Tripp and I wheel into the parking lot of the garage and wrecking yard owned by Silas Duke and the Salty Dogs motorcycle club. It’s located on a back country road in a rural area outside of town. I’m here to take out the trash, and Tripp is in the passenger’s seat, already shifted into his large, black-brown wolf.
I park my Jeep in front of the squat, cinder-block office building, and we get out of the car.
“Can I help you?” an attractive woman in her midthirties calls from the open door of the office.
“Is Silas Duke around?” I ask.
“Si? He’ll be in the garage.” The woman points her pen in the direction of the garage bays and goes back to work.
Tripp looks at me and then at the garage as if to say, Ready?
“Remember, I don’t want you to interfere unless I ask you to. Hang back, and if I need you, I’ll let you know.” Tripp is right. I need to flex some muscle to win the respect of my leaders.
Tripp nods his understanding with a high-pitched yip, his intelligent green eyes the only recognizable thing about him.
With Tripp trotting by my side, we make our way over to the garage. A dozen men are working on cars and milling around, the smell of axle grease and rubber tires hangs in the humid morning air. I scan the crowd. They’re all human. “I’m looking for Silas,” I call out on our approach.
A guy in a red shirt points to a car up on a hoist.
Silas emerges from the shadows underneath the car with a heavy-duty socket wrench in his hand. “You found him.” Then his eyes narrow as he sees me standing there. “What do you want?”
There’s no point in beating around the bush, so I decide to let him know in no uncertain terms that I’m not the welcoming committee. “It’s time for you to go. I won’t tolerate your ‘business ventures’ or you killing humans in my territory.”
Silas picks up a tire iron and cuts his eyes to the guy in the red shirt. “Close the gates.”
The red-shirt guy walks into the garage and enters a combination into a keypad mounted on the wall. Hearing the screech of metal, I glance over my shoulder to see ten-foot-high metal fence gates swing closed across the driveway to the parking lot.
Silas walks toward us and does two unexpected things at the same time. He bangs the tools he’s holding together in a taunting slow clap, the sound echoing like the rapport of a gun in the now silent parking lot. And he lifts the veil from the magic he’s been hiding. It drifts off him, only in a trickle at first and then with more force. The air ripples and for a moment, I don’t know what he is and then it hits me—the dank, musty stench of werewolf.
While wolf shifters are born, werewolves are made. They’re humans who’ve been bitten by another werewolf. They’re known to be vicious and bloodthirsty but aren’t as powerful as their shifter counterparts. However, there’s an exception to every rule—a prodigy, an outlier. Silas must be it for the werewolf community because the magic billowing off him is very strong.
“I’m not leaving this territory,” Silas grinds out. “I have as much right to be here as anybody else.”
Tripp lets out a warning howl as Silas charges across the parking lot toward me.
Calling my enchantress magic, I thrust out my hands and stop Silas in his tracks. The force of my power snaps my head back and creates an uncomfortable pressure in my chest, as if I’m being pushed back in my seat by the g-forces of a race car. I’m still getting the hang of wielding the power I recently inherited from my mother.
When the other men come out of the garage, Tripp bares his razor-sharp teeth at them and growls loudly.
Silas gives me a feral grin and begins banging the metal tools together again as he leans into my magic. He takes a step forward and then another. He looks as if he’s walking into category-four hurricane winds, but he’s making progress toward me.
“You’ve forfeited your rights. You’re terrorizing the humans and killing women for sport.” I dial up my power, and my lungs constrict further. Silas loses momentum and staggers back a step, dropping his arms to his sides. Then he bends forward, deeper into my magic, and begins the steady pace toward me again.
His face pinches in disgust. “No one cares about those girls.”
“I do. They’re in my territory and under my protection.” My voice is strong, but the backs of my knees are sweating, and my power feels as if it’s going to tear me apart from the inside out.
The other men come farther into the parking lot and form a loose semicircle around us. They shout jeering comments like “Give her what she came for, Si” and “Teach this girl a lesson.”
A crouched, snarling Tripp lunges with a vicious snap of his jaws at any man who attempts to get too close to the fight.
Silas raises the metal tools in the air once again. “When I reach you, I’m going to beat you to death with these.”
I don’t doubt his words for a second. He continues to advance on me, and I pull harder on my power than I ever have before. Every cell in my body is close to bursting. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on without killing myself.
When Silas is within striking distance, I do the only thing I can. I drop my magic and step aside.
Silas swings the tire iron at me but is overcommitted. His strike misses, and he rushes past me.
I pick up the reins of my magic once again and slam Silas headfirst into the side of the office building. He hits the building at about sixty miles an hour. It’s like a car accident with no car, and his skull cracks like an egg against the cinder block before his body slides to the ground.
Tripp jogs over on all fours to give Silas’s body a sniff and then backs away.
I give the crowd of assembled men a flinty look before turning my back on them to blast the closed metal gates off their hinges. “This shop and your motorcycle charter are officially closed. If I have to come back, your fate will be worse.”
