Mirror Mirror

DELILAH

“~Mirror, mirror on the wall,~

~“Who’s the strongest of them all?~

~“The one that strives to thrive,~

~“Let it be I and only I.”~

I wish I could say that dying wasn’t painful, but it is.

Magic stitching you back up and moving your entire being to another area is just as painful.

To even begin to describe what happened to me…

Something had changed; inside me I felt this chaos and this pull but most of all I felt… so much more as I opened my eyes.

I could feel the flowers surrounding me like a bed, my hair splayed out like a princess waiting to wake from a dream as I sat up, blinking.

It took me only moments to figure out where I was—the college where my mother resided as “principal,” even though she was actually the greatest witch on the west coast.

A cover for the humans.

I was in white robes in the middle of the campus surrounded by delilahs. Hundreds of the colorful flowers.

Something about this made me shake my head with a small laugh. The Fae and their magic was simply…

Why wasn’t I dead though?

I felt like me, just different somehow.

Looking over my hands and lifting my robe, I didn’t see anything out of place—the spot where the water had turned into ice and speared me in the chest didn’t even hurt.

If it had scarred or been magically healed, that would have been another story, but I was not about to strip out of my robe to look in the middle of the dark campus.

The first rays of sun hit my face as I made my way out of the little field of flowers that seemed to have popped up all around me.

Something felt so strange, and I couldn’t place it. My head felt fuzzy as if my senses were dulled as I tried to piece together everything.

Fae magic had done something to me, but what? How had I come in contact with it?

My mother would know what was wrong. Instinctively, I headed to her office knowing that she’d likely be there soon, if she wasn’t already.

The campus hadn’t woken up yet so a woman with bare feet in a Grecian white robe—or maybe it was Roman—greeted me, offering me a similar garment.

I was unfamiliar with the way the robe folded, but it was better than being half-naked.

When I arrived, she was at her desk, with her hands folded, leveling me with a glare making me freeze.

“M-Mom?” I asked, pausing in the doorway.

“You said you would be here last night. It’s morning,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Even though I specifically told you not to, you did the spell, didn’t you?”

I looked at her, confused, stepping into the room. “Spell… what? What spell?”

“You truly are a disappointing child,” she said coldly.

The hair on my neck prickled. How many times had I heard that statement? It was a big reason why I had gone to New Mexico.

Yet here I was, back under her thumb, under her critical gaze comparing me to my siblings.

“I don’t know how I’ve disappointed you now. I don’t even know how I got here.” A small bit of anger flared in me, an inner voice that I normally kept at bay around her.

“Whatever I did though, it was likely worth it.” My voice dripped with acidity.

“You dare speak to me that way?” she asked, towering over me.

I heard two more people slip in behind me quietly. Adriana and Bailie—my youngest sister and aunt.

Both of them had cords in their hands as I glanced back.

A binding spell.

My mother had done this once to me one summer, and then left me in the desert to find my way home.

“Weeding out the weak” was what she had called it—a trial to make me stronger. Yet my sisters never got such treatment.

What was her plan this time?

“You really plan on binding me?” I asked, looking her in the eyes, facing her head-on.

“What else would you have me do? You won’t listen to me, and now you’ve unleashed a spell that you can’t even begin to comprehend the consequences for!

“You’re too immature, so it’s best if you are no longer a danger to this coven.”

“A danger? A danger!?” I raged, my face turning red and my hands balling into fists.

“I do all your errands. I take all the risks. I even run the chapters you don’t want to touch!

“I have made this coven and so many covens under you in the western chapter the strongest they’ve been in decades!”

My voice rose.

“Meanwhile you still are rude, sending poor witches you want out of the way on the dangerous missions, just so you don’t have to deal with other supernaturals and have an excuse to wage war against people for leverage.”

My face turned red with anger.

“Instead of working in harmony with them, you’d rather get paid or take items you want from them! I’m a danger because I refused to come back? Because I wanted to be happy, like Tatiana!?”

My mother walked around her desk to sit on the edge.

“Tatiana, the Poison Princess, she was barely related to us, and had finally figured out how to have eternity…only to give up her powers for a bloodsucking parasite!”

She sneered. “Letting down her entire coven, siding with the Fae and their prophecies? She’s nothing but a traitor, and so are you!” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

As if it were a signal, my sister and aunt began reciting the binding spell, wrapping their hands around the cords.

My mother pulled one from her pocket and joined in flawlessly. I felt the magic around me swirl.

Normally in the past, I had bowed my head. Any punishment she had placed on me I had listened to and taken—until Tatiana’s letter.

She had told me to fly free. That love, real love was worth every second of the empty life of eternity…

She’d told me to fight.

And to love myself when I thought no one else could. Because out there was someone that loved me more than I loved myself—and they were worth meeting.

~Fight!~

I clasped my hands together, uttering a spell, fighting the pull of theirs that made me feel as if my body was draining.

“Hear me, three times three—give back what they want to take from me,” I uttered as fast as I could.

But it wasn’t possible. The two colliding spells began to tear and pull at my clothing, bringing me to my knees.

I was going to lose my magic again.

