Magaestra: Loyalties: An urban fantasy series

  Magaestra: Loyalties

  Katherine Kim

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Excerpt of Magaestra: Tested

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Katherine Kim

  Magaestra: Loyalties © 2021 Katherine Kim. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, at katherineukim@gmail.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Follow me on Instagram @katherineukim or on Facebook www.facebook.com/katherineukim

  Cover by Cover by Sabrina Watts at Enchanted Ink Studio

  To my father who helped me fix a gaping plot hole even when he didn’t understand it. Still not sure how he managed it, but hey. Thanks, Dad!

  1

  Faith chewed on her lip and swiped the last sticky crumbs off the table. The kids had made a shocking mess baking cupcakes that morning, and somehow they had managed to get frosting on the underside of the table, on all the chairs, and in one corner, on the ceiling. She looked up at the glob of frosting and grimaced. She'd need a ladder to get up there. At least the rest of the kitchen was clean again, and the kids were in the den watching cartoons with their bodyguards.

  "Oh, thank God, the timing is perfect," she muttered when the coffee pot gurgled loudly then beeped, signaling that there was finally fresh coffee. She had been going through several pots of coffee a day lately. Stress and anxiety and grief pushing at her, and she had nowhere to expend it. Faith fixed up a cup and leaned her hip on the counter, drinking it slowly but without actually tasting it.

  Kaylee had been asking about her mom that morning, wanting to know when Crissy was coming home. It had been one reason for the baking spree. Jake had suggested with impeccable preschool logic they have brownies to feel better and Kaylee refused outright, saying that she was waiting for Mommy to come home with the brownie supplies. Jake had nodded seriously and then suggested cupcakes, for which Faith was deeply grateful. Kaylee had looked like she was about to have a fit at the idea of making brownies without Crissy.

  They should have found her sister by now. With an entire pack of werewolves, the cops, and even a few vampires searching, they should have at least found a damn clue already. Guilt stabbed through Faith's heart, at the memory of Crissy's face when she had burst into the room that Jesse Honeyford had locked her and the kids not even a whole week ago.

  Crissy had been tired, pale, and anxious, but was otherwise in decent shape then. Honeyford had, apparently wanted her to make more babies with, Kaylee having been promised to his disgusting Alpha. Fortunately for everyone, Jesse Honeyford was more brawn than brains, and it didn't take them long to find where he had Crissy and the kids. A short fight with some half-trained werewolves, and it was all over. Faith had been so happy to see her sister alive and well and safe that she had stopped paying attention.

  They all had, really. the battle was over, the victims were rescued. Nothing left but to clean up and go home, right?

  Faith flinched when the empty mug clinked against her teeth as she growled. Actually growled.

  "You've definitely been living among wolves, sugar," Tamika chuckled. "That was a growl to be proud of."

  Faith jumped and looked over at the table where the Enforcer was grinning at her. Tamika was just a touch shorter than Faith-- who wasn't exactly considered tall thanks to her mother's Asian genetics-- but that was no reason to dismiss the woman. Tamika was the Enforcer Second for a reason.

  "I thought I smelled coffee. There enough to share?" she asked.

  "Yeah." Faith got down another mug and took a cup over to her new friend, then fixed herself another.

  "What's got you over there doing wolf impressions, anyway?" Tamika asked after a long sip. The beads in her braided hair clacked when she turned to raise an eyebrow at Faith.

  Faith tensed, then sighed and forced her shoulders down. Tamika was an ally. Her friend for Pete's sake.

  "I was thinking about the mess at the lodge. We had Crissy. She was right there and it was my fault that she's gone again because I didn't keep us all together like I said I would. Aldric said we shouldn't relax until we were in the truck, but..."

  "Honey, woah! Slow down. Did you expect those vamps to show up and attack?" Tamika's gaze was sharp and her eyebrow cocked like she already knew the answer.

  "Of course not," Faith grumbled. She saw where Tamika was headed, but the guilt didn't care. She and Kaylee were here, safe, in the Frostwalker clan house, surrounded by security and video games and cupcake messes, and where was Crissy? Was she eating well? Was she scared? Injured?

  "Did you expect them to come swooping out of the trees with a pack of blighthounds of all damned things? You had a fraction of a second to make a decision, and you chose to protect the kids. I haven't met Crissy, but I've met her sister and I've met her daughter. I'm willing to bet real money that Crissy would rather you keep yourself and Kaylee safe than risk anything to protect her."

  Faith growled again, but there wasn't much force behind it.

  "It just makes me so... I feel like a terrible person, let alone a bad sister that we haven't found her yet. She's out there, somewhere, probably scared and if what we think is true, she's being held as a power source at some creepy vampire's lair! But here we are living in freaking luxury, making cupcakes!"

