Karma's Spell (Magical Midlife in Mystic Hollow Book 1), Lacey Andersen [best book club books .txt] 📗

So much.

Pain shot through my chest and it literally felt like my heart was breaking all over again as Sarah's face seemed to fill my mind. Just thinking about her sent shockwaves of pain through me, but they weren’t nearly as bad as they used to be. Time definitely helped. The pain was still as intense, but somehow I’d grown bigger so it didn’t affect me quite so much.

Emma was certainly intriguing. Maybe as a first date. I’d been thinking about going on one. Ten years was long enough to wait, I reckoned. But nobody had caught my eye.

Except Emma.

And for some reason, I didn't think anyone would. There was just something about this woman that turned my head, always had, always would. How to go about asking her out, I had no idea. I hadn’t asked a woman out since, well, I couldn’t really remember doing it other than when I stumbled over my words asking Sarah out. And that was a very long time ago.

Maybe there were videos online about how to do it. I’d have to remember to check.

“Daniel!”

I sighed and turned to face the wolf pack’s new, very young alpha. “Nathan.”

Drawing on my inner magic, I shifted into my animal form and shook out my fur. As a bear shifter on wolf territory, this was pretty unusual, but the situation was severe. The bears usually kept to our own territories, but the wolves feared us. The pack shifted around me, snarling and snapping. But they wouldn’t go on the offensive. Bears were known for their brutal attacks. The wolves might have outnumbered me, but in experience, size, and knowledge, I made up for it. I was worth ten of these pipsqueaks and they all knew it, which is why none of them advanced toward me.

It wasn’t always this way. There wasn't always this tension. Nathan, I was your father’s best friend. I watched you grow up, from afar. I mentally pushed the words at the wolf alpha. Thomas was my best friend. His loss was a blow to us all. Whether you want to believe it or not, he was friends with all the other shifter communities in the area. This tension wasn't always there.

Bullshit. Nathan's voice rang in my head like a bell clanging in the distance. I never once saw you here. You keep saying that you and Dad were friends, but there's nothing to back you up.

My bear wanted to roar and smack the absolute shit out of him for being so dense and untrusting, but I couldn't blame him. I'd probably be the same in his shoes.

Your father, your alpha, was protective of his son. He wasn't willing to risk anything harming you. You're his heir, and he didn't want to risk a hair on that adorable little head of yours. After you were born we never met here anymore. Always off pack property, away from you, though that didn't mean your dad ever shut up about you.

He never talked about you. Nathan's voice was salty as though he was jealous of the time I spent with his father, or the fact that Thomas held his cards close to his chest. He wasn't pissed off anymore though, which was a good thing. Besides, I agreed with him on that point. The man had been so obsessed with keeping Nathan safe that he didn't think what it would be like for Nathan to be isolated from the other shifters in the area.

Nathan shook his head. His long gray fur rippled over his body as though he was standing in a gust of wind. He paced back and forth in front of me, but it was no longer aggressive; it was a man working off the adrenaline of preparing for an attack and none coming. I'd been there. Sometimes it could take a while to calm down.

Nathan shook his head, and his long gray fur began to recede as he shifted back into his skin. Watching always made me feel like I was intruding on something private, but I also knew if I turned away now it would be both an insult and make me look weak. So I watched as his skin seemed to absorb the fur that had once coated his wolf.

It happened with any shifter with fur; our bodies just seemed to reabsorb it, just like it did with our clothes when we shifted into our animals. It creeped me out to watch though. Maybe I watched too many movies but I always wanted the clothes to shred when I shifted into my bear and the fur to turn into dust on the wind when I shifted back or something. My wallet was certainly happy that I didn't explode out of my clothes every time I shifted. Gods, could you imagine how big your closet would have to be just to keep up with yourself shifting, let alone the families with moody teenagers that shifted every two seconds? I was exhausted just thinking about it.

The young alpha stood on two legs once more after a tense moment where he was halfway between wolf and man. Another reason I was grateful we didn't lose our clothes was because I didn't want to see Nathan naked. I doubted he wanted to see me that way either.

With a sigh, he nodded once. “Fine, Bear. Why are you here?”

I shifted and strode forward, straightening my clothes as I went. “I’m looking for her brother.” I nodded my head in the direction Emma had driven off.

“And I told her. I don’t know where he is.”

I looked him in the eyes and believed him. I believed that he didn't know where Henry was, but he had his suspicions. “Fine. What do you know?”

He motioned for me to sit in the chair beside him. “As I told the women, he got busted counting cards, but the Vamp Mistress made everyone let him go. My guys don’t