Page 41 of Assisting the Alpha
I exhale and open my eyes. “I need to top up my magic.”
Ethan rubs his beard. “Fuck, okay. We can go back to searching on foot until it replenishes.”
Everyone knows that any depleted magic-user will eventually refill naturally, barring damage to their magical core.
I grip his wrist when he starts to get up. “Actually… there’s a fast way.”
Ethan’s eyebrows shoot up. “A fast way to refill the magical tank?”
I give a sharp nod. “My mum used to love to tell the story of how they discovered I have a sorcerer’s level of magic. I was two, wanted to play outside and splash in the puddles, and my nanny, a fellow coven member, wouldn’t let me. So I literally froze her, as well as everyone else who got in my way, and carried myself outside on my stubby little legs. My dad found me passed out on the lawn, luckily within minutes.”
“Holy shit,” Ethan murmurs. “I knew you were powerful, but so young? I’m guessing you passed out because you’d depleted your core?”
I huff. “I don’t remember any of it, but I do remember my parents deciding that rather than try to restrict my use of magic, they’d teach me how to always be able to access more. The idea being that I could always get myself out of trouble that way, or at least avoid getting into worse trouble. I had lessons on refilling my core before I could properly say the word sorcerer.”
“So what do you need to do?”
This isn’t something that’s ever shared, except between sorcerers. It’s not written in our grimoires and I never even told Qadir or Nyoka about it. But I trust Ethan.
“The reason why sorcerers are more powerful than mages and witches is not just because our own personal core can store a much larger volume of magic or because we don’t need herbs, spell circles, or incantations. We can also draw power from ley lines, which run under the earth in certain locations.”
Ethan frowns, his eyes flashing with some emotion I can’t place. “That sounds risky.”
I grimace. “Only in that it’s addictive. I can do the spell while connected. As soon as I give you a location, I want you to convince me to let go. Whatever it takes.”
Ethan’s jaw tightens. “Why do I feel like you’re not telling me everything?”
My wolf lover is too clever for his own good.
I blink at him as innocently as I can manage. “We need to find Irving, right? The longer we wait, the more chance of him…” I trail off, unable to say the words we’re both thinking.
Yes, there are risks to connecting to the ley lines, but I know what I’m doing.
Ethan kisses me firmly before pulling back. “Keep yourself safe. I’ll be right here.”
That’s a yes. I probably would have done it whether he agreed or not, to be honest, but it’s infinitely safer with someone to talk me back out.
I close my eyes and empty my mind, just like Mum and Dad taught me. It takes no time at all to use my moonstone to connect. The river of magic is deep and wide, a fast-moving pink glow flowing beneath us even though we’re fourteen floors up.
Replenishing my magic requires finesse to make sure I don’t overload my magical core. There’s no time for that right now.
Instead, I divert a tiny trickle of the ley line towards me and restart the seeking spell. Brown hair, full beard, kind brown eyes. His favourite shirt and broad shoulders. The earth from space.
My mental map zooms in so fast it makes me dizzy. It’s a really good thing I’m sitting down.
Birchester. The edge of Riverside on the border with vamp territory. A dark alley. Why is it always a fucking alley? I try to look for something identifying, but it looks like every other cobbled back alley in the city, hemmed in by buildings on either side. I could stop there—it narrows things down a lot—but I’m convinced there’s another clue here if I can just find it.
I rotate the picture in my head. There!
My eyes snap open and I sway with a wave of vertigo. My voice comes out a deep rumble. “The northeast edge of Riverside. A vamp bar called The Last Drop. The alley opposite.”
My vision is hazy due to the ley line connection, but Ethan’s aura glows pure gold as he presses his phone to his ear. I’m too distracted to figure out why he’s such an unusual colour. Shifter auras are usually orange.
He relays the message to whoever he’s called, then tilts my chin so I’m looking directly into his eyes. “Let go, sweet thing.”
No, I need to stay connected. Irving needs me at full strength. I can replenish my magic faster this way. I feed the trickle of ley line I no longer need for my spell into my core.
Why is Irving in a back alley of Riverside at one in the morning on a weeknight? Surely he can’t be…