  "Do you think we're not looking?" Tamika frowned now, an expression so unusual on the woman that Faith paused before answering.

  "I..." She sucked her lips in between her teeth to keep her first reaction from being uttered. It wasn't fair to the Frostwalkers, and it wasn't kind. She finally settled for muttering "I just want my sister back."

  "I know, Sugar," Tamika said, smiling again. She drained her cup and stood to rinse it out and stack it in the dishwasher. "We'll find her. I can't wait to meet her."

  "I just want to give her the biggest hug ever and never let her be by herself ever again."

  Tamika laughed, throwing her head back. The laugh turned into a nearly evil cackle when she caught sight of the frosting on the ceiling. "Oh, Marc's going to enjoy that when he sees it! That red food coloring stains like crazy, there's gonna be a pink spot up there for years! Better go find him and let him know. He could use something to distract him a bit."

  "Yeah? Why's that? Pressing Frostwalker paperwork got him stressed out?" Faith didn't mean to sound quite so snarky, but if Marc wasn't working on finding Crissy, she really didn't want to hear about it right this moment. Which, of course, made her feel even worse.

  Tamika's eyebrows lifted. "You didn't hear?"


  "Hear what?"

  "There was an ambush this morning on one of the border patrols. Aldric went down to the clinic to check in with the sentry that was injured and Marc's been going nuts." Tamika rolled her eyes. "Ori and Kenya were there on the patrol to do some training, so it wasn't much of a contest, but they got in a few good blows before they were dispatched."

  "Oh! That's why Aldric went hurrying out when we started baking," Faith frowned. "I thought he was just trying to avoid the mess."

  "Honey, you know he wouldn't care about a little frosting in odd places." Tamika grinned and glanced back up at the pink glob on the ceiling. "I'm going to go check in on the kids then try to get a few things done. Sadly, bills don't care if you're in the middle of a pack war, they insist on getting paid anyway."

  "God. Don't remind me," Faith grumbled. Tamika laughed and tossed a grin over her shoulder on her way out of the kitchen, the bell mixed in with the beads tinkling cheerfully.

  Faith looked down at the last sip of coffee in her mug. She appreciated what Tamika had been trying to do. There wasn't much they could do to save Crissy until they knew where to look, so stressing herself out about it wasn't helping anyone. Not herself, not Kaylee, and definitely not Crissy.

  But... it also felt a bit like nobody was taking the search seriously. All she wanted was some hope. A direction to look in. She missed her sister and Kaylee needed her mother more than she needed a stressed out, anxious aunt.

  With a grunt she stood up. She snatched her cup up, drained the last of her coffee, then went to the sink to rinse it out. Once that was done she headed to Marc's office to see what exactly was going on.

  "–the freaking council. Of course, they're not going to do anything, but it's probably better to have the complaints on file before anything else happens," Marc was saying as she neared the door. Despite her better intentions, she stopped to listen for a moment. But it seemed that her rational mind held less sway over her actions that afternoon. “Now the Goldfang wolves are bringing hired vampires on their raids. This is ridiculous.”

  "I agree. Better to have the political bases covered. If Alpha Molin had any foresight he would have already contacted them, but I doubt that he does," Aldric said. "As long as they have the paper trail, it will be much easier to defend against any possible complaints he might think to lodge after the fact."

  "Assuming we don't kill him in combat first."

  Aldric's dry laugh told Faith he approved of that idea. "Think he would stop harassing our patrols if he was dead?"

  Sarah's stomach churned.

  He continued. "It is not as if the Council will take any actual steps, after all. They don't as a rule. And they have no authority to do so. All bark and no bite, unfortunately, as things stand."

  True enough," Marc snorted. "Badly set up on so many levels. If you're going to create a governing body, you've got to give them some actual authority. Still, it would be a good idea to get a paper trail on, well, on paper."

  There was a pause and Faith frowned. Why were they talking about bureaucracy? And what was this Council? Could they help find Crissy? Apparently, they couldn't even stop the Goldfangs from being so aggressive, so likely not.

  "The most urgent thing right now is to find where the ambushers came from and where they thought they would go afterward. No doubt they were there to glean information on our border patrols. Strength and timing and such."

  "Agreed." Marc sounded tired. "This damn pack war. Molin seems to think that if he takes our territory he'll suddenly get rich."

  "As we have established, he is not the brightest of leaders," Aldric said, chuckling. Marc's warm laugh joined in a moment later.

  Faith couldn't take it. Yes, the threat from the Goldfangs was important, but it wasn't wolves that had snatched Crissy at the lodge. They had made her a promise, and her brain had apparently moved from the relatively understandable tear-filled meltdown and headed straight for irrational ranting. Only Crissy and Aunt Lucy had witnessed her like this before.

