Claimed (Book Four of the Castle Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel (2 page)

Kieran stood at the center of the space, dressed in black and watching the sky. There was something terribly lonely about him just then. He looked as if he was only being held up by his own will, his own power. When he turned to her, however, he was completely professional, as distant and cool as most of the Magus Corps members she had ever met.
 

“Thank you for coming,” he said softly.

Is that all you can say?
Hailey wanted to scream.
The things we did to each other, the things we said to each other, and now you simply thank me for appearing?

Hailey was a woman who burned, not one who froze, but for now, she would give him as good as she got. Later on, there would be space to cry, to weep, to question everything that they were to each other. Now she only nodded.

“The Magus Corps performs an important service for the covens,” she said, her voice soft. “There is a debt there.”

Kieran flinched a little at the mention of a debt, but he nodded.

“It is not my intention to bring you pain or to drag you along on a task for which you are ill-suited,” he said. “I will make this as quick as possible.”
 

He crossed the space to her. She had forgotten how fast he was, how smoothly he could move. Somewhere in the distance, she heard a lonely wolf’s howl. She wondered if it was Cavanaugh, trying to make sure that he knew where his master was at all times.

 
She stared for a long moment as he pulled off his black leather gloves and offered her his bare hand.
 

“Take what you need, and we will begin.”

Her power allowed her to take strength from other Wiccans when she touched their skin. She did not need to use their particular gift, but she could instead turn it towards any task she cared to name. She had flown in the air, channeled fire through her body, and even moved herself from place to place with only a thought. To do all of that, however, she needed to touch another Wiccan’s skin.

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

“Hailey?”
 

She took two steps back, fast.

“I…I don’t want to. Not like…”

Her words spilled out like stones tumbling one after another. She kept shaking her head. She couldn’t stand to touch Kieran, not when his blue eyes were so dark and so empty.

“Here, take my hand instead.”

To her relief, Liona had appeared behind her. From Kieran’s startled glance, she knew that it was more than just a matter of the other witch walking quietly. Liona also had more powers than any other witch she had ever met. She turned to her gratefully.

“This won’t hurt you,” Hailey promised. “You may be a little tired, but I promise, it won’t hurt.”

Liona raised an eyebrow at Hailey.
 

“I very much doubt you could hurt me, no matter how much you took.”

Liona turned to Kieran.

“I don’t know what your game is, Major, but I do know that you have chosen to play it with someone you don’t deserve. Remember that, and remember that a witch’s curse is a very long thing.”

If Kieran had any feelings about Liona’s words, he didn’t show it. Instead, he took several steps back, nodding.

“As you please.”

Hailey took a deep breath. Liona offered her hand, letting Hailey wrap her cold fingers around it. Liona’s hand was warm, and at first, Hailey clutched it for comfort as much as for anything else. Then she remembered that she needed to demonstrate her skills yet again. She steeled herself, closing her eyes.

Taking power was always different from person to person. With Piers, it was like falling into a sea of light. With Kieran, it was like pulling from a vast ocean, deeper than she could imagine. With either of them, she could draw from their supply and feel as if it would never run out.

When she closed her eyes and reached for Liona’s power, what she felt was a forest of shadows. Things shifted, creating a gradient in the darkness, but it was so dim. There was something dark and primitive about it. She could feel small yellow eyes on the back of her neck, she could feel the small hairs on her arms rise defensively. Liona’s power was as tangled as the roots of a great tree. When she pulled from Liona, she was touching something old and terrifying.

She stumbled back with a soft cry, hugging herself. To her shock, she fell straight into Kieran’s arms. Even in that brief contact, there was something achingly familiar about the way he touched her. Her body was more foolish than her heart or her mind. It didn’t understand why she couldn’t linger, taking in the fresh and oddly cool smell of him, listening to his breath and feeling his arms around her. She pulled away from him.

“Are you all right?” asked Kieran.

If she didn’t know better, she would have said that there was something hopeful about his voice. It made her bristle.

“I am, yes.” Hailey turned to Liona. “Are
you
all right? That can be draining for some.”

Liona’s dark eyes were thoughtful.
 

“Yes…yes, I am. That does tell me something though. Come speak with me later. I have some information that might interest you.”

She turned and walked away, leaving Hailey alone with Kieran.

“So, Major,” she said, her voice breaking a little on his title. “What do you want to see?”

Kieran’s eyes followed Liona for a moment before turning back to her.

“I remember what you could do while we…”

“While we were together?” she asked.

He nodded.

 
“I would like to see what you can summon up in the way of fire. You were able to summon up flames when last we spoke, but I need to know whether you can make them burn hotter.”

There was that strange hope again, but Hailey pushed it out of her mind. If he wanted to pretend that they had never touched each other, so be it.

She nodded icily, stepping back from him.

It did not matter that Liona was skilled in far seeing. She had the power that Liona carried within her. Now she could wield it exactly how she chose.
 

She thought of flame. She thought of the hearts of volcanoes, and the way the world split to reveal a core of magma underneath. She thought of heat that could melt through steel, through rock, through things far stronger than human flesh and bone.

She heard a deep roar, like the sound of an oncoming train, followed by a snapping in the air.
 

When she opened her eyes, she realized that she was standing in a column of flame that was so hot it was a bluish white. Beyond the sheet of fire, she could see Kieran, staring at her with wide eyes.
 

She reached through the flame in wonder. She knew that it would not hurt her. Instead, licks of the white flame danced on her fingertips. There was a faint ticklish sensation where the flame kissed her. When she walked forward or back, the flame walked with her. It was a good thing that the ground of the practice field was nothing but packed dirt. Beneath her feet, it singed to black, but it did not catch.
 

