Fangs and Fur- Beta Read Along
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2025 by LA Magill. All distribution rights reserved for the exclusive use of Wicked Women LLC.
Toad’s low growl rumbled through the tension between them and cut Hadrian off. The black cat’s ears flattened against his skull. His lips peeled back, fangs bared, and a sound Dili had never heard from him—guttural, primal—tore from his throat. He launched toward the back door so quickly Dili hardly saw it.
Hadrian blurred, following Toad’s trajectory, but magic burst through the back door and let mayhem in despite the vampires’ timely actions. Wind whirled around Dili’s cottage, spilling, knocking, and rattling everything from its place, and on the wild air, an irresistible sound crooned with overwhelming power.
Freeze.
The siren’s charm swamped Dili’s ears, and while the summoning magic didn’t flood her mind, her muscles struggled to stay afloat. The witch focused on the lingering warmth in her teacup, the flickering heat of the fire at her side, the anger bursting within—anything hot to counter the charm’s chilling command. Dili’s strength and speed would return as she painstakingly soaked up the summoning magic clinging to her body, but it meant that her magic was slow to swim against the currents of magic crashing through her home.
She wished she could do more than watch. Toad and Hadrian remained poised to attack, the black cat suspended in mid air, and the vampire lunging for the door handle. Magic held them motionless, as still and sharp as ice, as impossibly stuck in space as they were in time.
Nile sauntered through the back door with a regal tilt of her head and the wind coursing around her. Her outstretched hands, fingers graceful as a dancer, glowed with gold power, but Dili couldn’t spot the jewelry that must have been the source of the natural magic.
“Let them go!” Dili ground out.
She forced herself to stand, and it felt like breaking through layers of ice for every inch. Nile’s reverent gaze flickered to hers, then she rested a delicate fingertip on Toad’s temple.
You shall sleep until the sun rises.
“No!” Dili shouted.
The black cat crumpled to the floor like a puppet with cut strings. His eyes fluttered shut, and his body relaxed onto the floor until he sprawled out without a single care in the world. His chest rose and fell in a steady, enchanted rhythm.
Dili dragged one foot forward. Then another. She tripped on Hadrian’s chair and stumbled to all fours. Nile’s attention swung to her, and though her expression broke with radiant sympathy at the sight of Dili on the floor, she made no move or magic to help.
“It saddens me to see you so weak, my lady,” Nile said softly. “I am sorry, but you can’t keep hiding forever.”
Dili grunted and strained to right herself again, and it took longer. Long enough that she had time to notice Hadrian remained so still not even his hair blew with the wind. But, he was only as silent as snowfall—as quiet as audible silence can be, a feeling of sound if not the actual hearing of it. That was snowfall, and from that same not-a-sound-feeling spreading through her cottage, Dili knew Hadrian was pushing back against divine power for the second time in an hour—and gaining ground.
No matter how much synthetic blood he’d consumed, she had to be impressed. Very few paranormals could withstand creation magic, even when wielded by a witch or a half-siren instead of a true divinity.
It was not the time nor the place, but for a split second, Dili remembered the look on Hadrian’s face when he’d asked her if she knew who he was. She should have known of a vampire whose magic rivaled what remained of the divines, if not have already made his acquaintance, but she knew she’d never encountered him before. Knew it in her bones the same way she knew Nile was not the half-siren’s name.
Nile then stretched the same fingertip out toward the vampire Dili probably should have known and definitely wanted to kiss again.
Retrieve the key at all costs.
Hadrian’s legs hauled him round, as she staggered to standing. She wobbled, but she had better balance than before. Not enough to out-wobble a vampire though, no matter how much Hadrian resisted the charm. Dili watched him grind his teeth and shorten every step. A green aura began to glow around him, but he could not keep his feet from moving forward no matter how he dragged his boots and tried to veer off course.
“R-run!” he forced out.
Freeing his lips must have cost him too much energy, though, because his body nearly sagged forward, and he was on top of her before she had wobbled three steps back. He scooped her up, wrapping her up tight against his chest with both arms. Dili knew she couldn’t have shaken him off even if tried.
“S-stop. M-me. P-please.”
She hated the misery in his eyes as neither of them could escape his grip. Hadrian’s hand slid down Dili’s left side and crested her waist, sliding low.
There was no pocket. Dili knew there was no pocket. She did not have a left pocket.
Hadrian’s fingers sank through the divine-woven fabric, and to her complete and utter dismay, his hand slipped into a gap between the layers, and into a chasm between worlds.
Reality unraveled as all sound collapsed. Light bent and fractured. Hadrian’s expression—anguished, terrified—vanished into an unseen vortex.
He was gone. The sudden lack of pressure enveloping her slammed into Dili like a physical blow, and in its wake came the familiar pain she hadn’t faced in a millennia. She arched backward, mouth gaping in a soundless scream as magical whiplash tore through her. Her spine felt like it would snap. Her vision whited out. There was only agony without time, and then suddenly for only a moment, then, a surge of power she’d never intended to touch again.
