Page 44 of Marked By Alphas 2: Claimed

“There,” she said, satisfaction clear in her voice. “Much better. Now we won’t drive in circles for hours.”

I stared at her. “We’re going to talk about this later.”

“Look up next route.”

“No, seriously, what was that? The fog just?—”

“Next route, Luke!Aigoo.” She sighed in that particularly Koreanway of expressing exasperation. “This boy, always asking questions when we have more important things…”

I looked back at my phone, muttering, “Sure, totally normal eomma behavior, making fog disappear. Why not? Probably learned it at the same place she got her recipe for those cookies that made Mr. Park speak in rhymes for a week.”

Two hours later, we were definitely lost. Not regular lost, but the kind of lost that felt… intentional? The roads twisted in ways that didn’t match any map, and twice we passed the same weirdly shaped tree despite driving in a straight line.

Eomma’s chanting had evolved into what sounded like a full Buddhist sutra. The bells hadn’t stopped ringing, the crystal was spinning by itself, and I was pretty sure the rice cakes were glowing.

“I swear that’s the third time we’ve passed that Welcome to Blackwood Heights sign,” I said twenty minutes later. “Except last time it said Blackwood Harbor. And the time before that it was Blackwood Cove.”

“Ah, they’re being difficult.” Eomma clicked her tongue disapprovingly. She reached into her bag and pulled out… was that a gong? An actual miniature gong?

“What? Eomma, no, you can’t just?—”

GONG!

The sound filled the car, impossibly loud for such a small instrument. The world… shifted. Suddenly the road ahead was clear, the sign distinctly reading Welcome to Blackwood Heights, and my GPS cheerfully announced “Return to route.”

“There,” Eomma said, tucking the gong away like this was perfectly normal morning behavior. “Sometimes you need to be more… assertive with territorial boundaries.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “You know what? Fine. Fine! This is fine. My eomma just gonged reality into submission. Why not?”

The crystal chimed in agreement.

“This explains why Kai got so lost,” I said, keeping one hand on the wheel while scrolling through my phone at a red light. “Though it’s weird—I can’t find a single review or post about people having GPS issues here. You’d think someone would’ve ranted about it online.”

“Mmm,” Eomma hummed from the passenger seat, that particular tone she used when she knew something but didn’t want to explain. “Normal people don’t notice. Only affects those with… sensitivity.”

I frowned, pocketing my phone as the light turned green. “What, like some kind of supernatural GPS scrambler?” I meant it as a joke, but Eomma just nodded seriously.

“Very old magic. Very clever. Keeps territory safe.” She paused, then added too casually, “Like Kai. Quarter-wolf blood very sensitive to such things.”

“Right, because Kai’s apparently a werewolf now.” I was still processing that particular revelation. “Which explains why he got lost, but not why…” I gestured at our car’s impromptu shrine setup. “…all this worked for us.”

Eomma suddenly became very interested in adjusting her prayer beads.

“Eomma.”

“Ah, look! Nice café! Very good energy.” She pointed eagerly to a spot ahead. “Pull in there!”

“You’re deflecting.”

“Growing boy needs breakfast. Can’t fight supernatural on empty stomach.”

“I’m twenty-two, Eomma. And you’re definitely avoiding the question about why we could sense the…” I waved my hand vaguely. “…magic road tricks.”

“Must be because I’m shaman,” she said airily, already unbuckling her seat belt before I’d fully parked. “Now come, before all good tables taken.”

I stared after her as she practically bounced out of the car, notinghow she’d said ‘I’m shaman’ and not ‘your eomma is shaman’ like she usually did. Add that to the growing list of weird things I was definitely going to interrogate her about later. Right after I figured out why my chest had started humming the moment we’d entered town limits.

But first, caffeine. Because if I was going to deal with werewolves, territorial magic, and my mother’s increasingly suspicious behavior, I needed to be properly caffeinated.

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