Season 0f The Witch (Claws Clause Book 2) Read online

  Season of the Witch

  Jessica Lynch

  Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Lynch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Jessica Lynch

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Pre-Order Now

  Stay in Touch

  About the Author

  Also by Jessica Lynch

  Prologue

  Paranormal unions (also referred to colloquially as matings, claimings, bloodings, soul mates, etc.) are recognized at the discretion of a government-appointed Union official. Without a notarized certificate (referred to as a “Bonding License”), the union is not officially recognized. As such, the Paranormal will be denied the rights and privileges as outlined in this ordinance.

  Once a Paranormal union is formalized, finalized, and notarized with the aforementioned “Bonding License” issued at a government-approved Union office, both parties involved (Paranormal/Paranormal or Paranormal/Human) must agree to dissolve it before presenting their petition at a Department of Paranormal Regulation (D.P.R.).

  The only true release from an official union is with proof of death in regards to one or more party in the Paranormal union.

  — Ordinance 7304

  Section IV, Part ii

  1

  As Colton Wolfe resisted the urge to smash the expensive new smartphone in his hand, he had an epiphany: finally claiming his fated mate and bonding her to him had caused his older brother to lose his Alpha damn mind.

  It was the only excuse for his out of character behavior. Seriously. Why else would Maddox think it would be a good idea to bring up this same old shit again?

  Five months. It had been going on for more than five months. Considering how slyly Maddox slipped it into their conversation, Colt was beginning to think it wouldn’t be over any time soon.

  And, since smashing his phone meant he was out as much as his last commission, he knew he needed to rein in his temper. Still, he wasn’t about to budge.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “Just what I said, Mad,” Colt snarled into the phone. “Answer’s fucking no. So drop it.”

  His brother’s bark of laughter came through the speaker. “Come on, bro. It’s just dinner at my place.”

  Sure. Dinner at the house in Wolf’s Creek where Maddox lived with his mate... only Colt wasn’t a moron. He knew damn well that there were strings attached to this invite. He could go for a free meal, but he wouldn’t be the only guest.

  “Is she gonna be there?”

  “Ang? Of course.”

  Colt growled.

  His older brother was, like him, an alpha wolf. His age and his role as future Alpha put Maddox higher in the pack hierarchy; in normal circumstances, Colt would never growl at Maddox unless he was gunning for a scuffle. With the phone acting as a buffer between them—plus his brother’s obvious meddling pissing him the hell off—Colt didn’t try to swallow the angry sound.

  Maddox laughed again. “Guess you meant someone else, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  It took a little effort, but Colt managed to dial back some of his aggression. No matter how shitty his situation had been lately, he’d suck it up and deal with it ten times over if only to hear his brother’s light-hearted laugh.

  Three years. More than that, since the accident that nearly broke his brother beyond repair happened in June and it was late November now. Okay. Three years and a handful of months and Maddox was only just starting to laugh again.

  Colt didn’t blame him. First, there was the accident: the terrible crash that left everyone believing that Maddox’s beloved mate, Evangeline, was dead. Then there was the Claws Clause, the ridiculous Para ordinance that said Maddox, as a surviving bonded shifter, could either lose his bond, lose his life, or lose his freedom as a result of her death. Maddox chose the Cage and, for three years, he was collared and jailed in the paranormal prison.

  And, Colt had to admit, Maddox took it pretty hard when that obsessed witch tossed Colt out of the window and, you know, nearly killed him back in June.

  But he survived. It might’ve been a rougher recovery than it should’ve been, thanks to her. Whatever. He was all better now and there was absolutely, positively, no way in hell that he was sitting down to dinner with a witch.

  Even if she was the most gorgeous—

  One thought. That was all it took. One stray thought of her dark hair, her purple eyes, her sweet smile, and Colt’s body reacted. His heart thudded in his chest, his palms growing slick with sweat, while his cock started to harden.

  You think he would’ve learned a little control by now.

  Nope.

  “Come on, Colt. You can’t keep avoiding her forever. I was thinking we could invite her for a meal. The two of you could start over, maybe explore what’s between you.”

  There was already too much tying him to Shea Moonshadow. That, as Maddox well knew, was the problem.

  A suspicion struck Colt. “Was it your mate’s idea?” he demanded. “She put you up to this?”

  “My Angie might have mentioned that it would be nice to see Shea again.”

  He gritted his teeth at Maddox’s casual use of her name. He could barely bring himself to think it, let alone say it, in case it riled up his possessive wolf. He had his beast locked down, totally leashed as he pushed to get his bond with the witch erased, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore the wolf’s absolute need to claim its mate.

