I looked away.

  “He married my sister,” she added in a voice so low I almost missed the agony it held. “Killed her first husband in order to do it.”

  Damn.

  Cohen had killed Kel’s father? No wonder she hated him.

  “He solidified his place as their leader,” I said.

  She nodded grimly. “He gained his power through destroying his own people.”

  “I don’t understand. Why didn’t his coven just overthrow him? Kick him out? Without magic, they’re all on a level playing field.”

  “Blood has always been the strongest magic. Cohen used it to banish other hexes from their own lands.” She shook her head. “When I learned that, I knew we’d have to do more than just break the curse. That’s why I didn’t come home to you. I’ve spent the last seven years, searching for another way.”

  “And?” I prompted. “What have you come up with?”

  She hesitated.

  There was something she wasn’t telling me. Even after everything, she still had secrets. And I couldn’t ignore how much that hurt.

  “Fine. Whatever. Just tell me how to transfer the magic back to the hexerei.”

  “Ash, no.” Her eyes widened. “You can’t do that. Cohen will kill you all.”

  “I can’t keep it,” I said. “It’s too much for me. And besides, it isn’t right. I made a blood oath.”

  “I told you, don’t worry about me.”

  “Well, it’s too late because I am worried about you,” I snapped. “Despite my wishing otherwise, apparently, I still care about you.”

  And dammit, that sucked most of all.

  “I care about you too, Ash. I’m sorry. For everything.”

  She reached for me, but I shrank away.

  “You’re about seven years too late. Tell me how I can return the magic. Tell me how to make it listen to me like it listened to you. And then you can go.”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand. Make it listen how?”

  “I don’t know. When that necklace you gave me broke, Cohen was right there, but the magic didn’t choose him. And it didn’t choose any of the others standing beside him. It chose me. How do I help it choose again?”

  There was a beat of silence between us and then, “You want to give it back but bypass Cohen.”

  “It’s the only way I can think of to make this right without condemning us all to a war.”

  “The blood oath you made… you swore to return the magic to the hexerei, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “Blood magic is stronger than anything, Ash. If you swore to return it to the hexerei, then that’s what you must do. Anything less won’t work.”

  “Dammit. There has to be something we can do.”

  “I could teach you to control it,” she said hopefully. “Help you harness it so you wouldn’t have to give it back.”

  I glared at her. “You, of all people, should know how wrong it would be to consolidate this much power into one person.”

  “It’s different with you,” she said.

  I crossed my arms, ignoring that. “Can I send it back to the earth or something? Get it out of me but not let the witches have it?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. This energy was created as an extension of a person’s life force. It will exist inside someone—somewhere—forever.”

  I let out a string of curses then shoved to my feet. “Great. You’ve left me with winning choices, Mom.”

  “Ash, if Cohen gets his magic back, he’ll destroy you,” she pleaded. “And all of this will have been for nothing.”

  At that, my temper finally snapped. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you allowed your own daughter to be collateral in your love triangle.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’ll never stop being sorry.”

  For some reason, her apology only made me feel worse. At least, if she screamed back at me, I could have the fight I so desperately wanted.

  “This was a waste of time,” I said, spinning on my heel and heading for the door. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  I yanked open the door and found Silas waiting on the other side. Kai stood behind him, looking like he’d seen a ghost.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “May I come in?” Silas asked.

  His expression had gone blank. Completely unreadable. But something in his words put me on edge.

  “Fine. I was just leaving.”

  I held the door wider to let him enter.

  Behind me, my mother gasped.

  I whirled in time to see her face contort to something like fear and then shock.

  “What?” I demanded.

  But she didn’t answer.

  Beside me, Silas had gone very still.

  I waited for him to speak, to explain why my mom looked at him like he was some sort of hallucination. But he didn’t look at me. Instead, he met her gaze with steel in his eyes and an expression frozen in resignation.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Inside my apartment, Kai watched me from across the table. I didn’t need to look over to know he was worried; I could feel it radiating from him. Oscar sat at the head of the table. He held a beer can loosely in his hand and stared at it like it held the answers to the damn universe. Hell, maybe it did. Maybe my dad had it right all along.

  “Ash.”

  Silas’ voice struck a nerve inside me I didn’t know I had left.

  Outside, thunder boomed, and lightning flashed.

  The magic stirred.

  Instead of answering, I got up and walked to the fridge. The pop of the beer can as I opened it echoed into the silence.

  I held it up and poured the bitter liquid down my throat.

  Not just a sip. All of it.

  When I’d finished, I tossed the empty in the trash and went back for a second one.

  Kai was there, blocking the fridge.

  “This isn’t you,” he said gently.

  “I don’t know me anymore,” I said. “I don’t know anything. My whole life is a lie.”

