Wolf Spell: Shifters Bewitched #1 Read online

  Wolf Spell

  Shifters Bewitched #1

  Tasha Black

  13th Story Press

  Copyright © 2021 by 13th Story Press

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  13th Story Press

  PO Box 506

  Swarthmore, PA 19081

  [email protected]

  Cover by Natasha Snow of Natasha Snow Designs.

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!

  Get your FREE books now at tashablack.com!

  About Wolf Spell

  I never believed in magic.

  Until I found out I was a witch.

  I was just a regular college student, working double shifts at the diner to pay for classes, and hoping I could help my injured brother find his place in the world.

  Then the witches came. They ripped me from my life, took me to Primrose Academy, and told me I was one of them. By the end of the semester, they claim they’ll have me wielding my powers to uncover ancient secrets, and maybe even to help the people I love.

  But before I have a chance to kindle that spark, a wolf-shifter guardian stalks straight up to me on the night of the Choosing Ceremony and tells me I’m coming with him. Luke is the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. He’s determined to protect me.

  And he swears I’m his mate.

  Excuse me, what? No one told me about this part. Now, I’m wrapped up in some ancient contract I never agreed to. And the worst part is, the restless, rugged shifter is making me start to question if I would walk away even if I could. I might fight my passions, but I’ll never make it three nights in his bed without surrendering.

  And if I surrender to Luke, I’ll have to abandon Primrose Academy forever, along with my new friends, my magic training, and all hope of helping my brother.

  As if that choice isn’t hard enough, there’s something else stalking the school. Something even more dangerous than a wolf…

  Shifters Bewitched is a brand-new Paranormal Romance series from USA Bestselling Author Tasha Black. Be sure to read them all:

  Wolf Spell

  Bear Charm

  Panther Curse

  Raven Song

  Contents

  Wolf Spell

  1. Bella

  2. Bella

  3. Luke

  4. Bella

  5. Bella

  6. Bella

  7. Luke

  8. Bella

  9. Bella

  10. Bella

  11. Bella

  12. Bella

  13. Luke

  14. Bella

  15. Luke

  16. Luke

  17. Luke

  18. Bella

  19. Bella

  20. Luke

  21. Bella

  22. Luke

  23. Bella

  24. Luke

  25. Bella

  26. Bella

  27. Bella

  28. Bella

  29. Bella

  30. Luke

  31. Bella

  32. Luke

  33. Bella

  34. Bella

  35. Bella

  36. Bella

  37. Bella

  Bear Charm (Sample)

  1. Cori

  2. Cori

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About the Author

  One Percent Club

  Wolf Spell

  1

  Bella

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

  But a quick glance around the tables at Sally’s told me the same story it always did. Everything was the sleek chrome and candy-apple red you would expect in a fifties-themed diner.

  The air was fragrant with the rich scents coming off the fryer. Customers nursed cups of bottomless coffee, their clinks and murmurs providing the underlying soundtrack to the half of my life that didn’t involve attending nursing classes and cramming for tests.

  The steady hum of the dishwasher and the soft sound of the blues playing on Daniel’s radio floated in from the back. The cook moonlighted as a guitarist when he wasn’t flipping pancakes.

  I was picking up some slight creeper vibes from the guy in the corner at table twelve, but stuff like that was par for the course, and I didn’t think much of it at this point.

  My senses told me all was right with the world, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something a little off. It was probably just one too many late shifts this week, on top of the pressure of early October mid-terms.

  I shook my head to clear it and slipped behind the counter. My tables were all quiet, so I reached into my bag and pulled out my Chem textbook to sneak in a few minutes of studying.

  I had a mid-term tomorrow, and late nights of work always meant less time to study. When she lost her other late-shift waitress last week, Sally herself had let me know that if I took on the extra shifts, I could study whenever things were quiet.

  The joke was obviously on me. Customers seemed to be able to sniff out when I was finally able to focus on the page.

  On the other hand, more shifts meant more money. And I definitely needed the money.

  I opened the book and took a deep breath, ready to sink in.

  Someone across the room cleared his throat.

  I looked up and straight into the eyes of the creepy guy in the corner.

  He was middle-aged, with grizzled gray-brown hair, a potbelly and a filthy jean jacket - your standard creep in a diner.

  He lifted his coffee cup.

  I seriously didn’t know how he could drink this much coffee. He had been calling me over for refills every few minutes since he got here almost two hours ago.

