Page 3 of Blood and Magic (RBMC: Helena, MT #2)

Vermillion

L iving was bullshit.

I didn’t use to think that, but ever since I’d died and come back to life, finding joy in the mundane had become an impossible task.

“Your heart sounds good,” my sister, Morwyn, said, pressing the stethoscope to my chest. “Lungs are fine. You’re completely healthy.”

I didn’t feel healthy. Hell, I barely felt anything anymore. I’d say I was depressed, but such a minuscule term didn’t cover it.

Last November, the bloodsucking vampires, aka the Bloody Scorpions MC, had abducted Sol in retaliation for her mating to Orion.

If there was one thing all shifters hated, it was a nasty vampire nest close to our homestead.

And fucking with one person’s mate meant the entire weight of the pack came with a vengeance.

We went after her, and in the process, I took two sets of fangs straight to the neck.

It had taken all the magic in the pack to bring me back to life.

Or, at least, they’d managed to get my heart beating again.

But knowing there was nothing on the other side, no heavenly gates and no ancestors waiting for me, put things in a different perspective.

I should have been grateful to have every damned day on this great earth, but things were different now.

I was different now.

My wolf had died and come back darker…angrier…more willing to snarl and tear into someone.

“Good,” I said, hopping off the table to put my shirt back on. “Clean bill of health. You can stop annoying me with your relentless questions.”

Morwyn rolled her eyes. As a fully trained medical doctor and the pack’s resident healer, she saw with more than just her eyes.

She had a special connection to the alpha that allowed her unfettered access to the magical ties between us.

When someone joined the pack, they made a blood bond to Kodiak, and through that supernatural tie, Morwyn could channel her energy at will to heal us.

It was this energy that had brought me back to life.

“Mill,” she said, her features softening, reminding me of our mother. “I’m worried about you. Caelum says you’re not eating. You’re losing weight.”

I scoffed and rubbed a hand over my face. “Our little brother is too busy fucking his way through the homestead to know what I’m doing.”

“You look like hell, big brother.” She crossed her arms, her brown curly hair sticking out at odd angles around her head. “It took you nearly fifteen minutes to change last moon.”

I’d been a member of the Helena, Montana shifter pack my entire life, and eight years ago, I’d been patched into the council…

officially made a member of the Royal Bastards MC.

We weren’t like shifters from fairy tales, unless you count the fucked-up German ones.

We only turned once a month, when the call of the full moon activated the magic in our blood and forced us to change.

We couldn’t turn into our furry counterparts at will, nor would we want to.

The shift was painful and difficult and took upward of five minutes for a normal shifter to fully complete.

We could accomplish partial changes at will: growing claws, extending our fangs, and letting the inner beast take over our vision.

But a complete transformation took place only once a month.

The lore was true about one thing, though.

We hated vampires with a bloodthirsty passion, and in Montana, any vampire that passed through became part of the Bloody Scorpions.

They ran the territory to the east of the Missouri, and up until six months ago, they’d been in league with the Vanderbilts.

Those rich motherfuckers had bought up everything to the south and west, damn near controlling the entire state.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying (and failing) to keep my tone light. It came out more in a snarl than I’d intended. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I’m fine.”

“Look, I’ve been doing some research.” She glanced down at the ground and rubbed a hand over her neck. “I don’t know how we brought you back, and I’m worried we might have done lasting damage.”

Yeah, no shit.

Everyone had moments that marked a definitive before and after.

Mine was that night. Before, I’d been fun.

Jovial. Generally happy with my life and those in it.

I loved being a part of the pack, and I loved everyone in it like family.

Our parents had died during a Scorpion raid on RBMC territory, so I’d been in charge of my little sister and brother ever since. I took that responsibility seriously.

After? Temper meet short fuse. Anything could set me off and routinely did.

I snarled at cubs and later regretted it.

I’d had to take a two-week probation from patrol because I’d pissed off our sergeant at arms, Moose, by punching another male when he’d gotten too close to a female who didn’t want his attention.

