Season of the Witch (Claws Clause 2)

Colton’s growl rumbled deep in his chest. His hands flexed, claws appearing suddenly where his fingernails had been a second ago.

“What’s wrong?”

“You gave him your blood? That’s the blood exchange the Nightwalker bastard was talking about?”

“I didn’t give it,” she said defiantly, tilting her chin up as he glowered at her. “Not willingly. You should know that.”

“Yeah? Then how did he get it?”

“It was after he decided he wanted me to be his queen. He pierced my finger and healed it with his mouth. I didn’t know what he was doing, and even if I did? He already sliced Hudson open once. He would’ve killed him if I said no.”

White fur sprouted along his bare arms, his wolf making itself known as Colton raged.

“I knew your worthless brother got you mixed up with those vamp assholes, but you never mentioned he already has some of your blood! No wonder you were feeling sick. Who knows what that corpse is doing with your blood?”

Shea didn’t want to admit that she’d be wondering the same thing. If her flu-ish symptoms the other day had been a normal illness, it should’ve been no match for her healing and her remedies. Deep down, she’d worried it had something to do with the promise she made to Julian that night at Bloodlust, and the way he so coyly told her that the first exchange was complete after he sucked the blood from her fingertip.

Rather than tell him any more details about how she’d been tricked into the blooding, she turned it around on Colton.

“Well, what did you think he meant by it? That I drank his? That I’m angling to become some kind of hybrid witch-vampire? I didn’t want any of this to happen, you know.”

“Then tell me you haven’t had any of his.”

His words were so brash, so rough, she was shocked into admitting the truth, “I haven’t. Not that it’s any of your business—”

“Of course it’s my business.”

She ignored him. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. “And don’t call my brother worthless.”

“He’s a Donor!”

“He’s still my brother, Colton. I’m all he has. Me and my grandmother, and she’s busy in Europe right now. I have to help him. I don’t want to get stuck with Julian for life, either, but I’ll do what I have to to save my brother. Wouldn’t you do the same for Maddox?”

He’d sacrificed so much for his brother. She knew that. Of anyone, she thought he’d understand.

Colton… didn’t.

“I won’t let that bloodsucker get his fangs in you. I am your mate. You’re the only one I have. What’ll happen to me if anything happens to you?”

To him?

Was he serious?

“You didn’t seem to worry about that all the times you asked me how my search for a spell to break our bond was going! I distinctly remember you telling me that it wasn’t personal. That it wasn’t me. You just weren’t going to take a mate no matter what. And now you expect me to believe you’ve changed your mind?”

Colton didn’t even blink at the heat scorching her angry words. “I was a fucking moron. My brother told me I was. Dodge, too. And I just didn’t realize it until I heard that corpse tell you that you belonged to one of his kind. You don’t, Shea. You belong with me.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Close to half a year of being told that she could never be good enough for him and now he wanted to claim he was her mate?

Maybe, back in July, she would’ve fallen for it. Maybe even a week and a half ago, when she sat in her rooms over her shop alone, picking at a dry turkey breast she prepared for a Thanksgiving party of one because Hudson was M.I.A. and Colton didn’t want her around… maybe then she would’ve given in without a second thought.

The bond was affecting her, too. It always had, from the first moment she laid her hand on his arm while he was unconscious in his bed. The connection between them had been instant—to her.

After he rejected her, she’d spent months trying to pretend that she didn’t desire him, but only because he made it point to tell her again and again that she couldn’t have him.

And now?

Now that he’d done an about-face, she couldn’t.