Veil of Thorns Read online

  When one of the Synod's shadow wraiths arrives on Oracle Briana Spurrier’s doorstep promising a way to free her true love from his cursed imprisonment, she’s willing to defy both Zyne law and cosmic order to strike the bargain. But the journey will take her to the far reaches of the globe and into a spellbound forest that is the lair of an ancient enchantress.

  Bri will need her Wolfkinde Familiar—Lucas Moncrieffe—by her side if she hopes to survive, even though that means inviting a lover from centuries ago back into her life. As Bri navigates the trickery of the savage immortal world, her power continues to grow, and she faces the most frightening question of all: can she embrace what she is without becoming one of the monsters?

  “Do not fear the thorns in the path

  for they draw only corrupt blood.”

  —Kahlil Gibran

  Prologue

  Toulouse, France

  1594

  A lone howl spiraled into the humid night.

  The birds’ shrill answer fluttered through the leaves and broke to the sky.

  Vivianne followed a winding path through the midnight forest—a path she’d never trod before yet knew by heart. The path to her lover.

  The dewy ground caught faint traces of light and reflected it back in an ethereal wave.

  As it should, on such a night. One charged with potent power.

  Though she was barefoot, the darkness did not fault her. She sensed when to step over roots and ducked on instinct under the lowest-hanging branches. She could never have spotted them in the inky darkness beneath the canopy, so she relied on her internal compass to guide her in the general direction and her Second Sight to fill in the rest.

  Fairy mounds glowed pink and blue-green in the distance, shielded by misty invisibility wards. Darker things lurked in hollows–greedy eyes watching. Others cowered and drew back as she passed. Magic licked at her from above and below. She closed her eyes, letting her other senses guide her. A bouquet of rich loam and ripe berries filled her nose. The sound of water grew closer, until she finally stumbled upon an ambling creek.

  Her passage along the rocky bank was as smooth and swift as the eddying water, only she was silent. Stealth and her heightened psychic abilities her only defense as she ambled deeper into his realm.

  She was not in any physical danger, but each step took her closer to an act that would cost her dearly. An act that would certainly cause her pain, eventually. But that didn’t matter now. She’d made up her mind.

  He is worth it.

  The forest was utterly still, but for the faint babbling of the creek. The living things remained mute. They understood a hunter was out tonight.

  She was willing prey.

  She’d worn his favorite rose oil and nothing else under her skirts and had built a painful wanting for him over the past weeks.

  He would scent her.

  She’d left her hair loose, so it swayed against the cloak she wore.

  It was his favorite color, the color of passion and sin. The color of blood.

  The wolf would see it from a hundred paces, even in the dark.

  She emerged into an eerie clearing, stark and bare of shrubbery but for a solitary oak in the center. Large boulders anchored the four directional corners like stout sentries of a sacred place lost out of time. The full moon poured forth power, drenching the misty circle in a gauze of light. With her first step onto the grass, the charge of the altar lapped against her, a current of power built of the very bones of the earth.

  A prism. A node of magic and gathering place for the energies of life constructed by nature itself.

  No wonder the wolf had chosen this for his lair.

  The rite we work here will not fail.

  The power of the circle washed through her, coating her insides with raw, elemental charge, and she knew she would succeed in what she set out to do this night.

  For good or ill…

  She blessed the corners, infusing her own magic into that of the prism, strengthening her connection to the Conduit. She reclined against the oak to wait.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  He stalked out of the shadows, owning the night and everything it touched, a predator fixed on delicious quarry. Tawny-copper figure shimmered in the moonlight, but for a mantle of black across his powerful shoulders. The golden halos of his eyes glowed through the dark. Long white teeth gleamed.

  She smiled and reclined into the leaves, spreading her cloak out beneath her.

  The wolf sniffed at her ankles, nosed up her skirt, licked her knees.

  She gazed up through the branches of the giant oak at the stars winking in the velvet night sky, heart fluttering near her navel. On her next exhale, she had a very warm, very naked, very aroused male pressed against her, nuzzling and kissing her neck. Growling at her gently.

  Her lover. Her wolf.

  “Gods above and below, woman, I told you not to come.”

  Vivianne smiled. He had. But he hadn’t meant it. They were both equally helpless against the forces drawing them together. Slaves to the lash of destiny. Their spirits communicated on a baser level, called to each other. Fate always tangled their paths, no matter how hard they tried to stay away–as if the heavens themselves had tied them to one another.

  Now she would make it official.

  She rolled them over and straddled his lap. Broad hands slid from her waist to her hips and gripped her possessively, seeping heat into her skin through her clothes. The almost painful need on his face reminded her of the first time he’d taken her, in the rough hay of the stables amidst her husband’s prized horses. They’d been crazed with desire, beyond reason or judgment. Beyond right or wrong.

  His chest rumbled in approval as she slid against his hardness, and he helped hike her skirt up her thighs. In her Second Sight, his features were still cast over by those of the beast, severe and lupine. His eyes were disks of amber flame with barely a pinprick of black in the center. Black claws gently scraped her skin, and she whimpered when their bodies sealed together–a sound of sharp relief.

