Magic's Crown Read online

  Magic’s Crown

  Sela Carsen

  Contents

  About Magic’s Crown

  Dear Reader

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Not Quite the End…

  Final Epilogue

  Author Note

  Also by Sela Carsen

  About the Author

  About Magic’s Crown

  A wolf with three legs is still a wolf.

  * * *

  Javier Acosta Campos is a wounded warrior and wolf shifter who trains therapy dogs for other veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. He’s just moved to Nocturne Falls to start a training program at a very quirky animal shelter, and he’s fallen stupid in love with the local veterinarian.

  Medina Theron keeps telling herself she shouldn’t be thinking about men. Since her fiancé moved on to blonder pastures, she’s stayed busy as one of the only veterinarians in town who specializes in the treatment of magical creatures. But now that the new trainer at the animal rescue seems to always be around at just the right moment, he’s on her mind a lot.

  When the remnants of the family she didn’t know she had drag her into a web of trouble, Medina and her new familiar need help. Thankfully, there’s a three-legged shifter on duty, and Javi means to keep her safe. Even from himself.

  Dear Reader

  Dear Reader,

  * * *

  Nocturne Falls has become a magical place for so many people, myself included. Over and over I’ve heard from you that it’s a town you’d love to visit and even live in! I can tell you that writing the books is just as much fun for me.

  With your enthusiasm for the series in mind – and your many requests for more books – the Nocturne Falls Universe was born. It’s a project near and dear to my heart, and one I am very excited about.

  I hope these new, guest-authored books will entertain and delight you. And best of all, I hope they allow you to discover some great new authors! (And if you like this book, be sure to check out the rest of the Nocturne Falls Universe offerings.)

  For more information about the Nocturne Falls Universe, visit http://kristenpainter.com/sugar-skull-books/

  In the meantime, happy reading!

  * * *

  Kristen Painter

  MAGIC'S CROWN:

  A Nocturne Falls Universe Story

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 by Sela Carsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and was made possible by a special agreement with Sugar Skull Books, but hasn’t been reviewed or edited by Kristen Painter. All characters, events, scenes, plots and associated elements appearing in the original Nocturne Falls series remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Kristen Painter, Sugar Skull Books and their affiliates or licensors.

  Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author or Sugar Skull Books.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * *

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  Created with Vellum

  Chapter One

  Javier Acosta Campos rolled out of bed and dropped to the floor for a hundred push-ups. By number seventy, his shoulders were burning, and the small of his back felt like a clumsy acupuncturist was using him for practice.

  The moment he was done, he let himself hug the floor until he got his breath back. This part was always risky.

  “Ah! Don’t lick my ear! That’s disgusting.”

  It was part of the routine. Lando was a Belgian Malinois—a smaller, browner version of a German Shepherd. Every morning, he waited until Javi was too tired to ward him off, crawled off the bed, and licked his ear before going to stand at the door, waiting to be let out.

  Javi levered himself back onto the bed and grabbed a microfiber towel he kept nearby. Making sure the skin on what was left of his leg was completely dry of sweat, he slid the liner over the stump.With a few adjustments and clicks to be certain he was firmly settled into the socket of the blade-footed running leg, he got up to open the door for his buddy.

  While the retired military working dog went through his own morning routine of sniffing along the entire fence line to be sure no one had intruded on his territory overnight, Javi filled his water bottle and waited. Absently, he reached down to scratch at a minor itch at the edge of the liner.

  Life was a weird thing.

  Fifteen years ago, when he enlisted in the Air Force, he didn’t remember having much of a plan other than just moving forward. A few years later, he’d made plans, but the IED that took his left leg off below the knee had definitely thrown him off his stride.

  It had taken time to recover—not just from the physical injury, but the psychological trauma. Everything had changed. He’d planned to stay in until retirement and figure out the next step then. He’d been married and they’d planned to start a family. The marriage lasted until his discharge papers showed up.

  So much for his plans.

  But life, being weird, had a way of rolling on no matter what you lost along the path—a leg, a career, a wife.

  Now, he had a cool-looking leg for running, a new career, and… Yeah. No wife. Even a dog as great as Lando wasn’t quite the same as having someone waiting for you at the end of the day with a kiss—one that didn’t resemble getting slapped in the face with a bucket of slime.

  He wiped his ear on the shoulder of his T-shirt again, just to make sure there wasn’t any dog slobber left on it.

  The little house he’d purchased sat right next to the running path that led through Nocturne Falls, Georgia—“Welcome to Nocturne Falls—where every day is Halloween!”

  It wasn’t the goofy tourist attraction that had brought him this far away from home, though. It was an opportunity created by the local animal sanctuary. He’d moved here to start up an adjacent program to train therapy dogs for veterans and first responders who suffered from PTSD or traumatic brain injuries.

