A Final Touch: The Complete Series, page 1
A Final Touch: The Complete Series
Odette C. Bell
www.odettecbell.com
Copyright
A Final Touch: The Complete Series
© 2025 Odette C. Bell
All characters in this publication are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover art stock photos licensed from Depositphotos.
Blurb
4 books. One volume. Binge the complete Final Touch Series series.
Magic entered the world twenty years ago. I was born to kill it.
I’ve spent my life hiding in the shadows of Mythos City, terrified that someone will discover my secret – a single touch from my skin strips a magical practitioner of their power. Permanently. But when my sister is threatened, I step out of the shadows and straight into the path of Jace, the city’s most ruthless Alpha. He doesn’t arrest me. He claims me. Now, I’m under his "protection" in a compound filled with wolves who want me dead.
But the Alpha isn’t the only one watching. A shadow faction known as the Kings is rising, and they know exactly what I am. They don't want to arrest me, either. They’d prefer a weapon. And Jace is the only thing standing in their way.
Tropes: forced proximity, grumpy/sunshine (with a lethal twist), hidden identity/power, and protective Alpha.
• Heat: Slow-burn fade-to-black.
• Action: High.
A Final Touch: The Complete Series
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
A Final Touch Book One Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
A Final Touch Book Two Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
A Final Touch Book Three Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
A Final Touch Book Four Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Sample
A Final Touch Book One
Chapter 1
“Nothing will go wrong as long as you trust me and abide by the golden rule,” my sister said, leaning against her desk with her magic-covered hands pointed at me.
Sighing and thumbing my rain-slicked hair from my face, I shrugged. Long brown locks slid down my wet yellow jacket. I’d stupidly ridden my bike here through a thunderstorm. It still pelted outside, buckets of rain splattering against the large plate-glass window behind my sister’s penthouse office. It offered a perfect view of downtown Mythos City. You could see right along the main boulevard toward the central shopping district. Several buildings stood out like naked people in a crowd. While all the other places had the old-world charm you’d expect of a 2,000-year-old metropolis, three central towers – made of steel, glass, and concrete – looked like stripped-back fingers reaching for the sky.
They belonged to the Central Magic District, the governing body of all practitioners in Mythos City and beyond. They were new, because magic was too.
I sighed, running a hand up and down my arm, dislodging the water and dripping it guiltily onto my sister’s carpet. How much I wished to return to a time without magic. Unlike the new generation born into a heady world of power, force, and privilege, I was old enough to remember when magic swept over the world 20 years ago.
My sister was a stunning six feet tall with penetrating brown eyes, a pristine cream pencil suit, and an official Court Counsel pin sitting above her left breast. We currently stood in her office at her law firm, one of the hardest-hitting in the city.
“You look distracted,” she muttered, a tight frown marking her ruddy red lips. She must’ve recently reapplied her lipstick. Or she’d run over it with a coat of sealant, considering she got to work at 5 AM sharp every day. Now, according to the clock in the corner of her vibrant, big computer screen, it was already pushing 6 PM. It was technically spring. You couldn’t tell it from the deluge splattering over downtown like a coughing fit.
“Huh?” I responded, remembering she’d spoken to me. With eyes locked on the windows, I wished I was elsewhere.
Like back 20 years ago before my whole life was dumped in the bin.
Karen rolled her eyes, tucked her sleeves further up, walked around the desk, and gently grabbed my shoulder. “Hey,” her voice dropped to a soothing tone, “it’s going to be okay.”
My sharp green eyes lurched up to her. Lips twisting, I grunted, “You keep promising that.”
“And it keeps being okay.” In a much lighter voice, she turned and gestured at the office then swept a hand along the long boulevard outside. “You’re free to walk around, ride your bike in downpours – which is stupid by the way – and slip under the radar. Nobody has any idea what you’re capable of. You’re safe. So it’s okay.”
Watching her as a flash of lightning blasted overhead, I managed to shrug.
Her definition of safe was different from mine. Without Karen, I wouldn’t be here, and while she was the high-powered lawyer, I was the low-income freelance journalist who had to ride her bike in monsoons.
I’d be dead without her. Or worse.
A tight shiver ran over my shoulders faster than another blast of lightning across the sky above.
Her fingers tightened around my arm and slipped quickly to my elbow, scrunching against the soggy polyamide raincoat. “Firstly, we need to get you a new jacket. Secondly, stop thinking about it. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows what you can do.”
