Edge of Seventeen by Cristy Rey Read Free Book Online Page A

considered what Bernadette offered. All of what she had
said was true. Cyrus had a great gig in Alaska. If he had to return
to pack life, he wouldn’t blink before going back to Stephen. He
didn’t particularly want to leave his current situation or
employment, but he couldn’t leave the Incarnate. It didn’t
seem that he could do both. He was chained to her, and he was
committed to staying close to her until he could figure out what
was happening to him.
    Before Cyrus could option a response,
Bernadette sucked in a hard breath. Leaning back in her chair with
that satisfied smirk, she drummed her fingers on the tabletop and
shot a finger in the air that she wiggled from side-to-side in the
international sign language for ‘no.’
    “I see ,” she said, playfully, voice
light with song. “You find yourself affected by the child. Perhaps
even bound—“
    “ No.” Cyrus slapped the table so
unexpectedly that Bernadette hopped in her seat and clapped her
hands over her beat-skipping heart. As soon as the shock wore off,
however, she was back with her smile. She shook her head and
puckered her lips to keep from flashing too-bright a smile.
    Bound. That’s exactly what Cyrus was:
bound to the Incarnate. And he wanted no part of it. There was no
room for any of that in Cyrus’ cursed life. He hardly committed
himself to a pack, and he was ready to leave them at this moment.
There was no way he could commit himself to some god-kin child.
What would he do for her anyway? Protect her? Even the thought of
that was a joke.
    “Then it’s her magic,” the witch assessed.
“She must truly be the Incarnate if her magnetism is such that it
draws your wolf out when otherwise unbidden. Do you see the danger
a creature like that poses to our kind? Can you imagine the wide
scale devastation of a child like that unleashed to walk among
us?”
    “Can you make it stop? Can you fix what’s
happening to me?”
    “I’ll make you a deal, Moonchild.”
    Cyrus hated when witches called his kind
‘moonchildren.’ It was a way of putting them in their place. It
lowered their rank to something akin to peons of nature, beasts of
lunar circumstance and nothing else. But they were so much more
than that. Witches thought that they could call down the moon and
had authority over his kind, over everyone’s kind. But they were
wrong. They were dead wrong. Cyrus’ lip curled into a snarl and
Bernadette sighed exasperatingly and rolled her eyes not unlike the
petulant teenager she’d just acquired.
    “I’ll tell you what,” the witch continued.
“You should stay in town for a few days. I’ll keep you abreast of
the situation with the Incarnate. If it turns out that she is the
one we’ve been looking for, then I’ll likely need to staff around
her. She is very powerful. Even if that child is not the Incarnate, she is extremely gifted.”
    “Is there a chance that she isn’t what you’re
looking for?”
    “In my opinion, no. She is the
Incarnate. The genuine article. And she needs to be restrained. It
can only be done the way that I have envisioned it though not all
agree. She will be regarded highly among us and she’ll be tutored
in my ways and grow to be a very successful woman. Ultimately, she
will inherit my enterprises.
    “What I want from you , however, Cyrus
Barrow, is the assurance that you will tame your beast. I cannot
and I will not place that very special package in hands that
tremble from failing restraints to keep from harming her. She is an
exceptionally gifted girl and, as Incarnate, we will have to be
very careful about what power is made accessible to her. Do you
understand?”
    “Truthfully, no,” Cyrus answered flatly. “But
I don’t care. I’ll take it.” He pushed up to his legs and shoved
his seat out from behind him. As he walked away, Cyrus called out
over his shoulder, “Keep in touch, witch.”
    True to her word, Bernadette kept in touch. A
couple of days later, she called with the word that she