I mourned, my head falling to my chest from the pressure of trying to focus on my spell.

I muttered my words over and over in a desperate plea. But I was no match for three witches.

Then my eyes spotted something on my chest and I felt it.

The spark of difference.

Whatever normal magic I had continued to be pulled, bound by their ropes. The spell was nearly done.

It was gone, being taken into the many parts of what made me into who I was.

The magic I started to use came from inside of me, like a small trickling—

~Fountain.~

The spark of difference inside me.

Cole. Seth. Their spell.

Fae magic.

I couldn’t control what it did other than let it lash out and pray that it would save me.

And sure enough it did.

A giant squeal came from behind me—the smell of myrtle in full bloom rooting itself into the polished wood floor as my sister ran around in circles, chasing her own tail.

I laughed freely, feeling my magic come back, but feeling so…

A strange, wild part of me wanted to dance and howl and laugh at my mother in a cruel manner as she looked at me in horror, dropping her rope.

“N-no. No! You can’t—you can’t do that!” she cried, covering her mouth, turning white as she screamed.

I shook my head at her with an amused smile on my face. “I think…I just did.”

COLE

The pack left as the sun rose, and I felt the spell pulling me toward my mate.

Everything shrieked at me to run and find her, but I didn’t want to move.

Each time I took a breath, all I smelled was her in these flowers—but even that was slowly fading.

A part of me mourned Delilah like I had never mourned anyone else.

Seth had been furious, he’d done everything in his power, but we were too late—there was nothing we could do.

That thought alone had broken something inside me.

We were protectors, and we had let her get in harm’s way out of our own foolishness.

A part of me had even thought maybe she had been one of our mates. You never knew for sure until they shifted.

Witches didn’t shift though—it was rare to even have them in wolf packs, and never with an alpha.

I could feel the pack’s indifference; the spell had worked, and that was the goal.

They felt bad for us, but all of them were also very confused.

We had gotten attached to the witch, and we never got attached.

Even when Jewel had tried to worm her way back into our beds, neither of us had cared to let her. She had already caused a rift in the pack.

She cared for us in her own way, despite trying to have both of us.

It was obvious as she came to check on me in her wolf form, prodding me with her nose.

~You need to get up.~

~No~, I mentally replied, moving my head away from her nose.

Her nose went under my stomach trying to prod me again, making me turn my head and snap at her.

She dodged just in time, growling at me. She was not your mate, she never was your mate. Your mate is out there, waiting.

~I don’t care~, I growled, closing my eyes once again. I turned on my side away from her.

Jewel growled, headbutting me hard, then backed away.

Growling, I stood up, looking her in the eyes to give her an alpha order as my claws sunk into the tender soil.

Before I could say a word though, she looked me in the eye.

~Treasure her.~

Her voice was a storm in my head—her thoughts bleeding into the two small words with venom and passion.

~Treasure her~…Delilah’s last words.

I growled, my ears pinned back in anger.

~Leave! Now!~ I mentally shouted.

Jewel immediately backed down, cowering and running into the woods.

My alpha order had been stronger than intended, but I didn’t care.

Nothing mattered anymore to me.

Seth would likely still attempt to run the pack and go find his mate, but me?

Something about Delilah had touched me, and I was the type to mourn.

I could feel the pull toward a mate—it grew stronger and stronger the longer I sat there, urging me to move, to go.

But all I wanted was to lie here and die with her.

~If we had gone in knowing the full truth…~

No. She had told us. I’d seen the uncertainty and fear in her eyes, but part of me had hoped she was ours.

Maybe it had been the magic, or the way the sun had caught her hair before she went into that river and she had looked back at me.

She had been like a goddess or a nymph with how at home she was in the woods, so unlike other human creatures.

I had tried to date a human once, and I took her into the woods. She was the noisiest, most annoying human that never stopped chattering.

But Delilah had been like a graceful cat, moving through these woods as if she had been made for them, touching trees and bushes as if they were old friends.

She could have danced, and made flowers spring up, and if she had sung I bet even the clouds would have parted.

This was how I wanted to remember her.

The warm sun hit my fur as the sun rose high. My eyes closed as I dozed, dreaming of only her.

Her lips and flesh. The scent of her desire as she came, the feel of her under my fingers.

~Delilah, why?~

~Why couldn’t we save you? Why did we have to do it?~

~No mate was worth that price…~

Her smell, her touch as it ran through my fur…

~Wait. She never touched my fur.~

My eyes popped open as a small tinkling chuckle filled my ears.

“Sorry, your fur just looked warm, and I never got to pet you.” Her voice was soft, with a hint of exhaustion in it.

~Delilah?~

I looked up, and there she was—the sun shining on her face as she looked down at me with a worried expression, her hand still in my fur.

~Delilah!~ my mind shouted.

This wasn’t a figment, was it? A strange illusion? Was I dreaming?

~Mate~, my wolf growled.

Huh?

I tilted my head at her, trying to process what my wolf was saying as I pulled from her touch to shift and sit naked before her in a crouch.

“Delilah…?” I asked in a half whisper, furrowing my brows.