The Coven And The Red Moon

CHAPTER ONE

The Coven And The Red Moon by Yavid Zilla

THE COVEN AND THE RED MOON

The werewolf's fate rested in the witch's hands...

Mira Marley is a quirky witch who's on a quest to complete a dark spell that will grant her immortality-at the expense of a live vampire's heart. She's ready to conjure that dangerous and life-changing spell when she meets a lone werewolf and beekeeper.

Ivan Gunnolf has secrets of his own. His alpha allure is obvious, but Mira senses that there's something more to him than his raw sexiness. When Ivan entrusts her with a devastating revelation, Mira has to make a choice. Will she sacrifice the most potent magic she's ever worked on to be with the man she loves?

Her fingers clutched his shirt and the connection zinged his every nerve ending, sending scintillating tingles all over his skin.

It was as if together they created a sort of sensual electricity. And Ivan couldn't get enough of her mouth, her tongue, her sighs.

Pressing a hand against her back, he coaxed her forward and bowed to continue the kiss. Her moan said everything he was feeling: yes, yes, all the yeses in the world. This tiny witch felt so right in his arms. He had to thank the gods for putting him in her backyard, even if it had been a strange night that had scared the hell out of him.

Chapter 1

Feet floating up so her toes peeked out of the frothy bubble bath, Mira Marley wiggled the little pink beads as she sang to the music filling her bathroom. She sang along with the Meghan Trainor tune about loving herself and not having time for a man because she was all about having fun. A fitting theme song for Mira at the moment.

Guys were great, but she didn't have the time to focus on a relationship if her plans to achieve immortality came to fruition. A simple spell could prolong her life a hundred years, guaranteed. But to actually perform that spell-which involved drinking the blood from a live vampire's beating heart? She'd been avoiding the spell for years, but she couldn't do that anymore. It was time to honor her departed mother, and to take back her power.

Baths were a common ritual for her in the evenings, after a long day of work at the brewery, or after she'd flexed into a few yoga moves and watched an episode of Bones on Netflix. Born a witch, yet pretty darn disappointed she'd not been born a mermaid, Mira honored her water magic by feeding her body's innate craving for water. Surely she owned the biggest bathroom in the city.

It was hexagonal, tiled like a Moroccan temple and the big round marble bathtub sat at the center of it all. It was the size of a hot tub, but there were no bubble jets in this tub beyond the sensory explosions from her homemade bath bombs.

Singing loudly, she blew a handful of bubbles skyward and laughed when some landed in her pinned-up red hair. The water was starting to cool, and she'd been in for forty-five minutes. Her fingers and toes were pruned, providing her traction-if she were an amphibian. Or a mermaid.

With a reluctant sigh, she rose from her watery haven and reached for a toasty towel hung over the towel warmer. It wasn't the wet porcelain tile floor that almost caused her to slip upon exiting the bath-it was the scream.

And a very familiar scream at that.

"Really?" Mira wrapped the towel around her ample curves and padded wet tracks to the back window to peer out, though she knew she couldn't see into her neighbor Mrs. Anderson 's yard from here. The windows were also fogged.

She often mentally compared her neighbor to Mrs. Kravitz, the nosy neighbor on the 1960s TV show Bewitched. They didn't look at all similar, but they possessed the same snoopy, and unwelcome, curiosity and annoying voices.

Yet another scream, this one curling the hairs on the back of Mira's neck, prompted her to use the side door in the bathroom that walked out onto the patio.

Pushing open the screen door, she leaned out into the cool spring air and scanned her backyard. It was close to midnight, yet her yard was always illuminated from the house light above the door where she stood, and the dozen solar lights pushed into the lawn at five-foot intervals that framed the backyard.

Suddenly something ran into view. A deer? Wildlife always dashed through the neighborhood yards. Raccoons, beavers, deer, once even a black bear.

Mira stepped out onto the bamboo patio rug, holding the screen door open with two fingers. She peered into the night, thinking her species, witches, had gotten ripped off because they didn't have cool night vision like vampires and werewolves. Suddenly an animal stopped, twenty feet away, in the middle of her yard.

She recognized the creature with an ease that made her heart sink.

"A werewolf," she gasped.

Removing her hand from the screen door to put her fingers to her mouth, she suddenly felt a cool breeze skim her bare skin. More skin than should have been exposed. The towel had gotten caught in the door and fallen away, leaving her standing naked beneath the house light, unable to form words as she met the werewolf's golden gaze.

