Page 5 of Triumph of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #6)

“No, not me. Duncan meant the apartment complex where I live and work. I don’t have a financial stake in it, but it also had some schemy stuff going on recently.

We resolved that though.” Again, I thought of Radomir dead at the bottom of that cliff.

A most definite resolution. “I’m skeptical that it was related to this. ”

“We’re confused about why someone wants the properties back here,” Lorenzo said.

“They are large in acreage, but the often-steep terrain would make development difficult, and the existing homes are very rural and rustic. The timber has some value, but lumber isn’t worth that much, and there’s a lot of it in Western Washington. ”

“Yeah,” I agreed, as stumped as he.

“The parcels back here rarely go on the market,” Lorenzo said. “Most of those not owned by the Savagers are in family trusts that have held them for decades. Those mundane humans use them for much the same purposes as we do—hunting and recreation—and are never keen to give them up.”

“Jasmine’s mom will get to the bottom of things,” I said.

“Yes.” Lorenzo nodded. “Even if someone does want to acquire a large contiguous piece of land for some reason, they will find that werewolves are not easy to drive off their properties.”

“No, I haven’t even been able to drive this one out of my parking lot.” I tilted a thumb toward Duncan.

“You’ve not tried as hard as you could have, my lady.” Duncan bowed to me. “Despite numerous threats of towing, a truck has yet to show up for my van.”

“I’ve been busy. I’ll yet have it towed. I saw your hose out, mooching water from my spigot again.”

He grinned at me.

Lorenzo looked back and forth between us and nodded again, as if our banter meant something. Or confirmed something? As long as he didn’t mind Duncan being here.

Trusting that the pack could handle the problem of the real estate agents, I pointed to the door. “Is Mom awake?”

“She is dozing off and on, but she does want to speak with you, so please wake her if she’s sleeping.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Duncan asked quietly. “Or stay out here?”

I hesitated, not sure what Mom would want—or if she would manage to offend him with talk of him fathering offspring with me. It might be better to leave Duncan outside, but something told me I would need support.

I clasped his hand, and he nodded with understanding.

After taking a bracing breath, I led the way through the outer room and to the open door of Mom’s bedroom. I knocked lightly.

“We’re here, Mom.”

She lay on her bed, propped against the pillows, her eyes open but with bags under them. Her hair was brushed but hung limply around shoulders that seemed narrower and frailer each time I came up here. The lump returned to my throat.

“Yes, of course. I sensed that one before you turned into the driveway.” She pointed her chin at Duncan.

“He does have a blazing and somewhat obnoxious aura,” I said.

“Obnoxious,” Duncan said. “ Really .”

“He’s full of old-world power,” I added.

“Yes, I’m aware.” Mom smiled as she noted our linked hands. “I approve of your decision to claim him as your mate.”

“We’re just holding hands, Mom. There hasn’t been any claiming.”

Not that it hadn’t been on my mind…

Mom looked toward Duncan. “The magic of the moon keeps my daughter fertile beyond the years when a human woman could healthily conceive, but she will not be so young forever.”

I flattened my free hand to my face. I’d been afraid this was what she wanted to talk about, or that it would somehow enter into the conversation.

Duncan’s mouth opened, but he didn’t seem to know what to say.

I squeezed his hand, hoping to convey that he didn’t have to say anything—or respond at all.

“This isn’t what you wanted to see me about, is it, Mom?” I hoped to sweep the conversation quickly past the fertility topic.

“No, but I long to see you with child—a full-blooded werewolf child of his loins—before my passing.”

“Yes, you’ve made that clear, but that’s not what Duncan and I want. We’re still getting to know each other. And he hasn’t yet proven to himself that he’ll be a good father. The only kid in his life that he’s been working his charisma on wants to kill him.”

Mom’s brow furrowed. Duncan’s did too. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up.

“Younger werewolves are more driven by instincts and hormones.” Mother reached for the drawer in her bedside table.