I’m sitting at the small tea table in front of the windows in my office on Avalon having a late-morning latte. After my fight with Silas, I need the caffeine hit. My office looks pretty much the same as it did when it was my mother’s. The large wooden desk, probably more suited to a male than a female, wainscoting and coffered ceilings all remain. I’ve added a couple of framed pictures of Ash and me from our wedding and coronation, but those are the only changes.
Suddenly, my mother appears in the seat across the table from me, making an unexpected visit from the great beyond. I startle, sloshing some of my coffee over the edge of the cup and onto the white-linen tablecloth. My mother and I have always had a complicated relationship, but I understand her better and can appreciate her more now that I have walked a mile in her Louboutins. It’s not easy being queen.
“Hello, Seraphina.” She greets me with a grim smile. “I just heard the news.”
I take a sip of my latte. “Hello, Mother. What news?”
“That you killed Silas Duke.” Her appearance flickers like a hologram and is the only indication of her spectral form.
“You know Silas Duke?” I meet her eyes and place my cup on the table.
“Everyone knows Silas, dear.”
“I’d never heard of him until a couple of days ago.”
“He may be a bit before your time, but he is well known to the Council of Seven and other rulers. He is the oldest and most powerful of his kind.”
Ash jumps into the room, his stormy glare pinning me to my chair. “I just saw Tripp. Start talking, Princess.”
He must have heard the news, too. To act as a channel that allows Ash to use my senses to see and hear my mother, I open the mate bond.
After he acknowledges her with a small bow, I give them the backstory of my grocery store run-in with Silas. “The first time we met, I could sense only the tiniest hint of magic on him. I thought he might be human. As it turned out, he wasn’t. Today, while I was fighting him, I had to call a lot of my power, more than I’ve ever called before. The rush was so strong, I thought it was going to tear me apart.”
“Moving from the power of a princess to that of a queen is like going from driving a car to piloting a fighter jet. As an inexperienced practitioner, you must be careful.” My mother holds up a warning finger. “The force of the magic can cause you to black out. It can even break your bones, shift your organs, and cause internal bleeding. In short, if you do not know what you are doing, it can kill you.”
“Would more practice help?” I’d spent the last six months practicing, pitting my power against Ash and the girls, but if more was needed, I’d do the work.
“The magic is still settling in you,” my mother explains. It takes time and patience to learn how to wield it. It may take a year or more for you to master it. You can’t force it. One day it will click into place, truly become a part of you.”
“You’re just telling me this now?” I ask, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Would you have listened to me? You always have to learn everything the hard way,” she replies.
I give her a touché smile and a dip of my chin. When you’re right, you’re right.
“The really old ones among us can temporarily hide their power, pass themselves off as human, when they do not want others to know how much magic they have. But the illusion can only be held for a short time, maybe an hour or two,” my mother says.
She always displayed her power, wore it like a Chanel suit of armor. My father-in-law, Reg, often diminishes the outward presence of his power when he’s with family so it’s not right in your face, but I’d never mistake him for human. Not for a second. “That’s an interesting trick. Silas almost fooled me, and he did fool Tripp.”
“Silas is a lone werewolf and a known problem.” My mother shifts her gaze between Ash and me. “He goes underground for long periods of time and then resurfaces every fifty years or so, looking for a place to call home. He cannot stay in one place very long due to his aggressive and violent nature. He has been wanted by the council for a long time, but he always manages to escape. Until now.”
“Nina, if you have a problem, I’m your problem solver. I thought I made that clear,” Ash says in a low voice.
“I had to confront him. He was killing women in my territory. Terrorizing the humans,” I say without regret.
“That sounds like Silas. He is a rogue wolf. Displaced and hungry for position. Hunger for position makes one desperate and dangerous. He probably thought because you are a young ruler, that you are weak. Killing him sends a very clear message.” My mother regards me with a gleam of pride in her eyes.
Ash closes the distance between us. “You walked into that fight not even knowing what you were up against.” He cups the side of my face, his thumb grazing my cheek. “He could’ve killed you.”
“But he didn’t.” I put my hand over his, holding him to me. “I killed him. I can’t continue to let you fight my battles for me, Ash. You may not always be there to protect me. You’re going to have to trust me to take care of myself. Do you think you can do that?”
“I guess I’ll have to try.” Ash drops his hand and gives me a long look. “You put yourself on the radar with this killing. Made a name for yourself.”
Rolling my shoulders back, I stare deeply into his eyes without fidgeting. “It needed to be done. I have to show my leaders I’m willing to stand with them to protect my territory. That I’m not going to sit by and let everyone else do the dirty work.”
“You did the right thing, Seraphina,” my mother says. “But Ash is correct. You will not be able to fly under the radar any longer. Killing Silas was your coming-out party. For better or for worse, you are out in society now. Soon everyone will know how powerful you are.”
