Charmed Wolf Aimee Easterling (free children's online books .txt) 📖

“Ash. I’m sorry....”

“Not your cowardice,” my oldest friend corrected me. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet with only slight difficulty. “Mine. I should have told you how I felt when I turned fifteen and noticed you were more than a friend to me. I should have told you when I turned twenty and realized I was in love rather than lust. The next time perfection comes calling, I won’t make that mistake.”

By this time, he’d reached the door leading from the breakfast nook to the main dining hall. And there, where I hadn’t noticed it until this moment, sat a suitcase large enough to hold everything Ash cared about.

He wasn’t just thinking about moving out. He was leaving. This very moment.

The fragment of pancake in my mouth tasted like sawdust. But Ash was right. This wasn’t my problem to fix, and he was already fixing it.

So I acted like a friend rather than an Alpha. “I’ll miss you,” I told the man I loved in a very different way than he loved me.

And Ash let me off the hook. “Don’t miss me too much.”

DESPITE ASH’S LEAVE-taking, the day continued to sparkle. By 10 AM, the sky was so blue we might as well have been in Faery. The mood of the pack was jubilant and the glitter quotient was even higher than usual. No wonder Lenny and his family were over the moon about the upcoming ceremony.

More than that, they were over the moon about each other. “Did you know”—Lenny leaned in closer, his voice conspiratorial—“my wife is like a new woman this year. She asked me to call her Viola yesterday. I didn’t even know she had a middle name.”

“I’m so happy for you,” I responded, entirely honestly. Because I was happy. Happy for Lenny and Viola. Happy for Natalie, who had outdone herself creating glitter-related items for the ceremony. Happy for the pack, half of whom had decided to attend in lupine form and were currently mingling with the guests.

“I can’t believe how well trained your dogs are,” Lenny continued. “They’ll look great on video.” He wagged a finger at me. “Now, remember our bargain.”

“I’ll remember,” I told him, smiling across the crowd at his son’s girlfriend, who I’d already moved onto lighter duty weeks ago.

Then Viola stepped out of the glitter-curtained changing room our teenagers had rigged at the edge of the forest. For a moment, I thought perhaps she’d broken her word and sucked magic out of the people around her. She was so beautiful she glowed.

But no. Viola’s resplendence came from inside. The moment she set eyes on Lenny, pure joy illuminated her.

And him. “Er, um. Excuse me,” the slick businessman choked out as he arrowed toward his wife without a single backward glance in my direction.

Then the ceremony started. But I was walking in the opposite direction. Because I’d been affected by a magnet of my own. A wolf I’d seen only once, through a mirror, but who I nonetheless recognized instantly.

Rune had donned fur today for the first time since I’d known him. At long last, he’d relinquished his fear of being a beast and met my pack in the middle. The sight of his bravery brought a lump to my throat.

So I curled around Kale, who was holding his phone up over his head to catch the action. I entered the changing room, empty other than the overwhelming promise of nearby persimmon. Stripping out of my clothes so fast I tore off a button, I slid into fur and ripped my way out through the fabric shielding the room’s rear.

There, Rune waited, all elegance and four-legged perfection. And I couldn’t help it. I raised my muzzle to the sky and I howled out the joy of the moment. Rune joined in without hesitation, his voice intertwining with mine as if our throats had been created to sing in harmony.

Then the whole pack was howling. Those in wolf form. Those in human form. Even, after a choked laugh, Lenny, his wife, and all of the non-shifter guests.

“This is totally going viral,” Kale hooted. Then he raised his voice and joined everyone else in the eerily beautiful howl.

One community, united. Human, wolf, and faery.

The kid was right. Tomorrow, we’d field inquiries about our glitter wolf wedding services. Pack debt, I suspected, would be wiped out in short order.

Today, however, I had a wolf beside me who I hadn’t been alone with in hours. A wolf whose bravery deserved rewarding...especially when I’d also benefit from that reward.

I nudged Rune’s shoulder and persimmon licked around me like fire. He turned and I spun in synchrony, leaving behind the pack who would be perfectly fine for a few hours without us.

Because I might be Alpha, but I wasn’t indispensable. Without the Guardian sucking us dry, my pack mates were quite capable of choosing their own paths forward.

Which left space in my own life for love and adventure. And I knew exactly who I wanted to adventure with.

Glitter in our fur and on our paw pads, Rune and I were beast and beautiful as we ran.

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED Charmed Wolf! You can learn more about Rune’s background in A Snowball’s Chance, free to email list subscribers. As an added bonus for joining my team, I’ll throw in two free werewolf novels so you don’t have to come up for air for days.

And don’t miss the rest of the Samhain Shifter series, each installment of which can be read as a standalone. Tank and Athena enjoyed their adventure in Moon Glamour, full of thievery and face blindness. The next book, Fae Wolf, will be available on all retailers in July 2021.

TORN BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.

Changeling werewolf Storm stumbles across her fated mate at a very unfortunate moment. The Queen of the Unseelie Court has demanded that she snatch a magical sword able to open up the borders between earth and Faery. Price of failure? Storm's adopted family will