  I nodded and grabbed the carafe. The dark liquid inside sloshed as I walked, the bitter scent reminding me of my mother. I had poured endless cups of coffee for her too, trying to sober her up in the darker times.

  “Thanks, kid,” the guy rasped.

  Even though it made it harder to pour, I stood on the opposite side of the table to keep out of pawing distance. Customers almost always kept their hands to themselves, but there was no point tempting fate.

  He didn’t push the cup closer to make it any easier for me, so I had to lean over. It made me thankful that my uniform was buttoned all the way up, so at least he wasn’t getting a free show. He smelled like a million cigarettes, even though there was no smoking in the diner.

  The big window behind him looked out over the half-empty parking lot. It was dark already, but at least the night looked crisp and dry. A good night for a walk.

  Which of course made me think of my brother. If the weather back home in Philly was this good, hopefully he was getting out and getting some fresh air. Though I strongly suspected Mom wasn’t staying on top of that.

  In the days after his accident he hadn’t wanted to be outside at all. He didn’t want anyone to see him in his chair and feel sorry for him. I had to lure him out there with the promise of orange soda and a paperback of the corny knock-knock jokes we had loved since we were kids.

  I made a mental note to call and check in again when I got home. Jon hadn’t been returning all of my messages lately, but I missed him, and I still tried to reach him every day.

  “Almost closing time, hon’,” Sally called to me from behind the counter as I stepped away
from the table.

  I nodded to her.

  Almost-closing-time was usually wishful thinking. But it meant Sally would relieve me and close up shop herself, which was a big relief. I needed some serious study time.

  I topped off coffee mugs for a young couple who were pretending to study but really just relaxing together, his arm around her slender shoulders.

  I longed for that feeling - that sense of peace and contentment. But I carried too much guilt, I always would.

  My big brother had always been the best and the brightest. Jon was going to be the first in the family to go to college.

  Until I messed it all up.

  When I was in tenth grade, I tried to sneak out the window of our third-floor apartment to go to a stupid party with my stupid friends - it’s funny how fast you can go from feeling like something is the most important thing in the universe to wondering what the hell you were thinking.

  Instead of the ninja-level exit I had planned, I fell - hard. Like probably should have died level of hard. No one who saw the site of the fall could believe I walked away from it.

  I lived, but I was far from unscathed. I broke my arm in four places, and needed two surgeries to make it right. Mom blew through what little savings she had, and then maxed out all her credit cards just to put me back together.

  She joked that all the king’s horses didn’t come cheap, but there was a tightness in her voice when she said it that let you know it wasn’t really a joke.

  So Jon had gone into the Army instead of college, hoping to take advantage of the G.I. bill when he got out. He had almost immediately been injured in a car accident off base.

  Now he was using a wheelchair to get around, and I was hoping to get a nursing degree so I could help him, financially and physically.

  The Hawthorne family was cursed, I was sure of it. Nursing skills might be the only thing that could save us.

  Pottsboro Community College, about two hours outside of Philadelphia, had a good nursing program. And more importantly, the classes were affordable, and they were further supplemented by a scholarship from the Women’s Foundation, as long as I kept my GPA above a three-point-five.

  Which wasn’t an issue. I was a good student. But the fact that I was living in a broom closet of an apartment over a hardware store and working as many shifts at the diner as I could to cover classes and used textbooks didn’t make it easy.

  The bell over the door rang, and I was relieved to see the creepy guy was leaving.

  Thank goodness. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave before him. He had my radar tingling enough that I would have been afraid he might follow me.

  I headed over to bus his table. He had left a crumpled one-dollar-bill beside the coffee cup. That seemed about right for taking up my table for two hours.

  Jerk.

  “You can go on home, love,” Sally called to me, her golden earrings dangling among her bright red curls as she spoke.

  I wondered if she had been waiting for him to leave before dismissing me too. She was very perceptive when it came to stuff like that.

  As far as I could tell, Sally was in her seventies, and showed no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Her flashy costume jewelry, all purchased from a cousin who sold for a mail-order company, and her exciting dating life were her favorite subjects of conversation. In another life, I would have gotten to know her better. In this one, it took every morsel of time I had to stay on top of my studies while working.

  “Thank you so much, Sally,” I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Take an Uber,” she advised me. “It’s dark out.”

  I nodded, but we both knew I wasn’t going to take her advice. A ride home would blow half of what I had earned on my shift, and I couldn’t afford that luxury.

  I cashed out quickly and went into the back to hang up my apron.

