Page 37 of Blood and Magic (RBMC: Helena, MT #2)

Maeve

F ucking men.

I blinked back tears as I sat in the passenger seat of my sister’s Range Rover.

After returning to the clearing and shoving my clothes back on, I found Guin talking to Kodiak.

She took one look at me, glared at Vermillion, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders to walk me back to the homestead.

We wasted no time heading to the ranch. Mill, Fenris, and Columba said they’d meet us there, but I didn’t care what happened to them.

How dare he? How dare he love my body so fully, so completely, and then dismiss me, telling me it was better for me to stay away from him? He didn’t know what was suitable for himself half the damned time. Why should I listen to a thing he said?

My heart thumped in my chest, nearly breaking as I tried to hold myself together. I didn’t know why I was so upset. We barely had anything. All that talk about me being different, about it being different between us, was just bullshit.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something to it. Even now, his magic hummed in my veins, raw and potent, and the more distance I put between us, the more agitated this new side of me became.

Go back, it urged. He didn’t mean it. Can’t you feel how he’s breaking apart? Something’s wrong. He needs you.

“I can’t believe he bit you again,” Guin said. “That motherfucker. I swear, I’ll tear his throat out with my claws.”

“Just leave it,” I said, skimming through the messages I’d missed from Ava while I’d been transitioning and changing. She’d called three times and sent over ten texts, threatening to notify the police if I didn’t reply soon.

“You know you can’t tell Ava, right?” Guin said. “You can’t tell Liam or Galahad. None of them.”

I swallowed against my dry throat and nodded, wondering how to lie to my best friend. Ava and I were two halves of the same whole, opposite sides of the same coin. I’d shared a womb with her, my DNA, my entire life. When I died, she’d been the one to bring me back to life.

This was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me, and I’d have to go through it without her. At least, I had Guin. At least, I had Sol when she returned.

“I know,” I said. “How did you and Sol manage to keep it from us?”

Guin rubbed her fingers over her tired eyes and sighed. “She wanted to tell you, but I’ve been carrying the secret longer. Just try not to think about it when she’s around. Sometimes, that helps.”

Despite her advice, they hadn’t been perfect about keeping it hush-hush. Ava and I knew they were hiding something.

Pressing dial on her contact, I brought the phone to my ear and waited for her to pick up.

“Finally,” she said. “I’ve only been trying to reach you for days.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been busy.”

She paused, and I could practically see her narrowing her eyes in suspicion. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lied. Everything. “It’s just this corporate hellhole I’m drowning in.”

“Okay.” She did not sound convinced.

“How are things with you?” I asked, trying to turn the focus from me. “How’s Lycan?”

She tutted. “Things are fine with me. Lycan is perfectly professional.”

“Uh-huh.” I’d heard about him—a bona fide fuckboy. If he hadn’t tried to get in her pants yet, it was only a matter of time. “Have you found a French lover?”

“Maeve,” she said with a laugh, and the conversation moved on to how things were going at the ranch. I complained about work for the rest of the ride home, and at the end of the conversation, Ava still wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. Just…do us both a favor and get laid, okay?”

She scoffed, and I imagined her rolling her eyes. “I’ll move it right to the top of the priority list.”

“Good. Love you!”

“Love you.”

After I hung up, I glanced at Guin, who raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You need to work on your poker face.”

“Yeah, no shit.” I took a deep breath and texted Sol, asking her to call me when she had a moment.

None of us had heard from her since she’d been on her honeymoon, but now that I was a shifter, there was an undercurrent of her that ran deep in my bones.

It matched the same signature as Guin, so I figured this was what shifters called a packbond.

When I asked her about it, she confirmed my suspicions.

“I could tell when Sol transitioned,” she explained. “The same as you. If you join Kodiak’s pack, you’ll make a blood pact with him. You’ll start to sense everyone else, too.”

“Are you in his pack?”

“God, no,” she said with a tiny laugh. “I hardly need someone else telling me what to do. If I did, I would have already been married.”

“So no mate then, either?” I raised my eyebrows, trying to imagine the type of shifter it would take to stand next to Guin. Would she need someone more powerful than her? Did such a person even exist?

“No,” she said stoically. “No mate.”

I cleared my throat, debating whether I should ask the next question. After what happened today, it probably didn’t matter anymore. “How do you know if someone’s your mate?”

