Page 50

I found my mate tucked away in one of the rooms upstairs where I kept most of my potion ingredients and journals. She threw me a smile over her shoulder, but her eyes mainly stayed on the work she was doing.

She’d moved some of her equipment over to our house during the move. We’d been so busy with everything, she hadn’t had as much time to focus on breaking the curse.

“Potion making is supposed to be my specialty,” she said with a sigh. “Now that I’ve been testing my magic a bit more, I thought it couldn’t hurt to give this a shot. I’ve been playing it safe since I arrived.”

“And now you’re done playing it safe?” I asked, curious what her answer would be.

Watching Prue flourish has been one of my favorite things.

“No,” she said firmly. “Dorian and I talked about it yesterday. I think for a long time I’ve been fighting the eventuality that I’d be stuck here, but just being close to you guys and forming this pack has already helped me be a little more in tune with my magic. What if I could find something to dampen our curses and we could get our lives back? We’d have to be magistrate approved, but with someone on our side that has an in with the magistrate...” She looked at me pointedly.

“Maybe you actually get a chance to have a little more freedom,” I concluded.

She nodded. “Exactly. It’s not that I want to leave Moonlit Grove. I love this town, and honestly, even if my curse is broken, I don’t know that I’d want to leave all the other cursed to just suffer.”

I moved closer to her, resting my head on her shoulder while I studied what she was working on, placing a soft kiss against her skin.

“And I love that about you. You’re so kindhearted. My career path was much more selfish. I chose this because of my brother.”

“Which is also a noble thing to do,” she said firmly, not letting me shy away from that. “I love how much you look out for him. Dorian is not the kind of alpha to ask for help. I can tell that already.”

I snorted at her words.

That was the understatement of the century. Dorian, frankly, wouldn’t ask for help no matter the cost. He may if it came to our girl, but that was only because he was already in love with this little witch.

“I support you no matter what. Wherever you go, I go,” I said firmly.

That finally got her to stop working. She put down the beaker she was holding and turned to me.

“Do you mean that? Even if I stay cursed for the rest of my life?”

“Then what an interesting life it will be.”

She studied me for a moment longer, as if testing if she believed what I was saying.

“I know that I seemed reluctant at first,” she said softly. “I think that I took it to heart more than I care to admit that my mom, my dad, my brother all dropped me the moment I was sent here.”

“Were you close before then?” I questioned softly. She was talking now, giving me a piece of her, and I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. My little witch was slow to trust, and the fact that she was trusting me with this meant the world to me.

But if the charred edges to her caramel apple scent meant anything, this story didn’t even start well.

“No,” she admitted. “My brother was younger, and when he was born, it was like I ceased to exist. I could no longer do anything right. Everything he did, I was blamed for.” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I thought it would get better as we got older, but I think that their treatment of me sort of rubbed off on him. We never really got a chance to be siblings.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I meant it, too. My parents weren’t great but I always had Dorian. As gruff as he may be.

I could tell how much their actions hurt her, and I hated it. She deserved better than her awful family gave her.

“What are your parents like?” she asked.

There was a dash of hope in her voice, and I hated to be the one to ruin it.

“My parents are complicated,” I admitted reluctantly. “They weren’t unkind to us, but they also never really came to terms with Dorian’s situation.”

“It wasn’t even his fault, and yet he was treated like something was wrong with him,” she finished for me, knowing exactly how that felt.

I nodded and gave a shrug. “We don’t really communicate much except through the occasional text, but that’s about as far as it goes.”

“Sounds like their loss,” Prue said with an indignant huff on our behalf.