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“I'm warning you. You will stay away from my son.” Dad's voice drawls out slow and quiet. “Not going to happen. The boy is one of us. He belongs at Exemplar. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”
Wyatt? What does he want with Wyatt? Another scuffle breaks out. There’s another crash and then everything goes quiet. I wait, but there is no more glowing light. My skin tingles again. It’s weird, but it’s my dad washing over me. I feel him. His dad-ness fills the air and surrounds me. Like when he wraps me in his muscled arms and hugs me in his lap. I breathe in and smell him. He is warm cinnamon. He is home.
“Is that man gone?” He looks at me for a moment and then nods. “Yes. He’s gone. Everything is fine.” I hear the lie in his words and know it’s one of those parent lies where they tell you what they think you need to hear because you’re eight and too young to understand the truth—but I understand. Something big happened, something bad. It scares my daddy, and he’s not scared of anything.
What were those glowy squiggles? Why did I feel all tingly when I looked at them?” His gaze narrows as he lays me back in bed and fixes my sheets. That little smile he hides is back. He shakes his head and bends to kiss my forehead. “Well, now, aren’t you the most special girl in the whole universe? You saw the runes, did you?” I nod, but his smile fades. “Is that wrong, Daddy?” “No, June Bug. It’s just unexpected.
“Close your eyes, sweet girl, and dream happy dreams. Daddy will take all the scary stuff away, and you and Wyatt will be safe, I promise.”
“I love you. Jesse—both of you—forever and always. Never forget that.”
“Oh, sorry, Jesse. You and your brother are the spit of one another, I swear. Especially when you stick your hair up in a ball cap like that.” “S'all good, Clyde. Today, you could tell me I look like your wolfhound before its bath, and I'd still be glad to see you.”
I grab two cases of beer and carry them to the back. Who needs the gym, right? I may not be as buff as Wyatt, but I grew up working hard and can hold my own wrestling out handsy patrons and drunken losers on Saturday nights.
It was an easy fix, nothing worth paying someone to come in and look at.” She doesn't look convinced, which I don’t get because fixing things is my jam. Given time, tools, and a few parts, I can MacGyver anything back to life. Wyatt says it's my superpower.
Mommie Dearest.
Nothing like a good Joan Crawford reference.
Time for a few hours of escape. Whispering Creek might not have a lot to offer, but Dad taught us that the love of nature and spectacular rock climbing goes a long way. Whether it’s a short scramble over a boulder field or an intense day on a super technical route, Wyatt and I have an endless playground of shale, sandstone, granite, and red rock to work off the stresses of life.
Wyatt shrugs. "My answer is the same. I won’t leave Jesse. We were born together. We live together. We'll likely die together." I chuckle. "Falling from the top of a mountain face." "Going out in a blaze of glory. Hell yeah."
Jesse can fix anything that’s broken. With a set of tools, things get taken apart and rebuilt better than ever: motors, computers, lawnmowers, you name it. It’s incredible. Like magic.”
“Jesse James Storme?” He peers over the top of the paper, and his gaze shifts from me to Wyatt. “And you’re Wyatt Earp Storme?” I roll my eyes. Who the hell is he to judge our names when he’s walking around with a name like Floyd?
“Dad went there?” My entire body tingles to life. Wyatt throws up his hands. “Well, that settles that. Now, I’m definitely not going. There is nothing I want from that man. End. Of. Story.”
He slings his climbing pack over one shoulder and tosses mine to me. “I have no interest in following Dad’s footsteps at some fancy male academy where you aren’t welcome. Team trouble for the win.”
“Hello, Mr. Air-con. I'm Jesse. Let's see what has you so keyed up, shall we?”
Getting into the zone, I open the side panel and start my investigation. “I spent the morning with a lovely beer fridge. If you're good for me, I could introduce you.”
Maverick is tall and dusty blond with a copper ‘end-of-summer’ tan that makes the intense teal-green of his eyes pop.
“Hey, Cowgirl. Setting up a blind date for your beer fridge? I didn't know you were a matchmaker to the town appliances.” “Hey, Mav. You know me. Take love when and where you can get it, no judgment, no apologies.”
It's always like that for me with Mav. One look at him and I'm wet and want to climb on him and make him my personal jungle gym. It's crazy. Primal even.
And it begins. Dammit. I swore I wouldn’t get sucked in by Jesse again this summer. Yeah, well, that lasted all of five minutes before my wolf was howling and prowling forward to claim her body and soul. I’m such an asshole.
His eyes widen as if he’s shocked I am fighting back. Yeah, well, it’s not the first time. Men at the bar are often surprised when I step into a fight and level them. “This is a private party, asshole. You weren’t invited.”
It hits me then. Wyatt—they took Wyatt and that douche canoe fire-blasted me over the ledge.
I don’t know how it’s possible, but there’s no doubt in my mind that those two men who poofed down to the plateau made a return trip to that helicopter with my brother. I have a strong feeling you’ll be joining us this fall. Exemplar recruiters can be quite convincing. Exemplar-fucking-Hall.
I make it down to the valley floor in decent time despite my body trembling and my mind and body warring between what I know and what I saw. Men don’t appear on top of a peak and steal a person—but they did. Wyatt can’t be gone—but he is—he can’t be—but he is.
Exemplar Hall—it even sounds diabolical. Okay, maybe not, but they are obviously not recruiting frat boys for their houses. That’d be one hell of an initiation tactic.
My mind is a scramble. All I can picture is Wyatt’s face when those Poison Ivy League goons snatched him. How could Dad be involved with them? Did he know they’d come for Wyatt? Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell us about his Alma mater. He knew they were crazy and didn’t want us mixed up with them.
