Special Edition - Moonbound Wrath

The crash of breaking glass stopped me mid-spell.

The room froze as I gritted my teeth, my left eye beginning to twitch. Slowly, I lifted my gaze from the protection charm spread across my worktable to find the culprit. Flashes of foxfire arced from Trouble’s whiskers as he tried to blend into the bottles he hadn’t managed to smash yet.

Not because the little shit felt guilty. Trouble hadn’t experienced that particular emotion a single day in his furry little life. This was simply the third bottle he’d knocked over in thirty minutes, and apparently even he understood the concept of self-preservation.

He perched on the second-highest shelf with one paw still extended over the empty space where a cylinder of moonroot had lived approximately five seconds ago. Silver dust coated his snout and sparkled across damn near every inch of the floorboards under him.

Fantastic.

I hated working with moonroot for exactly this reason. It didn’t matter how thoroughly I cleaned. I’d be finding that shit in every nook and cranny until the end of time.

Trouble’s tail gave a cautious flick as he retracted his paw, a pulse of innocence brushing through our bond.

Honestly, it was impressive. Completely fraudulent, but impressive.

Tainted copper flooded my mouth, and I fought the urge to gag. “Just because you can’t talk doesn’t mean I can’t taste the lie, you twerp.”

The little fucker blinked at me with the most bullshit “WHO, ME?” expression in the known universe. Then he sneezed, and a cloud of glittering moonroot dust exploded from his fur.

Behind me came a low masculine sound that had no business calling itself a laugh.

I flipped Harkan off without looking away from the trickster masquerading as my familiar. “You’re encouraging him.”

“I didn’t say a word,” Harkan replied, entirely too pleased with himself.

“Says the man thinking supportive thoughts.” I finally glanced over my shoulder, narrowing my eyes at him.

The barest curve touched his mouth, there and gone. “I didn’t know you could taste those.”

“I can’t.” My gaze dropped pointedly to the smile he was failing to hide. “I have ears.”

That did it. His chuckle broke into a full-blown laugh.

Traitor.

Trouble launched himself from the shelf, landed on Harkan’s shoulder, and tucked against the dire wolf Alpha’s neck as though he’d never committed a crime in his life.

Harkan didn't even have the decency to move him. Nearly seven feet of lethal Alpha wolf, feared across the Divide, was currently being used as transportation by a six-pound menace with foxfire in his whiskers. This was my life now.

Honestly, I'd had far worse.

I bent to collect the larger pieces of glass before Trouble decided the broken jar was also a snack. A thin ache pulled at my side as I crouched, the mostly healed scars protesting the stretch.

I ignored it. Scars ached. That was half their job.

“That was imported,” I muttered as I dropped the shards into a dustbin. “And expensive.”

Harkan leaned one hip against the table, completely unbothered by the criminal tucked against his neck. “I’ll replace it.”

I straightened and gave him a flat look. “That isn’t the point.”

“No?” His fingers moved lazily down Trouble’s spine.

“The point is consequences.”

At the word, Trouble promptly shoved his face deeper into Harkan’s neck.

I stared at them both. “You are actively undermining me.”

“He seems remorseful.” Harkan somehow managed to say it with a straight face.

I leveled a glare at him. “Get out.”

His mouth twitched.

Gods, that mouth.

Three weeks ago—maybe even two—I could have blamed the Mating Moon for the way my body reacted whenever Harkan looked at me like that. Could have blamed the unfinished bond, the magic, or the fact that fate seemingly loved to fuck with me on a cosmic scale.

That excuse had become considerably harder to maintain since the bond settled. Evidently, I wanted him even without a moon, ritual, magical crisis, attack, or impending death involved. Which was deeply inconvenient.

Harkan pushed away from the table and came toward me.

More inconvenient.

“You want me to leave?” he asked, amusement still lurking beneath the words.

“No.”

One dark eyebrow rose.

I sighed. “That was clearly a figure of speech.”

“Mm.” He kept coming.

I pointed a warning finger at his chest. “Don’t ‘Mm’ me.”

Harkan stopped close enough that the heat of him pressed into my skin before he ever touched me. His hand settled at my hip, and the bond stirred.

It wasn’t the violent pull it had once been. Not the relentless rope around my ribs that had nearly dropped me in the street when I’d tried to run from him.

This was deeper. Quieter. A current under my skin that simply existed because he did.

Which probably should have terrified me more than it did.

His nose brushed the shell of my ear. “You smell like moonroot.”

“So does your accomplice,” I murmured, refusing to give him the satisfaction of leaning into him.

Trouble chirped from somewhere near his shoulder.

“I meant you.” 

Harkan’s breath warmed the side of my neck a second before his mouth followed. Every coherent thought in my head promptly packed a bag and left.

“Harkan.” His name came out far less annoyed than I’d intended.