The creature, who in fully shifted form was half wolf, half man, thrust back his shoulders and lifted his chest, looking ready to howl. But when his gold eyes dragged away from hers and down her body...

Mira tried to cover herself as she actually said, "Eek!"

The wolf snorted and a low growling noise rumbled in the night. It didn't sound threatening. In fact, to her it sounded...amorous.

Mrs. Anderson 's scream sounded again. It was the catalyst to setting the werewolf off in a dash out of the yard.

Released from the spell of the creature's piercing gaze, Mira grabbed the door pull and opened it, reaching for the towel and quickly wrapping it around her body.

Just in the nick of time because from around the corner of her backyard appeared a policeman, and in his wake, Mrs. Anderson.

"Did you see it?" Mrs. Anderson, wrapped in a thick white terry robe, scampered over to the patio, the ears on her bunny

Tugging the towel up higher and this time clasping it firmly, she stood before the elderly policeman, whom she knew lived on the other side of Mrs. Anderson. Mira nodded. "Uh, yes?"

"I told you!" Mrs. Anderson slapped the policeman's back, who shrugged and winced. He was accustomed to answering Mrs. Anderson 's cries of wolf at all hours of the day.

But had this been a true cry of wolf? Best not to let humans know that.

"It was a deer," Mira hastily tossed out. "Or maybe a moose. Yes, I'm sure that's what it was."

"A moose?" Mrs. Anderson jammed her bony fists to her hips. "It was Bigfoot!"

"All right, all right," the policeman said, placating his neighbor with a pat to her back. "Miss Marley here says it was a moose. She's got very good eyesight, and her backyard is well lit. So if she says it was a moose, I believe her. Let's go home now, Mrs. Anderson. Leave Miss Marley to...her bath."

To his credit he didn't eye her blatantly, only tipped a nod to her and turned Mrs. Anderson around, walking her back to her yard. All the way they argued over why a moose would be wandering through the tulips when it had very obviously been Bigfoot.

Mira stepped inside the bathroom and closed the door and locked it. She peered out the now-defogged window, attempting to sight the werewolf. Perhaps spy a wolfish shadow backlit by the moonlight.

Whispering a protection spell to encompass her yard, she sent it out with a blown kiss.

Why had a werewolf been wandering through the neighborhood? That wasn't common. Too risky. And it wasn't even the full moon. Werewolves were much smarter than that. They knew to stay away from humans when shifted.

"It was a good thing for him I scared him off."

Mira winced. She had scared the wolf away with her naked body? Not one of her finest moments.

On the other hand, that look it had given her. Definitely animal, but also...maybe kind of...sexual.

She shook her head. "You're a silly witch. Just be thankful you didn't flash the whole neighborhood. Ha!"

The music now blared Taylor Swift. Dropping her towel, Mira performed a hip shimmy as she reached to drain the tub and then blew out the candles one by one, blessing the water goddess Danu as she did so.

* * *

Three nights later, Mira stayed late after her shift at The Decadent Dames. She and her three witch friends owned the microbrewery in Anoka. Mira was the master brewer. They all brewed and worked shifts and took turns scheduling, but Mira was the early riser, so she generally arrived around six in the morning to start the day's brew and finished about an hour before they opened in the afternoon. Today, she'd gotten a late start so had finished the brew hours after opening.

A local band that covered current pop hits was set up before the front windows and the house was packed. At the moment, the lead singer belted out a cover of Meghan Trainor's "NO," which was an anthem to a woman not needing a man.

Singing the chorus, "Untouchable, untouchable," Mira danced by herself amid the crowd on the dance floor, arms thrust high and hips swaying her short red-and-blue-tartan skirt. Nothing felt better than a beer buzz and dancing. And she had new, red, five-inch heels to break in, so much dancing was required. Tossing her bright red corkscrew curls over a shoulder, she let out an exhilarated hoot.

Eryss, the brewery's principal owner, danced up to Mira. She and her boyfriend, a former witch hunter who lived in Santa Cruz, California, split their time between cities during the year and soon she'd be headed for the sunny West Coast. Her friend's long skirts dusted the hardwood floor and she grasped Mira's hands and the twosome danced for a few seconds.

"You look happy," Cerys said over the noise.

"I am! I'm always happy!"

"It's contagious!" Then Eryss leaned in to speak close at Mira 's ear. "Did you notice the hunk at the bar who has been eyeing you up fiercely for the last ten minutes?"