  He rubbed his face into her bodice, licking, kissing, and nipping. Vivianne quivered in his arms as he drove into her, deep and satisfying. And then came his slow, languorous torture. He glided against her with aching precision that made her belly coil tight. Slow, steady, controlled. Concentrated not only on her pleasure, but on drawing it out as long as possible.

  Until she begged for completion.

  Her wolf asked for one thing in return.

  “Are you sure?” He drew back to look at her, the burn of hunger in his gaze. Wildness crept beneath the surface. Desperation. He’d told her to stay away, said that it was not worth the risk. But she knew he had been trying to convince himself not to want this.

  When she didn’t answer, but only smoldered at him, he teased against her until she cried out, a prisoner to his exquisite knowledge of her body.

  She had tried to listen to reason, to make the unselfish choice. She’d failed. Or surrendered. Did it matter anymore?

  “Ana?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  Vivianne didn’t fear the wolf. And she no longer cared of the consequences. She needed him. They needed each other. She’d seen what they could have, what they could be. And one lifetime with him would never be enough.

  “I’m sure.” She moaned as the heat of him touched so deep, she broke out in a sweat.

  He rolled her over, laid her back on their forbidden marriage bed of crimson velvet, rich earth, and fallen leaves. Already buried within her, he pulled her legs tighter around him and ground against her in a luscious, sinewy wave of pure, supple muscle.

  Rough stubble abraded her neck and chest as he devoured her. He trailed his tongue to the tops of her breasts, biting harder,
marking the giving flesh with crescent rings of teeth marks.

  “For all time, I will love only you.” He claimed her mouth, this time holding nothing back. He drowned her in the tempest of his own ancient power, that of an immortal.

  There was no turning back from here. They were committed. Tonight, they re-forged destiny… Tonight, she would veer from the path she’d sworn herself to with a blood oath, forsaking one of the sacred Threefold Laws.

  He is worth it.

  Her body cried for release. Power hummed over her skin, seeped into the ground, and vibrated back in a skin-pebbling charge of static.

  Vivianne unsheathed her athame.

  Her lover released her mouth, grunted with excitement, quickening the pace of his fervent thrusts.

  She rolled them over, rode him to the ground, and pinned his shoulders until he calmed.

  His chest heaved. Claws dug into her thighs.

  She dragged the blade across her palm, blood beading. Did the same over his left breast, reciting the incantation until it coiled around her bones. The intricate weaving of ancient and forbidden magic glowed behind her eyelids.

  As she uttered the words that would bind them together eternally, the sky seemed to bear down on their circle. The energy inside roiled and bubbled. With all the power she could channel, under the full moon, in a sacred prism, Vivianne placed her hand over her immortal lover’s heart, and willed them to become one.

  Their heartbeats crashed together like lightning bolts meeting in the sky.

  They both cried out, backs bowing. Still joined and dangling on the precipice of release, they clung to each other as the spell sizzled in the air.

  Power seeped from the ground in whorls of hazy mist, sparkling in the moonlight. It flowed into them, between them, out of them. Their bodies tensed, melded together, their consciousness intertwined as sure as their lips were locked.

  “I love you, Ana.” He stared at her face, eyes swirling like clouds in a fierce thunderstorm as he plunged them over the edge of fulfillment.

  “I love you.” She clung to him in the desperate throes of desire, free-falling through bliss with the eternal mate of her soul. “Lucas.”

  Chapter One

  San Juan Islands, Washington

  Present Day

  How does one begin a letter to a werewolf lover from a past life? There was no correct answer to that question. Emily Post herself would be stumped. Dear was too endearing. Hi was too familiar. To was too…something.

  Bri tapped her pen on the table and stared through the rain-slicked glass of the kitchen nook’s beveled windows. The lilies at the edge of the yard swayed in the mid-morning breeze. If she took much longer, she would miss the ferry.

  Sighing, she bent back over the paper.

  Lucas,

  Okay. She could do this. She’d put it off long enough. For months she’d meant to write something, anything. Just a reply to his letter should have been simple. Could he call on her–yes, or no? She couldn’t even write either of those words, because both could mean so much more.

  But.

  Whatever unresolved feelings she had for the immortal half-demon who called himself Lucas Moncrieffe, they weren’t lessening with his absence.

  Her regressions were unceasing. And the dreams of late had become increasingly vivid, to the point that she would wake still feeling the ache of the hollow place where Vivianne’s love for Lucas once resided. She couldn’t block him out of her dreams, and she could only hold him at bay in the real world for so long. Her only other option was to face him and hopefully train herself into seeing him as something else through exposure therapy.

  She was not his long-lost love Vivianne. No matter how much Lucas wished it to be so. She didn’t love him. She didn’t even know him.

  Pretty cut and dried.

  He had risked his life to save hers, though, and she’d treated him unfairly. What happened to Kean wasn’t Lucas’s fault. They would probably all be dead now if not for him. She owed him her thanks at the very least.

  Nodding to herself, she scribbled the next line.

  We should talk.