“How much longer do you honestly think you can keep me hidden?”
“I’ve kept you hidden for 20 years. Nobody has an inkling about your powers. I’ve got this. Now take off your jacket.” Frowning at me kindly, she gestured with a quick flick of her hand.
Feeling crappy for soaking her plush cream carpet, I gently unzipped my jacket and slipped it off. After I hooked it over the back of a metal chair, I yanked up my blouse underneath, pulling it all the way up to my shoulders to reveal the curve of my back.
Karen clucked her tongue, clicked a step forward on her heel, and carefully ran a warm hand down my spine. She stopped in the dead center, and a cold shiver bit through my flesh.
“… How is it?” My voice caught in my throat.
“It’s not as bad as I thought. It’s holding up okay…. Wait. Hold on.” Her words quickened, slurring together. Flattening her palm on my back, a charge of her unique, powerful magic sank into the skin.
Screwing my eyes shut, I tried to tune out the stabs of pain pulsing through my body as Karen tried to counteract my magic.
If she weren’t a family member, she couldn’t dare touch me like this. Nobody else in the city could lay a bare hand flat on my skin and hope to get away with it.
“What have you been doing?” she asked.
“Nothing.” My voice tightened with defensiveness.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” she sighed in the kind of practiced tone you used against delinquent criminals.
“Karen—”
“Hey,” tapping me on the shoulder, she waited until I turned, and she shot me a grin. It was all cheeks and teeth, all rumpled nose and total kindness.
It made my shoulders shake and loosen.
“It’s okay, sis,” she continued. “I’ve got this. I’m not accusing you of anything, and I certainly don’t think you’re running around trying to strip powers from people. I can promise you, you’ll never do that. It’s not in you. But I think you must be under a lot of stress, and that’s affecting your magic seal. Is it your finances? Let me help you out. I c an set you up with a job here anytime.”
“I don’t want to work for you. You’d be a mean boss.”
Karen laughed as she concentrated on redoing the charms that kept my latent magic from forcing its way out at a single touch.
While the world had changed in incredible ways over the past 20 years, not everybody had benefited equally from the fact magic was now real. Or should I say, that magic had now been revealed. Magic had formed in most humans after a virus escaped a secret vampire lab and spread around the globe. But not everyone got powers. Some people had sailed through the past 20 tumultuous years completely normal. Others had grown all sorts of strange abilities. Some people could shift their physical form into animal-like avatars. Others, like vampires, could pull the living life force out of people and live virtually in perpetuity.
There were elementals, telekinetics, even clairvoyants. The virus changed people’s DNA on the quantum level, allowing them to draw on the craziest powers.
But while almost everyone else fell into recognizable magical categories, I didn’t.
I removed magic with a single touch.
Karen clucked her tongue again. “There’s no need to be so stiff. It doesn’t hurt that much, does it?”
Through hard, white lips I lied, “Nope. I can hardly feel it.” Meanwhile, ice practically ravaged my bones. The feeling of Karen half shutting my magic off was like repeatedly having my face smashed in a door.
Nose crumpling, lips stiff and hard, I breathed through my teeth.
“I’m going to give you one more month for this new freelance lifestyle to work,” Karen warned over the crackle of her own force. She was a medical mediator. She could use her own life force to directly influence other people’s bodies. While most mediators like her worked in the health services, Karen had always wanted to become a lawyer. Even M-day – the moment when magic swept across the world 20 years ago – hadn’t changed that particular dream. My sister was not the kind of woman to ever change her mind about something that mattered to her.
Which is why I winced. “I don’t want to work in your office.”
“Like I said, I’m going to give you a month to make it work.”
“Then what are you going to do? Lock me up?”
“That would be a rather extreme solution. Plus, the last thing I want you to do is go anywhere near the justice system. I’d chew off my left arm to keep you away from the pack.” Karen might be the strongest, bravest person I knew, but her voice crumpled like somebody stamped on it.
I couldn’t hide the tight shiver that clutched my shoulders and tore up my spine. It was like a fast car tearing across an unsealed road. A cloud of dread passed over me, and my shoulders crumpled.
Karen squeezed my elbow with her free hand. “Hey,” she said softly, her voice like a warm hug. “You think I’d ever let you come to the attention of the Pack? I deal with Jace Winston personally. He might look like Prince Charming, but the Alpha is a coldhearted bastard.”
My sister almost never swore. It would take a frosty day in hell for her to break our parents’ golden rule about civility. The injunction had never meant much to me. But I barely remembered my parents. I’d still been a kid when they died on M-day.
