Page 58 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
“You finally awake, dipshit?” he asked as Spectre offered Hex a mug of tea.
“Uh, thanks,” he said, and then he shifted a narrow-eyed orange glare over to the werewolf. “Try being summoned twice before casting that same spell, and see if you ever get up again,” Hex barked right back, lifting the mug to his lips with shaking hands.
“Hex Witch,” Abigail greeted politely, and the words were repeated in kind by my father, Calla, and her husband. His name was Otto, and while both he and Calla knew they weren’t soulmates, they loved each other anyway. His soulmate was, interestingly enough, his own brother.
Not everyone had four soulmates the way I did. Lucky me. And they were all incarnated as alpha male pricks. The universe could’ve made this so much easier by making one of them a guinea pig or a skunk. Shit, I’d take a hedgehog or a possum over this mess. Just … maybe not a goldfish.
Only, I was lying because I felt very, very lucky to have such beautiful male specimens for my thirsty witch ass to bed. It was sacred, you know? The joining of a witch and her consort. Not at all perverted or dirty or wrong. On the contrary, it was practically holy.
I want to yank Hex’s pants down so bad and suck him off.
I blinked myself out of the moment in time to register the slight that my mom had just played on both Hex and myself.
She was referring to him as Hex Witch, the iciest, most polite form of greeting among witches. She may as well have addressed him as Dear Sir or something. Not sure how proper humans went about such things.
Humans were weird as fuck.
“Abigail Witch,” Hex corrected, standing up straight and frowning into his cup. I’m not sure what his expectations—or mine—were, but my mother was not helping.
“I take it you’re feeling well enough for a small journey?” she began, and Hex looked up from his tea. The expression of confusion on his face was enough to make me feel protective. As I said, I liked to sort of mother my husbands … They mothered the kids, in turn, and then pampered me. It was the perfect cycle.
“Where would we be going?” I asked, phrasing the question in an intentional way.
My mother offered up another admonishing look.
“You are not going anywhere—especially pregnant.”
“Pregnant?!” Hex breathed, and then he dropped his mug. It shattered on the wood floor at his feet as Caine snarled at him.
“You better learn quick how we do things around here. Mop and broom are in the closet down the hall. Hurry it up now.”
Hex stared at him in wide-eyed shock before shifting his gaze over to me.
I just stood there and stared right back at him. Did he know that he was the only possible father? There was demon blood inside of me; I could smell it. The others, like my parents, might not recognize it with Hex and Monster inside the house, too, but I knew the difference.
Either way, Hex took off and returned quickly, cleaning up his mess and dumping the glass shards in a garbage bag offered up by Spectre. At this point, all five of us were soaked in sweat and probably dreaming of a nap and some speedy witch food delivery.
There were options out there, you know? Some covens delivered by broom, like Grubhub or DoorDash but for the Numinous. We had Bruja Bitches, Magic Meals, and Coven Craic to choose from when it came to enchanted cuisine. But … we weren’t talking about tacos or cheeseburgers or subs just now, were we?
Abigail turned to me again.
“Hex Sorciere needs to be returned to Coven Wyrmwood,” she stated, as he were an overdue library book or something.
But ‘return’ and ‘my soulmate’ were not words that could be put into a single sentence unless the person they were being returned to was me; I was very protective. Even over Hex. The only person who could keep us apart was him and him alone.
“I can’t go back to my coven,” Hex stated firmly, holding the broom in his hand and looking over at the empty space on his wrist where my magic mark had been. “I skipped out on the wedding; I freed the wolves meant for the sacrifice; I knocked my grandmother out and defied the Three.”
“And now, what, we’re supposed to take in yet another political refugee?” Abigail demanded, turning to look at me while my father supported her on the stool, as if she weren’t used to having to keep her balance the way she was. Her legs … I was almost certain that both of them were gone, lost to the curse. But I didn’t dare say it aloud. It made me feel guilty for arguing with her, but I wasn’t going to be bullied when it came to my own family. “You have three husbands already, Graceley.”
