Magical Midlife Love (Leveling Up #4) - K.F. Breene Page 0,1

awful smile.

“Right place at the right time.” His eyes twinkled with malice.

“You’ll pay for this,” I seethed.

“No I won’t. I accepted an approved job.”

The older woman passed us by, her pleasant smile turning to a look of alarm when she noticed the knife. I’d picked a terrible location to fail at my magic. With any luck she was magical, and the only person she’d tattle to was Austin. I didn’t feel like lying to the police. Again.

“If you hit back, it’ll be against town law, and the alpha will have to put you in your place. He’s made it very clear he doesn’t play favorites. He won’t ruin his reputation by ignoring an attack on one of his people…” Sasquatch’s smile was triumphant. “Not even for you.”

I gritted my teeth. With hard work, plus help from Austin and Edgar—gardener, vampire, amateur doily maker, and interpreter of Ivy House’s magical books—I had turned the tide in my magical ability. Austin and I were now about even in power. If he tried to cow me for knocking this dirty butthead around, it would be a well-matched battle.

I didn’t want to put Austin in that position, though. His pack was barely contained chaos right now. Or so Niamh had told me. He had said he needed space from our friendship, which kept skirting the line of something more, and although we trained together every day, we hadn’t had a conversation that wasn’t directly related to training in a month and a half. Niamh, on the other hand, still visited his bar nearly every night, and she kept me up to date on the latest goings-on. Everyone had heard rumors of the great Austin Steele, the fierce polar bear shifter alpha, and shifters were flocking to O’Briens from all over the U.S. and Canada—some even came from other continents. They came to bask in his power, to (hopefully) share in his prestige. And some of them simply came to satisfy their curiosity, wondering if the rumors were true. Wondering if he couldn’t be beaten.

Whenever someone challenged Austin Steele, that curiosity was quickly sated.

His primary objective in securing this territory was to protect me. He was building a castle around my keep. I would not spit in his face by going against the laws that he needed to uphold to run this town. He was my alpha here, just as I was his alpha on Ivy House soil.

“You may not pay for this now, but you will pay for it,” I ground out, fisting my hands, bracing myself. “I’ll find a way that doesn’t violate the town law.”

“Yeah, right. Whatever.”

Terror constricted my chest as he shifted his weight and poised. His muscles bunched and that knife sped toward me, choking me up. The point pierced my side, a momentary flare of bright white pain before I snubbed out the feeling with magic. The blade squelched as he drove it all the way in, the hilt bumping against the circle of crimson quickly expanding on my white shirt.

There he paused, his glinting eyes connecting with mine. I distantly felt Austin drawing nearer, walking up the street, but the usual fluttering of my stomach was absent. Because I had a blade embedded in it.

“Well?” I asked quietly, anger flowering in my middle. “Do you plan to pull it out, or are you trying to give me rust poisoning?”

“That’s not even a thing for magical people, Jane.” He let go of the hilt and pulled his hand back, joy soaking into his features even as blood soaked my shirt. He clearly didn’t intend on pulling the knife out himself.

I didn’t feel the blade, and I was already working on damage control with my healing magic, but that didn’t stop the primal part of me from cringing in dread. A deep part of me still connected a stabbing with a grave. My mind edged into survival mode, each second that dangerous weapon stayed lodged in my flesh pumping out another wave of adrenaline.

I could easily pull it out, sure. I wouldn’t feel it. But half the time it didn’t hurt to work out splinters, either, and digging those out with a sewing needle had always been beyond me.

“Pull it out,” I said through clenched teeth, my hands shaking, not daring to look down at it again. “There’s nothing in the rules about you getting to leave the knife in.”

“Exactly. There’s nothing in the rules about leaving the knife in…or pulling it out, either.” Sasquatch just looked at me with