Magic caged, p.1
Magic Caged, page 1
Magic Caged
Cursed Shifters Book 4
Charmaine Ross
© 2024 by Charmaine Ross
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published in Australia
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Line edits: Sugar Free Editing
Proof reading: Jen Katemi
Proof reading: Sue Phillips
Cover design: Charmaine Ross
Blurb
A blind mage.
An unknown land.
Mates who can never bond.
.
My lack of sight has made me invisible. I’m nothing. Unworthy. Until I’m thrust into the unknown land of Faerie and the arms of two powerful Griffin shifters. They say I’m their mate, but a missing bond brother and a frozen wasteland stand between us and our bond.
.
I can’t let them claim me. A woman who will never complete them.
.
They think I’m one of the true Chosen. The key to saving Faerie and all who reside here, but I’m not who they think I am. If I had the grimoire inside me, surely I'd know?
.
I’m not magical. I’m not a shifter. Their trust in me is misplaced. But as our enemy hunts us down they do the unthinkable and bond me to them. They see my soul and their greatest mistake.
Excerpt
“Let me bring you pleasure. Please, Gilda. I . . . I need to touch you. Please let me.” A tremor wove through his hands, his fingers tightening infinitesimally. Gone was the self-assured male. The king’s general. This was the raw him, cut to the quick with his need. Pink ribbons wove around me, and the griffon that I’d only just met nudged me with her feathered head. Mate. Give.
Fake, fake, fake.
The griffon was filling my head with things from my deepest dreams. Things I knew better than to think I would ever have.
Want, want, want.
I had to resist the call. The temptation. So, so hard.
Please, please, please.
You have one chance to feel this way. One chance in a lifetime. Before he knows who you really are. Her voice and mine were one. Compelling me. Sentencing me.
Take, take, take.
My willpower crumbled because I had to know. I had to feel what it was to be wanted. Desired.
I was weak. So weak. The gods would hate me as much as I hated myself because I crumbled, nodded, and sealed both our fates. He pressed his lips on mine again. His touch was so tender. So caring.
Yes.
This.
A sigh rippled through me. This was the type of touch I’d always dreamed of. Gentle, caring, seductive, loving. His lips massaged mine, gently stoking my desire, and when he drew my lower lip into his mouth and sucked, flames of my need consumed me.
The magic grew stronger when wisps of pink light wove between tips of purple. Soul-lights! Barely there. Barely touching. The magic grew with each passing second, morphing into something stronger. Deepening the lie. This was why he thought I was his true mate. Because only true mates had soul-lights.
And gods help me because I yielded to temptation and kissed him back as desperately as he kissed me. His hand drifted from my waist, rising higher to squeeze my side. My nipples tightened. Simmering heat rose from my core, driving tingles upward from the juncture between my thighs.
“Have to touch you, little mate. Have to feel every part of you,” Siveril whispered.
I couldn’t deny him. Couldn’t deny myself. “Yes. Please.”
Once. Just this once.
His hand slowly drifted to my breast. Excitement sparked along my nerves. My nipples beaded as he gently massaged my breast. I arched my back, and he kissed his way down my throat. I clung to him, one hand gripping his shoulder, the other curled around his thick bicep. My breaths grew labored. As heavy as my mind.
“Not enough. Want to taste you,” Siveril rasped as he reached the top button of my blouse.
“Yes, please, Siveril. I want . . . you to taste me,” I whispered. I would have said anything just to keep him doing what he was doing to me.
The faint purple threads grew brighter inside me. They lengthened, twirling around pale pink. The more they played, the greater his presence became as the magic grew stronger.
More intense.
More enthralling.
His warm fingers slipped through the open parts of my blouse. His breath shuddered as he pushed the material off my shoulders, baring my chest.
“Gods, you’re . . . gods.” His voice was a groan, and then wet heat closed around my nipple. He sucked my sensitive flesh into his mouth and laved my nipple with his tongue. All I could do was cling to him and revel in the glorious sensations he elicited within my body.
His arm wound around my back, lowering me to a bed. His silken hair brushed my skin as he leaned above me. Cool air swirled around my breast, but his hand closed over it, gently kneading while he feasted on the other.
So wrong. So right. My soul was sold, and the demons would feast.
I bared my throat as he kissed his way back to my mouth. My legs parted to fit him in the cradle of my thighs as though it were the most natural thing for me to do. The weight of him was comforting. Welcome.
I knew couples were intimate like this. I may have been blind, but I knew what they did. That type of intimate touch horrified me. Anyone could have been watching and I wouldn’t have known, but this was Siveril. I was safe, even if everything about this was fake.
I wound my arms around Siveril’s neck, arching my back so that my breasts pressed against his chest. His hardness wedged against the most intimate part of myself. He was long and thick and oh so hard. I drew in a quick breath as a quiver ran through my body. A new need crackled to life, this one less gentle. More urgent. He moved against me, driving himself against my core. My clit throbbed, swelling with each unrelenting thrust.
