☽ ASTORIA ☾

I never thought I’d see him again.

Yet there he was, sitting on my bed, trying to pretend like he didn’t have a care in the world. It wasn’t working, because I could see the lines of worry on his face, and the way his forehead pinched together. His brown eyes betrayed the storm of uncertainty brewing within.

Devon and I hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Not since Alpha Caius’ twentieth birthday party. I unexpectedly shifted and ruined his good time, terrifying his guests. Apparently, a dragon crashing his good time wasn’t on the list of things the newly minted alpha would tolerate from me. That night he sent me away in a fit of rage, banishing me from the pack.

I was only ten years old.

I stepped into the room, and Devon looked up, his face breaking into a wide smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The worried lines remained.

“Hey Tori… “ he started, using a nickname I hadn’t heard in a decade as if he was trying to soften me up.

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped back. I was too old to be called Tori, too old for buttering up and dancing around reasons for him to be here.

I was already annoyed with his presence. He had been my friend, but he had forgotten me in the wake of our alpha’s anger. I had not heard from anyone in my former pack since being carted away.

Except Matt.

I softened at the thought of Matt. He sent me letters every month. He was the only reason I knew anything about my pack at all. But it still felt like a lifetime ago since I’d been anywhere near the mountains and rolling hills I had grown up in. Matt did his best to keep the connection alive for me through his words and pictures.

Devon flinched at my tone, but he forged on. Clearly, whatever he had to say was important.

“Caius wants you to come home, Astoria,” he muttered, like he was waiting for the anger that he knew would flair at his words.

“I don’t have a home, remember? That bastard banished me,” I snarled back.

By werewolf standards, I was rogue. I had no pack to claim as my own, sentenced to live my life on the run like a common criminal. It was only because I possessed magic that I was sent to the monastery I lived in instead of being tossed out into the forest to fend for myself.

“He ne-....we need your help,” Devon implored, but I didn’t miss the correction he made. He was trying to make it sound like more than just Caius wanted me back, but I knew better.

Werewolves were generally suspicious and distrustful of anything that could see them as prey. On the food chain, I was the highest predator. My species was ancient and rarely seen in the world, and it was a miracle I was even born.

“Then ask one of the witches for help. I’m not doing whatever it is he’s suddenly decided I’m worthy of.”

Forgiveness wasn’t something I had so far been able to achieve for Caius’ betrayal. He had torn me from my home and my family, then hid me away in a monastery deep in the Appalachian mountains. I had grown up far from my birthplace all because I upstaged him at his own party.

Devon sighed a deep sigh, and the lines on his face increased as he contemplated his next move. I was just as stubborn at twenty as I had been at ten, and he knew it. I wasn’t going to just go along with whatever he and Caius wanted without a good reason.

“Matt was kidnapped. Rogues are threatening to kill him unless Caius gives up the pack,” Devon said in a rush of words.

Well, that was a damn good reason.

“How? Why? What has been happening that Matt wasn’t telling me?” I demanded.

Matt never mentioned a problem with rogues, not once in the ten years' worth of letters I had. I had just gotten one from him a few days before, and it was full of news about the pack and the changing seasons as the Yellowstone mountains the pack lived under strained under feet of snow.

“They overwhelmed us while most of the pack was gone. It’s like they knew we were vulnerable; they’d clearly been watching us.”

I sat down in my desk chair and put my head in my hands. Something was very wrong in the world. Rogues were never this organized. They lived in small groups, but nothing large enough to overwhelm a pack of hundreds. To brazenly come onto pack lands and kidnap a former alpha was ludicrous and bold for even the bravest of rogues.

“What does Caius want from me? My magic doesn’t have the ability to track, but a witch could. Why doesn’t he ask one of the ones here for help?”

My magic was an amazing thing, but I wasn’t sure how it could help in this situation. I was built to be a predator, a hunter in the sky that could swoop down and make you disappear in the blink of an eye.

“He doesn’t need your magic; he needs your dragon.” Devon looked like he regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.

“Oh. Now my dragon is okay,” I said in minor disbelief. “Not that she’s useful to him, he wants her around.”

“I’m sorry, Astoria. He didn’t know what else to do besides bring you home. He knows you can sense aura; he’s hoping you can track Matt with it if we can get close enough.”

I let out a bitter laugh. Of course, the witches would have kept Caius updated on my progress as I grew and learned more about my abilities. Probably to be prepared in case I decided to go back and tear him to shreds for sending me away. I didn’t want to go back, but for Matt, I would.

I stood and sighed as I started pulling my things out and stuffing them in a duffel bag. Minimalism was one of the tenets of the monastery, and I didn’t have much despite my love of books and desire to collect all things tea related. It didn’t take me long to shove clothes and a few trinkets, along with Matt’s letters, into the bag before dropping it at Devon’s feet.