It took her a few seconds to get over speaking about Jace. I didn’t blame her. He, along with a handful of other hyper-powerful practitioners, practically ran the city. Technically we had a human mayor, but the magical side of town was run by their own. There were the shifters, with Jace as their supreme Alpha. Then there were the vampires, who were run by an enigmatic, stunning woman by the name of Francia. The witches had a swinging door of leaders that changed practically monthly, and a sub council ruled the wizards. And finally there were the mysterious Engelos – an almost angel-like race of creatures that happened to be the most beautiful things ever seen. They rightly freaked out a lot of people. Engelos had powerful psychic skills and could read unguarded minds easily.
The only benefit of my magic was nobody could read me. If an Engelos really wanted to, they’d have to get close enough to touch me. And that’d strip them of their magic for good.
“Hey, what do you think dad would say now?” Karen changed the topic, likely reading my tension again. It hooked even higher around my shoulders, a straitjacket for my throat.
I had to force a chuckle. “He’d tell us to go clean out the drains.”
She joined in with a soft laugh. “Does a big building like this have drains?”
It wasn’t even funny, but we both shared another laugh. Karen dropped into a quick, heavy silence, likely thinking of our parents.
My mind went right back to Jace and the sheer danger of his magical enforcers.
Fear ran through my veins like a sharp knife. While M-day took both our parents, our aunt had lived for at least three years afterward. She’d taken care of us and hammered home the importance of never letting me come to the attention of anyone.
As a child I hadn’t understood why and assumed I was the cure for magic nobody knew existed. My aunt had promised I was a weapon instead.
Now I was old enough, I knew she was right.
A man like Jace would use me for one thing: to strip magic from his enemies.
“The next bit’s going to hurt,” Karen warned. “Brace yourself.”
Wincing, drawing on years of courage, I nodded.
Karen’s magic crackled over my shoulders, bright enough it reflected across the windows in a dance of blue and yellow. The crackles sparked up high then rushed over my back, sinking easily into my spine.
Clamping down on my jaw like a horse to a bit, I stifled a shriek.
Karen’s magic wasn’t destroying my powers. It sealed them behind a wall of mental control. It meant I wouldn’t strip magic from anyone who bumped into my shoulder accidentally. I’d have a little leeway before my force started slipping out.
Technically, someone could grab my bare skin, run their fingers over my hand, even pick me up without my force leaking out and curing them.
But if my emotions were upset—
“It’s almost done. Relax. I know it hurts a little, but you’ve got to open your mind to this bit. Otherwise the block won’t work properly. We don’t want a repeat of primary school.” Karen shifted around uncomfortably on her heels, her hand pulling away from my back for one centimeter before it clamped back down again.
As a shudder of cold power counteracted the fire usually churning through my blood, I tried not to think of poor Jimmy in primary school.
Though I hadn’t thought of him in those terms at the time. A bully who’d gone after me relentlessly for losing my parents, he’d cornered me one day on the swings, grabbed my head, and banged it against a metal pole. We were on our own, which meant no witnesses.
My power had leaked out, smashing him in the chest.
Jimmy had come from a long line of shifters. Not of the new kind. His family had possessed magic long before M-day.
But in that fateful moment, Jimmy had lost his. My power had simply torn the capacity for magic right out of his bones. It knocked him out, too, and fortunately gave him a little amnesia.
When he came to, nobody knew how he lost his force.
My sister had quickly and quietly transferred me out of the school on the premise of us moving interstate.
I barely thought of him anymore. It was clear from Karen’s tight tone that was not the same for her.
“Relax. Come on, kid, I know you’ve got it in you.”
Jaw as tight as wire, I forced my shoulders down.
The crackle of her force stung my skin, sinking in deeper. Light shone up over my back in jagged lines. Soon they’d settle, forming invisible runes that’d sink deep into my skin. You’d either have to try to cut me with a scalpel or scale my naked back with a magical microscope to pick them up.
My sister was one of the best medical mediators in the state. Not that anyone but us knew that. She kept her talents exclusively for me.
With a sigh, she was done. Flicking a few blond locks out of her face, she gestured at her couch.
I walked over and flopped, not bothering to hook my top down.
Frowning, she marched up, grabbed the soft cotton, and patted it over my stomach. “You’re all done for this month. You can thank me later. Or maybe right now. My secretary’s sick.”
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