  His cock was a hard length of steel beneath his jeans. It was a constant reminder that, despite what his stubborn mind thought, his body was all aboard the mate the witch train.

  As if Maddox could sense his struggles over the line, his brother asked, “So, how’s your dick?”

  He palmed the budge with a heavy hand, trying to tame it even though it was pointless. “Why are you suddenly interested in my dick? Don’t you have yours to worry about?”

  “Mine’s fine. My mate loves it. And, once you give in and actually start to get to know your mate, your dick’ll be fine, too. Trust me.”

  Colt closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and bit back his frustrated howl. “Can we not talk about my dick, please?”

  “How about dinner?”

  His eyes sprang open. “Pass.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m still gonna see you tonight, though, right?”

  “Tonight? What do you mean, tonight?”

  “There’s a mandatory pack meeting back home. Sundown. Alpha insists. You have to be there.”

  Terrence Wolfe was the Alpha of their pack. Colt knew better than most that he only called pack meetings when it was important—and when it affe
cted the pack as a whole, including the shifters who didn’t live within his territory. If Maddox said Colt had to be there, he had to be there.

  Alpha’s word was law. No one argued with the Alpha—especially if he was their father.

  “I didn’t know. Thanks for the heads up. Dad would’ve had my tail if I missed it.”

  “Hey, if you answered your phone or checked your e-mail once in a while, you would’ve known.”

  Colt didn’t have an answer for that. Mainly because Maddox was right.

  Over the last few months, he’d purposely cut himself off from his family, his packmates, and the few others he considered his friends. The only ones he continued to talk on a regular basis were his brother and his best friend, Dodge McCoy. And considering weeks could go by in between their conversations, he accepted he had a very loose definition of what regular meant.

  It was actually Dodge who convinced Colt to pick up the phone when Maddox called earlier. Colt had been regretting it ever since.

  For once, he found Colt at home instead of locked up inside his work shed out back. Since Dodge was a ghost who actually haunted Colt, the two had laid down a couple of ground rules years ago. The biggie was that Dodge was free to come and go inside of Colt’s house—but the work shed, Colt’s private space, was off limits.

  He’d been spending a lot of time in there lately.

  “Alright, Mad. You made your point. Yes to the meet—”

  “And dinner?”

  “That would be… oh, yes. I remember… fuck you.”

  Colt ended the call, cutting his brother off mid-chuckle. Showing great restraint, he slipped his phone into his back pocket instead of crushing it in his grip like he really, really wanted to.

  “That went well.”

  “Shut it, Dodge.”

  “Hey. Just sayin’.” Dodge threw his ghostly hands up in the air, though the smirk on his transparent face showed off his humor at Colt’s situation. “What happened? Mad Dog giving you grief ‘bout the witch?”

  “He’s pushing me to have dinner with him and his mate on Thursday. Doesn’t matter if he wants to invite her or not, I’m still not going.”

  “Thursday, huh? You know why he was inviting you, right?”

  “Because he can’t keep his nose out of my business,” guessed Colt.

  “Could be that,” Dodge agreed. He jerked his chin toward Colt. “What was that last part about? You leaving?”

  “Yeah. Not like I want to, but Alpha’s calling an important meet for some of the shifters higher up in the pack. I’ve got to go. Maddox, too. He wants to start at sundown.”

  “Don’t have much time ‘til then.”

  “Yeah. I’ll have to leave soon. You want to come with?”

  The second the words were out, Colt regretted them. He was so used to the Dodge he’d known his entire life: the smartass, the instigator, the loyal phantom. The ghost who could be counted on to remember every last detail, who could pop in and out of all the places he’d been in a blink of an eye.

  Except, sometime over the last year, his ghostly existence had started to catch up with Dodge. Being a ghost didn’t mean you were immortal. Each ghost was given one hundred years to tend to the unfinished business that created them. If they found their anchor—which was how Colt got stuck with Dodge in the first place—before they finished up what they were supposed to, their life force was extended—but not for long.

  First, they lost their ability to materialize over long distances. Next, they started to fade. For a while they could go anywhere, so long as they traveled with their anchor. Toward the end, when they were more see-through than substantial, the ghost was confined to the physical landmark they last imprinted on.

  For Dodge, that was the Bumptown. The meet was on pack land. He couldn’t go and they both knew it.

  Dodge’s electric blue eyes—the only spot of color left to the ghost—dimmed to a smoky, pale periwinkle shade, though he held onto his smirk. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a meet of my own. Gigi’s coming in to see me along the Row.” Cemetery Row, where he technically kept his own place for whenever he “got tired of seeing Colt’s face”. “You can fill me in on what the pack meeting’s about when you get back.”

