All rights reserved. Copyright © 2024 by LA Magill. All distribution rights reserved for the exclusive use of Wicked Women LLC.
Darkness wrapped around my eyes. Sunshine, warm on my skin despite the cool breeze, couldn’t penetrate the obscurity. But that was the point.
Salty sweat and heavy musk oozed near me. Wafts of lactic acid and adrenaline trailed in circles around me. Panted breaths stalked me.
The soil’s trembling bass rippled the softest steady beats in the footprints left behind by my attackers. The far-off ringing timbre of the mountains echoed as gently as it could, pinging off the giant bodies of the bears that circled me. The rushing melodies of wind and water broke around their steadfast determination, flowing back to me with whispers of movement and intent.
The horrifying whispers of Rot underneath. The frightening new messier, wilder, chaotic notes that had crept into the musical mana of my lands.
I listened to it all. My ears heard every sound of fur and flesh and every note of magical music. Listening…. Listening…
Relying on scent and sound alone, I traced my attackers. They had the advantage of size and space. They came at me one after another, together at once—anything they could think of to bring me down to the ground.
But I was an Alpha in my lands. Even blindfolded, even in my human skin, the bears that lunged and snapped and struck at me never stood a chance.
Earth song cried out to me as one of my attackers swung his shaggy head my way. The magic jittered, a frantic scaling melody. The music anticipated each step I should take to evade the coming charge.
I listened with caution. Those recent darker notes, grim enough to match my resolution, paved that path.
Earth song, and my ability to hear the Earth’s voices, was useful in combat. Just my training that day was more for my body, not my spirit.
Water trickled down my skin as well as sweat as I narrowed my focus to my sensory feedback rather than the Earth’s symphony. My nose tracked the sweat and hormones. The telltale inhale, the claws in the dirt, the slide of thick fur—my hearing latched on to every sound. I turned my head in the same direction, and my nose caught the scent of one of the bears, homing in on me.
My senses triangulated where he was. He charged at me, coming in low. He probably aimed to sweep my legs out from under me.
Only months ago, I would have changed my stance to avoid the hit, grabbed his ruff, and unleashed all my power to use his momentum against him with my own brute strength.
Instead, I changed my stance to avoid the hit and let his body surge past me. I turned round, ready to hammer an attack at his rear before giving space again—hit and run—but my heightened senses caught the other attacker trying to take advantage of my back being turned.
Sneaky. I abandoned the counter strike on the first bear, letting him skid away from me unscathed. I followed my inertia and continued to spin with my momentum, spiraling under and out of the way of a paw that whistled past my ears. He swiped through the air right where my head would have been.
Sneaky, but not quick enough.
Rather than follow my momentum away from my two assailants, I completed my twist until my knees and hips aligned. I bunched my quads and strained through my legs. My boots skidded a centimeter as I halted my forward movement.
From the deep crouch, I slid my left foot forward, pushed straight up, and arced my left arm up and over my head, twisting back around to smack the bear on his big, audacious butt.
He let out a short bellow of surprise and scampered off. The two would-be-strikers gave me space for a moment, too, both of them huffing.
“Time out,” the most perfect voice I’d ever heard called out.
I uncoiled myself, releasing all the tension from my muscles and blowing out a huge breath. I slid the blindfold off to see Jason and Lu shift across the veil, and Rohan, Smirkums, and Serena walking toward me with cool water.
“Thank the sweet Earth. I’m so thirsty,” I said.
Rohan stretched the bottle out to me. I chugged a few gulps before taking several deep breaths, calming my lungs. Slowing my heart rate.
I peeked at my brothers out of the corner of my eye. They shifted slowly, conserving their mana. Lu popped back across the veil in his human skin with an exhilarated grin on his face. His broad forehead and broader shoulders glistened with the effort of his exertions. He mopped his face and pushed back the wisps of hair that had pulled free from his braid.
“That was mean,” he said.
“Says the one who was going for a head swipe,” I said back.
We grinned at each other, years of bickering, training, and love backing a trust between us that wouldn’t change because of an irritating swat on the rump.
My blonde-haired blue-eyed brother appeared with a pop a moment later. My breath hitched as we made eye contact, but the connection didn’t last. Jason dropped his eyes without a word. A vein along his temple bulged, and his jaw clenched.
