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.
Dili followed Toad back up the road toward home, sipping her tea and munching through her pastries pensively. Telling Vanessa she was going to handle the vampire situation was easy, but she actually didn’t have a plan for how to go about it.
Vampires tended to be impulsive creatures. Driven by their constant need for human blood, they were relentless and excessive in their efforts to secure their next meal. When deterred, for any reason, most vampires grew aggressive at best and violent at worst.
Even though she was quite familiar with vampires and their blood magic, Dili had never met one who acted the way the intruder had. He hadn’t tried to seduce or overwhelm her to gain entry to her home. He hadn’t touched her, even though he’d pushed into her personal space. He’d tried to use blood magic on her, but when she countered the spell, he’d been intrigued instead of irritated.
And after she forcefully expelled him from her home, she hadn’t seen a single sign of retaliation. No ominous warnings left at the edge of her property. No shadows stalking her as she had walked to the shed.
All of which suggested that this vampire, though alone and starved, had not been seeking a meal from Dili… which begged the question: what did he want?
An involuntary shiver ran down Dili’s spine as she recalled he’d asked the same of her, his words potent with power. The way his magic had deceived all her senses, promising temptations, teasing—
Toad meowed loudly. Dili shook her head, coming back to the present. She’d been so lost in thougth that she hadn’t realized she’d stopped walking. Even though they couldn’t speak back and forth the way they used to, Dili thought she knew what the black cat intended.
“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” the witch said.
Again, Dili saw no signs of the vampire as she walked home. The early morning sun cast long shadows through the trees, but none belonged to anything supernatural. She kept her senses alert, but the mountainside remained peaceful.
Dili went straight to the garden behind the cottage. She smoothed a bare patch of dirt with her foot, then grabbed a stick. She drew a check mark, an X, and a question mark next to each other. Toad watched her in silence as she worked, but the moment she was done, he leapt to the other side of the symbols so they were looking at one other.
Dili took a deep breath and held it for a moment. Toad gave her a long, slow blink. She stared into those new green eyes, wishing the hard questions she had to ask had easy answers.
“Last night… he said… did you really seek the vampire on purpose?” Dili asked, a bubble of hope in her chest.
Toad used a paw to tap the ground next to the check mark.
That small hope burst, making Dili’s chest deflate, making her throat go tight.
“Did you really want to become a vampire?” she asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
Toad’s tail twitched. He stepped forward, and with deliberate precision, tapped the check mark again.
She had expected it, especially after his first answer, but it still stung. Dili bit her bottom lip, trying to hold back distracting emotions. She felt strangely numb despite all the questions rattling her thoughts.
“Did he force you into any of it?” she asked, but she already knew the answer before the cat gently tapped the X.
“Trick you?”
X.
“Did he at least explain what being turned meant? The contract of service?”
Check.
Dili’s stomach dropped as the answers she didn’t want to hear fell into place. That Toad had understood everything. That Toad had wanted it.
The witch stared at the ground, unseeing. She felt rejected. It wasn’t that Toad had ambitions of his own or that he’d wanted more for himself that their life together couldn’t provide. Dili was too old, too weathered, and too wise to think their love had to come with a leash.
What hurt her was that he’d said nothing about his desires to her. Not once, over several years. Magic only drew a familiar towards a witch, but never held them together—that bond came from nature itself. Their trust had been earned. Their companionship had been wanted. Their lives had been shared. Equally. Fully.
“You never told me.” Dili couldn’t keep the pain from her voice.
Toad let out a tiny, plaintive mewl, then walked over to sit on the question mark. He stretched a paw out to rest on her thigh.
“I… I’m not sure what you mean.” The witch groaned, then let out a long, weary sigh. “It must be the contract. I think your blood magic bond with him supersedes what we had.”
Toad hesitated, his eyes narrowed in thought. He stepped away from the question mark, then placed a paw on both the check mark and the X.
“Yes and no? How?” Then, she quickly shook her head. “I know you can’t answer like this.”
Toad blinked in affirmation, then walked back to sit on the question mark. He put his paw on her thigh again, meowed, then turned his head around so he was looking back out into the garden. He mewoed again and again.