  It was a shot he couldn’t throw away. Plus, there were other bonuses he’d discovered since he’d moved here. For instance, the veterinarian who volunteered her time at the shelter was pretty much the most perfect woman he’d ever seen in his life.

  Dr. Medina Theron was a teeny, tiny badass. She looked like a fairy princess and had the temper of a mountain troll. Even when she wasn’t actively angry, she was still a stern, no-nonsense kind of woman, though she could be sweet, too. He’d seen her comfort people when their pets were ill, injured, or when they had to take that final walk.

  He’d also watched her rage when sad, malnourished, frightened animals were rescued. With the pets she was calm and even, but the moment she left the building he figured that if she ever met the people who mistreated their animals, they’d better run for their lives. But if Medina had a little attitude… Well, she hadn’t seen him go furry yet.

  Since the day he’d first seen her at the animal shelter, he’d started tripping over his own tongue every time he got near her. Even his mostly dormant wolf stirred when she was near, though just barely. Which left him reduced to jogging past her office at the same
time she arrived every morning just to get a glimpse of her.

  Silent flirting… borderline stalking… whatever.

  Javi glanced at his watch. If they left now, they’d get there in time to see her arrive at her favorite parking space.

  Lando finished his recon, slurped up some water, then waited for Javi at the front door as if his human was the one holding up the show. “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”

  They started out at a slow jog. This late in the fall, there was finally a snap of chill in the air, and he let it wash over him. Javi was Nevada born and bred, but this pretty spot in Georgia actually boasted four seasons, even if summer was still the longest.

  In only a few steps he eased into the rhythm of running. It had taken about a year to fully heal from his injury and get accustomed to wearing a prosthesis. He’d progressed from a basic leg to one that let him move almost as if he’d never lost it in the first place. The cool, new running blade had been fitted at the Prosthetics Clinic at the VA hospital. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the freedom of his morning run until the first time he’d jogged around the hospital. He’d come home and buried his face in Lando’s ruff, and the big dog had stood and absorbed the wetness that had surely come from sweat running into his eyes.

  Without his sturdy friend, he wasn’t sure he’d have survived this long, but the dog had been a lifesaver. When he was approached by a fellow veteran-turned-dog-trainer to see if he wanted to help out with their therapy animal program, he’d accepted.

  The irony of his job wasn’t lost on him now, anymore than it had been when he’d become a handler in the Air Force. A werewolf who trained dogs sounded like the punchline to a bad joke.

  The magic in his blood wasn’t the same as the shifters who populated Nocturne Falls. He was from a line that had been in the Americas since long before the Spaniards landed, one that blended human and animal in a way that was completely unlike other shifters in Nocturne Falls. Javi didn’t become a sleek and beautiful wolf like in the pretty, sparkling movies for teenage girls.

  He became a monster.

  As a human, he was a couple of inches under six feet. But as a werewolf, he was nearly eight feet tall with four—well, three—sets of claws and fangs designed to protect himself and his pack and destroy his enemies.

  At least, he’d been able to before his injury. In the years since he’d come home, he hadn’t shifted once—hadn’t been able to, and hadn’t wanted to. It was like his beast had retreated into the very back of his mind and gone to sleep. He felt no call to hunt, and it was almost a relief. Almost.

  There were times when the moon was full and he heard the howls of the Nocturne Falls shifters that he wished he was out there, too. Not hunting, not after anything for blood, just for the freedom of running under the pale lunar glow.

  But his wolf didn’t budge, so Javi just kept doing what he was trained to do.

  He thought he’d gotten lucky to be able to adopt Lando when he’d they’d retired from the K9 program, but the therapy dog training had been an unexpected wonder.

  Javi knew the sensation of being completely lost after separation. Even without the injury and the divorce, he would have felt adrift. Too many former military and first responders were left in that fog, and if eighty pounds of well-trained, loving canine could be the thing that stood between a suffering veteran and the decision to end it all, Javi was all in.

  When the Nocturne Falls training job had been offered, he had jumped on it. It wasn’t that he was unhappy back in Nevada, but he’d become increasingly restless. Even with his grandmother there, it didn’t feel like home anymore. It was just the place he’d gone to lick his wounds. He wasn’t the man—or the wolf—he’d been when he’d left for the Air Force, and the very familiarity of his hometown had started to close in on him. This move was exactly what he’d needed.

  Best of all, he thought as the jogging path curved to run past the parking lot of the local veterinarian’s office, I get to see Medina nearly every day.

  He slowed down to a walk as her sparklingly clean, white SUV pulled in and parked. He’d seen her driving it around town, and he figured she had to have that seat in its highest setting just to see over the dashboard. It was, frankly, a little terrifying to be on the road with her. She climbed out and slid down to the ground, and he realized her running board was gone. The driver’s side of the truck was also pitted and scraped, which it hadn’t been three days ago when he’d seen her last.