“Mm?” His lips moved against my skin.

I tightened my grip on the edge of the worktable. “You’re distracting me.”

“I’m just standing here,” he murmured, too innocent for a man currently kissing my neck.

“You’re standing here aggressively.”

Fangs grazed my skin, sending a sharp rush of heat through me.

I sucked in a breath. “Very aggressively.”

Harkan went still against me, though his hand remained steady at my hip. “I can stop.”

I almost called him a liar. The word died before it reached my tongue because he wasn’t one. If I asked him to stop, he would. No argument. No wounded pride. No attempt to convince me otherwise, no matter how badly he wanted me.

That certainty still caught me off guard sometimes.

Wanting Harkan had become easy. Trusting him enough to believe he would listen was the part I was still learning how to carry.

I turned within the circle of his arms and found his amber eyes already waiting for mine. Trouble had disappeared somewhere between one breath and the next, apparently deciding even he had boundaries.

Coward.

Harkan’s hand slid from my hip to the small of my back and pulled me closer.

“You were supposed to be fixing the shelf,” I reminded him, mostly because remembering the shelf was considerably safer than thinking about the look in his eyes.

“It’s fixed.” Satisfaction honeyed his voice.

I leaned to one side and peered around him. The shelf had been reinforced, leveled, and secured against what appeared to be everything short of a siege.

“It was fine.”

Harkan followed my gaze. “It leaned.”

“Barely.”

“It moved when I touched it.”

I stared up at him pointedly. “Most things do when you touch them. You’re enormous.”

Amusement glinted in those amber eyes, but he refused to be distracted. “It was going to fall.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Gods, you’re irritating when you’re competent.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “You gave me a hammer.”

“That was clearly my first mistake.”

“And nails,” he added.

I sighed as though the weight of my own terrible decisions might finally crush me. “Obviously my second.”

His hand tightened gently at my back as he laughed, and something soft moved through the bond.

Unfortunately, the shelf wasn’t the only thing Harkan had decided needed fixing.

My gaze drifted around the room.

The building had been storage once. Stone walls, heavy timbers, two narrow windows. Nothing particularly remarkable about it.

Harkan had called it secure. I’d called it temporary.

Then came the worktables. The sink. Locking cabinets. A small iron stove with enough ventilation that I could brew potions without accidentally poisoning everyone within fifty feet.

Yesterday, I’d found a rack beside the door for drying herbs. Today, it seemed, we were fortifying shelves.

At this rate, the man would have a sign hanging outside before I figured out how to stop him.

I still called it “the workroom,” and he didn’t bother to correct me. Which was somehow worse.

There had been no conversation about staying. No grand declaration that this was mine now. Harkan had simply kept noticing things I needed and quietly made room for them.

For me.

The realization tightened beneath my sternum as my gaze found him again.

“You’re staring.”

Heat climbed the back of my neck, which was ridiculous considering what the man had seen me do naked. “I was thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.” His mouth curved, amusement filtering between us.

I snorted and slid my palms over his chest. “You should probably keep a closer eye on me.”

Something in his expression shifted. The humor remained, but it sharpened into something decidedly less innocent as his hand settled more firmly at my waist. “Is that what you want?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I really should have known better than to hand a dire wolf Alpha an opening like that.

“There are several things I could be doing right now that are considerably more dangerous,” I murmured, letting my fingers drift higher over his chest.

Harkan’s pupils darkened as his gaze dropped to my mouth. “Is that so?”

The rough edge in his voice sent heat sliding low through my stomach.

“Mm-hmm.” I rose onto my toes, close enough that my lips nearly brushed his. “Very irresponsible things.”

Before I could come up with something suitably lewd, Harkan bent and caught me behind the thighs. I barely had time to gasp before he lifted me. My ass landed on the edge of the worktable, scattering a few harmless scraps of parchment as he stepped between my knees.

“That,” I said slowly, “was extremely presumptuous.”

A sexy half-grin graced his lips as his hands settled on my thighs.

I hooked one heel behind his leg and pulled him closer. Whatever smug response he’d been about to give me disappeared when I kissed him.

His fingers tightened against my thighs as he kissed me back, hard enough to steal the next breath from my lungs. I slid one hand into his hair, dragging him closer as my legs closed around his hips.

The low sound that rumbled from his chest went straight through me.

Harkan broke the kiss only long enough to drag his mouth along my jaw and down my neck. His hand slid higher under the hem of my skirt, and my fingers tightened in his hair. His breath roughened against my skin as he pulled me closer to the edge of the table.

Then someone knocked hard enough on the outer door to rattle it in its frame, and Harkan went completely still.

For one glorious second, I watched sheer irritation cross the face of a man who could normally stare down an entire room without so much as blinking. His eyes closed. A long breath escaped through his nose as though he were personally asking every god in existence for patience.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

Another knock sounded. “Alpha?”

