Blood & Wine

2 | Eden

I sighed. "He's here consensually, I promise," I told Dasher, steering him away from my sister's kinky games and down the hall toward the bathroom. The living room was the only safe place to portal—the only that would not tell the person in there who it belonged to. It was extremely undecorated, and bare except for the sofas. Sometimes we changed them for chairs when we had other witches here, but that was rare. No one wanted to be associated with our Coven anymore—the tattered remains of it, anyway. Not that I blamed them. If it wasn't for my sense of duty and responsibility, I, too, would've left Magus behind and stayed in Louisiana. "Calla?"

My sister poked her head out of her room, those dark eyes of hers two pools of surprise. "Oh!" she said, hiding whatever was in her hands behind her back. "I thought he was supposed to arrive on the fifth."

"It is the fifth," I responded to the hare-brained witch. Calla was a year younger than me, and she had been discarded by her own Coven for being so... uncouth. She was always messing something up, forgetting something, or shirking her responsibilities. I found her working in a metaphysical shop with too much knowledge—moreso than regular humans who were interested in the occult. After ten minutes of conversation, I invited her to join me in Magus, and we moved to South Carolina two months later.

I did not regret my choice, even though sometimes her forgetfulness made me want to scream.

Like tonight, when I was tired, Dasher smelled terrible, and I wanted to have a conversation with her before he emerged from the bathroom. We had to do something about him, and I had promised to keep him safe to the best of my ability. I wouldn't go back on my word, but I wouldn't force him to stay either. 'The best of my ability' included giving him an offer that he would be stupid to refuse.

Then again, men were already stupid, and Dasher had been through something I wouldn't wish on anyone but my worst enemies. Which he would become if he fell into the wrong hands.

Calla slapped a hand over her mouth. "Shit, let me get Ezekiel out of here."

I rolled my eyes. "Please. We have a lot to talk about."

She looked at Dasher behind me. "Yeah. We do."

I tugged Dasher down the hall. "Ezekiel is a half-vampire," I explained. "Calla's plaything for the past month and a half." I didn't see the appeal—yeah, he was handsome, like many of them were handsome, but he was so arrogant and full of himself at High Council meetings I had no desire to even look at him once we were out. Calla, however, did not attend High Council meetings—she found them boring, and I wanted to keep her far away from that part of our lives for her own safety—and, therefore, did not know how terrible he could act.

Dasher didn't respond. For someone who had lost five people he loved in the past three months and four in the past week, he was considerably well put together. Of course, I could sense he was burying all of it beneath him, but it would erupt in two days under the full moon. Which was why his mom had been so damn insistent in me getting to him.

I stopped at the guest bathroom—both Calla and I had our own private bathrooms. This one was strictly for guests like Dasher. I pushed open the door. The water was still hot, thanks to Calla's fire element and some spell work. The water was decorated with lavender to calm him, and I had lit some candles meant to soothe and rest the wolf within him.

Not to tame him like Imelda had wanted—taming the wolves, trying to control them, was what had gotten my Coven in this mess in the first place. Or the old Coven in this mess. I was the last one left before I recruited Calla.

Dasher looked in the bathroom, panic in those dark brown eyes. He moved like he was going to take a step back, so I nudged him forward with a gust of air. He whipped his head to me. "What did you do to me?" he demanded.