Moon Spell

“Where am I?” Bellamy asked into the seemingly empty space, his throat scratchy from little use.

“You’re safe. For now.” The voice coming from across the room was instantly familiar to him. Intimately so. And it made his breath catch, sharp and harsh in his chest.

Safe. He would never be safe with Ashwood.

And now fleeting pictures flashed through his mind: the lads surrounding his bed at Moon Flower, pity in their faces before Madam Langley ushered them out to allow him rest; Oscar telling him how sorry he was before leaving him in an empty room; Madam Langley having him eat some small bites of Miss Celestine’s biscuits, which filled his belly enough, then sipping some tea that made him drift into a deep slumber…

“Oscar.” He sounded weak, reedy. “He betrayed me. He told you where I was hiding.”

“I’ve always known where you were, Bell,” Ashwood said in that soft tone that in another time and place would’ve soothed him, but now only made his stomach tighten.

“Don’t address me that way,” he said through gritted teeth, adrenaline pumping in his veins. The shortened moniker was too familiar, too personal, and he no longer thought of the man as his Ash—or at least tried not to torture himself that way.

“Sorry, my mistake.” He seemed sad, miserable. But surely, it was only a trick. He could never allow himself to soften for Ashwood again.

“How could you possibly have known where I’ve been?” Bellamy asked. “I’ve kept myself hidden for nearly two years.”

“I could smell you,” he replied plainly. “I would recognize my mate anywhere.”

“We are not mates, nor betrothed, or anything else to each other,” he bit out, but the effort exhausted him. “Besides, if that were even remotely true, why haven’t I picked up your scent?” At least outside of his memories—that warm, familiar scent he’d always welcomed in another life.

Ashwood crossed the room, moving into view, and the sight of him made Bellamy’s breath stutter—it always had. Ashwood looked older somehow, his green eyes dimmer, and his skin had lost some of its luminescence. Bellamy didn’t know what Ashwood had been through—and he didn’t care, he told himself, not after what Ashwood had done.

Still, he was striking, even under the deceit and blackness of his heart. Bellamy closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to endure his closeness and beauty. But shutting him out that way was almost worse. Now his other senses heightened, and he picked up his earthy scent, with an undercurrent of something raw and more animalistic in nature. It stirred something inside him he wasn’t easily able to combat.

“You’ve allowed your wolf to ebb away,” Ashwood said. “Has the madam been helping with that?”

Bellamy nodded, not without effort. “A suppressant. Every full moon.”

He heard Ashwood sigh as he sank down in the chair across from him as if weary, drained. And not from the sickness, but something else Bellamy knew nothing about.

“Unfortunately, it’s made you weaker against this illness. As it stands now, you are dying,” Ashwood said gravely. It was already what Bellamy had suspected, and perhaps Madam Langley had been fearful to admit, so hearing it said aloud only reinforced the obvious. How his body seemed to be shutting down. “Your wolf could fight it better.”

My wolf? Ashwood spoke as if it was a different personality inside him. How strange. But wasn’t that exactly how he’d felt every full moon? Like a desperate part of him was trying to break through his skin? But now…now he felt feverish in another way, as if his body was a wasteland. Still, it was better than being associated with the very beasts that had taken his mother away from him.

“Madam Langley is not to blame. She was only trying to help.” Bellamy attempted to ball his fist, feeling protective of her, but he was too weak.

The madam had been the one to take him in when he’d run from Ashwood and Gladstone and his former life, which hadn’t been a life at all. She’d taken one look at him and known what to do. She’d kept him hidden and safe, at least temporarily.

When he’d confessed what happened to him with Gladstone and how he was beginning to feel a particular itch under his skin, especially during the full moon, she’d calmed him, nurtured him. After consulting with Madam Fairborn—her beloved—Madam Langley had been the one to inform him of her suspicions about the so-called wolf inside him—instead of others who’d been more prominent in his life. Like Ashwood or even his own mother.

So many things had fallen into place once he’d thought back on it all. Things that now seemed obvious to him—how his mother had acted, skirting right along the edges of truth, allowing him only threadbare explanations about why she needed him to be mindful of practically everything in their lives.