Dili frowned. “You… you want to go find him?”
Toad sprang sideways, and he landed on the check mark.
Dili let out a disgusted groan.
The familiar padded forward and crawled into her lap. He purred, and began rubbing his head against the bottom of her chin.
The cat’s actions were unmistakable, though the last thing Dili wanted was another close encounter with the vampire.
“Do you know what he wants from me?” she asked, her voice tight.
Toad hesitated, then reached forward to tap both the check and the X, again, without getting out of her lap.
“That’s not helpful,” Dili muttered. “Is he dangerous to me?”
X.
She wasn’t convinced. “Does he plan to hurt me?”
X.
“Does he plan to turn me?”
X.
Dili sighed again, and Toad got out of her lap. The witch stood, brushing dirt from her skirt.
“I’m assuming you can find him?” she asked, sounding annoyed.
Toad’s tail swished eagerly as he tapped the check mark.
“Then let’s go. But we’re not letting him back in here, understand?”
Toad wove between her legs, wrapping his tail around her and rubbing his face against her skin. He blinked up at her, and even with the edges of his fangs been poking out, he looked downright adorable.
The familiar led her into the forest beyond the wall around her home, following a path only he could sense. They walked for nearly an hour, deeper into the woods than Dili usually ventured. The trees grew denser, the underbrush thicker. There must have been a stream nearby because the trickle of water grew louder the more they walked.
Eventually, they came upon the small stream, and Toad followed it downhill. Dili walked more cautiously. She was not agile and suspected the footing might be slippery.
Another twenty minutes found them emerging into a clearing amidst the trees. The stream dropped off a few large boulders, creating the tiniest waterfall that spilled into a decent-sized pool, small enough that Dili hadn;t seen it before the break in the trees abut large enough for a swim.
Toad stopped, his ears perked forward, his whiskers twitching. Dili followed his gaze. He was staring at the surface of the water. Dili stared for a few moments, then scanned the rest of the surroundings. There was no sign of the vampire, but Toad made no move to continue.
“Are you sure he’s here?” Dili asked.
Before Toad could turn around, splashes burst from the center of the pool. A face paler than cotton and as thin as withered reeds broke the surface. Dili noted the white-gold hair fanning out around him, nearly three feet long. The water was so clear that Dili could have seen much more than that, but the way the dappled sunlight played across those pink lips mesmerized her to the point of stunned silence.
She hadn’t expected to find the vampire like this—vulnerable, exposed. She’d imagined confronting him in some dark cave, not catching him in such a mundane moment.
The vampire rubbed his face, letting out an indulgent sigh. On the next inhale, though, he stiffened, dropped his hands, and whipped his head in their direction.
Dili heard his breath hitch when he spotted her. Watched a pang of hunger darken his eyes. They stared at one another, Dili’s pink conflicted eyes locked with his green gluttonous gaze.
Toad meowed loudly, breaking the tense moment and their eye contact. At the sound, the vampire’s hungry expression vanished, replaced by a confident smirk and a glint in his eyes.
“Care to join me?” he asked in a sultry tone.
Dili wrinkled her nose in disgust. By the looks of his flattened ears, Toad seemed equally put off by the vampire’s invitation.
“We need to talk,” she said curtly.
“Then come on in,” the vampire said.
Dili balled her hands into fists and glared at him. Toad let out an ominous groan.
The vampire gave them both a big smile, showing off his fangs, and held his hands up.
“Alright, alright. If you insist…”
Unlike the night before, the vampire didn’t lunge at her with supernatural speed. Instead, he sauntered out of the water, rivulets streaming down his naked body.
Dili dropped her eyes before she saw too much, heat flooding her cheeks. The vampire didn’t deserve such respect after invading her home, but then again, Dili had too much self-respect to compromise her values for a sneaky, self-absorbed—
A freezing touch came under her chin and lifted her face up. She found herself once again only an inch apart from his face. His green eyes bore into hers. His breath ghosted over her skin. Her eyes almost dropped to his pink lips, but then he opened his mouth.
“What’s the matter, witch? Cat got your tongue?”
Next chapter coming Friday, September 5.