Coven by Lacey Weatherford

up married so young. But we were already
bound together magically, also. Marriage was inevitable. There was
no way it wouldn’t have happened.”
    “So, if I go out and bind myself to someone,
Dad will be okay with him sneaking into my room to sleep with me
every night? And I can marry him right away since I’m already two
years older than you were when you and dad got married? Dad will be
okay with all of this?”
    “I think it’s quite safe to say that your
Dad will castrate any guy he ever finds in your room. I don’t think
he will be nearly as generous as my parents were.”
    “But why? I’m eighteen already. That’s so
not fair. Legally I could live on my own right now, you know.”
    “He knows what guys are thinking,
sweetheart. He’s been in that place.”
    “He’s still in that place,” I reminded her
and she actually blushed.
    “Do you want to move out and live on your
own?” An ever so slight wrinkle of concern appeared between her
brows, showing my comment made her nervous; but her question gave
me pause.
    Did I want to live on my own?
    My thoughts immediately drifted to the local
demon coven. It would be stupid for me to do anything of the sort
with them in the area. I’d be a sitting duck and all for what? So
some guy could sleep with me? I hadn’t even kissed a guy, yet, so
that seemed like it would be jumping the gun a bit.
    “No. Regardless of how irritated I might get
about Dad and his extreme overprotectiveness, I do love him and
have no desire to watch his head explode if I gave him news like
that.”
    “Just give him time, Kenna. He’ll warm up
and come around eventually. Don’t forget he’s been living in the
middle of a forest for almost two decades with you. He’ll get the
hang of normal life after a while, and he won’t seem so ‘out
there’.”
    “I’m just happy we were able to convince him
to move. That was a feat several years in the making. I didn’t
think he was ever going to agree.”
    “See? You’ve already won one big battle.
Just give him time.”
    Yeah, one battle that I’d immediately lose
if he had any clue of demons around. I had to prove that they
weren’t a threat, somehow. I mean, yes, Seth said they’d been
trying to recruit him for their coven, but they could’ve just
attacked him and forced him to comply; so maybe there was hope. The
family had a respected business in the community, too. It wasn’t
like they could go around killing people whenever they wanted. That
would draw too much attention. Maybe they were even more refined
and in control than the Cummings family had been.
    Vance Cummings, not Mangum, was the name my
dad was born with. When his mom, my grandma, Krista, discovered
that my grandpa, Damien, had been regularly drinking my dad’s blood
and using him to perform dark magic, she’d run off with my dad and
changed their last name to avoid detection. After Damien had been
defeated, or so they thought, his parents, my grandparents, stepped
in, trying to use my dad’s then uncontaminated blood to steal the
Awakening for themselves. After they failed, one of my dad’s
cousins, Catriona, had tried to kill both of my parents so she
could claim the Awakening that was inside them. Fortunately, Cat
met her own demise, as well; but the celebration was short lived
when Damien reappeared, touting that he had regenerative
capabilities and he’d genetically passed them on to my dad. He even
killed my dad, just to prove that he’d come back to life.
    To say I was the direct descendent of
demonic lunatics would be an understatement. And even though my dad
had eventually completed his forced demonic conversion, somehow
he’d managed to keep hold of some thread of sanity inside himself.
According to the stories my mom had told me, it had been very
touch-and-go with him on several occasions. So while he sometimes
irritated me with his choices, I knew, without a doubt, he always
had his family’s best interest at heart.
    In fact, he’d