Page 41 of Charmed, I'm Sure
“No, you shall not—” I hiss.
“Thou art more lovely, more temperate—”
Shoving myself out of the chair, I stomp over to Mabel’s herb shelf, rummaging through until I find exactly what I’m looking for. Dried Sage.
Grabbing a few sprigs, I stomp over to where the ghost is floating and wave it threateningly at him. “Don’t make me banish you.”
He clutches his chest in mock offense. “Would you banish the words of one’s true love’s poet?”
“Yes,” I say flatly.
Behind me, Mable chuckles under her breath, and when I shoot her a glare, she just shakes her head, grabbing her quill again. “Seems someone has decided to fight your fire with fire himself.”
I groan, already plotting the next hex for tomorrow.
Chapter Thirteen
Rac-Coon’t Be Serious
Miles
It’s been a little over a week since I moved to Pumpkinridge and while it’s been a completely different world from Jasper, it’s starting to finally feel like home. The fresh smell of coffee is wafting through the air along with the damp moss smell from the forest right outside my window.
I was glad to see that log cabins seem to be a pretty universal thing for wolf shifters and that they provided guest cabins to those looking to become part of the pack. The Alpha, Adren Wolfe, is drastically different from Silas, the Alpha of Rocky Mountain Pack.
While Silas is young, caring, and often known for his grumpy demeanor, Adren is something else entirely. Where Silas would growl and huff, Adren simply watches, and somehow the quiet presence carries more weight than raised voices ever could. The scars across his face only deepen his intensity. He’s clearly someone who has survived, endured, and doesn’t need to prove himself to anyone.
It’s clear from the few times that I’ve been around the pack since being here that he is deeply respected. The younger wolves bow their heads as he passes, not from fear, but in reverence. Something I think Silas will eventually experience as he grows into his role. When we walked into the healers den, the room quieted when he spoke, even theinjured silent as they all devoured his words.
Adren isn’t only respected within his pack, even the community respects him. I’ve seen him walking through town and how others bow their heads to him. Something generally only given as a show of respect to elders, but yet they extend it to him.
Adren is also probably old enough to be both mine and Silas's father, which definitely gives him an advantage over Silas. Fair. His mate, Elmira, is a quiet, graceful beauty who rarely speaks and often just smiles at the young pups running around. That is also a drastic difference from Nova, Silas’s mate.
Growing up I loved Jasper, still do, but it never quite felt like home. I mean, it was home, in the sense that it was the only thing that I knew and couldn’t imagine a life outside of it. There are still moments, even now, that I miss the slow, peaceful life of it.
None of the women there were ever appealing, even when I was a young teen running high on testosterone and with a puffed-out chest. Nope, none of them ever even sparked a small flicker of desire. I can’t put my finger on it, call it intuition or whatever, but I always felt this pull to the East Coast.
I can’t tell you how many nights I would skim through photos of places along the East Coast, hoping that one of them would just call to me. It wasn’t until I was skimming through photos of Vermont that I came across this folklore about a hidden town full of all things that go bump in the night, that my heart raced and I just knew—this is it. It has to be.
It took an act of the Moon Goddess to convince my mom to let me go. My dad, he wasn’t exactlyforthe idea, but he understood the desire to find my mate. After talking with Silas and Nova, they both gave me the blessing to find her and went so far as to aid my search in whether the folklore was true.
It took the better part of a year before I finally could pin down a general location. From there, Silas tracked downthe listed Alpha of the pack. I hadn’t known this before, but apparently all Alphas answer to the Alpha Concave–a council older than any living wolf–and every pack change has to go through them. Silas handled the formalities, reached out to Adren, and that’s how I was granted permission to come.
I’m mid sip of my coffee when my phone vibrates. Setting the cup down, I pick up the phone to see my mother’s chosen photo. She swore before I left I would forget what she looked like, so she snapped a photo with me and made it her contact photo.
Swiping the answer button, her actual face fills the screen with her bright smile everyone says I got from her, not that I’m complaining. My mother is a beautiful woman with long, black soft waves, and a light dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her vivid green eyes are in stark contrast to her pale skin, but they are my favorite feature of hers.
“Awe there’s my handsome boy.” She beams with pride.
“Hi Momma.”
She zooms in closer on the screen, scanning me as if she can read everything that’s happened in the last week just from my face alone.
“How’s Pumpkinridge treating you? How different is it from Jasper? Are there different shifters there too or just wolves? Is that pink hair?! What is the town…”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. One question at a time,” I say with a chuckle.
“Sorry, you know it’s been hard. I never imagined that my one and only baby would not only leave the den, but move to the other side of the country. You can’t fault me for worrying. It already seems more than just your address has changed.”