Fates Entwined

31

“What do I get as a reward?” he asked.

"What do you want?"

"A kiss."

"You'll have to really impress me to get that."

"I do love a challenge." He rubbed his hands together and repeated the words. Nothing happened.

I decided to try a slightly different technique. "Forget the words. You don't even really need them for magic—they just help you focus. Instead, think about something that makes you really angry and hold your hand out in front of you. Direct your anger toward that."

"Anger is easy. All I have to do is think about Roxandra." Jordan held his hand out, a vein throbbing in his forehead as he concentrated. A moment later, a small flame appeared in his palm. I sucked in a breath, but I didn’t want to break his concentration as the fire grew.

“I did it!” The flame immediately extinguished, but he was beaming, and his smile was as warm as the sun across my skin.

“You did it!” I clapped my hands together. “You’re a fast learner.”

“I have a good teacher,” he said and grabbed me around the waist. I shrieked, but I didn’t try to get away as Jordan spun me around once and then pulled me closer. "Now how about that kiss?"

I kissed him on the cheek with a smirk, and he groaned and let me go, but he was still grinning. Something passed between us, and I wanted to kiss him for real. But it was too much, too fast. I was still trying to sort through everything I felt about him.

“We should probably start heading back,” I said. “But we can do this again.”

"And by 'this' you mean...?"

“The training." I smacked him on the shoulder. Stupid, insufferable alpha, I thought and turned away before he could see my grin. Or how close I was to actually kissing him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Since I’d been able to complete the wards in one day, I was able to spend the next few days wandering around town, getting to know the people while watching out for any attacks or kidnappings. True to my word, I also kept training Jordan, even though watching him improve at fire magic so quickly made it hard for me to keep my distance. He was earnest about learning, underneath all the banter and flirting, and he always looked so happy when he figured something out. Frankly, I was getting tired of pushing him away.

I made sure to check the wards every day, but so far there was no sign that anyone had tried to get past them. Roxandra hadn’t returned to claim Jordan yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I tried not to stress about it, but it was hard to not let it get to me.

To try and take my mind off of everything, I stopped by the bookstore I’d seen the first night I’d walked downtown with Jordan. Paws And Prose was a cute little shop with new and used books and a charming display in the front with some fall-themed books. I smiled as I glimpsed the twitching tail of a brown tabby cat sunning itself underneath a display of historical fiction.

Some bells chimed on the door as I pushed it open, and a woman behind the counter glanced up over the thin-wired glasses perched on her nose. She looked to be about my age, with brown skin and black hair pulled up into a knot on the top of her forehead. “Welcome in,” she said and immediately turned her gaze back to her book. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. I knew the feeling all too well of getting caught up in a good book.

I closed the door behind me and looked around. There were several free-standing shelves of nonfiction in the front and floor-to-ceiling fiction shelves along the outer walls. I made a beeline to the romance section and spent a few minutes looking around, then grabbed a book I thought Larkin might like. Maybe we could choose this one for our next book club pick.

As I headed back to the counter to buy it, I studied the young woman in front of me. Something about her seemed off somehow, and I realized it was the glasses. Shifters didn't need them. Why was she wearing them?

"Oh, this is a good one," she said, as she rang up the book. “You’re the Ophiuchus staying with Jordan, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m Stella."

“Nice to meet you. I’m Moumi."

“Are you the owner of this store?”

“I am,” she said, grinning. “I opened it about six months ago. It’s always been my dream to own a bookstore, and thanks to our new alpha, now I do."

I tilted my head. "Thanks to Jordan?"

She put the book in a small plastic bag for me with the shop's logo of a wolf with glasses reading a book. "Up until Jordan became alpha, I wasn't allowed to be a true Leo, because I'm half-human."

"Oh," I said, feeling like an i***t. That explained the glasses. I remembered Ayla had grown up in the Cancer pack but never was really one of them either. I still had a hard time believing the packs could be so cruel—the Ophiuchus accepted everyone.

"As soon as Jordan became alpha, that was one of the first things he changed." She proudly flashed the Leo symbol on her arm. "He also loaned me the money to open this place."

"That's..." I found myself at a loss of words. "That was really nice of him to do all that." She nodded. "He's the best thing that's ever happened to our pack."

"It sounds like it." I tried to change the subject with the first thing I could come up with. "Did you go to the Convergence?"