The despair at his distance hadn’t lessened in the months since I’d hurt him. Since I’d mauled hum when I’d fallen to Rot and lost all reason to gain corrupted power. Since I lost his trust.
I saw the scar on his leg in my memory. The torn flesh had healed red and ropey. Hard ridges where it had once been smooth muscle. Jason never complained about it to me, but I heard through Serena how he hated the new tightness in his skin.
The Alpha, a magical force given to me by Earth magic to protect those of my kin—those I love—rumbled with my black rumination. The darker notes in its music grew louder.
A gentle hand on my waist brought me back from the edge of spiraling.
“You were looking great out there,” Rohan said.
The sound of his voice was the only thing I considered as beautiful as Earth song, and in many instances, even better. Rohan’s dulcet tone captivated me from the moment my name rolled off his talented lips. It wasn’t love at first sound, but it was an attraction that would grow to be as important to me as the bonds I held with my sleuthmates. I could not envision a future without Rohan by my side just as much as with Smirkums or Serena. And Jason.
The bleaker music the Earth made for the disquiet in my spirit settled with his praise. I leaned into him, even though I was still overheated from my training.
“Thanks,” I said. “It felt a smidge better today.”
“We could tell,” Lu said. He still panted.
“Seriously cool,” Smirkums said. “Jason couldn’t get closer than a foot and half, and Lu was only slightly better.”
Jason didn’t comment. I tried not to take it personally.
“That’s decent,” I said. I wiped the water and sweat off my forehead and pulled at my sticky shirt to get it off my chest and back.
“Decent? I’d say more than decent,” Smirkums continued.
I grunted. “But I need to be good. Better than good, if I can manage it before the mages strike again.”
Jason’s brow dropped low at my words. Smirkums and Serena, my lovebirds, weren’t fazed just by words; Jason had survived more than they had, and understood fear better than they did, even with all the heinous things done to them at the hands of the raven flock.
I wondered, though, if the words made him think of Tau’s smoking breath or Tadhana’s sparking hands like I did… or if he was picturing my bloody claws.
The threat the mages’ posed me and mine riled the Alpha’s over protective urges every day. Even when the sun was shining, the ravens absent, and Earth song mild. It was a danger that lurked just beyond what I could sense, but I knew it was coming. I knew it with both my skins. I hadn’t been able to shake the sense of looming retaliation for months.
Which is why I’d been training my hide off for months. My scarred arm had healed well, without any loss of strength and nearly full range of mobility, but my mind hadn’t. I needed practice aligning my physical prowess and my mental state.
And my spirit, but that’s practice I need to do on my own.
I’d grown up mastering the unique martial arts developed and passed on by generations of bear shifters, as had all my ancestors descending from my mother’s special bloodline. With each skill I perfected, I also honed my secrecy. The open-palmed strikes and bold charges allowed me to disguise my perks while still relying on them: paranormal strength, speed, and senses in my human skin that should have only belonged to my bear skin.
In the last few months, I’d been adapting my fighting style to better work with my trauma. Or at least trying to. I couldn’t strike with my scarred arm without triggering debilitating flashbacks. I’d gotten better, on most days, at recognizing when I was slipping into haunting memory, but the fighting…
The new evasive, guerrilla-style combat I was forcing into my muscle memory didn’t suit me. The attack patterns didn’t sit well with my bear, who preferred to lean on my size and force. The new techniques put tactics and skill ahead of strength and speed. I needed a new mindset entirely to use that combat style to win, not just survive.
Ingraining new techniques and a new mindset into my muscles required more than diligence. Fighting against years of muscle memory for a different reaction stressed my mind and my body equally. It took extreme focus not to fall into my usual patterns, but when I did, Lu was always quick to correct me. He recognized my moves better than anyone else.
The practice challenged both my human and my bear skins, but a menacing darkness kept pushing me through. Driving me.
I kept that stained emotion locked away in my spirit, hidden from my sleuthmates and the people I loved. I promised I wouldn’t push them away again, but that didn’t mean I had to show them every struggle. Every darkness.
It didn’t matter what it took, though, or how hard I had to push myself. If I was to be ready to face the mages, I had to learn how to fight anew. My scarred arm had healed, but the damage in my psyche was taking longer—will take a lifetime—to mend.