“What does that make you, Silas? Don’t come here degrading me for my loyalties. Not when you’re using this pack as some type of farce as a family. You’ve been looking for somewhere to belong just as bad as me.”
She doesn’t move her wand and in that moment, I see her grandmother’s teachings, not the sweet girl I met in treehouses who never had a mean word to say about anyone.
“I suppose we both got what we wanted, then.”
“You can’t kick them out of their businesses,” she repeats, threatening me with her magic, which I shouldn’t like.
It’s the first time Thorin wakes all day, his deep voice rumbling through my mind.“She’s so pretty when she’s mad.”
I shake him off and grab Violet’s wrist. “I’m not going to kick them out.”
“You’re not?” she asks, the pressure of her wand slipping.
“Your grandmother said I had no leverage for peace, but now I do.”
“That’s truly what you want? Peace?”
She lowers her wand to her side as I stare down at her, already mad that I told her I wouldn’t kick the witches out of their businesses. She shouldn’t be privy to that information or any of my plans.
“I wouldn’t have had that meeting otherwise,” I say simply.
She crosses her arms over her chest. Tonight she’s wearing a pink nightgown. Did they have a sale on these things and she just bought one in every fucking color? Who still wears a goddamn nightgown, anyway?
The bugs are loud and the moon is waxing gibbous, a promise of what’s coming in a few days.
“It will never happen,” she says, shaking her head and walking back to the porch. She flicks her wand, instantaneously lighting all the carved pumpkins onto her porch.
I have to hold back my surprise at how effortless that was for her.
“Let me ask you this, has anyone from the Moon Walker Pack ever done anything to you personally?” I ask her and she pauses,leaning against the pillar of her home. I crowd her space, my hand well above the top of her head. “Well?”
“Besides unkind words spoken, no,” she whispers and crosses her arms. “It doesn’t matter, though.”
“Why?”
“I know you want that pack to be your family so bad, Silas. But being in a coven? Those women? They mean everything to me and I’d rather die than betray them in any way. Just having you here is a betrayal, sharing coven secrets, talking about my grand-mère? It’s been generations of hatred between the Celestial Coven and the Moon Walker Pack.”
“Isn’t it odd that no one knows the origin?” I ask, tilting my head at her.
“History gets lost, especially when we’re all hiding what we are from the real world.”
“Or could it be something else? Magical manipulation?”
Her grip on her wand tightens as she glares up at me. “What are you insinuating?”
“Could be nothing. Could be everything,” I say, not wanting to show all my cards.
I’m not sure why I want Violet to see reason. It’s clear her grandmother has indoctrinated her to some extent. But what if she could see reason? What if everything was different? I groan at myself, knowing it’s a stupid idea, it will never happen.
“You ride into town, claim that pack, and you know everything, don’t you? Well, you don’t know shit about my family or me. It’s been a long fourteen years, Silas.”
“Very long. It doesn’t look like the years were hard on you,” I say, pointing around at her house.
“You don’t know me.”
“Clearly not,” I agree, which frustrates her more as she turns and walks through her front door.
Even though this is the last place I want to be, something beyond my control has my feet moving behind her. I do my best not to look at her ass swishing in her nightgown.
