Page 11 of Faeheart (Widdershins Supernatural Academy #2)

Wild

“ A foursome is fine with me,” I said as the four of us headed toward the cafeteria for dinner.

“That’s nothing compared to the things I do every summer at home.

” I glanced over at Caden. “I never thought I’d sleep with you or your boyfriend, but I can’t say I haven’t noticed how cute the both of you are. ”

Caden blushed furiously, his pale skin turning a shade of pink that made his freckles stand out even more prominently against his cheeks. “Wild!” he hissed, glancing nervously at the other students milling about campus after dark. “Keep your voice down.”

Elias walked stiffly beside me, his shoulders so tense they were practically touching his ears.

Through our bond, I could feel his conflicted emotions, disgust warring with curiosity, proper decorum battling primal desire.

And the distinct fear of a virgin . I decided I would keep that part to myself.

“What?” I grinned, deliberately bumping my shoulder against his. “Scared someone might hear that the perfect Thorne heir is considering getting down and dirty with a fae and a half-breed?”

“That’s not—” Elias started, then stopped, taking a deep breath. “Can we please discuss this somewhere private? Not in the middle of campus where anyone could overhear?”

Atlas chuckled, his arm protectively around Caden’s shoulders. “He has a point, Wild. This isn’t exactly outside conversation.”

“Fine,” I sighed dramatically. “But don’t think you’re getting out of it, Princess. I’ve felt what goes through your head when you look at me. And at Atlas.” I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively. “Especially when he shows up in that stringy little tank top after wrestling practice.”

“I do not—” Elias spluttered, but the flare of embarrassment that shot through our connection told a different story.

We rounded the student center toward the main cafeteria building, the trees casting long shadows across the courtyard under the light of the half-moon. The air felt different somehow, charged with an energy that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“Do you feel that?” Caden asked quietly, his steps slowing.

I nodded, my usual playful demeanor fading as I sensed it too. There was a magical disturbance rippling through the ambient energy of the campus. Something wasn’t right.

“It feels like...” Elias began, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“A ward being broken,” I finished for him, our magical senses aligning through the bond.

Atlas tensed beside us, his nostrils flaring. “I smell something wrong. Something... burnt.”

We had only made it halfway across the courtyard when the first explosion hit.

A blast of magical energy erupted from the cafeteria building ahead, shattering windows and sending a wave of heat rolling toward us.

Students screamed, scattering in all directions as debris rained down.

The massive dome of protection surrounding the entire campus shattered into a million tiny shards of light.

Widdershins Academy was no longer hidden.

“What the fuck?!” Atlas growled, instinctively pulling Caden behind him. “How is that even possible?!”

But I didn’t get a chance to answer. Through the smoke and chaos, I saw them, a group of cloaked figures emerging from the cafeteria entrance, their hands glowing with malevolent energy. One of them pointed directly at us.

“There he is! The Thorne boy!”

“Elias, run!” I shouted, grabbing his arm and pulling him behind a stone planter as another blast of magic scorched the ground where we’d been standing.

The attackers moved with coordinated precision, their dark cloaks billowing as they advanced across the courtyard.

I counted six of them, each wielding a different type of corrupted magic that made my fae senses recoil.

This wasn’t wild magic or even structured witch magic.

It was something twisted, perverted from its natural state, something meant only to destroy.

“They’re after me?” Elias gasped, his face pale with shock. “Why would they?—”

“Questions later,” Atlas snarled, his body already beginning to shift. Bones cracked as his shoulders broadened, dark fur rippling across his skin. “Get to safety!”

But there was nowhere to run. The attackers had split into two groups, flanking us from both sides. Students were screaming, fleeing in all directions as professors rushed from nearby buildings, their own protective spells flaring to life too late.

“The binding,” Caden whispered urgently, grabbing both Elias and me by the wrists. “We need to use it!”

“Professor Blackwood said no magic,” Elias protested automatically, even as one of the attackers hurled a ball of sickly green energy toward us.

I yanked him down as the spell exploded against the planter, sending chunks of stone flying. “Fuck what Blackwood said! They’re trying to kill us!”

Through our connection, I felt Elias’s fear and confusion swirling like a whirlpool, threatening to pull us all under. But beneath it was something else, a core of raw power that he kept tightly leashed, locked behind years of rigid training and family expectations.

“Let go,” I urged, squeezing his hand. “For once in your life, Elias, let go!”

Atlas had fully shifted now, his massive black wolf form launching itself at the nearest attacker. Teeth flashed in the moonlight as he clamped down on a bare arm, but the witch merely laughed, a hollow, unnatural sound, and sent Atlas flying with a casual flick of their wrist.

“Atlas!” Caden screamed as the werewolf slammed into a tree trunk with a sickening crack.

Something snapped in Caden then. I felt it through our bond, a surge of protective fury that made the ground beneath us tremble. Vines erupted from the manicured lawn, thick as my wrist, whipping toward the attackers with deadly intent.

“That’s it!” I yelled, letting my own fae magic flow freely for the first time since the binding. The pendant around my neck flared to life, burning hot against my skin as I called up illusions so real they could cut, mirror shards of light that sliced through the air toward our enemies.

But the leader of the group merely raised a hand, and both my illusions and Caden’s vines disintegrated into ash. The magical backlash hit us like a physical blow, sending us staggering.

“Pathetic,” the leader called out, pushing back their hood to reveal a woman with silver-streaked hair and cold eyes. “Is this the best the academy can offer? A half-breed, a fae whore, and the great hope of the Thorne family?”

Elias’s grip on my hand tightened painfully. Through our bond, I felt something shift inside him. Rage replaced fear, and determination overtook confusion.

“Stay behind me,” he whispered, his voice different somehow, resonating with power I’d never felt from him before.