  The words were flat as I spoke them. The emotions behind them, not so much. Silas was my brother, but more shocking than that, my mom had been with another guy before my father. Imagining it was just … weird. I found myself thinking of her as a person beyond just who she’d been to me in this life. Someone with a whole past full of experiences. Relationships. A life.

  It didn’t hurt me that she’d done it. It hurt me that she’d lied.

  Outside, more thunder shook the skies. Kai held my gaze, and whatever he saw there must have told him to back off. Without a word, he moved aside, and I grabbed a second beer.

  After chugging half of it, I turned to face Silas, who stood near the window.

  “Just say what you came to say,” I said.

  His brows drew together at that, and his obvious irritation at my words only sparked my temper hotter.

  “Don’t give me that look. You’re the one who followed me home,” I told him, stepping up to the bar and setting the cold beer on the counter between us. “So, say what you came to say, and get the hell out. I’ve had a long day, and I’m not interested in whatever bull shit family reunion you think this is going to be.”

  Silas glanced at Kai then Oscar.

  “They’re not leaving,” I added flatly.

  Neither Kai nor Oscar had said anything to Silas since he’d arrived. But one look at their set expressions and I knew they wouldn’t have left the room even if I’d demanded it.

  “You have two minutes,” I said when Silas didn’t speak.

  He dragged his gaze to mine. I refused to decipher the emotions I saw there.

  “I don’t owe you anything,” he said, which was so completely opposite of what I’d expected that it left me speechless.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Kai demanded.

  Silas answered but kept his eyes on mine. “Who that woman is to me is my business before it’s anyone else’s, including yours,” he said. “I don’t owe you an explanation I’m not ready to give.”

  I threw up my hands. “Then why the hell are you here?”

  His back remained rigid even as his voice became resigned. “Because I realized I’m out of time.”

  “Out of time for what?”

  “To help make this right.” His eyes flashed, and for a moment, I thought he’d actually decided to be angry with me. But then he spoke, and I realized his rage was all for her. “Whatever betrayal and abandonment you feel, I feel that too. Except, I never had a childhood with her that made me want to love her in spite of it all. If it were up to me, I would have never told you the truth because I would have never let her hear me acknowledge her for what she is to me. And that’s my choice. My business. If you want to be pissed at me, fine. But I won’t apologize for that.”

  Some of the anger drained out of me.

  Or, more accurately, redirected itself toward who deserved it.

  “She lied to me,” I said. “My whole damn life.”

  “She lied to me too.”

  “That day at camp,” I realized. “After graduation. The woman who came to you—it was her.”

  He nodded. “I thought she was fucking with me. And then, when you came here, I thought maybe you knew and were playing some stupid game with my head.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said even though that much was obvious by now.

  “Yeah. I figured it out. That pissed me off too though. I couldn’t understand why she’d never told us about each other. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive her for that.”

  My throat squeezed, strangling the words to a million questions I wanted to ask but couldn’t. If he’d known about me, would he have come looking? Would he have found me and maybe helped me out of my situation? Or stayed with me in it? What would it have been like to have a brother? Someone to lean on? Someone to shoulder some of the weight of my circumstances?

  I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of it.

  “Why did you come today?” I wondered. “Why acknowledge her at all if you hate her so much?”

  “Because,” he said, and this time the flash in his eyes glinted with violence. Determination. War. “I think there’s a way we can use me against Cohen.”

  I glanced at Kai and Oscar. Then I looked at Silas questioningly.

  “Go ahead,” he said knowingly. “It’s time they knew.”

  “Knew what?” Oscar demanded.

  “Silas has abilities too,” I said.

  Quickly, I told them about his ability to take my gift with his touch. “And he cast some sort of spell earlier,” I added, mostly to Kai. “Something to help ease the effects of the magic. I think it’s why we both felt like ourselves today.”

  “Holy shit,” Kai said, looking at his friend with an awed expression.

  Silas didn’t meet his eyes. Instead, he watched me steadily.

  “Your gift,” I said to Silas. “Do you think it’ll work on an entire coven?”

  He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  “Wait, what are you proposing?” Kai asked.

  I turned to Kai and Oscar. “If I do the transfer but Cohen thinks it didn’t work, what will he do?”

  “Guns,” they both said at the same time.

  “Without those,” I said.

  Oscar frowned.

  But Kai’s eyes shone with anticipation. “Nothing,” he said fiercely. “He can’t do anything without his props.”

  I looked at Silas. “You’re right,” I said. “You don’t owe me anything, and I have no right to blame you for her lies.”

  I did, however, have questions. And one look at Silas’ hard-edged gaze told me he didn’t have answers. My shoulders slumped. If I wanted to know the story of my mother and Silas’ father, I’d have to go to the source. I wasn’t ready for that yet. Why did fighting a war against Cohen feel easier than diving into the mess that was my past?

  “It’s not like I wanted it to be this complicated,” Silas said.

  I hesitated, digging deep for the strength it would take to move past this—at least, for now.