“They rarely spend a great deal of time getting to know each other. You certainly did not with your first mate. I recall catching you naked and howling on the back porch shortly after you met the Cascade Crushers boy.”

My cheeks heated, and I avoided looking at Duncan but didn’t miss his murmur of, “I knew howling would be involved.”

“I am a werewolf,” I murmured back.

Mom sighed wistfully and withdrew her medallion from the drawer, then pushed it closed. It glowed softly, and I sensed the matching medallion on Duncan’s chest, though it was under his shirt, intensify its own aura.

“This is why I called you up here.” Mom waved for me to come closer. “I do not know how much longer I have.”

I shook my head bleakly, wanting to deny that the end neared, that nothing could be done, but we both knew the truth.

“You will take this now,” Mom said, “so there is no dispute after my passing.”

I knew she’d wanted me to have it, but with the moment upon me, my first instinct was to reject the medallion. I had half-siblings with as much right to anything of Mom’s as I had. More right. They hadn’t forsaken their heritage and cut off ties to the pack for years.

“You are the strongest of my offspring.” Mom gazed intently at me.

“That is why you will take it. It is not about who is most deserving or who did the most for the family over the course of their lives. It is about what is best for the pack. That is the way of the wolf. You have the strength and power to protect the pack, to ensure its continued existence in this era of waning magic and pressure from the outside world, from humanity ever imposing itself on our territory.” She looked at Duncan, who’d retreated to the doorway, and then back at me.

“I trust you will find a suitable alpha male to help lead the pack.”

“You make it sound like the female is in charge of all that,” I said.

Everyone knew it was the alpha male who led.

Mom managed a smirk and looked out the window. The back of Lorenzo’s shoulder was in view as he stood as a silent protector on the porch.

“The male is usually the strongest and a great hunter,” Mom said, “but we all know the female cares the most about the welfare of the pack, of ensuring birthrates remain suitable and doing everything possible to survive in the modern era, to retain our heritage. Also, the magic has chosen. Do not forget that. The medallion responds to you.” She held it out, inviting me to take it.

All it had ever done was glow a little when I touched it, but I accepted that it didn’t do even that for others.

Though I wanted to deny the gift, since it meant Mom believed her end near, I lifted a hand to accept it.

Warmth thrummed from the wolf-head medallion as my fingers wrapped around it, and its glow intensified, almost blindingly so.

Power flowed from it and into my body, invigorating me, making me long to change into the wolf and go hunt.

Or to join the others in chasing away those who trespassed, who threatened the pack.

“I knew it would respond more strongly once that dreadful potion was out of your system,” Mom murmured, sounding satisfied. “Put it on.”

Yes, the medallion wanted that. I could feel it in the magic infusing me.

Though I couldn’t understand why I deserved its interest, it gave me the sense that it had been waiting for me to wear it. To wield its power.

I unclasped the fastener and lifted it toward my neck but paused, sensing that Duncan had moved behind me.

“Allow me,” he said in a husky voice that surprised me.

The glow had faded enough that I could see his face when I looked back, his eyes intense as they met mine.

Intense and hungry. His own medallion glowed enough to bathe his features in its warm light, to reveal his parted lips, lips on the verge of kissing me.

Or… devouring me? His aura crackled in the air around him, the magic brushing my skin, sending a hot tingle through me though he hadn’t yet touched me.

Heat flushed my body, making my core tighten in anticipation of?—

Of what? We were in my mother’s bedroom.

“Are you drawn because of the medallion?” I whispered, thinking if I pointed that out he would realize it was influencing him and be less affected.

“I am drawn for many reasons.” Duncan took the ends of the chain, brushing the back of my neck as he fastened them.

Another hot tingle swept through me. His fingers lingered, and he stroked my neck, brushing his nails along my skin and up to rub my scalp.

Such desire scorched my nerves that it was all I could do not to turn around and throw myself upon him. My entire body hummed with heat and with need.

But I hadn’t forgotten where we were, and I looked toward my mother. She was watching intently. Wanting us to mate? To give her the werewolf offspring she craved?

