Wolf Spell: Shifters Bewitched #1

encourage it.”
“Yes, Quincy, yes,” Professor Waita said triumphantly, looking up at the rest of us. “Though this is called a forcing charm, what you’re really doing is getting to know the plant, and then asking it to do as you wish. Questions?”
I looked around, but no one raised their hand. I had no idea where to start with this, but figured I would just watch the others and do what they did.
“Very well,” Professor Waita said. “You have one hour.”
The stern but comforting voice of the professor and the hope that I would succeed in this exercise, if nothing else, allowed me to lose myself a little.
Growing up in Philly, I’d had little opportunity to get my hands in the dirt. I spent the first few minutes trying to understand the little plant’s environment.
The soil was damp to the touch, but a little gritty under my nails.
“Careful, Hawthorne,” Professor Waita growled. “The roots of a baby plant are like feathers.”
“Sorry,” I said, pulling my fingers out of the dirt.
I held the pot up and observed the plant from all angles. With the sunlight filtering through it, the green was so bright and tender it almost broke my heart with its delicate beauty.
I want to know you, I want to understand you, I thought to the plant, feeling monumentally stupid.
I glanced around the classroom.
Most of the students were grimacing at their plants to no avail.
A girl I recognized from my morning class, Justine, with the red pixie cut, had managed to extend one of her plant’s leaves to about four times the size of the others. The tip of her tongue was sticking out between her lips as she frowned in concentration.
I continued to silently cajole my own plant as the light in the room blushed into a yellow afternoon glow.
“Okay, class, that’s enough,” Professor Waita called to us. “Put them away, you’ll try again next time.”
I had done nothing, absolutely nothing to my plant.
I looked around again. One or two of the students in the front row had pink buds at the ends of theirs.
Only Quincy had succeeded in asking her plant to blossom. It was a glorious pink, and I envied her horribly for being able to do it. This was supposed to be my thing.
As the students filtered out, I tried to catch Professor Waita’s attention.
“Hey, there, Hawthorne, chin up,” she said. “You’ll get it tomorrow.”
“Do you teach the Healing class too?” I asked, remembering something Cori had mentioned about her over lunch.
Her eyebrows shot up.
“One of them,” she replied. “But those are for upper-level students only. See you tomorrow, girl.”
I headed out, trying to ignore the lump in my throat.
It was only when I saw Cori and Anya waiting for me that I remembered what I really needed to be upset about.
My heart began to pound again at the thought of a night with the lord protector.
But before the fear fully descended on me, I pictured his eyes in my mind, pale as ice, and so tortured.
I wondered if there was something in me that might ease his pain.

12


Bella
I stepped out onto the stones of the courtyard again. At least this time I was wearing shoes.
The breeze picked up, lifting my hair and swirling my dress, carrying the scent of the forest to me.
Cori and Anya had helped me get ready, and they were scandalized when I chose to wear one of my modest uniform dresses.
“I don’t want him to think I’m trying too hard,” I had said.
“Don’t worry,” Kendall had said with her mouth full from where she sat perched on Cori’s desk chair, eating her stash of hard pretzels. “He won’t.”
“Don’t you want to feel your best?” Anya had asked me. “It’s an important night for you two.”
But I wasn’t interested in looking my best.
My heart was set on somehow refusing the mate bond.
If I could manage to do that, then I could still help my brother, even if I wasn’t exactly a natural at magic right out of the gate.
I just needed a little time.
And while I couldn’t be so disrespectful as to go to the lord protector looking slovenly, I hoped that wearing the school gown would tell him I was doing my duty, not coming to him for pleasure.
With my luck he would tear the thing off me before he could make any judgements about it. And the most infuriating part was that I couldn’t decide if that would be a bad thing. I didn’t want to be someone’s mate, but I couldn’t deny that I was attracted to him. How could I not be? He was so hot.
I bit my lip and looked around.
The courtyard was empty, but that was as it should be. I was supposed to go to him, alone. He would be waiting on the other side of the labyrinth, at the edge of the trees.
Well, there was no point putting it off.
I took a deep breath of the chill night air and marched across the courtyard toward the labyrinth.
I had never been good at these types of things. I’d gotten helplessly lost in the corn maze on the farm trip in elementary school and had to be rescued by an embarrassed looking farmer in front of everyone.
But tonight I had a sense of which way to turn.
It might have been the boxwoods guiding me, sensing my magic.
But I suspected it was the pull of the mate bond, dragging me closer to my fate. The idea made me almost frantic with despair, but I kept going, rounding one wall and curving around to the next.
I emerged on the other side so suddenly that it was a little bit disorienting. One second I was navigating the maze, the next I was in the open space between the boxwoods and the tall trees of the dark woods.
Moonlight bathed the edge of the forest in a soft glow. It reflected in the large, waxy leaves of the rhododendrons and was lost in the heavy shadows under the pines.
My lord