By the pictures on the folder, Exemplar Hall looks like a legit Ivy League academy: ancient stone buildings with turrets and creeping ivy, sprawling grounds with hot guys chatting and having a good time, and physical challenges with archery, capture the flag, and rock-climbing. Damn. If it weren’t a school run by kidnapping lunatics, it would be the bomb.
“You’ve known where he is all along?” She nods. “Since the day he left, aye.” I look from her to Maverick and back again. “How dare you. We thought you were our friends. You lying spies have been reporting back to our deadbeat father? We’ve been living in this shithole with an angry drunk, struggling to survive and what, we were a pet project for you?” They have the good sense not to make excuses.
“Now can we go find Wyatt?” “Give me five minutes, Cowgirl. I want you to know everything.” I chuff. Sure, now he wants me to know everything. Too little. Too late.
“Get it over with, Mav. All I want is to find Wyatt and have the world make sense again. I don’t give two shits about your drama. If you can help find my twin, that’s all you’re good for.” I grit my teeth and take the hit.
I don’t know how it’s possible, but there is a female magi.
I meet her gaze and breathe her scent into the full depths of my lungs. There’s nothing there to explain what she’s thinking. She straightens and then gestures to the dressing screen. “Okay, wolf boy, magic proven. Put your clothes on and tell me how we get my brother back.”
“Language? Did you actually just say that to me? You lost the right to parent me twelve years ago when you fucked off and left us with a monster, Mr. Helm.”
Don’t take your anger out on her, June Bug.” My fury bursts beyond my control and my skin grows hot as the lockbox in my chest bucks against my ribs like an angry bull, demanding attention. The leather armrest wrinkles in my grasp. “One: don’t call me that. You lost that right when you forfeited our family. Two: you’re wrong. Nora doesn’t get to skirt her part in this just because she was working for you. She betrayed us, the same as you, the same as Maverick.”
“So, what? You think your absentee parenting readied us for the big fight? Newsflash, you’re not Mr. Miyagi. Wyatt and I aren’t tough because of you. We’re tough despite you. Subjecting us to a life of bullshit was you stepping aside and letting the chips fall where they may.” He shrugs. “Same outcome. You’re a spitfire.”
“Please. You change into a wolf, and you think I’m special?” “Jesse, you’re the only female to ever have magi power. The only one. In the centuries of magi, and even twins of magi, you are the only one who sees and feels the energies that guide our secret society. Every other female in history carried the gene for her male offspring, but it didn’t activate within her.”
“Belong to…like I’m your property?” His eyes glitter with all kinds of erotic promise that makes me want to do away with our clothes right now and become a proud member of the mile high club. “No. Like you’re mine to love, mine to protect, mine to pleasure.”
“You weren’t going to leave?” “Not at first.” “Then what changed?” He offers me a sad smile and I know the answer. “It was me, wasn’t it? You realized I had powers and you changed your mind. It’s my fault.”
For some reason, her betrayal feels worse than Maverick’s or my father’s. She was there with us, watching our lives blow up in our faces, lying to us every day of the past twelve years.
It’s not losing my hair that scares me. It’s only hair, after all. What has me jumpy is knowing the Exemplar Hall trials await. To make this work, I have to infiltrate an organized event, convince everyone I am a twenty-year-old boy, and find my brother in a sea of other twenty-year-old boys.
“Is this supposed to be a pep talk, wolf boy, cause if it is, telling me I’m as mediocre as everyone else is a strange approach at reassurance.”
“So, infiltrate the scary secret society, stay alive while we play icebreaker games, avoid legacy assholes, find Wyatt, and don’t go into the vault.” The plane bumps off the main runway and we taxi slowly toward a hangar. “And then, what? Will you evac us from a designated checkpoint deep behind enemy lines or something?” They all stare at me like I have two heads.
Maverick laughs. “You’re not Jack Ryan, Cowgirl.” Whatevs. “Give me a break. It’s my first day as a cross-dressing undercover guy-spy with magik—with a K—powers. Is it just me, or does any of this sound freaking crazy?” I look from one to another. “Yes? No? Just me?”
“FYI, if it wasn’t for Wyatt being in the clutches of Floyd and his fire-flinging flunkies, I’d tell you this was all too much and take a hard pass on this whole situation.”
By the time we arrive at Dad’s secret lair home base, I’m pretty much over my panic and—as crazy as it seems—I’m accepting this bizarre new reality. As much as a girl pretending to be a guy who just found out that her long-lost Daddy has a secret lair home-base can be.
“Look, Mav. I don’t want to fight. I want Wyatt home safe. Whatever you and Dad and the magi have going on is not my concern. My twin was kidnapped. For right now, that’s my only concern.” “And we’re going to get him back.” “Are we?” For the first time, I let my insecurities fly. “Everyone keeps telling me I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not prepared. I can’t imagine what I’m up against. I’m under-powered, under-informed, and under no illusion that Wyatt and I matter to anyone in this house half as much as I thought we did two days ago.”
“What it was like for him?” My eyes pop wider than I can control. “Wyatt’s in this mess because we were thrown away and left in the dark. Maybe if we knew about any of this—maybe if Dad had stuck around or taken us with him—maybe Wyatt wouldn’t be scared and angry and confused right now. What do you think the magi are telling him, Mav? Who’s got his back?”
“The Celestial Council isn’t a fraternity. They are an elite squad of assassin warriors with magik coursing through their cells who feed on greed and power. They wanted Wyatt, so they took him. If they have to beat you to a bloody pulp and dangle you in front of Wyatt to ensure his cooperation, don’t think for a moment they won’t.”