The world she’d helped make filtered back in through gasping breaths and the cold press of floorboards against her cheek. Above her, the half-siren stood as frozen as the vampires had been, her face drained of color.
“What—what just happened?” Fear haunted her voice.
Dili pushed herself up on shaking arms. Her muscles trembled. Her teeth ached. But when she lifted her head and met the other woman’s wide, shocked eyes, something ancient and terrible unfurled within her. Unleashed power rippled outward from the witch’s skin, a low ringing hum that made the air shimmer. The fire in the hearth flared, then dimmed to sullen embers.
The witch rose to her full height. Slowly. Deliberately. She breathed, and her voice resonated with echoes of lifetimes, of a fury long buried and a suffering long endured.
“You are as foolish now as you were as a girl, Naddahat. You crave powers not meant for your hands, so you will always cower at the feet of your betters.”
The half-siren flinched at the sound of her true name.
“My lady—I didn’t know! What—”
“Silence!”
Naddahdat sank to her knees, quivering. She bowed her head and spread her arms out before her in supplication.
“I told you I didn’t want to come back,” Dili whispered. Then, she said louder, “You will rue this day, child.”
“I shall repent, my lady. Every day I will beg for your mercy. I would serve you as my only queen, with the glory you deserve, and—”
“No more lies, Naddahdat,” Dili’s voice cut through the fearful rambling. “You serve yourself. You always have.”
“Please, my lady, forgive me!” the half-siren moaned.
Her pleas landed on distrusting ears. Dili kept her fury in tight control as she slipped her hand into her right pocket and withdrew a short bronze blade. The half-siren wailed with fright at the sight of it but did not dare run. The witch fingered the edge of the blade, still as sharp as the day it was forged, then eyed the pitiful half-siren.
“Swear a blood oath, and I shall consider keeping your transgressions between us,” Dili declared.
Naddahdat lifted her head, her dry eyes wide with disbelief. “You hide what I’ve done from Gaia?”
“Yes. I accept your terms,” Dili was quick to say.
A complaint almost made it to Naddahdat’s lips, but she couldn’t voice it looking into Dili’s enraged face.
The witch drew the blade across her palm. It sliced through her skin so easily that the pain didn’t register until the blood had already blossomed and dripped down her hand. The bronze blade gleamed as if untouched, not a trace of blood left on it.
Dili gestured Naddahdat to offer her hand. The half-siren flinched, then tentatively lifted her right palm up.
“Left,” Dili snapped.
The half-siren flinched again, and switched her hands. She gulped loudly. “A-and what of your terms, my lady?”
Dili sliced open the half-siren’s palm and took the other paranormal’s hand before she could back out. She pressed their cuts together, and her eyes fluttered shut at the ecstasy that came with divine touch, but she did not linger in that moment. The inferno of her rage wouldn’t let her.
Dili’s baleful eyes held Naddahdat’s horrified stare, and as the witch spoke, the ancient ritual forged a pact so strong, so tight, so binding, that neither could break it on their own.
“You shall protect and serve my familiar, Toadstool, and all his family and all his descendants until the end of time.”
Shock wiped the fear from Naddahdat’s face, but it was quickly followed by infuriating arrogance, and then an insulted expression. Her jaw dropped, though she didn’t quite scoff the way Dili imagined she wanted to. Not while their hands were still clasped.
“I accept your terms,” Naddahdat grumbled.
A satisfied smile stretched Dili’s lips as the magic sealed them into their fates, then she dropped the half-siren’s hand. Someday, Dili would very much enjoy watching the pompous hybrid picking up after hairballs, but there was no time to savor her successful trickery now.
Naddahdat pulled her hand back and sheltered the bleeding palm against her chest. She glowered at Dili and glared at Toad, but the witch knew the half-siren would not act on her resentment. Could not. Which had been the whole point.
Dili couldn’t have gone after Hadrian without making sure Naddahdat wouldn’t attack Toad the moment she turned her back, because she had no intention of taking the loyal black cat with her. She didn’t even know if she could rescue the vampire, and she wouldn’t risk the same unknown with her familiar.
So, ignoring Naddahdat completely, Dili strode over to Toad. She kissed his head and rubbed his ears.
“I don’t know how, but I will bring him back. For the both of us,” she whispered.
The witch tucked the bitterness of the goodbye away and, without a single word or moment’s hesitation, Dili thrust her hand into her very real left pocket, and vanished into the vortex to save Hadrian from herself.
*Chapters 20-22 have been modified to blend the end of volume 1 and the start of volume 2 together. The final publication will read differently, though the general plot points will remain the same. Learn more on my blog.
Next chapter on Friday, December 12.