A raven-haired worshiper of the Titans--Hekate and Nyx--is determined to save her lover from an ancient curse, she must prove to him that life is worth living and that being a werewolf has its perks.
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My mother's spellbook was a delicate leather-bound journal with pretty crystals laid on the top that were interwoven with leather strips. The strips were braided in rings rippling over the cover. It was filled with her journal entries while she was learning magic in her twenties. She had formally labelled herself as a worshipper of Hekate and Nyx and she did most of the magic studies on her own.
I still remember the first time I described the colours bleeding from the night sky to her. How if you looked at it one way it was just a bland black sky with maybe a few shy stars, but if you deepened your search you would find bold violets leaking through the silver clouds. The stars would start twinkling like moonlight off an ocean, they blinked and glared through the neon colours that slid through them like slow-moving serpents. I remember the warmth of her arm around my body and the cold of the dewy grass under our bare legs. Dad would be inside our old place with Ari playing a game because she was always so restless. Therefore, watching the night sky was our thing. I thought I was really teaching her something that day, that I was going to open her mind to new possibilities of life. I was eight and my stomach sunk when my mum told me that we were the only ones who could see the colours of the night. She described the ancient titans and how they had blessed our family line with these gifts.
She promised to teach me more when I got older.
Her hair was black like mine, her eyes were the colour of bluestone, and she had hands that were meant for sketching great works of art not cooking for that ghastly old restaurant she used to work at. She made me promise not to share this gift with just anyone. It had to be someone special. A power that someone can respect not fear. A power my aunt lacks but pretends to know the ways of the arts of magic to collect cash without the hard work. My mother taught me a few tricks, but then she and my father died and it turned out magic couldn't protect you from everything. I never understood why they had left us in the care of Theia Alexandra. That was possibly my mother's only oversight.
My mother had written down her findings of the mythic world and the myths that lived within human society. I flicked to the page on shifters, my neck sore from the events that were fresh on my mind even though they happened hours ago. My eyes flicked over the dusty old attic that had my parents' belongings. I had made sure they stayed protected and clean when I lived here but since I'd been at university it seemed that my Theia and my sister didn't find their history as important or interesting.
I turned the page and was enthralled by my mother's sketch of the werewolf next to a basic description of their nature. Werewolves were not uncommon, there were many different kinds from different lands and all had evolved into compassionate creatures. Or at least humans that could change into wolves, not people cursed to be monsters forever. Lazarus was my first vampire encounter, as far as I knew, but I had meant a few werewolves before. I had heard about a pride of werecats, but I didn't know much other than there were very few of them and based on my mother's findings she hadn't known too much either. That wasn't important except it was always so fascinating to read about my mother's ventures in the fantasy world. Any findings I would find I'd fill in the gaps in her work, so it was like we were still working together.