She licked her lips and looked at me, probably deducing why I was asking.

“I’ve heard it’s like your entire world shifts. It becomes about them, about their survival, their happiness. You can feel them under your skin. Some people even have a telepathic bond. Sol and Orion can feel each other’s pain.”

That got my attention, and for some reason, the thought of Mill dying six months ago came to the forefront of my mind.

When precisely had his heart stopped? I always found it strange we went through the same thing around the same time.

But what if… No, that would be preposterous.

We weren’t mates. Hadn’t he shown that today?

If we were, he wouldn’t have been able to hurt me like he did, push me away for the sake of his pride.

This was such a mess.

When we got to the ranch, Guin drove the Range Rover up the driveway, and I narrowed my focus to the front door, which was hanging open.

A sinking weight of dread unfurled in my gut.

Somehow, I already knew what had happened.

I started to open the door, but Guin put her hand on my arm to stop me.

The rotting stench of decay wafted inside the SUV, nearly making me retch.

“What is that?” I asked, turning to face my sister.

“Vampires.” She put the vehicle in reverse and backed out of our property, grabbing her phone. Kodiak’s voice filled the speakers.

“Guin, what’s wrong?” he asked, as if he could tell we were in danger without us having to say it.

“Scorpions,” she said, her voice stoically calm. I knew better than to think she was undisturbed. In the face of a threat, she either got angry or turned inward. In this case, it was the latter. “The front door was kicked down. We didn’t go inside.”

It was silent for a moment before he said. “Meet us at the corner of Lilac Drive and Dogwood. We’re headed your way.”

After she hung up, she opened the center console and pulled out a pistol, checking that it was loaded and one was in the chamber before she sped down the road to meet the Bastards.

* * *

Kodiak, Moose, and Vermillion escorted us back to the mansion, ten other Bastards following behind us on their bikes. They were heavily armed, each with handhelds on their waists and automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

“Are you okay?” Mill asked, grabbing my shoulders as he ran his gaze over me.

“Fine,” I snarled, breaking free of his hold.

It had only been a few hours since he’d reprimanded me in the forest, and my ire had not dissipated.

I deserved an apology. He’d bitten me, not the other way around.

I wasn’t stupid, not about him, and I wasn’t sure how much I bought into us being wrong for each other.

If we were, why did I feel so strongly about him?

“They’re gone,” Kodiak said when he emerged from the house, his heavy boots thumping down the stairs. “But…Guin, it’s a massacre in there.”

Mill’s features dropped, and he ran inside.

“Massacre?” I glanced at Poe and Columba, reading the grief on their features. We had left the human workers here alone, trusting the security at the ranch to protect them. They were supposed to alert us if something terrible happened. How did they get through our perimeter? How had this happened?

It all caught up to me in one terrible moment of sinking dread in my stomach.

No.

I raced up the marble steps after Vermillion, ignoring Guin’s call to stop me.

I froze inside the foyer. Blood streaked the walls in a terrible display out of the worst true crime documentaries.

I heaved at the sight of entrails decorating the crown molding like Christmas ribbons.

In the parlor, human heads had been lined up on top of the fireplace mantel in a gory display, their faces twisted in horror and torment.

Heart thumping and legs unsteady, I walked through the rest of the mansion, where body parts were strewn about, having been ripped from their torsos with brutal force.

Monsters. These Scorpions were monsters out of the depths of hell.

Just as I ascended the stairs leading to my room, Mill walked out of the door and shook his head.

“Don’t go in there, sweetheart,” he said, his brows lowered in a scowl, his tone bordering on furious.

Of course, his saying that only made me want to go in more. I pushed past him, and my legs nearly gave out at the sight inside. Written on the wall were the words, “Give me my bitch or I start killing heirs.”

Ellen lay on my bed, her throat torn, her chest ripped to pieces. My stomach rolled, and I turned to the side, vomiting right there in the doorway to my once safe space. I retched until nothing else came out, my nerves trembling, my pulse racing.

No. Not Ellen. Not her.

But when I opened my eyes again, she was still laying there, lifeless and still with rigor mortis. I couldn’t look at it anymore.

Slowly and numbly, I walked back outside, overhearing Aquila reporting to Kodiak.