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.

Harkan opened his eyes and leveled a look at me that only made matters worse.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Still grinning, I patted his chest and eased my legs from around him. “Saved by pack bureaucracy.”

His jaw tightened as he glanced toward the door. “That's not a thing.”

“It is now.”

The growl rumbling in his chest had absolutely no teeth behind it, and we both knew it.

I grinned wider as I slid off the worktable. “Maybe next time you should work faster.”

Another low growl followed me across the room, promising there would absolutely be a next time.

And when there was, I suspected I wouldn’t be sitting on the table for long.

The wards along the doorframe hummed over my skin as I approached. I’d put them up myself on the first day, weaving three layers of protection through stone, timber, and iron until the old storage building felt less like something I was borrowing and more like something that might eventually belong to me.

Eventually. Maybe. If I ever let myself believe it.

I released the outer ward and opened the door.

Cold afternoon air swept inside, carrying damp earth, cedar, woodsmoke, and the layered scents of wolves moving through the compound.

The woman waiting on the other side was familiar enough that I knew I’d seen her around, though it took me a second to attach a name to the face.

She had dark hair braided tightly against her scalp and a weather-beaten cloak pulled around strong shoulders. A leather cord circled one wrist, woven through with tiny carved bones and beads.

Mara.

Her gaze went past me to Harkan first. “Alpha.” She dipped her chin respectfully before looking back at me. “Sable.”

There was nothing frantic about her, but something in the set of her shoulders was too rigid for a social call. Wonderful. Evidently, it was my turn to find out what fresh disaster the Divide had coughed up.

“What happened?”

Mara studied me a bit too long. “What makes you think something happened?”

I leaned against the doorframe. “You walked past Harkan’s house, the healer’s quarters, and at least six wolves who’d rather chew off a paw than admit they couldn’t fix something.”

A reluctant smile tugged at her mouth.

“Yet somehow,” I continued, “you ended up at my door.”

“Fair.”

Behind me, Harkan made a low sound that might have been amusement, but whatever expression he wore disappeared when Mara stepped inside.

She reached into the pouch at her hip and pulled out a smooth black stone, setting it on my worktable, and the last of my amusement faded.

It was small enough to fit in my palm, with a protection sigil carved into one face. The grooves should have been packed with powdered silver. Instead, they were filled with something dull and gray.

I moved closer without touching it.

Silver tarnished. It darkened, spotted, corroded.

This looked drained.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A boundary ward.” Mara braced one hand against the edge of the table, her attention fixed on the stone. “My family’s kept them around our land for generations.”

Harkan moved to stand beside me.

I felt the shift in him before he spoke. The warmth that had filled the bond moments ago receded behind something colder and more focused.

Alpha.

“Where?” he asked.

“North edge of the territory. Past the cedar line.”

The location meant nothing to me. It clearly meant something to him.

Harkan’s expression hardened. “When did it fail?”

“Last night.”

His gaze stayed on the stone. “Only this one?”

Mara hesitated.

“At first.”

A slither of unease skidded down my spine at those two words. Nobody ever said “at first” when the rest of the story was about to improve.

I snatched a pair of iron tongs from the worktable and nudged the ward. Metal clicked softly against stone, but nothing else happened.

No flare of defensive magic. No warning hiss. Not even the faint recoil I should have felt from handling someone else’s protection spell.

The ward just sat there.

Dead.

“How many?” I asked.

Mara folded her arms across her chest. “Seven by dawn.”

I looked up sharply.

“We replaced them,” she continued. “New stones. New carvings. Fresh blood in the bindings. We did everything exactly the way my family has always done it.”

“And?” I asked, though I already suspected I wasn’t going to like the answer.

Her mouth tightened. “They were dead before noon.”

The last of the heat Harkan had left on my skin seemed to disappear.

I lowered the tongs and studied the ward again. “What, exactly, were they meant to keep out?”

“Anything that crossed the boundary with harmful intent.”

My eyebrows rose. “That’s broad magic.”

A spell like that should have required constant maintenance, especially across multiple generations.

Mara gave a small shrug that seemed more defensive than casual. “Maybe, but they’ve always worked.”

Everything worked until it didn’t. “Did you find any sign that something crossed after they failed?”

“We don’t know.”

I looked up from the stone. “How do you not know?”

Her eyes sharpened, but worry squatted under the burr of irritation. “Because there were no tracks. No broken branches. No disturbed brush. Nothing that suggested anyone—or anything—came through.”

Harkan shifted beside me. “What about scent?”

Mara’s gaze cut to him. “There wasn’t one.”

Something cold moved beneath my ribs. Before I could decide what to make of it, Trouble appeared on the table beside me. His foxfire had dimmed until only the faintest orange-white glow traced his whiskers. He crept toward the ward, stretched his neck far enough to sniff it, and instantly jerked backward.