Without thinking about how she could do such a thing, she brought a lick of the flame to dance on her fingertips before sending it flying from her. That narrow and deadly point of heat flew from her fingertips to embed itself on the stone wall on the far side of the courtyard.
 

The fire felt pure and beautiful. It was only with a sigh that she let it go. She was shocked by how cold she felt immediately after.
 

“That was more than you could do all those weeks ago,” Kieran observed.

“It has felt like a very long time for me,” she said. Her words came out softer than she thought they would. She thought that they would be recriminating, but instead, they were nearly a plea.

“I will need to see more,” Kieran said, looking away.

He offered her his hand again, but this time it was Piers, falling out of the sky.
 

He was a flyer, given to the high cold air. Flyers were known for their whimsical and fickle nature, but now she wondered if they should be known for their tempers as well.

“That looked like it could singe the clouds,” Piers observed. “What more do you need to see?”

“I was sent to do a job, Coven Master,” said Kieran, and now he sounded more tired than anything else.
 

Hailey stepped between them to prevent another fight.

“Piers, will you give me your hand?”

Piers didn’t hesitate before rolling up his sleeve. Taking a deep breath, she touched her fingertips to the inside of his wrist. Even that gentle touch was enough to feel his strength, his energy. Where Liona was a primeval power rooted in the earth and reaching towards the sky, Piers was a sea of light. Sometimes, she felt as if she could drink it all in, and then see to the end of the universe.
 

She pulled her power from him, feeling the warmth settle in her bones like a kind of embrace from the man himself. She knew that taking power from him would not harm him or even overly drain him. When she shared power with someone she was close with, it left both of them stronger than they were before.
 

“What would you like to see now?” she asked, her tone measured.

“I would like to see you fly.” Kieran’s voice was quiet. She wondered if she heard a kind of defeat there.

Without a word, she pushed off from the ground, leaving the two men far below her. There was some remnant of the flames with her still. The thin mountain air should have brought a chill to her exposed skin, but the coolness was almost welcome this time. She moved through the air like a fish, completely confident of her ability to go where she pleased. She knew how to use her body to steer herself, to fall and to let the wind catch her, and to power her way even higher.

Piers was a skilled flyer with a lifetime of experience, but her own ability was raw power. She knew that she could stay aloft for hours. Instead, she spun nimbly head over heels before showing Kieran how fast she could go by looping around the towers of the Castle.

When she lighted back on her feet, she risked a smile at Piers. There was a kind of fierce pride in his gaze, something that told her that he would always be there and ready to defend her, but that he was more than happy to let her defend herself as well.

Kieran’s expression was a little more difficult to decipher. There was pleasure there, pride like there had been in Piers’s face, but there was a kind of defeat as well. She couldn’t read it, couldn’t even begin to do so.

“Kieran?”

He nodded, distant and cool as a glacier.

“I want to see if you can change your shape next,” he said. Now they could both hear a desperate tone in his voice, something that scrabbled at the edges of his face for purchase. “It’s fairly difficult. Shapechangers tend to bloom later. It can take them years before they have complete control of what they can do.”

Kieran sounded like he was warning her off.

Hailey tossed her head in disregard.

“I’ll try anything once,” she said, forcing an edge of bravado into her tone. “Piers, if you don’t mind?”

“No. I need you to pull that power from me this time. Otherwise, there’s no reason to do this at all.”

Hailey bit her lip, nodding. Piers looked furious. If he had any kind of reason to step in, she knew that he would have.

“All right. I… All right.”

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she stepped a little closer to Kieran. Her body still recognized his. Even if he was as distant as a glimmering star, some part of her simply didn’t understand why she didn’t embrace him, or why he didn’t reach for her.

He offered her his hand. Closing her eyes, she touched his bare skin with just her fingertips. His power rolled and tossed like the sea in a storm. It turned over and over. When she went to draw it from him, she had a sensation of being drowned, of being carried under. It was still so deep and so powerful, but unlike the calm that he had always had before, now there was something deeper and crueler about it.
 

She broke away from him with a cry, staring at him with wide eyes. Piers started for her, but she shook her head.

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

Kieran paused. Then he shook his head.
 

“Nothing that I can speak of,” he said finally. “Can you pull power from me or not?”
 

“I can.”

She thought about her shapechanging transformation for a moment. The first candidate that came to mind was the shape of an owl, like her own familiar, Merit. Merit lived in the forests outside the keep. She brought death on beautifully silent wings. While she knew Merit’s form well enough, Hailey decided that the prospect of needing to fly was too intimidating.

Instead, she thought of Cavanaugh, Kieran’s wolf. Cavanaugh was a Mackenzie Valley wolf, one of the largest species in the world. He was powerful and unforgiving in a way that prey animals never were. It was clear that he only recognized Kieran as his pack, though by the end he had allowed Hailey to touch him as well.

She closed her eyes, reaching for the power that she had pulled from Kieran. She imagined her body twisting and changing, losing fat, gaining muscle. She imagined dark hair sprouting all over her form, she thought of a nose that was far keener than hers and eyes that could see through the dark.

She was aware of a faint pain, of popping noises that would have disturbed her if she had thought of them. She wasn’t sure how long it had gone on, but when she looked up, the world looked very different. She turned in a circle to see herself before glancing up at Piers and Kieran.

They both stared at her. Piers moved first.
 

“Though I have to admit I prefer you as a woman, you make a very fine wolf, Hailey.”
 

He offered his hand. To Hailey’s intense irritation, her first instinct was to sniff it. Instead, she took his hand between her powerful jaws, closing her teeth on his skin with the utmost gentleness. Her senses––sensitive and marvelous––could detect the fact that his heart started beating faster, that the pupils of his eyes were dilated black. He was fascinated, but he was afraid too. Some wolfish part of her liked that a great deal.