Charmed Wolf, Aimee Easterling [best novels in english txt] 📗

forth felt less like a battle and more like a dance.

Rune was ten times more skillful than I was. His sword knew the track mine was heading on before I was even certain of my own upcoming trajectory. His body seemed to be tied to mine with invisible strings.

And yet...he didn’t press his advantage. Didn’t attack with fury. Instead, Rune maintained the same languorous pace with which he’d started. Together, we spun.

Swords collided and separated, sparking moonlight. Blades tapped together, ringing like bells.

Gradually, the pack drew in closer, and this time I didn’t order them out of the zone of danger. Because there was no zone of danger.

Which meant that when Rune spoke, we all heard.

“I’m half fae, but I’ve given your Alpha my true name.” He wasn’t addressing me, and yet he was. Tap, tap, slide, our weapons sang counterpoint to his promises. “With that name, Tara can force me to do her bidding. If I become a hindrance, she can send me away from here. Even without that promise, I would still bend to her will.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my old nurse smile. She was the soft heart of our pack, the maternal instinct. No wonder she was swayed by Rune’s poetry.

Willa wasn’t. “How,” my father’s Beta demanded as our swords carved beauty into starlight, “can we trust you not to go beast the way you did this morning?”

For the first time, Rune’s step faltered. If this had been a true battle, that would have been the moment I brought him down.

Instead, my sword provided leverage so Rune could regain his footing. My words provided the strength of my belief. “Butch would never harm those he cares about. And, as Beta of this pack, he cares about all of you.”

Persimmon unfurled stronger, pulling me in until my shoulder brushed Rune’s shoulder. If it hadn’t been for the Guardian’s menace and Natalie’s children lost in the bowels of the earth beneath us, I would have dropped my sword and taken his lips.

Instead, I raised my eyebrows, a reminder that I needed to win this battle. Then I twisted the base of my weapon up against the pommel of his sword.

Rune nodded. His fingers relaxed.

As easily as if we’d planned it, his sword flew away into the wooded darkness. Rune knelt with the grace of a dancer.

“Alpha.”

I was the only one with a sword now. I used it to tap him on the shoulders—right, left, right—as if I was a queen and he was my knight.

“Beta,” I replied.

THE EARTH EXHALED BENEATH us. The Guardian thought I was doing her bidding.

But the pack hesitated, their bonds slithering snake-like around me. The immaterial tethers should have latched onto Rune without nudging, but apparently Clan Whelan nurtured reservations still.

So I grabbed the mass of tethers and twirled them around Rune’s shoulders. If pack mates wouldn’t connect willingly to their new Beta, I’d force them to connect.

Force them so fast that the bonds’ bite was surely painful. I’d felt that pain when my father died and leadership had transferred to me in an instant. Then, my shoulders had bowed for a split second before I’d straightened as Alpha.

Rune, in contrast, didn’t falter. Instead, his gaze roved across newfound pack mates.

“I’m honored,” he told them. “I will live up to your trust.”

“Best you do,” Willa started, voice terse. But then she trailed off as I completed the transition that needed completing. The one I couldn’t explain aloud because of the charm Lenny’s wife had cast over my head.

First, I placed two fingers in my mouth to whistle up transportation. Erskine pirouetted only once in the moonlight before he came to stand beside me. Then he let me grab his mane and vault aboard.

There, I did what I’d planned from the beginning. Grabbing all of the bonds flowing out of me except those leading to humans, I ripped them from my flesh.

Did I say, rip? I should have said excavated them one by one with a rusty spoon.

If the sudden joining of those bonds had been painful, their severing was excruciating. Pack mates’ gazes flying to mine, their reactions gut-wrenching and disillusioned.

No wonder Willa, for once in her life, ignored my place above and apart. “Tara, your role is here! With your pack. You’re behaving like a child. If you leave now, you might as well stay gone.”

I swallowed. She was right. I was no longer Alpha because I’d chosen a path my pack couldn’t walk down. I’d chosen to save Kale and Hazel, Erskine and Rune.

But I wasn’t leaving Clan Whelan in the lurch. Instead, ignoring pain both physical and emotional, I flung the bonds I’d ripped from myself toward my Beta...now the pack’s Alpha.

Because Rune wasn’t tied into the Guardian. He hadn’t been raised to defend a fae who didn’t deserve defending. The Guardian wouldn’t have a foothold to sneak through him and into our clan.

Instead, Rune was a safe anchor for my pack mates. He’d protect them until I was finished...or would find a way to protect them forever if I failed.

Only, Rune didn’t understand that. Didn’t understand why I’d ripped free the persimmon-scented connection that started at my neck and spiraled to his heart. Why I’d removed the reason our swordplay had been a dance and a seduction rather than a battle.

I opened my mouth to explain, but the charm that prevented me from explaining about the Guardian prevented me from speaking about this also.

So all I could do was listen to Rune’s anguished “Tara!”

I felt his pain...then I didn’t.

Slumping over the unicorn’s neck, I clenched my fists into Erskine’s mane with the last of my energy. Then I passed out.

Chapter 37

“You need to wake up.”

Rune’s voice slapped my eyes open. No, not Rune’s. Not quite.

The mattress beneath me was soft and...vaguely damp? I blinked my eyes open to find wisps of white floating across a blue sky above me.

Right, I wasn’t in bed and this wouldn’t be Rune shaking my