“That’s it, little mate. Take what you need from me,” he said, his grinding thrusts growing harder and more insistent.
I panted, lost to the glorious sensation he incited from my body. My fingers clenched around his neck as I drew my legs more tightly around his hips. “I never . . . You feel . . .”
Heat pooled, heavy and insistent. A coil tightened in my belly, directly connected to my pulsing clit. He ground his hard length against me, delving his tongue into my mouth, giving me everything my body demanded as the coil snapped. Every muscle in my body locked as I flew into my climax. Pale-pink soul-lights embraced purple, and I knew Siveril’s delight from sending me spiraling into my pleasure. Sparks exploded through me, coating everything in a golden wash.
Light and shade morphed into shapes. Rough wooden beams, gnarled and knotted, made up the hut’s walls. Twisted branches formed its sturdy frame, bent into smooth curves that met at the top in an intricate knot, from which herbs and flowers had been tied in bunches to dry.
A counter made from sturdy branches lined one of the walls, and on it sat pots, jars, and metal boxes. A fire crackled in a hearth on my other side, a cauldron set on a tripod sitting next to it.
The furniture was rough, shaped from the natural contours of the wood rather than imposing, unnatural angles and planes. Twisted burls and knots formed unique patterns in the grain, each piece one-of-a-kind in its gnarled beauty.
The chair legs were stout branches, bent and twisted by nature but sturdy still. Their bark remained intact in places, adding visual interest and texture. The seat and backrest were woven skillfully from thinner withes that bent sinuously to shape, holding the sitter within their organic embrace.
Evindal stepped through a door that was nothing more than intricately woven branches. He stopped short in the doorframe. One hand tightened on the handle, while he held a dead rabbit with his other.
My body went tight and cold. My stomach dropped and twisted into a nauseous knot as his eyes flew wide open. His mouth fell agape, and his lips trembled as he stared down at us. The chill that encased my body turned to ice as his forehead furrowed and his eyes narrowed to seething slits. The muscle worked at his temple as his jaw tensed, and his eyes grew as chilled as the frost crackling through my body.
Siveril bared his teeth at Evindal as he flung the rabbit on the countertop. The animal’s body thumped on the wood, sending a metal dish crashing to the floor.
Evindal glared down at us, his fists clenching tightly at his sides. “You have no idea what you’re doing, brother,” he spat through gritted teeth. “This will end badly, I promise you that. Don’t come crying to me when it all blows up in your face.”
Contents
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
16. Chapter Sixteen
17. Chapter Seventeen
18. Chapter Eighteen
19. Chapter Nineteen
20. Chapter Twenty
21. Chapter Twenty-One
22. Chapter Twenty-Two
23. Chapter Twenty-Three
24. Chapter Twenty-Four
25. Chapter Twenty-Five
26. Chapter Twenty-Six
27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
30. Chapter Thirty
31. Chapter Thirty-One
32. Chapter Thirty-Two
33. Chapter Thirty-Three
34. Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter One
Wind whispered through the forest as though there hadn’t been warrior elves atop horrifying bugs trampling through the wolf territory’s underbrush. As though Serafine and her mates hadn’t Changed into wolves and charged away. As though Anise hadn’t climbed aboard her draugr and ridden after them, her alpha dragon mates at her side.
Sedric had described the scene to me in a hushed, harried whisper as events unfolded and the thunder of their footfalls merged from the forest and into the peaceful clearing around the wolves’ cabin. The thumps of things powerful and heavy driven into the earth, a strange dry rustling, and the deep voice that filled the forest with the unknown churned in the center of my chest.
The hot pressure of someone staring weighed me down while unseen beings spoke. Someone was watching me. Studying me. Knowing they could do so freely because there was nothing I could do about it.
The familiar sensation was the same type of pressure before someone tripped me up or shoved me into a wall. The pause as someone took my measure and found me lacking because my disability was a hindrance to them. I couldn’t see the pathway that needed to be swept or the patch on the floor that needed to be scrubbed. My disability was their extra work, even though we were all slaves to Esoti and had no choice over anything in our lives.
I waited for an annoyed huff or the deprecating chuckle that usually accompanied the pressure, but there was nothing more than the wind winding through the leaves in the wolves’ forest. Perhaps the magical dome Serafine had created was putting everyone out of sorts.
I couldn’t see it, of course, but she’d described it to me. Transparent gold filled with magical glitter that sparkled in the sunshine. Born from the magic of the ancient grimoire that had been hidden inside her and freed when she’d bonded with her wolf-shifter alphas.
I didn’t know the color of gold, but I knew how sunshine heated my skin and I thought it may be the same. I didn’t know what glitter was either, but it sounded like the effervescent bubbles I felt when water ran across the rocks in the brook.