I mean, what was the fucking point of any of this?

We were born. We lived meaningless lives. And then we died. The end.

“I’m fine,” I growled, my wolf perilously close to the surface. I felt the shift in my eyes, my canines extending, my fingernails turning into sharp points capable of slicing and dicing.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, her own wolf glaring at me from behind her gaze. “With one word, I could have you on house arrest. You’re already skating on thin ice with Kodiak. You want to stomp on that crack?”

I grumbled and took a deep breath, trying to calm the rising tide of fury in my gut.

“We’re worried about you, Van,” she said, using my legal name, the one she’d been calling me since we were children. “We love you.”

“I don’t need you to worry about me,” I said, recognizing the signs of exhaustion in her face. She had nearly wiped herself out to bring me back, and in the time since, she hadn’t recuperated. “When are you taking a vacation, huh?”

“Don’t change the subject.” She sighed and shook her head. “I need you to be honest with me. What else are you noticing?”

The utter frustration with literally everyone and everything. The urge to hunt down every fucking vampire I could until the world overflowed with their wretched, decaying blood. An overwhelming emptiness in my soul that nothing and no one could fill.

I was a zombie, and she’d made me this way.

She should have let me die. They all should have let me die.

I pushed my thumb and forefinger into my eyes, tired of this conversation and her incessant prodding.

If I told her half of the things I had been experiencing, she’d slam me in the holding cell and dissect me like a science experiment.

No other shifter we’d ever heard of had been dead as long as me and brought back by magic.

It bordered too close to things I didn’t want to think of.

“Wyn,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.

“Our vice president is marrying a Vanderbilt tomorrow. Marx, the king of crusty undead bloodsuckers, is still on the run. I’ve got no clues about where to look for him.

” As the pack’s tech guru, it was on me to find him, but the fucker was a Goddamned ghost. “Half the pack is pissed about Kodiak’s alliance with Guin, and our brother spent three days stuck in a cave with my best friend’s sister.

Don’t you think there are bigger issues to worry about? ”

She scowled. “I’ll add delusional apathy to the list of symptoms.”

“Let. This. Go.” I said the words through clenched teeth, hoping she’d get the picture.

“No.” Morwyn turned to her notes and jotted down something undoubtedly incriminating that would only piss me off more.

She was as stubborn as I was, and if she weren’t my dearest little sister, I’d already have snarled loud enough to send her scampering to Kodiak with her tail between her legs.

As it was, she wasn’t scared of me and never would be.

As much as my wolf hated everyone and everything else, I would never hurt my siblings. Never.

“If I did something while healing you, I need to fix it.”

The urge to bite her head off nearly overwhelmed me, but just then, my only friend and fellow RBMC member, Fenris, stuck his head in.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “I thought I heard your dulcet tones.”

“The doc is trying to patch me back together like Humpty Dumpty.” I grabbed my cut and stuffed my arms into the leather before heaving it onto my shoulders.

“Good,” Fenris said, running a hand through his dark curly hair before stepping inside and smiling at my sister. “Someone needs to.”

She glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. “Fenris.”

“Morwyn.” He grinned. She rolled her eyes and returned to her paperwork, clearly not amused.

Perhaps I should have been more concerned about Fenris’s blatant flirtation, but she’d never given him the time of day, which was a good thing.

Fenris had never been serious about anyone or anything, except his younger sister, Lyra. And maybe me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Is Lyra?—”

“She’s fine,” he said. “Being stuck in a cave with your brother was barely a blip on her radar.”

At the last new moon mating ceremony, she’d snuck off pack territory in a terrible storm and gotten stuck in a cave with Caelum when a tree collapsed in front of the opening.

They’d been there for three days before Kodiak could find them.

Other than reeking like sex, dirt, and earth, they’d emerged mostly unscathed.

As long as Caelum kept himself out of trouble, I tried to stay out of his personal shit.