  Was that the same as saying he could call on her? Or would he take it too literally, being gods-knew how old? She had to be careful not to extend an inadvertent invitation. She didn’t want him appearing on her doorstep. This confrontation was going to take preparation and planning. No, he definitely couldn’t call on her, but…

  You may call me on the telephone. If you don’t know how to use a telephone, please write back and we’ll make other arrangements.

  She signed her full name, wrote down her home and cell numbers, and sealed the note in an envelope she’d addressed and stamped over a month ago. She tucked it in her purse and made sure Max and Maggie had food and water.

  Tourist season on the island was picking up early this year, thanks to a recent blast of dry weather. More people heading to the islands meant making your intended ferry had become a rarity. Better to get the day started, or else she could end up on the red-eye home. She had lots of mainland errands to run, plus the extra stop for Astrid. She would try to keep that short, but with the Fitzgerald clan, one never knew.

  She wanted to be home before the full moon rose. Her body buzzed with excitement, as it always did knowing she would see Kean soon.

  Despite the sun-breaks, winter’s chill hadn’t released its hold on the islands yet, and the heater in Kean’s clunky old pickup had stopped working. Again. Bri pulled on her forest green pea coat made of thick wool and the knitted mittens and scarf Astrid had given her for Yule.

  Two German shepherd sentinels stood at attention by the truck as she walked down the back steps to the driveway. Bri shook her head. “Not this time, guys. Just guard duty today.”

  Max stretched, yawned, and loped over to Bri with his tail wagging. They exchanged licks for scratches, and he took his post on the back porch.

  Maggie sniffed Bri’s hand as she passed, but otherwise didn’t move.

  As soon as Bri climbed into the cab and shut the door, she heard the skitter of claws and a thump behind her. She checked the rearview mirror to see a brown and black lump of fur trying very hard to blend in with the rusty truck bed. She chuckled. “Maggie… out!”

  Maggie reluctantly complied and watched with a forlorn curl of her expressive brows as Bri backed down the drive. Once on the road, Bri laughed to herself about the antics Kean’s dogs–just his dogs–put her through on a daily basis. Imagine what the flesh and blood man would do to her, if they ever had the chance to settle into a life together.

  No…bad idea. She wasn’t supposed to imagine that. It made things too difficult, and so much more unfair. Later, she would see Kean. He would see her. They could talk and be in each other’s presence, a blessing she thanked the heavens for every night. But they couldn’t touch each other. They couldn’t feel each other. It was positively maddening.

  Kean’s body was still in the mortal plane, encased in stone and under a powerful curse. But thanks to a protection spell on a blessed amulet and Kean’s own stubborn will, his spirit was somehow still clinging to this plane by a thin tendril. He’d sacrificed one of his thirteen lives to hang on to this one, hovering in a grey place where souls between incarnations sometimes lingered. A ghost. The Zyne word for it was Lumere. Within the magical and physical barriers of the house, he could take a form, though not a corporeal one, and only on the full moon, when Bri could summon enough power to help him cross the barrier separating that grey place from the real world.

  It was a blessing. And it was never enough. Which was why she was still driving his junky truck, even though she could afford a new car. She liked the idea that Kean was with her, even when she left the house. She shared her bed with his two obnoxious dogs because their body warmth and soft snores reminded her that she wasn’t alone, that soon Kean would be there to hold her again.

  After a decade of keeping herself closed off from everyone, Kean had broken through her barriers in just a few sho
rt days like the bull-headed Taurus that he was. And Bri had let him. Just to feel the gutting stab of loss all over again. It was a sick joke of Fate, like a second cancer diagnosis on the last day of chemo. Or it was just really bad fucking Karma.

  You’ve definitely earned plenty of that.

  Vivianne alone had carried nine other lives to the grave with her, due to her rebellion against the Synod. And Bri had lived at least a dozen other lives she’d glimpsed. She probably wasn’t a good person in all of them. She didn’t want to know her soul’s tally on the cosmic scales, but she figured it was a safe bet spending the rest of this life trying to right wrongs. Starting with Kean.

  She was trying to learn from her past mistakes, not letting her heart freeze over again, however tempting that was. She had to keep it open, for Kean. To keep hope alive. She wasn’t running or hiding from her grief, either. This time, she’d let herself feel it, the whole ugly lot. Sometimes she cried until she wasn’t sure she would ever catch her breath. But she always did.

  She pulled onto the ferry, killed the engine, and slid out of her mittens to wrap her fingers over the worn prints on the steering wheel. Maybe her rituals and shrines for Kean were getting a little ridiculous, but she wasn’t hurting anybody. It seemed important to keep him alive in her memory, as much as possible. They’d had so little time together, after so long apart.

  She’d spent every waking minute of the last four months studying Zyne texts and researching Kean’s curse. After the events of her father’s death and the disturbing revelation about her own powers—she was a Skydancer, whatever that meant—the Synod had required her to take on a Zyne tutor. It was a thinly-veiled attempt to keep a close eye on her, but they could have done much worse, so she didn’t complain. She met with Councilor Amin every week, studied her assigned texts, practiced her assigned spells, and peppered him with questions to guide her separate research into Kean’s curse, most of which he couldn’t answer.