Picking up her phone from the bedside table, he dropped into the armchair in front of the fireplace and typed in his brother’s number into the keypad from memory. They weren’t technically brothers; they were just a close group of friends who were leaders in the den. All of them were quite different, actually. Their den was made up of many different shifters, dragons, crows, basilisks, cats, griffins, and pegasuses, mostly. A fairly standard spread of species. His closest brother was Ciro—the one he called now.
The line rang twice before he picked up.
“Hello?” Ciro’s voice came through, gruff and pissed off. He had woken up a slumbering dragon—oops.
“It’s me,” Felix said, low, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the little witch wouldn’t wake up.
“Felix? What the fuck? Where have you been? Have you been sleeping with that porcupine shifter again? I told you he was into some weird shit.”
“What? No. I’m on Caerwyn.”
Ciro went silent. “Come the fuck again?”
Felix laid it out for him: the ritual, the bond, the riddles to undo it.
“You don’t think she’s your?—”
“No. It’s not possible.”
“Yeah, well, last week I thought a bond between a witch and a shifter was impossible too, but here we are.”
“Look.” Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you have any ideas, or are you just going to continue being useless?”
“If you were here, I’d punch you for that.”
“You’d miss.”
“Fuck you.” But it was a relieved kind of fuck you, the kind that came from knowing that your brother was safe enough to be an asshole. “Actually, holy shit.” The sound of rustling sheets came over the line.
“What?”
“Remember that case I was working on where shifters were going missing?”
“Yeah?”
“I haven’t been able to find a lead for months; all of them are dead ends.”
Realization poured over Felix, something cold settling in his chest. “Until now.”
He was one of the missing shifters.Thiswas where they could be ending up. But if that were true, why hadn’t any of themreached out? A phone call, a message—anything. Unless they couldn’t.
What frustrated him more than anything, more than this witch, more than this absurd bond, was a question without an answer. Something almost feral in him refused to let it lie. It was borderline obsessive. It was also why, at thirty, he’d clawed his way so high up the ranks.
His instinct was right, though. Witches had something to do with it, and now, it pissed him off enough that he intended to find out whatexactlythey were doing with them. He felt a tingle in his balls that it wouldn’t be good.
“Exactly,” Ciro said.
“Tell me everything.”
“It’s been happening for over thirty years; all of the shifters disappeared without a trace, and we haven’t heard anything from them. In the last week alone, three more have gone missing from the London Conglomerate.”
Felix’s tail went still as he sat up straighter, the armchair creaking under his weight. “Fuck. How many in total?”
“At least thirty,” Ciro exhaled. “The human government swears they have nothing to do with it. The witches are as uncooperative as usual.”
“Do they have anything in common?”
“Apart from them being from London and above the age of eighteen, no, there’s not. Every single lead I’ve had has gone cold. I fucking knew the witches had something to do with it.” He paused. “The witch you’re bonded to, do you think she’s behind this?”
