Avine sat up in bed, heart slamming against her ribs, and watched turquoise sparks rain from the ceiling fixture like tiny, malevolent fireflies. The wards along the walls pulsed erratically—bright, dim, bright, dim—and the inn groaned around her with the pained sound of old magic straining.
Three days since the Elder visit. Three days of the wards flickering, unstable, refusing to hold. Three days of Avine pouring magic into stones that swallowed her power without stabilizing.
She pulled on yoga pants and a worn sweater, ignoring the cold floorboards against her bare feet. The central ward stone in the basement was the problem—she’d felt it weakening for the past six hours, a slow leak of energy she’d been trying to plug with increasingly desperate spell work.
By 4 a.m., she was on her knees in front of the central ward stone, sweat dripping down her temples, her magic fraying at the edges. The sigils she’d carved into the stone three days ago with Theo were flickering, some of them already dark. The pack magic woven into the wards was destabilizing, pulling away fromher sea magic like oil separating from water. Without it, the entire ward network would collapse within days.
She pushed more power into the stone. Her vision swam.
The ward stone sparked. The overhead light blew. And in the darkness, with her magic stretched thin and her body trembling from exhaustion, Avine heard the front door open upstairs.
Heavy footsteps. Deliberate. Moving through the inn like they belonged there.
“Avine.”
Theo’s voice carried down from the top of the basement stairs, and despite everything—the exhaustion, the frustration, the simmering resentment at being rescued again—her traitorous body relaxed at the sound of it.
She kept her back to the stairs. “I didn’t call you.”
“I know.” Footsteps descended. “The wards have been destabilizing for six hours. I felt it.”
“I can handle this.”
“You’re handling it right into magical exhaustion.” He stopped behind her. Close enough that she could feel his body heat cutting through the basement chill. “Your hands are shaking.”
She looked down. They were.
“The pack magic is separating from the witch magic.” Talking about the technical problem was easier than acknowledging the man standing behind her, making the air feel charged. “The two systems aren’t compatible long-term without reinforcement.”
He crouched beside her, and suddenly he was right there, all broad shoulders and concerned gray eyes and that distracting jaw. “The ward interference damaged the foundational anchors. The magic we wove is holding, but it needs reinforcement. Stronger reinforcement than either of us can provide alone.”
“So you’re proposing, what? Another collaboration?”
“I’m proposing we reinforce every ward anchor in the building with combined witch and wolf magic. It’ll take days, not hours. But when it’s done, these wards won’t fail again.”
Avine’s throat constricted. She wanted to argue, to push back against the uncomfortable truth in what he’d said. But she was exhausted, and her wards were failing, and the man beside her had driven across town at four in the morning because he felt her magic destabilizing.
“Fine.” She pushed herself to her feet, swaying slightly. His hand caught her elbow, steadied her, and neither of them acknowledged the contact. “For the inn’s sake.”
“For the inn’s sake.” But his voice had softened, and when their eyes met in the dim light of the failing wards, she saw relief there. Not triumph. Relief.
She didn’t know what to do with that.
DayOne
They started in the basement and worked up.
Theo had brought supplies—chalk for temporary sigils, salt for purification, a leather satchel full of carved wooden tokens that hummed with pack magic. Avine provided her own materials: sea glass collected from the beach, dried herbs from Junie’s shop, crystals charged under three different moon phases.
“The pack sigils need to be inscribed first.” Theo knelt beside the central stone, rolling up his sleeves. “Then you layer the sea magic over them. The two systems reinforce each other instead of fighting.”
“Show me.”
He did. His hands moved with surprising delicacy over the stone, tracing patterns she’d never seen before—angular, primal, nothing like the flowing scripts of witch magic. Golden light followed his fingertips, sinking into the rock and pulsing there.
Avine watched, professional interest warring with awareness of how his forearms flexed as he worked. The muscles moving under tanned skin. The careful concentration on his face.
“Your turn.” He stepped back, gesturing for her to approach the stone.