  “Good night, Daniel,” I called to the cook on my way to the door.

  “Night, sweetheart,” he yelled back, holding a styrofoam box over the counter. “Grilled cheese for the road?”

  “You’re a lifesaver,” I said as I took it.

  The box was extra heavy, which told me he’d snuck fries in there, too - maybe even some onion rings, if I was lucky. I was entitled to an employee meal, and I always chose the grilled cheese. But Daniel usually hooked me up with a little extra if he could.

  “Do you have a gig tonight?” I asked.

  “Nah, night off,” he said. “I have my son tomorrow.”

  “That’s great,” I told him sincerely. “See you later.”

  I headed out the back door of the restaurant. Even if that creep from earlier was sticking around waiting for me, it was unlikely that he’d think to come to the back. And there was a pretty obvious security camera right over the door that would make anyone think twice about trying to pull anything.

  I stepped into the cold night and took a deep breath of the fresh air.

  Fresh was probably a relative term, Pottsboro wasn’t exactly a picture of bucolic splendor. But the air was free of the greasy weight of the diner, which made it fresh enough for me.

  I cut through the little alleyway that led toward home.

  When I reached the end, I had a choice - walk the long way on the sidewalk and be home in twenty minutes, or cut through the cemetery and be home in ten.

  My Chem book seemed to weigh about a hundred pounds in my backpack and the styrofoam box with my dinner was warm in my hands. It would be so nice to eat it before it fully congealed.

  I marched forward through the black metal gates of the cemetery.

  The fronds of the weeping willows at the entry wavered, though there was no breeze. The trees in the cemetery were so beautiful. The first hints of the coming explosion of fall colors had just begun to creep in. I had always loved all kinds of trees, even though we lived in places where they were rare.

  Other people might be spooked by cemeteries, but in towns like Pottsboro, they were like an oasis of nature. Jon and I had played in the one at the old churchyard near our apartment in Philly as if it were a park.

  Most of the gravestones here in the Pottsboro cemetery were low-lying granite, or old-fashioned marble. The few larger monuments and sculptures served as my landmarks.

  I had just reached the marble angel at the center of the cemetery when I heard footsteps.

  My heart thudded in my chest and a sudden wash of adrenaline already had sweat prickling at my brow.

  My first thought was to run.

  Well, my actual first thought was that I was an idiot.

  I had risked my safety for a warm grilled cheese sandwich - another clear case of going from believing something was important to wondering what the hell I’d been thinking.

  But my second thought was to run.

  I spun, expecting to see the creep from the diner. I had a pretty good hunch that I could outrun him.

  But it wasn’t him.

  The figure behind me was silhouetted in moonlight. It wore a hat and trench coat, but there was something strange and stooped about its posture.

  More than that, there was an aura of wrongness all around it that brought back my unease from earlier, but a thousand times stronger. The breeze carried a hint of something rotten and sickly-sweet, like the time the power went out at the diner, and I had to help Daniel clear the spoiled meat out of the walk-in.

  I didn’t so much forget about the idea of running as I just completely forgot how my legs worked.

  Run, run, run, my mind screamed.

  But my feet just wouldn’t obey.

  The thing lurched toward me, its movements jerking and odd, like a lagging video game. The limbs moved at the wrong angles, as if its bones were broken, or maybe it didn’t even have bones at all.

  Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t human. And something deep inside me told me that it never had been.

  It was only pretending.

  The whole world blurred and then slowed.

  The man-creature moved toward me like it was underw
ater. My pounding heart thudded once, the sound too deep in my ears.

  A familiar sensation filled me - something I had only felt once before, and tried my best to forget.

  I tried to blink away the memory of falling, falling…

  Do something, Bella.

  Instinctively, I lifted my hands to shield my face.

  The creature was only a step away when it stumbled and looked down. Snakelike vines from the nearby willow tree crawled over its feet, wrapping around and holding it fast, rooting it to the spot as sure as my terror held me to mine.

  But it only stopped for a moment, then lurched forward again, leaving its worn boots behind to reveal the gleaming white of bones beneath.

  “Stop,” I moaned as it raised an arm to strike.

  As if on command, the willow branches lifted again, swirling around my inhuman assailant, tangling in its long coat.

  Did I… make that happen?

  The idea was almost more frightening than the thing that was after me.

  Almost.

  My vision blurred at the edges, but my body surged back to life. I sprinted for the path to the gate that would take me out the other side of the cemetery, my footsteps thudding on the damp grass, then crunching along the gravel path.