Page 50 of Do You Even Hex, Bro?
I shift and run the whole way back to the edge of Villeneuve’s property, my wolf surging with renewed energy. I get Micah and Rowan to follow me back to the pack house with a few barks and howls. We rush up the porch steps and burst through the front door, bristling with excitement even though I haven’t even gotten a chance to tell him the news. As pack members, we’re just that good at reading each other’s energy.
"She's meeting us tonight!" I announce to the rest of the pack, shifting back into my human form and striding into the living room where we’ve transformed our recreation area into a research center. Laptops open, books scattered across every surface, Sean actually taking notes from a grimoire about siphon care like it's finals week.
"What?" Sean's head snaps up. "For real?"
"Eight o'clock." I can't keep the grin off my face, even if the next part sours it. "Villeneuve is arranging it."
"Holy shit," Micah breathes, pushing his glasses up his nose. Lucky bastard gets to shift with those, unlike our pants. "That's—we didn't expect?—"
"I told you," Rowan interjects calmly, though his eyes burn with the same excitement I feel. "She felt the connection too. She wouldn't have agreed otherwise."
"What did Villeneuve say?" Micah asks, picking leaves out of his hair. "How is she?"
"He says she's recovering." I drop onto the couch beside Sean, pushing books aside to make room. Pretty sure none of us have ever studied this hard for an actual test. "He's being dodgy as fuck, but he's not trying to stop us from seeing her."
"Maybe he's not as evil as you think," Rowan suggests.
I shoot him a look. "He's definitely evil. Just a different kind of evil than we thought."
"Or maybe he actually cares about Regina's wellbeing," Rowan pushes. "Unlike her coven."
The mention of her coven—of Kyle—darkens my mood instantly. I should have torn out his throat when I had the chance, except no, since apparently, that could have killed our mate.
Definitely a miscalculation.
I'm glad she's willing to see us this soon, but it also hasn’t been enough time to learn enough about what a siphon is and how to care for one without her… dying.
Maybe Sean had a point about the hamster thing.
"So what have you found out?" I ask Sean, forcibly redirecting my thoughts. “Didn’t expect to find you nose-deep in a book without pictures in it.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to singe my ass on Villainoodle’s wards, either,” Sean mutters, raking a hand through his disheveled sandy hair. "Siphons are even more rare and special than we realized. Like,unicornrare. They can’t generate their own magic. They pull from external sources. Trees, the ground,rocks, other shit. The really powerful ones can draw from other supernaturals.”
“Like shifters?” I ask hopefully.
He grimaces. "Yeah, uh, so… witches don't really bond with shifters unless they can help it. Especially not siphons."
"Oh," I say, unable to hide my disappointment.
This is even more of an uphill battle than I thought.
"That explains why she was bonded to a coven," Rowan adds. "From what we've found, binding to a structured group is the most stable arrangement for a high-level siphon. They become the focal point for collective energy, and then multiply it."
“When didyouhave time to research this?” I ask him.
Rowan shrugs. “Came back to the pack house for a drink and couldn’t shut my brain off.”
“Right.” I consider his words. “They said something about her being the Thirteenth, didn’t they?”
“Yeah,” says Sean, a sigh whooshing out of him. “That's why they're hunting her so hard. She was their power source. They were using her like a magical fucking battery. And if she runs out of magic…” He taps the crinkled pages of the open grimoire in his lap. “Let’s just say that without a connection to either her original coven or a new bond, she'll run out of magic. And that can be, uh… deadly.”
The implications hit me like a ton of bricks. She's not only running from her ex, she's racing against magical starvation. No wonder she looked so exhausted when we found her.
"What else?" I press, lifting the book into my own lap and leafing through it like I can will the words to jump into my fingers. It's an ancient academic text on rare magical classifications, and the pages are yellowed and falling apart. That's how you know it's good.
Or someone pissed on it.
Hoping it's the former.