“What are you?—”

Before I could finish, Elias stepped forward, placing himself between us and the attackers. The pendant at his chest blazed with blinding light, and I felt a strange pulling sensation, as if he were drawing magic not just from himself but from me and Caden as well.

“You want me?” Elias called out, his normally perfect posture now radiating dangerous power. “Here I am.”

The leader laughed again. “Surrender now, boy. Your family’s betrayal must be answered with blood.”

“My family?” Elias’s confusion flickered briefly through our bond, but he didn’t falter. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you made a mistake coming here.”

“The Thornes promised us you would join our cause,” another attacker snarled. “Your father assured us his son understood the need for purity.”

I watched Elias’s face harden as understanding dawned. “My father doesn’t speak for me.”

He raised his hands, and I gasped as pure magical energy began to swirl around him. It wasn’t the structured, formulaic spells I’d seen him practice, but something older, wilder. It was magic none of us knew how to use or control, but he was doing it, somehow, on instinct.

“Elias,” I warned, feeling the bond between us stretching dangerously as his magic built to impossible levels. “You can’t channel that much power alone!”

But he wasn’t listening. The air around him crackled with electricity, the scent of ozone and something ancient filling my nostrils. Through our connection, I could feel him reaching for something beyond himself, beyond even our binding, something primal that lived in the spaces between realms.

The leader raised her staff, dark energy coalescing at its tip. “Kill him! Kill them all!”

Six streams of corrupted magic shot toward us like vipers striking. Elias threw up his hands, and a shield of pure energy materialized, but it was already fracturing under the assault, his untrained wild magic buckling beneath the coordinated attack.

“He can’t hold it!” Caden shouted, dragging himself toward Atlas’s fallen form.

I made a split-second decision. Lunging forward, I wrapped my arms around Elias from behind, pressing my chest against his back.

The moment we touched, our pendants flared in unison, and I felt our magic interlace like fingers intertwined.

The shield solidified, turning from transparent to a swirling opal barrier that reflected the attackers’ spells back at them.

“What are you doing?” Elias gasped, his body trembling with the effort of channeling so much power.

“Helping you, idiot,” I growled in his ear. “You can’t do this alone.”

Through our connection, I pushed my chaotic fae energy into his structured channels, feeling the way our magics fought before finding an unexpected harmony. The sensation was intoxicating, like nothing I’d ever experienced before, wild and precise all at once.

“Caden!” I called out. “We need you!”

Caden hesitated, torn between us and Atlas’s unconscious form. The leader of the attackers seized the moment, redirecting her staff toward him.

“The half-breed dies first,” she snarled.

Time seemed to slow. I watched the bolt of sickly energy streak toward Caden, saw his eyes widen in terror, felt Elias’s panic surge through our bond. Without thinking, I reached through our connection, grabbing hold of Elias’s magic and pulled hard .

The world exploded into light and sensation. Elias screamed as power poured from him into me, far more than I could safely handle. My fae nature responded instinctively, channeling the overflow toward Caden through our shared bond.

The moment it touched him, something extraordinary happened.

Caden’s dryad heritage awakened in a dramatic display.

His skin took on a greenish hue, and leaves sprouted across his body as he thrust his hands forward.

The bolt meant to kill him dissipated against a wall of thorny vines that erupted from the ground, encircling Atlas’s fallen form protectively.

“Impossible,” the leader whispered, taking a step back.

But we weren’t done. The three-way connection between us had stabilized, magic flowing in a perfect circuit that amplified with each passing second. I felt myself shifting, my true fae form emerging. I was taller, wilder, my skin glowing with internal light and my hair moving as if underwater.

“You wanted to see what the Thorne heir is capable of?” I laughed, my voice echoing with otherworldly resonance. “Let us show you.”

Elias turned in my embrace, his eyes now glowing with golden light. When he spoke, his voice overlapped with mine, the words coming from both of us simultaneously.

“If you threaten one, you threaten all.”

The leader raised her staff defensively. “W-What is this magic? This isn’t?—”

Elias and I moved as one, our hands weaving patterns in the air that neither of us fully understood.

Ancient symbols appeared, burning with blue-white fire.

The attackers scrambled backward, their coordinated assault dissolving into panic as the symbols coalesced into a swirling vortex between our outstretched hands.

“This is old magic,” I heard myself say, though the voice didn’t sound entirely like my own. Something was speaking through us, using our bodies as conduits. “Magic that still remembers when the realms were one.”

Elias’s body pressed against mine, our energies fusing completely as the power built to a crescendo. The leader of the attackers flung spell after spell at us, but each one dissipated harmlessly against our combined aura.

“Retreat!” she screamed to her followers, but it was too late.

With a sound like thunder cracking the sky, the vortex between our hands expanded outward, engulfing the courtyard in blinding light.

I felt Elias’s consciousness merging with mine, our thoughts and memories flowing together until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.

Through him, I felt Caden too, his vine-like energy weaving through both of us, grounding the wild power that threatened to consume everything.

When the light faded, the attackers lay scattered across the courtyard, unconscious but alive. The magic had stripped them of their strange and unnatural corrupted power, leaving them as ordinary witches once more, and not the strongest ones at that.

I swayed on my feet, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. Elias wrapped his arms around me before I could fall, both of us barely remaining standing.

“What... what did we just do?” he whispered, his voice trembling.

I looked up into his face, seeing him truly for the first time. Behind the perfect facade was someone just as lost and searching as I was, someone who’d been hiding his true self for so long he’d almost forgotten it existed.

“Something impossible,” I replied, my fingers tracing the line of his jaw without my conscious permission. “Something beautiful.”

But before either of us could say anything else, my head swam and my vision tunneled in. Both of us dropped to our knees, our arms still wrapped around one another. I got one last look at those beautiful brown eyes before my world went dark.