No Way (Claws Clause 1.75)

Oh, there used to be a handful who lived on the outskirts of Colt’s Bumptown—used to be, since he’d never been subtle when it came to expressing how he felt about their magic—but unless a witch chose to go solo instead of relying on the coven, witches mainly stayed in the three skyscrapers that cemented their power and place in Coventry. Going the corporate route seemed his only option.

Turned out it was.

It was also a disaster.

In the end, he had no choice but to meet the head witch of Coventry at the seat of her power if he wanted to broker a witch to help out his brother. Delivering her a diamond that set him back more than three grand, Colt went there for answers regarding Maddox’s bond—and came out with more than he bargained for when it came to his own.

A witch. His black-haired beauty was a witch.

You’ve definitely been touched by a witch. That’s what Luciana had told him, almost gleefully. Only his aversion to being turned into a toad on the spot kept him from wolfing out in the middle of her penthouse office.

He’d denied it. Of course he had. Between his furtive visits, the times he steadied himself by parking outside of her shop just to get a glimpse of her before he ran off on another errand, Colt had sought to learn everything he could about Shea.

She owned her shop, selling essential oils, soaps, candles, crystals, and more. The Hudson that incited Colt’s jealousy? Her brother. Colt saw the man walking into her shop once and, struck by two things, he lingered near enough by the door that he could eavesdrop.

One: Hudson looked like a male version of his Shea. Same blue-back hair in messy curls, same olive-toned skin, and a pair of warm brown eyes that seemed haunted as they darted to and fro, walking as if he expected someone to jump out at him.

And two: he smelled like meat.

Unlike Shea, whose scent was

still muted, he caught a whiff of her brother from more than a block away. The rotten smell was normally the calling card of a Nightwalker, but the man was moving around in broad daylight, so he couldn’t be one of the night-bound vampires.

Colt’s lips curved upward in disgust. Her brother was a Donor. A blood junkie. A Nightwalker’s willing meal.

And Shea was a witch.

He didn’t want to believe it. When Luciana dropped the bomb—when she told him that a witch had a claim to him—his first instinct was to deny it. His second instinct, too. He was an alpha wolf. So her scent was muted beneath the overpowering scents in her shop, but shouldn’t he have been able to guess?

Her eyes were brown. Not purple. She had brown eyes.

She couldn’t be a witch.

Except she was.

Moonshadow. Shea Moonshadow. He should’ve known from the name. Just like how she pointed out that she knew what he was by his, he was an Alpha damn idiot not have caught that she had one of the most infamous witch names out there.

Her missing scent? It made sense when he realized that it wasn’t missing—she was hiding it.

It was a sneaky witch trick. Whether they did it to cover up their power level or what they were, a witch could glamour their appearance—like Shea did, making her eyes brown instead of purple—or shield their scents.

Just another reminder that his mate wasn’t a human. To Colt, though, a witch was a million times worse.

Tell that to his wolf, though. Despite the man part of his brain warning that he could never be happy with a witch, his wolf was insistent that Shea was meant for them. Which was why he was parked outside of Moonshadow Apothecary again while waiting to see if any of his contacts could track down Priscilla Winters at last.

Luciana swore that whatever happened to cause Evangeline’s memory loss and her broken bond with Maddox, it wasn’t anything one of her witches could fix. Colt didn’t buy it. Someone out there had to be able to help him but, as of right now, Cilla was his last hope.

Too bad no one could find the wayward witch.

It killed him that he had a witch of his own right here. And, due to his own stubbornness, there wasn’t any way in hell he could ask her for her help.

As if that was all he wanted from her—

For a second, one measly moment in time, Colt wondered if he should just give in to his instincts, give in to his wolf, and go try to claim his mate like Maddox was struggling to do. He’d feel complete, his wolf would be whole… and he’d be at the mercy of a witch for the rest of his long, long life.

His lips curled back from his canine fangs. His boot eased off the brake, slammed down on the gas.

With her shop shrinking in his rearview, Colt snarled as he sped away, already reaching for his cell phone as it began to ring.