Page 54 of 3 Shifters to Break a Curse

An invisible string tightened around me, stretching from my head to my chest. I sucked in a breath as I continued to read the words. The string tightened even more. I reached the end of the ritual, and I almost couldn’t breathe.

I started from the beginning. I felt a tug on the string. And then another, and a third. Finally, the string unraveled and thread by thread, I was freed. The last of the fog cleared… and more importantly, I remembered what I had forgotten.

“Oh, my goddess,” I said in a rush and stared at Ezra.

Ezra and Rin stared at me as if they had no clue what was going on.

“Are you going to talk to us now?” he asked.

I nodded and smiled. “I remember.”

“Just like that?” Rin asked, sounding doubtful.

I nodded. “Trust me, the ritual was much more involved than you realize. You may want to sit down.”

Ezra said, “I’ll go grab Luke. Don’t start without us.”

He disappeared up the stairs as Rin took a seat. “This had better be good.”

I nodded and kept quiet. Excitement bubbled through me because I was one step closer to being free of Jared for good. But as far as Rin… I figured all the steps forward I had taken with him were undone within the last few minutes. I had tried when it came to smoothing things over with him. And if he wasn’t convinced that I wasn’t lying to him from the start, then I didn’t know what would help. Probably nothing. Especially with how stubborn he was.

A few minutes later, Luke and Ezra came back down the stairs. Luke was pulling on a shirt as he came down, and the sight of his abs just before becoming hidden behind the cloth reminded me of the sex we had.

I bit my lip.

“What’s going on?” Luke asked, settling his gaze on me. “Ezra said you had something you wanted to tell us?”

I nodded. “Yes. I can remember everything now. And everything I had gone through all made so much more sense.”

“Okay…” he said, dragging out the word as he and Ezra took their seats.

“About four or five months ago, I cast a love ritual,” I said. “And everything had gone according to plan, or so I thought. I had some doubts when I cast the ritual. Doubts I thought I had done a good job of pushing back, but I understand now how horribly wrong everything had gone. And from the very beginning.”

“How?” Rin asked. “How did you have doubts?”

“I didn’t believe I could find real love,” I said with a shrug.

“Okay? Please continue,” Luke said.

“There weren’t supposed to be any doubts,” I said. “Magic is fickle like that.”

“Okay,” Luke said. “How does that explain everything?”

I held up a finger. “I’m getting there. I’ll take questions at the end, all right?”

He sighed and nodded.

“The love ritual required me to make a figure of clay,” I said.

He arched an eyebrow.

“So, you see… My doubts set the ritual astray. So instead of bringing me love, I brought a sort of curse on myself. So, after I had cast the ritual, the next morning, the clay figure was gone. I had forgotten most of the ritual by then.”

“And this leads to Jared how?” Rin asked.

“The clay figure turned into a clay demon. That’s what Jared is. He has been consuming my energy and life, growing stronger by the day. That explains how he has been able to find me, won’t leave me alone, and had become so strong.”

“Well…” Ezra said. “That explains him, but not how to defeat him.”

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