  “We’ll make it simple,” I said. “Friends?”

  He nodded slowly, thoughtfully, like he was digging for the same strength I had. “Friends. Now, how do you want to do this?”

  *.*.*

  Kai didn’t like my plan. Not when I first explained it to him in Oscar’s apartment with Silas and Oscar listening in, and not an hour later when we met downstairs in the shop to lay it out for the group. Then again, his disapproval surprised exactly no one since we all knew he was never going to agree to anything that put me in danger. By now, I’d learned to deal with his wolf’s hardheaded temper. Basically, I ignored it and distracted him with a make-out session that even Kai-the-darkling couldn’t stay angry through.

  By the time the others joined us at the Throttle to hear the details, Kai had resigned himself to a sulky silence that, honestly, my wolf found broody and therefore sexy as hell.

  My wolf had issues.

  But, at least, she was talking to me again. Whatever Silas had done, the effects had already outlasted his predictions. I had my fingers crossed I’d make it to the end of all this before everything caught up with me and it started raining blood or something.

  “So, we’re going to give them back their magic, and then when they abandon their weapons to try and kill us with said magic, we kill them instead,” Idrissa said when I’d finished explaining my idea.

  “No,” I said. “We’re not going to kill them.”

  “Just Cohen,” Kai said.

  “No, we’re not killing anyone.”

  “Look, the traps we’ll lay out will stop his men from infiltrating anywhere except the meeting spot.”

  “How do we know they’ll fall for it?”

  “Because I think they’ve been doing it all along,” I said. “We all thought there was a spy, but I think Cohen’s men have been watching us. Sneaking in through sections of the line we’ve never expected of them.”

  “We’ve been watching those lines—”

  “We’ve been watching the bordering lines. Where our land touches theirs, along the western edge. We never expected them to come in from the east.”

  Idrissa looked instantly pissed and I knew she was considering the probability of what I was saying.

  “Okay, so we lay traps for those areas,” Presley said. “And then what?”

  “Then we call Cohen and report a disturbance. Act like we’re no longer in control of some of our people. Say they crossed into hex territory. He’ll send his team out to meet them, and the traps will do the rest.”

  “How does that help us?” Idrissa asked. “If we’re not killing them, I mean.”

  “It gives us control,” I said. “If we can distract Cohen, we can call Kel and ask her to meet us.” I glanced at Silas. “I want to give the magic back in stages. Starting with the hexes who are actually loyal to us.”

  “Give us more numbers against Cohen when the time comes,” Idrissa said.

  “And when the time comes,” Kai said, “if we’re not killing him, what are we doing to the asshole?”

  I looked at Silas, who looked completely inconvenienced by the mere fact that I’d insisted he be here for this meeting. “We want to banish him.”

  “You say that like it means something,” Presley said. “But I don’t think the asshole will listen to a stern ‘don’t come back’ speech.”

  “It’s more than that,” I insisted. “My mother mentioned it when I asked her why his coven hadn’t removed him from power when he’s obviously so out of control. She said Cohen had banished the hexes who stood against him. And even without magic, it held because he’d spilled his blood to make the vow, and blood magic is more powerful than anything else.”

  Presley shook his head like he’d resigned himself to this being a shit show.

  “Pres, you’re the one who said I should use the magic against Cohen. This is how we do that. We let it choose to return to those who wouldn’t harm us.” When he didn’t say anything, I added, “Unless you have any better ideas?”

  He held up his hands in silent surrender.

  I looked at the others, but no one else spoke.

  “Say something,” I demanded.

  “Okay, fine. Your booby trap-distraction idea isn’t bad. But, um, can we just talk about the elephant in the room,” Isaac said.

  “What—?” I began.

  “Silas is your brother,” he blurted.

  Silas rolled his eyes. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Our lives are at stake, and you want to gossip.”

  “It’s not gossip if it comes from the source,” Isaac said pointedly.

  Silas crossed his arms, making it clear he had no intention of elaborating on this new information.

  “Yes,” I said, forcing calm. “Silas is my brother. We have the same mother. Different fathers.”

  Isaac glanced between us. “This is wild,” he said. “You two are an Ancestry-dot-com commercial waiting to happen.”

  “Can we get back to the part about killing Cohen?” Idrissa asked.

  I glared at her. “We are not killing Cohen.”

  “Why not?” she shot back. “Presley’s right. I think he’s earned it.”

  “It’s not about Cohen,” I said.

  Idrissa started to argue.

  “Ash is right. It’s about who we’re going to be.” Silas stepped forward, shocking everyone into silence with his answer. Or maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t also begging to kill the asshole who’d basically stolen his heritage from him. “If we kill Cohen, we set a precedent for what kind of pack we are. We send a message that we’re no better at controlling ourselves than we were before the curse was broken.”

  “And if we don’t kill him, we’re the kind of pack who can’t do the hard thing to protect ourselves,” Idrissa said.