Page 46 of Moonveil and Magic

“Ivy,” I whispered, the name feeling like a jagged serrated knife in my throat.

Across the room, Kael bolted upright. His lounging posture vanished, replaced by the terrifying stillness of a wolf scenting a kill. His dark eyes were wide, fixed on the empty space in the room as if he could see the magical feedback loop collapsing.

“She’s gone,” Kael growled, his voice a low and guttural vibration that shook the glass on the coffee table. “Moonveil’s wards just flatlined. No explosion, no struggle. They just... ceased to exist.”

I set the cup down with a hand that remained perfectly steady, though my blood was beginning to boil. I reached out with my senses, tapping into the shard. The crystal was screaming now, a high-pitched psychic wail echoing the warning Great-Grandmother had just delivered through the void.

“It wasn’t a rogue,” I said, my voice dropping into that dangerous, honeyed register that usually preceded a culling. “The magical residue is too clean. It’s layered with those old, suffocating, high-level sigils. Great-Grandmother just confirmed it. The coven moved faster than we anticipated.”

Kael stepped toward me, his fingers curling into claws. “Coven. You think it was the Council?”

“Worse,” I bit out, my mind flashing to the woman who had spent decades trying to sanitise my world. “Muriel. Ivy told me once that Muriel had been watching her, waiting for a slip-up. She is the only one with the arrogance and the authority to pull a targeted extraction this clean. She doesn’t just want the shard… she wants to break Ivy’s spirit because she can’t control her light.”

Kael’s growl resonated alongside mine, a primal sound that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. “She’s alive. I can feel the frantic thrum of her pulse through our bond, but the shard’s dampening it. They’re trying to smother her aura, Lucien. Trying to hide her from us. I can feel the silver magic of her great-grandmother fighting to keep the path open, but the coven smoke is thick.”

I stood abruptly, the elegant businessman facade falling away to reveal the predator beneath. My amber eyes burned. “They can try. But they’ve forgotten one thing.”

Kael looked at me, his gaze narrowing. “What?”

“They didn’t just take a witch,” I said, my lips curving into a faint and predatory smile. “They stole something that belongs to us. And I intend to collect.”

Kael’s dark eyes softened for a fraction of a second, a shared moment of jagged vulnerability. “Every whisper of her fear, every spark of her trust... It’s all still there, Lucien. Anchoring us.”

“Ours to protect,” I corrected, my tone carrying a heat that Kael met with an instinctive nod of agreement.

We moved as one. There was no need for discussion. Kael moved to the control panel, his hands flying as he signalled his network, while I began to weave the tracking spell, using the shard and a remnant of the great-grandmother’s silver message as a compass. We needed to stay synchronised: every spell, every move, and every strike perfectly aligned.

“No unnecessary risks until we have eyes on her. No one touches her, Lucien. Not a single soul.” Kael said, his voice rough.

“Agreed,” I murmured, my amber eyes glowing with an internal fire. “If they try, they’ll discover exactly why my kind was once worshipped as gods of the hunt.”

I felt Ivy’s presence, a tiny, flickering flame in a vast darkness, calling to us through the void.

“Ivy,” I whispered under my breath, my magic coiling around my arms like living smoke. “We’re coming for you and no one, not a single soul in this wretched city, will keep you from us.”

Kael added, low and fierce, “You’re ours, little red. Always.”

We stepped out onto the balcony, the city lights twinkling innocently below, unaware of the two predators about to tear the night apart in search of what was theirs.

In the Den of Shadows

Kael

The scent of old stone and sterile, bleached magic was making my hair stand on end. We were miles outside the city, at the edge of the coven’s jurisdictional line, standing before a nondescript manor that reeked of high-altitude arrogance. But we weren't alone.

Behind us, the darkness was alive. I could hear the rhythmic, heavy breathing of my boys from the shopmen who spent their days over engines and their nights running as wolves. To our left, a lethal, silent shadow moved. Lucien’s puma clan had arrived, their presence a cold, predatory hum that made the very air go still. We had the numbers, and more importantly, we had the rage.

“The trace is stronger here,” I growled, my voice vibrating deep in my chest. I looked up at the building and saw the shimmering threads of blue energy only I could see—the tether to Ivy. “She’s inside, and the shard is screaming back at the safehouse, Lucien. It knows she’s being held.”

Lucien’s amber eyes were cold, glowing with a predatory light that made him look less like a man and more like the ancient hunter he truly was. He didn’t need to repeat his theories about Muriel. The silence between us was heavy with the shared knowledge of what we had to do. The heat radiating between us, fuelled by the bond to little red, was enough to melt the iron gates blocking our path.

“She’s relying on us,” I muttered, my muscles coiling. “Let us not keep her waiting.”

We moved through the perimeter like a tidal wave. The coven’s wards were sophisticated, but they were built to keep out rogues, not a unified front of a wolf and puma backed by two clans. We dismantled the first layer of magic with a synchronised pulse, our golden and dark energies weaving together to snap the sigils like dry glass.

Inside, the manor was a tomb of white marble and flickering candlelight. We burst through the final set of double doors into the sub-levels, and the sight ignited my blood.

Ivy was suspended in the centre of the room, held aloft by shimmering, voiceless restraints. Her skin was mapped with the glowing red lines of suppression sigils. Muriel St James stood at the centre of the ritual circle—her face twisted into a smirk of pure glee. Beside her, looking frost-edged and terrifyingly composed, was Shirl.