  “Yeah. I can do that.” Colt cocked his head. With more than a century of deadtime under Dodge’s belt, he knew far too many people—some alive, most dead—for Colt to keep tabs on all of them. Gigi… that one sounded new, though. “Gigi, huh? You change your mind about looking for your key?”

  Just like how shifters had their fated mates, ghosts had their key. The one person who was their “key” to having a second chance at life.

  Dodge had never seemed interested in locating his. Maybe, with the deadline to his second death coming up so soon, he was giving it a try.

  “Fat chance,” snorted Dodge. “She haunts a coven in California. I figure, if the witches around here haven’t figured out where she’s hiding, maybe I should widen my search to the other side of the country.”

  “You still looking for Cilla? I thought Maddox had a couple of packmates on her trail.”

  The ghost tipped his see-through derby in Colt’s direction. “And maybe they’ll find her before I do. I’m thinkin’ it’ll still be easier for me to move on if I know that that psycho witch can’t get to my boys. Now go on. Terrence will have a fit if you don’t answer his summons straight away.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  “Alright. We’ll talk later,” Colt promised.

  But not about Shea. And not about Dodge’s missing key, either.

  The pair of friends might not have much in common, but a self-destructive desire to die—and in Dodge’s case, die again—without giving in to a destiny they hadn’t chosen for themselves was the biggest common factor they shared.

  Colt refused to let fate tell him he had to take a mate. Dodge refused to track down a female only because it would extend his afterlife. And while each one of them thought the other was being ridiculous, they respected the other’s decision because they were friends.

  Plus, they’d both always gotten one hell of a kick out of messing with Maddox.

  So, yeah. Best friends.

  * * *

  Colt’s Bumptown was more than an hour out from the center of pack land where the Alpha made his home. Because of the drive—and, okay, maybe he hadn’t left as early as he should’ve—he was the last one to make it to the meet.

  The Eastern Pack boasted more than a hundred fifty members. While most of them lived in the territory claimed by the Alpha and his mate, some lived on their own patch of land. Maddox lived in Wolf’s Creek. Colt lived in the Bumptown at the edge of Grayson and Woodbridge. It wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unusual, especially when a shifter had alpha instincts.

  The inner circle of the pack was notably smaller. They were also the same packmates who were trusted enough to have an important position at Wolfe Construction, the pack-run business.

  As he let himself into the house, heading for his father’s open office out back, he spied seven other shifters waiting for him. Terrence and Sarah, Maddox, Sloane, Kelly, Hank, and Ralph. His family, one member of Colt’s team, two of Maddox’s foremen, and his father’s most respected Omega. Ralph might be considered a runner, but his was often the most thoughtful—and peacekeeping—opinion among the more vicious predatory shifters.

  As he strolled into the office, his father grunted a greeting at Colt. Sarah tutted over his lateness. The other men in the room all called his name and nodded at him as he took his position next to Maddox.

  Sloane smiled shyly over at him.

  “Hiya, Colt.”

  A touch of pheromones mixed with the earthy notes of big cat wafted over to him. The petite brunette was a lioness when she shifted, so even if he wanted to believe that the lust he picked up on wasn’t directed at him, it was pretty damn obvious.

  Sloane was a nice girl. A talented architect, too, which was how Colt got to know her. She joined their pack at t
he beginning of the year, impressing Terrence with both her blueprints and her hunting skills. She got assigned to Colt’s team once she was admitted to the pack. It wasn't long before she started putting out a signal that she was interested in him as more than her boss.

  At first, it surprised him. Then it bothered him.

  She wasn’t his mate. He wasn’t hers, either, obviously.

  That didn’t stop Sloane.

  While male shifters couldn’t get an erection until they found their fated mate, female shifters had it a little bit easier. Because the concept of mating was a biological quirk more than anything for the shapeshifting paranormals, females didn’t ovulate until they were bonded and claimed by their fated mates. They couldn’t bear pups, but they could have fun with other males—just like humans could, Colt thought bitterly.

  Sloane made it obvious she was attracted to him almost immediately. Colt made it equally clear that he had no intention of fooling around with the lioness. Luckily, she’d stopped searching him out whenever he was on pack land as soon as she heard the whispers that he might’ve found his mate.

  Colt squashed those quickly, then realized he probably shouldn’t have. When he refused to settle down with Shea, refused to follow through with any kind of mating, Sloane started eyeing him with interest in her amber eyes again.

  She was a good architect. One of the best on his team. He would never think of shutting her out when it came to her work, but when she was giving him that come hither look?

  Colt locked down his expression, standing next to Maddox with his hands folded behind him, his focus forward as if he couldn’t wait to hear what his Alpha had to say.