Page 8 of Wolfsbane

And if the process was magical, why shouldn’t it bestow everything I dreamed of all at once? Not just magic, but . . . all right, maybe I was pathetic, but when I imagined my awakening, it was with someone who loved me, someone who was as eager as I was to see all that I could make of myself.

I imagined something preordained, destined, permanent. I wanted a partner or . . . or if that was silly, I at least wanted someone who wanted me.

Not a business transaction.

Not anything coercive.

Just a moment for me and someone I loved and the unfolding promise of our future together.

And sure, maybe I read too many romance novels, but I’d grown up in a home that skewed heavily female, and reading was an acceptable pastime.

Sue me, I wanted Fabio with a ripped shirt to whisper sweet words in my ear while he awakened my magic. The crazy thing was that it didn’t seem like everybody did.

Hell, I was pretty sure Tristan was just pleased Mother had awakened him herself, and there was about as much romance between the two of them as there was between me and Ms. Harey.

Maybe less.

I frowned at her sweet, soft bunny face, annoyed that all this time, I’d thought I was just flighty and demanding, but now there was something else, like a splinter in my mind.

We had a vampire in a cage.

Do we tolerate enslavement?

The voice came to me from nowhere, deep and full in my mind, but Jiminy Cricket had never been a fixture on my shoulder, and last I checked, Mariah hadn’t learned to talk.

It wasn’t . . . enslavement, exactly.

Yes, it is.

But we were keeping people safe. Vampires were apex predators. They killed people. Their very existence risked exposing the whole magical world.

So why does Ermengarde keep him alive? Why take his blood?

Altair had been trapped in that cell longer than I’d been alive. Way longer. I didn’t even know how long, but Ingeborg had acted like he’d been a fixture since she was just a girl, and by the time I was born, she was ancient.

Now, she was in a home, and Altair was still locked away.

Why?

I didn’t know! To keep him from killing people.

Has he?

I didn’t know. He’d never hurt anyone that I’d seen. Mostly, he just looked . . . well, pitiful. Gray and sunken and eager to please. He was starving.

We don’t have to tolerate that.

Sure, and what the hell was I supposed to do about it? I hadn’t stuck him in that cell. Whatever his situation was, that was between the coven leader and him. And . . . and maybe one day, when I was in charge, I’d change things, but it wasn’t my place yet.

So we’re cowardly.

Yes! Yes. Absolutely. I was a big fucking coward in a world of magic and creatures that kill people with no power of my own. Yes, I was a coward, and really, I didn’t see why it was up to me to be anything else.

Pitiful.

“Shut up, Mariah,” I growled, snatching her off my bed as I fell into it and burying her face against my chest so she couldn’t look at me with her judgmental eyes.

No, it wasn’t really her picking at my sense of shame, but that was as good an answer to what’d gotten into me as anything. The stuffed bunny was judging me. That was it.