Tension hardened my shoulders when thunder split the air above my head, followed by the crackling of broken ice. Screams pierced my ears, ahead of panicked voices that rose over the cacophony. I ducked, my arms flying over my head as my heart pounded against my ribs. I couldn’t see to run to safety, so I could only make myself as small a target as possible. It was all I could ever do.
Sedric’s strong fingers dug into my elbow as he hurried me across the grass, the blades swishing across my boots. “Quick. Get inside.”
“What’s happening?” I asked as he placed my hand on the banister so I could orientate myself. I spun toward him, not taking another step.
“The dome is cracking,” he said, his voice low. Urgent.
“What!” How could that be?
Serafine’s magic was strong. Strong enough to defeat one of The Six. The dome could only break with the magic of another of equal power . . .
“Go into the kitchen with Cook and the staff. I’m going to round up who I can. When I return, we’ll hide in the basement. If anything happens, that’ll be the safest place for us all.”
Sedric’s footsteps hurried away. For an old wolf shifter, he still moved quickly, but that was the way of the wolves. Not only was I blind, I was also human. I was nothing like them.
I gripped the smooth wood and felt my way up. I counted the six steps to the top. Another six would take me to the front door.
I felt for the door handle and quickly stepped inside. Males called through the woods, and their wolves’ howls followed me into the alphas’ cabin. My hand shook as I trailed my fingers along the plaster, a ball of barbed wire forming in my stomach as I made my way to the kitchen.
I didn’t have a wolf’s preternatural abilities. Or any of the shifters’ abilities. Nor was I magical. I was merely a slave, purchased by Esoti from my mother when I was a young child, making me the lowest of the low. Barely useful because of my eyes. I may never have seen my mother, but I never heard from her after she abandoned me, either. My life ever since had been the stronghold.
Truth be told, I didn’t know how I’d survived.
Serafine had gotten me out of that place after Esoti’s unbelievable death. I could barely get my head around the fact that she had killed Esoti and that she had a piece of the famous, all-powerful grimoire inside her. And then a few weeks later, Anise, the dragon shifters’ mate, arrived in wolf territory with her piece of the grimoire and the news that Drisella was dead.
Now Haera was here with the panther alphas and elves begging for help. The wolves and dragons had known who she was, and not one of them had been welcoming. And the dome was cracking. I didn’t have to see to understand the tension in the air.
Haera and the elves brought destruction with them. There were only four beings powerful enough to crack the magic of the grimoire. And one motivated to assert his unending control over panther territory—Titan. He would never let them leave his territory voluntarily. And now he was here. If he got through the dome, he would raze the ground we walked on and leave a wasteland behind. Of that, I had no doubt.
Barbs gouged my insides as I stepped into the kitchen, my palm settling on the wall nearest the door. The acrid scent of fear seared the back of my throat. Scared, raised voices replaced the kitchen’s usual cheerful clatter and peace. The room was filled with the body heat of too many people, crushing the air from my lungs.
A rough, warm hand took mine. “Gilda, come with me, girl.”
I recognized Cook’s rasping voice, normally so confident but now tinged with nerves. Another crack boomed loud enough to shake the foundations beneath my feet. Children whimpered and adults hushed. It was all they could do in the face of the unknown.
“Get out of the way,” Cook demanded as she pushed our way through the crowd.
“Why’s she going first? She’s a human,” a young male spat.
“She’ll slow us all down if we’re forced to wait for her to stumble along,” another unknown voice hissed.
My skin heated. The word “human” sounded like a curse. And it was. I couldn’t blame any shifter for the sentiment. They were ruled with an iron fist by The Six and treated just as badly by humans. Even as a slave, I was regarded only as one station higher than they.
Now, though . . .
I wasn’t sure what Esoti and Drisella’s deaths meant to both shifters and humans. A war had started, and no one was safe.
“A blind human at that,” someone else muttered.
I didn’t miss the scoffs or the elbow jabbed in my lower back.
“Shut up, the lot of you. Gilda is Serafine’s best friend, and Serafine is your alphas’ mate. Show some respect,” Cook growled. She was formidable when she got started.
I’m lucky she took me under her wing, although I don’t know why. She didn’t need to treat me any different than I had always been treated. I’d never told a soul about the way other humans treated me at Esoti’s stronghold. Not even Serafine. She had enough to contend with. Compared to hers, my life was charmed, but Cook must have seen something in me, and that had earned her my wholehearted gratitude.
She guided me to a stop and pressed me against the wall. Cooler air slipped over my face, and I realized she’d brought me to the back door. “Stay here, girl. I’ll come and get you and take you to the basement when Sedric comes back.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure she saw the action before I felt her presence move away. There wasn’t much else I could do. I hunkered against the wall as more people filtered into the room. The stink of fear grew more pungent the longer we waited.
