Magical Midlife Madness (Leveling Up #1)(71)

He huffed and shook his head, the laugh not quite breaking the surface. “I told him about this place when we were at Agnes’s house, waiting for the forgetful potion. I wanted to make sure you had a place to go if things…heated up.”

“Oh.” I frowned. I hadn’t realized he was serious about the whole secret thing. “Thanks. We needed it.”

Silence sifted down between us for a moment, broken only by a bird twittering in the new day and Mr. Tom bickering with Niamh about something within the cabin.

“What comes next?” I finally asked, my stomach in knots thinking about it.

“We’re all waiting on you for that one. This is your show. We’re merely the players.”

I didn’t waste his time asking why that was. I knew why—that house. That magic. My arrival had thrown everything into disarray.

“Is it so much to ask for a quiet life?” I murmured.

“Didn’t you have a quiet life? And yet, you came here. Maybe a quiet life isn’t your thing.”

“I don’t know how to live a loud life.”

He settled, sitting cross-legged, his hands entwined in his lap. “I was exactly the opposite. All I knew was a loud life when I decided to settle under my brother’s thumb and learn. I was going crazy the whole time, desperate to start a bar fight for no reason. I hunted more than was normal. Or prudent. I kept our whole city and the neighboring town in meat, and it still wasn’t enough. I hated to leave my family, but I was happy to be free.”

“Why’d you come here? Why’d you come to the town that houses Ivy House? Were you drawn to the magic?”

This time he did laugh, humorlessly. “I didn’t even know about Ivy House when I settled here. I was wandering. Town to town, through the wood—I came up over the Sierra Mountains. The cold doesn’t bother me. I randomly stopped in O’Briens. No reason for it—it was late, I was tired, and I figured I’d grab a drink and find somewhere to sleep. This town was the closest, magical or otherwise.

“I hadn’t even finished my first drink when a commotion exploded in the bar. Yelling and tussling—I ignored it at first, because it had nothing to do with me and I didn’t know anything about this town. I didn’t want to get thrown in jail or held up by some mage. But it quickly became apparent that the situation was no good. If there was law in the town, it wasn’t stepping in like it should.”

“What was the problem?”

“A young shifter—a fox—was being used for sport. Instead of being chased by fat men on horses with dogs, he was being hunted by a pack of young wolf shifters in a training exercise. The fox kid ducked into the bar to get help, and the organizers of the hunt wanted to get him out and get him running so the wolves could track and tackle him.”

“Tackle him?”

“It’s a nice way of saying what they actually do. After tackling.”

I grimaced in horror. “That’s legal?”

“No, it’s outlawed, but some organizations don’t want to change their customs and don’t much worry about the outside world. As I watched, I recognized the majority of the people in the bar were clearly uncomfortable but doing nothing. They were afraid to stand up for the kid. They were afraid to create waves with the organization. Organizations like that have money and power. Their influence is far reaching.”

“You found a way to get out of the slow lane,” I surmised.

His gaze found mine, something unreadable in their depths. “Exactly. I found a worthy outlet. And I ran at it with all my pent-up aggression. I…sent a strong message. A message I knew would be received badly. I stuck around, waiting for the organization to come to town and quell my uprising. When they came, they came hard. Harder than I’d expected. Not harder than I could handle, though. I met the challenge. I lost myself to it.”

He paused, staring out at the water. I waited in silence, knowing he needed to tell his story. Given he had no friends, and he was a gruff man clearly slow to trust, I doubted he’d talked about this before.

“The fight was vicious. It was brutal. They brought shifters and mages—I was outnumbered twelve to one. But I had a lot of pain I needed to work through. A lot of uncertainty in my past. Hell, I’m unbalanced. I told you. I let my dark side, as you called it, have free rein.”

“What happened?” I asked softly.

“I didn’t send them to the hospital. I sent them to the morgue. Every last one of them. I made a statement.”

“And that ended it?”

He chuckled darkly. “Nope. They sent more for the second wave, asking for my head on a spike. Offering a reward for it. By this time, my name was being circulated around the shifter community. People were talking. Word reached my brother, and he offered to send aid.” He shook his head. “But by that time, fire burned deep within me. I’d found…a purpose. I’d found a place where I was needed. But I’d also found some peace. I faced the second wave alone again, but this time I offered a way out. They could go in peace, as long as they left the corrupt organization that employed them, or they could stay and fight and find their own heads on spikes. Half walked away. The other half…”

“Please tell me you didn’t actually put their heads on spikes.”

“No. I’m not that sort of man. But I did maim them for life. I didn’t kill anyone, but I made sure they’d never fight again. The organization they came from wasn’t so kind.”