Yes, I knew with certainty that she wanted that. Maybe she’d even known the medallion would increase my allure to Duncan, or whatever it was doing. This wasn’t the first time I’d held it, even worn it in his presence, but it was the first time I’d done so while he was wearing its match.

Since the artifacts had historically belonged to the male and female alphas of the pack, it shouldn’t have surprised me that their power might seek to mingle, to bind their wearers together.

But I didn’t want to have sex with Duncan because magical necklaces were coercing us into it.

He couldn’t want that either. He had to be tired of being coerced by magical devices.

“We need to go,” I whispered harshly and slipped away from his fingers.

I swept out of the room, almost running. I didn’t intend to give in to my mother’s manipulation or that of the medallions either.

Duncan caught me before I reached the front door, his arm wrapping around my waist and halting me. Powerful and irresistible, he pulled me back against him, his muscled chest against my back.

“Luna,” he growled, lust radiating off him.

My body responded in kind. Instead of trying to pull away, it pushed back into him, images flooding my mind of Duncan tearing off my clothes and taking me against the log wall of the cabin. I envisioned screaming and howling with intense pleasure as he plunged into me.

One of his hands cupped my breast, thumb brushing my nipple through my shirt, and such scorching desire flooded me that I groaned. Damn the magic, I couldn’t resist this. Couldn’t resist him .

I could feel the outline of his medallion against my back and knew it wanted this, just as the one I wore did.

I could feel the outline of him, as well, big and hard, and a tremble of need went through me.

He kissed the back of my neck, then trailed his lips to my throat, nipping as he inhaled my scent, aroused by it, by me.

“I’ll have you,” he said, his grip tightening.

Molded to him, I opened my mouth to fervently agree. Then the door opened, daylight flooding in.

Lorenzo blinked as he encountered us scant inches away. Abruptly, as the cool winter air swept in around him, I grew aware of Jasmine and Emilio and a half dozen others outside.

Duncan growled, half lust, half irritation at the interruption. He didn’t release me, as if he would take me and not care in the least if my whole family watched.

Though I was aroused and ready for him, I caught his hands.

For a moment, he resisted my attempt to move them away from my body.

He was stronger than I and could take me if he wanted.

Maybe that should have scared me. But he only resisted for a moment before drawing in a shaky breath, releasing me, and stepping back.

“ Lorenzo ,” came my mother’s voice from behind me, as if she were chastising him for interrupting.

Hell, maybe she was. This is what she wanted, after all. For Duncan to lead the pack and give me a child.

I was thankful that Lorenzo had opened the door.

As badly as I wanted to be with Duncan, I didn’t want it to be because of magical coercion or my mother’s manipulation.

Once his lust chilled, he would come to himself and wouldn’t want that either.

The last thing I desired was for him to regret involving himself with me—and my pack.

“I heard noises and wanted to make sure you were all right, Umbra.” Lorenzo inclined his head toward her, then stepped back outside.

He closed the door, but not before I glimpsed numerous sets of curious eyes turned in our direction.

What kind of noises had we been making? I didn’t even know.

“Luna,” Mom said, gripping the doorway frame for support. “You two must wear the medallions and return to the magical cave in the gully. I had a dream, perhaps even a vision, that you would find answers there about how to protect our people.”

More likely, she thought the stronger magic there would make it so that Duncan and I couldn’t resist each other, and all that she wanted would come to pass.

When I glanced at him, I found his heated gaze still on me.

I looked away, trying not to think about how much I would like to slip away somewhere private and continue what we’d started.

Instead, I turned to Mom. “Radomir is dead. I don’t think our people are in that much danger now.”

She didn’t look surprised. She must have heard the story from Jasmine—my niece had become a confidante, and I’d told her all about that night.

“He is not—was not—the only threat to our people,” Mom said.

Did she mean Abrams? Or something more? The stuff with the real estate agents?

“Go to the cave.” She pointed through the back window of the cabin. “You’ll find answers there. I am certain.”

“Okay, Mom. We will.”