Every hair along his spine lifted.

“Well, fuck.”

I started to reach for the ward, but Harkan caught my wrist before my fingers touched it.

“Wait.”

The word came out sharper than I expected. I looked down at his hand, and a beat later, so did he.

“Sorry,” he murmured, releasing me.

I flexed my fingers once, more irritated by the instinct behind the gesture than the touch itself. “It’s a ward stone, Harkan. Not a bomb.”

“We don’t know what happened to it.” His jaw tightened as concern pressed through the bond.

“She literally just told us what happened to it.”

His eyes hardened. “You know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, I did. That didn’t mean I appreciated him trying to stop me from touching the damned thing. “Then you can stand there and glower while I do my job.”

For a moment, he looked like he wanted to argue. The muscles in his jaw flexed as he stepped back.

Across the table, Mara suddenly found the newly reinforced shelving fascinating. Smart woman.

I picked up the ward. Cold sank into my palm immediately. It wasn't the ordinary chill of stone left somewhere dark. This cold settled into my bones like it belonged there.

My gift rose instinctively in response. Truth had texture and taste. Everything carried some kind of echo—the hands that had touched it, the words spoken nearby, the promises made or broken in its presence.

An object this old should have been saturated with them. Generations of wolves had bled over this stone. Renewed its protections. Trusted it to guard their land and families. There should have been layers upon layers for me to sift through.

Instead, when I closed my eyes and reached for its history, I found nothing.

My eyes snapped open.

Harkan was watching me closely. “What is it?”

Shaking my head, I looked back down and reached again, pushing harder this time. Even broken magic left something behind. Failed spells tasted bitter. Lies carried ash or copper or rot, depending on their shape. Truth settled cleaner on my tongue, sometimes cold and sometimes sweet enough to sting.

Magic could weaken. It could change or scar or twist into something almost unrecognizable, but it didn't simply disappear.

Except this had. There was no residue inside the ward. No lingering spellwork. No memory of the blood used to bind it or the wolves who had carried it in their hands. Only absence.

My stomach dropped as recognition finally found a name. I knew this kind of nothing. I’d felt it once before in my mother’s shop, standing only feet from a hooded man while an imp begged for his life.

There had been no scent on him, no aura, and nothing for my gift to taste, as if every piece of magic that should have proved he existed had been carved out and replaced by a void.

The Devourer.

Pain sparked so suddenly that my breath caught.

Harkan moved closer at once. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said automatically, and my mouth flooded with the bitter taste of the lie.

Fantastic.

And, of course, he didn’t buy it for a second. “Sable.”

“I’m fine.” More copper coated my tongue, harsher this time, and I resisted the urge to grimace at my own damned magic.

Trouble hissed from beside my elbow, though whether he was reacting to me or the ward was impossible to tell.

I lowered the stone back onto the worktable with more care than I'd used when picking it up. Under my shirt, the scars at my side pulsed again, but this time the skin drew tight, as though something had slipped a finger under the edges of the wounds and yanked.

I kept my expression neutral. If Varro had taught me anything worth keeping, it was that pain was information. I didn’t have to advertise every time I received it.

“What did you taste?” Mara asked quietly.

I looked at her, then at Harkan. Concern flooded the bond, sharper now because he knew perfectly well I was holding something back.

But I wanted one more piece of the puzzle before I said the word “DEVOURER” aloud and watched the entire compound lose its collective mind.

“Has anything else happened around your land?” I asked Mara.

Her brow creased. “Like what?”

“Anything that didn’t make sense. Animals disappearing. Livestock refusing to cross somewhere they normally would. Magic failing where it shouldn’t. People getting sick.”

Something flickered across Mara’s face, small and quick, but I’d spent most of my life watching people lie.

“What?” I asked.

Mara hesitated, then shook her head. “Nothing.”

Ash coated my tongue. “Horseshit.”

Her mouth flattened, but she didn’t look away.

Beside me, Harkan let out a low growl. “Answer her.”

Power threaded through his voice, subtle but unmistakable. The jars on the nearest shelf trembled against one another, and Mara’s shoulders stiffened as the Alpha finally made an appearance.

After a moment, she exhaled. “My youngest said something last night.”

I leaned forward. “How young?”

“Eight.”

SHIT. So old enough to know to not make something up but young enough to see what many couldn't. “What did she say?”

Mara glanced toward the window as though she expected something to be waiting on the other side. When she looked back at me, the worry she’d been trying to hide was written plainly across her face.

“She said her shadow was looking the wrong way.”

The room went silent. Even Trouble stopped moving. I looked down at the dead ward stone as the scars on my ribs burned hotter.

Harkan’s concern sharpened through the bond. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

For once, the truth tasted clean.

I almost wished it hadn’t.