  “Doc? Everything okay?”

  She turned and her face softened a little in a small smile. “Mr. Acosta-Campos. Out running, I see.”

  Lando came back from snuffling in the grass to greet Medina with a paw out to shake. She took the paw and greeted him, too. “Smell anything interesting today, Lando?”

  The dog shoved his nose into her hip and grinned, tongue hanging out.

  “You know you can call me Javi, Doc. What happened to your truck?” He was trying to be patient, but the damage was worse up close. There were places where the metal was so thin he thought there might be actual holes in it.

  “Oh, that. Katya has a new creature—a bonnacon.”

  Katya Leonov was a sweet, shy woman doing extraordinary work. She had established the animal shelter where he worked in Nocturne Falls, and rescued not only mundane animals, but any supernatural creatures who needed her help.

  “I’ve had the last couple of days off. What’s a bonnacon?”

  “Looks like a small bull, but when it gets scared it, umm… sprays.”

  Javi lifted a brow. “Sprays what?”

  She shifted from one booted foot to another. He’d never seen her look uncertain before, as if she wasn’t sure how he’d react. “Acidic poop.”

  He looked from her to the truck and back, considering the damage. “Acidic poop.”

  She nodded, her chin down enough that he could see the golden gleam of the fine chain she always wore around her neck. Medina looked up at him through thick and curling eyelashes. Javi had known he was a goner the minute he’d noticed them. He’d never once noticed his ex-wife’s eyelashes.

  “A small bull that sprays manure that can eat through metal.”

  His hand curled into a fist at his side.

  She nodded again, her gaze—one eye the green of mountain pine, the other like black coffee—upturned and glittering with an enthusiasm he knew she rarely showed to others. “Pretty cool, huh? They’re really rare, even in their natural habitat, and now there’s one in Nocturne Falls. I’d only ever read about them in bestiaries in vet school.”

  Javi let her words flow over him while he tried not to lose his… poop. She was so excited over this new animal, and he didn’t want to squash her feelings, but the fact that she could have been badly hurt shook him hard.

  He finally calmed down enough to ask, “Where were you when this happened?”

  The flush that stained her cheeks warned him he wasn’t going to like her answer. During the four months he’d lived in Nocturne Falls, they’d become friendly colleagues, even though he wanted more. He hoped it wasn’t just wishful thinking that had him imagining that she’d gotten a little friendlier than just colleagues in the last few weeks, but he didn’t want to push too hard. In the meantime, he didn’t think it was out of line to be concerned that she had nearly been melted to death by bullsh… poop.

  She waved her hand nonchalantly, though she watched him out of the corner of her eye. “In the truck. Good thing it’s pretty sturdy. I had to run it through the car wash twice, though.”

  He ran his hand over the driver’s side door until he came to a spot where his finger actually went through the metal. There was a choice to be made here. He could either be incredibly angry that she’d been in danger, or thankful that she was safe.

  Javi reached out a hand, and she looked at it for a second, her perfect brows furrowed. When she finally put her fingers in his, he held them just tightly enough to memorize the imprint of her skin on his. “I’m glad you’re okay, D
oc.”

  He tried to tamp down the protective instinct that wanted to wrap her in cotton and keep her away from anything that could hurt her, but that was a no-go. He had to trust her to stay safe. Her job was dangerous, but she was good at it, and he’d be a real jerk if he thought he could stop her from fulfilling her dreams, no matter the risk.

  He held her hand only for a moment, then let go. He’d liked her for so long, he didn’t want to scare her off now. “Going back out to the shelter today?”

  Medina nodded. “I need to look in on him again. He got a nasty slice on his hindquarters from somewhere and I want to make sure it’s not getting infected. Plus, Katya said she’s got some new guests that need to be checked out.” She paused, and her cheeks pinkened. “Are you going to be there?”

  “Yeah. Pups and people to train.” It was hard to pull back, but he did it. “I’ll see you later.”

  He waved and pushed off to finish his run.

  The warmth of her hand in his lingered.

  Chapter Two

  She folded her fingers into a fist to hold onto the sensation of his skin.

  They’d known each other for a few months now and worked closely together, Medina reasoned. It was nothing more than a friendly gesture. He was glad she was safe.

  To be truthful, she was, too. Blue, as Katya had decided to name the bonnacon, was really a sweetheart of a bull. Once he’d calmed down, he’d been very gentle. Short of leg and long of hair, Blue was about the size of a Highland bull—small enough even she could see over his shoulders. But watching her truck melt while she sat inside it had been one of the less pleasant experiences of her career.