Page 3 of Hexy Beast

Fucking witches.

They think they know everything, control everything, win everything.

Well, not this time.

Not with the prize I’m about to have tucked away in my saddlebag. It’s a spell book with some stupid Latin name (like anyone speaks that shit anymore), and it’s been all anyone can talk about on the Croesus Network for the past few months. The thieves, crooks, and everyday villains who post on the LinkedIn of Witchingdom’s law averse called stealing the spell book the job of all jobs.

How was I supposed to walk away from a challenge like that?

When your name is Darius Aetos, and you’re the alpha of your namesake werewolf pack, there isn’t a way, and so I didn’t. Now the spell book is about to be mine.

How am I going to make that happen? The same way I do everything else: by putting together a plan all the way down to the minute details and then working that plan. No changes or substitutions allowed.

I don’t yammer about it or bounce ideas off other people. I don’t need to.

I learn by myself.

I observe by myself.

I act by myself.

Period.

It’s my system, and it works. I don’t need to mess it up by talking through ideas or being anything other than completely analytical about it all. Feelings only fuck things up—all you have to do is take a look at the mess the past two alphas (my father and grandmother) have made of the pack to understand that. Some thought it was my fate to be as bad of an alpha as they were. My answer to that? Fuck fate. I don’t believe in it. I decide my destiny and do whatever it takes to make it happen without any help from anyone else.

And the destiny I choose is to protect my pack, no matter what it takes. If, in this case, that means stealing the old-timey spell book that everyone in Witchingdom wants, then so be it. I’ll make it happen.

The thing about stealing the spell book, though, is that the people on the Croesus Network weren’t wrong. Tracking it down was a giant pain in my ass. Weeks of paying off or strong-arming informants across Witchingdom, however, had finally gotten us what we needed. Leona Sherwood and Erik Svensen had the spell book. They’d been road-tripping in a canary-yellow classic convertible with the spell book toward some secured facility where (once stored away) it would stay locked up tight for all eternity or some such shit. Witches are such melodramatic assholes. That was their plan. My plan was better, which is why my squad and I caught up with them right as they drove straight into the most dangerous place in Witchingdom—the pixies’ forest.

Oh yeah, you may be thinking, “Pixies, how bad could they be?” Let me tell you, they’re more unhinged than a toddler who skipped naptime after downing a five-pound bag of sugar and meaner than a badger shifter with a hangover whose access to greasy cheeseburgers has been cut off.

I had a run-in with the pixie queen a while back, and the less said about that, the better. Suffice it to say, I barely made it out.

Up until this minute, I had zero plans to press my luck with the pixie queen ever again. But now I don’t have a choice, because that ridiculous spell book is the one thing my pack needs to change its fortunes.

For that, I’ll do anything.

I take a minute to scan the forest for any sign of the vicious little gambling-addicted miscreants. I can’t see them through the thick trees, but I know the pixies are there watching and waiting—and no doubt betting on if I’ll get out of the forest alive this time. I can smell the dust of the chalk they use to keep track of their wagers, and my wolf sense can feel the flutter of their teeny-tiny wings as they hover in place like demented hummingbirds.

The last thing I want to do is go in there, but as my gaze drops to the tire tracks of the classic Cadillac convertible Leona and Erik are driving, I know there isn’t anything I can do to avoid it. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m letting anyone else take the risk of going into the pixie queen’s domain.

“You guys stay back,” I tell my squad. “We’ll meet up at the rendezvous point.”

Nikos, my second-in-command who’d love nothing more than to see me gone, stiffens. “Are you—”

I cut him off before he can argue. “I’ll see you there.”

His eyes turn into angry little slits, but I’ll deal with that later.

There are a few grumbles, but no one follows when I rev my motorcycle’s engine and head toward the tire tracks the ’57 Caddy left when Leona and Erik pulled into the forest.

I make it all of a quarter of a mile through the thick trees when a curvy, light auburn–haired witch appears exactly in the middle of the path. I can tell from a glance that she’s a Sherwood. The red hair and entitled air always give them away. However, the witch giving me the up and down is not Leona. It’s Effie, the Sherwood family’s resident troublemaker.

She’s the daughter most likely to throw a party in the woods, put a spell on your phone so every text includes an eggplant emoji, and go skydiving without a magic carpet.

The witch is a menace.

She looks exactly like she does in the pics and videos on her WitchyGram account. (I’ll make your life pure misery if you let anyone know my alt account follows her.) She’s all lush curves wrapped in well-worn jeans; thick, wavy hair begging to be touched, tugged, and wrapped around a fist; and perfect, bountiful tits that could make a werewolf skip running through the woods during a full moon. Other werewolves. Not me. I have more important things to take care of than finding out if Effie Sherwood tastes as good as she looks.