The rent was sky high and the lodgings had seen better days, but Hella’s new temporary single-storey home—shed—was deep in the shifter district, a place where she doubted Ethyrian’s men would come looking for her. She peered at the stains on the cobbled floor that were old and refused to come up, and curled her lip at the faint lingering scent of animal that clung to everything in the single rectangular room. She tried not to think about what beasts had called it home in the past.
Possibly horses.
When the old panther shifter had shown it to her, he had embellished a lot. According to him, it wasn’t a shed previously used to house animals. The stable door was cottage chic. The peeling white paint on the outside was authentic. And the missing terracotta tiles on the roof lent it character, apparently.
It was a shed.
But beggars couldn’t be choosers.
In reality, it was the perfect hiding place.
No self-respecting witch would live in such a hovel.
So the nymphs were unlikely to look for her here.
Still, she couldn’t hide here all hours of the day and night. She would have to go out at some point. She was going to need supplies and was worried about her shop, not that she was crazy enough to go and check on it. She had her spies keeping an eye on it for her. By spies, she meant young witches who lived in the surrounding buildings and who were her eyes and ears when it came to all the juicy gossip in the town. In exchange for lessons, they kept their ear to the ground and told her everything.
Who was having an affair. Which businesses were in trouble. Which witch was making a play for more power. Who was sleeping with whom. Who was in the market for an affair. Fine, there were a lot of affairs involved, but it made her little town far more interesting when she knew which couples were on the verge of breaking up and who was sleeping together. The more unlikely the pairing, the better.
She stared into the mirror that had seen better days, was patchy in places and had been hanging on the yellow wall for decades judging by the fact the paint behind it was a darker shade of dandelion. Odd that there was a mirror in the shed.
Unless the previous occupant had been a horse shifter.
It would explain the smell.
Male horse shifters loved spending most of their time in their animal forms. Apparently, it got them a lot of attention from females. A fine-looking and well-groomed horse could easily draw a crowd of twittering women who wanted to pet and stroke, and ride it.
She twisted a length of her blue hair around her finger, desperately trying not to think about what kind of sordid things had happened in this building.
Should she dye it?
A ruckus outside in the street had her fingers tensing in her hair, yanking on it, and she hurried to the single sash window, her heart thundering as adrenaline shot through her veins. She sagged against the wall as she saw it was only two groups of feline shifters fighting in the alley between the tall walls that enclosed two of the compounds and not an army of nymphs come to grab her. The shifter district was lively to say the least. She had never realised it before, but having been here for two nights, she had learned that every shifter breed had a problem or two with the other ones who occupied the area.
Fights were far too common.
Her nerves were shot.
She couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep because there was always a fight or four that broke out and had her flying to the window, terrified of what she might see.
Hella watched as the six males went at it, clawing and hissing at each other, not really paying attention to them. Maybe she needed to move again. What if she went to the fae town near Fort William in Scotland? Fenix, her closest friend, had often spoken about it and owned a home near there. She could drop in and check on him while she was there. It had been months since he had come to see her for more pills to keep his incubus hunger in check, and she was worried.
It wasn’t like him to go this long without coming to see her. The number of pills she had given him the last time she had seen him hadn’t been anywhere near enough to cover this many months between visits. She tried to look on the bright side, telling herself that he might have found his mate and things might have worked out for them this time, but deep in her heart she knew that if that was the case, he would have brought the female to meet her.
He had always talked of doing just that.
Hella had always talked of him watching his back and that one day the blood mages he targeted were going to take him down, but he had never listened.
And she understood why.
He was cursed.
Seemed to be a theme these days.
The wolf was cursed too. There was no doubt about that in her mind now. She did have other doubts though—like the claim she was his fated one. Someone was ‘yanking his chain’ as Fenix would put it. She didn’t know who she had crossed to get the wolf cursed, but she had added finding out to her to-do list.
Together with breaking the wolf’s curse.
Hella abandoned the idea of changing the colour of her hair and drifted to the table she had placed her bag on, opened it and sifted through it. She pulled out two of the books she had brought with her and set them down, and carefully eased onto the wooden chair, not trusting that it wouldn’t collapse beneath her weight.
The fire in the ancient log burner crackled and popped, filling the silence as she leafed through the first book, looking for anything that might help her with the wolf’s curse. Her fingers brushed the page, lovingly stroking it, and she glanced at the other book. She had left so many of them behind.
How were they doing?
She hoped the nymphs didn’t rip them apart in a fit of pique when they discovered she was in the wind. Some of them were old, as ancient as this shed she now called home. They were precious and irreplaceable.
She was tempted to sneak to see one of her friends, a witch who had seen her hauling arse across town. She had asked Greta to keep an eye on her house and send any nymphs that came asking about her in the wrong direction.
Or better yet, dispose of them.
The less of the king’s men in town, the easier she could move around.
Hella sagged against the back of the chair, not caring when it creaked ominously.
She just wanted her old life back.
She huffed. If she had known who Ethyrian was when she had met him at the masquerade ball in Paris, she would have steered well clear of him. Kings, princes and alphas had a terrible habit of thinking they could just take what they wanted.
Case in point, the wolf.
She bet her left tit he was an alpha.
He had that dominant, overbearing attitude she now associated with men drunk on their position of power.
Although, Ethyrian had been nice to her. A little simpering at times, and broody, but he had been nice. Only she had apparently seen just one side of the nymph king, and he had been concealing the one that had reared its ugly head the moment she had dumped him. She sighed. She had been in a bit of a dry spell when she had attended the ball and had figured nymphs for an easy lay, a bit of fun, like an incubus but without the drawback that their semen could affect her connection to nature and therefore ruin her magic.
And her.
It turned out that nymphs were sexually highly charged, but they were also seriously high maintenance. They wanted to be petted and cooed over, desired and adored.
Which really wasn’t her scene.
Any man who took that much effort to please and keep happy was a man she didn’t need.
Hella moved her focus back to her book, drifting through the pages as the fire warmed her back. The world outside was quiet and peaceful, and for a moment, everything felt right in the world.
And then a big bad wolf came barrelling backwards through her door.
Shortly followed by five nymphs.