I was silently agreeing to go with him. But only for Matt’s sake. Matt was the only person in the world that I truly cared about, and I would burn it down to get him back.

And unlike most people who said that I could actually do it.

Devon picked up my bag as he stood. “I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder to bring you home before now. I didn’t know,” he said.

“Didn’t know what?” I asked, tilting my head to one side in confusion. He knew I was gone; he was there the day I left, so what didn’t he know?

He shook his head, refusing to elaborate further, and left the room. I had no choice but to follow him silently. We worked our way through twisting halls built like a maze until we stepped outside. He tossed my bag into the backseat of a waiting SUV and opened the passenger side door for me.

I turned and took one last look at the place that had sheltered me for a decade. It was large and foreboding, despite the crisp white walls covered in vines that served to camouflage it from view. Magic surrounded the place; the very air shimmered with it to the trained eye.

The witches within had done everything they could to train me for life. They had taught me how to control my impulsiveness, direct my magic and work with my dragon, instead of against her. They still didn’t hold the place in my heart that Matt did, as I had refused to get close to any of them for fear of being ripped away once more.

But I was going to use what they taught me to reign terror down on those who took the only family I had left.

I slipped into the front seat of the car and pulled my seatbelt as Devon closed the door and joined me on the other side. As we drove through the warding surrounding the monastery’s land, I sucked in a breath as the magic flowed through me. I hadn’t been outside that warding in my years. I always chose the safety of the monastery and all it had to offer me over exploring the woods around it, filled with creatures that would do anything to get their hands on what I was.

Astra stirred in my mind, aware we were being released out into the world.

We’re going home.

Obsidian isn’t our home; it’s just a place we’re visiting.

Home.

She repeated the word more firmly, and I decided not to argue with her. She would see for herself how much Caius’ hatred still burned for us. He wouldn’t have changed, because no one like that truly does.

I was quiet on the drive to the airport, dwelling on my past and turning the present over in my head. Devon left me to my thoughts as he drove. He hadn’t publicly protested my banishment, but Matt always wrote that he asked about me every month when my letters came.

Which meant Caius wasn’t the only one who had kept tabs on me. In his own way, so had Devon, and I had no idea what that meant, or why. It was another piece to the puzzle that was becoming my life I would never find a place for.

We arrived at the airport in record time, and nervous energy swept through me at the sight of the pack’s sleek private jet. I had been on a plane only once before, but the experience was enough to make me never want to be on one again. The memories of my night flight away from my pack burned into my memories like a hot iron.

“Can’t I just fly myself?” I asked Devon, eying the plane and its pilot suspiciously.

“No. Alpha’s instructions were clear. I bring you home myself,” Devon replied.

“He’s not my alpha,” I grumbled.

But I followed him out of the car and up the narrow steps of the horrible-looking machine. I was sure I would have a panic attack before the day was over. I had my own wings and didn’t really need to utilize the metal ones attached to the plane, but Caius probably didn’t want my dragon loose on his pack lands. He was probably afraid I’d terrify the locals.

The machine roared to life, and we taxied down the runway. Moments later, we were being lifted into the air, and I gripped my seat as panic set in. This wasn’t going to be an easy trip. Even as the plane leveled out to cruising altitude, I couldn’t get hold of the rampant fear spreading through me.

Magic sparked uncontrollably at my fingertips, and Devon watched me with wide eyes as I struggled to reign in my emotions. I wasn’t intending for my magic to break loose in this tiny space, but magic followed emotion, and mine was all over the place.

“Please don’t bring the plane down,” Devon pleaded, my lack of control heightening his own anxiety.

“I’m having a panic attack!” I snapped. It wasn’t like I was purposely going to do anything stupid, but at the moment, I couldn’t control anything. Not myself, not the plane, not my future. Suddenly it was all too much, and I squeezed my eyes shut as waves of nausea rolled over me.

Devon shifted in his seat, and I felt his hands on both of mine. “Breath, Astoria, you’re safe.”

He repeated words of my youth that he had used many times when I felt out of control, breaking through the fog of unrestrained panic surrounding me, and I took a deep breath. I sucked in lungfuls of air as my magic receded, and the warmth of his grasp grounded me.

“You’re safe,” he muttered again, though whether it was more to himself or to me, I wasn’t sure.

I opened my eyes to find him watching me and pulled my hands away. When my magic had been unwieldy as a child, he and Caius were always the ones to calm me. They had been the only ones capable of calming the storm that was inside of me, and the words you’re safe had been the mantra of my childhood.

Then Caius ripped me away from all that I’d known, and I hadn’t truly felt safe since.