  "And what do you have going to find my sister while you're both sitting around making fun of that jerk, hmm?" Faith stomped into the office and glared at Marc, who had the good sense to look surprised. It's not like both of them couldn't both hear and scent her around the corner if they had been paying any attention.

  "Faith, we--" Aldric started to say from the chair just behind her.

  "I heard what you were doing. You were both laughing at that idiot Goldfang alpha." She turned to glare at him. "Tamika told me that nobody was badly injured this morning, so why you're both in here cracking jokes about what's essentially a total non-issue of political posturing instead of doing something useful, like planning how to get rid of this distraction or where to look for Crissy I don't know. You promise me. You both promised me. You promised to do everything you could to find her, but you're just--" her voice cracked.

  Part of her brain was yelling at her that she was being both unfair and irrational. The rest of her was beyond reason.

  "And there's some kind of Government for you people? Some werewolf Supreme Court that you can take all this information to? Molin couldn't find his head with both hands and a map, but you're worried about political fallout of him attacking us? What about the political fallout of kidnapping my sister? Or the kids? Or trying to kidnap me? Hmm? Why haven't we asked this Council about Crissy?" Wow. Faith knew she was being unfair. She knew she was ranting half incoherently, and given the startled expressions on the men's faces she wasn't making a lot of sense, either, but she couldn't seem to stop the flow of words.

  "Faith, we--" Marc started to say something while she paused for breath.

  "No! I don't want to hear your excuses! I want to hear some sort of plan! I-- ugh!" Faith needed to get a damn grip, so she cut herself off completely, and growled-- growled-- at Aldric just like she had been growling in the kitchen, and stormed out of the room. She had to get a damn grip.

  2

  Aldric stared at the empty doorway for a long moment, at a complete loss for words. What on Earth had that all been about? Did she think that they were not searching for her sister? That they weren't doing everything in their power to find her? This was not a movie and they could not simply sit down and suddenly have the information they wanted. It took time.

  Did she not trust them or was there something else he was missing?

  "Well," Marc said, taking a deep breath. "She did warn us that she's good in the crisis, then breaks down later. I'm honestly surprised it took this long."

  Aldric blinked and turned his attention to his friend, who sat behind his desk and seemed less baffled than Aldric felt.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean, she's been through a hell of a lot in the last week and a half. Any one of the traumas she's lived through should have sent her spiraling, but she's been solid as any seasoned sentry. But her sister was kidnapped-- twice I might add, she was attacked by rogue werewolves in her own kitchen, she learned about the existence or werewolves and vampires. She has been threatened, attacked, caught in the middle of a flat-out battle, faced down paranormal crazies, and had her family's biggest secret revealed to a bunch of relative strangers." Marc huffed out a mirthless laugh. "I'm shocked that this is all the stress breakdown we've seen. I half expected her to take to her bed and go catatonic for a while. Kaylee's been having terrible nightmares. I know because I hear her whimpering when I check on them, until Jake crawls into the trundle bed with her. She never stays in her own room. I'd be shocked if Faith wasn't having nightmares, too."

  Aldric frowned. "I suppose when you put it that way, it makes sense." He glanced at the door. "In a manner of speaking."

  Marc raised an eyebrow at him. "What's your real worry here? You know better than to take those accusations to heart, and you know that she'll feel pretty awful for throwing them at us once she's had a few minutes to think. But you look upset now."

  Aldric took a deep breath. It was foolish and unreasonable. There was no need for him to feel
wounded by any of her words, nor by her attitude. He turned to his friend and shrugged. "There is no reason. I am fine."

  Marc snorted. "Nobody that says they're fine ever is." His friend peered at him. "All right. Go on."

  "What?"

  "Go talk to her. You’re obviously unhappy that she’s unhappy, and I think she could use the reassurance that we're not abandoning the search to play political footsie with that idiot Molin." Marc made shooing motions. "I'll get in touch with Leo and see if he's got any leads. You never know."

  Aldric blinked for a moment then stood and nodded. It was only moments before he was outside Faith's bedroom door, listening to the alternating angry grumbles and sniffled muttering. He knocked and the sounds ceased.

  "Faith? May I come in?"

  There was a long moment of silence, then a quiet. "Sure."

  He opened the door and saw her, slumped on the edge of her bed, her eyes red but dry.

  "I won't ask anything so foolish as are you all right but do you need some water? Some food?" He almost asked about coffee, but she had been consuming so much lately it was a shock that she slept at all.

  "No," she said. "I'm sorry about all that. I guess it all just bubbled up. Everyone is okay, right? Tamika said they were, but I didn't confirm it."

  Aldric hesitated, unsure if he should get too close, but Faith looked so miserable, slumped on her bed, not even looking up at him. A quiet sniffle reached his ears and he was across the room before he was aware of making the decision. He sat beside her and rubbed his hand over her shoulders.