by KT Strange
His hands were heavy on my lower back, and he rubbed slowly in circles, his palms warm through my clothes.
“Well let’s cross our fingers that we get a response then,” he said. I huffed out a noise of agreement, letting my eyes shut, locked in the comforting heat of his embrace.
The wind picked up, playing with my hair, as we waited. Minutes ticked by, I don’t know how many, and with each passing moment I felt a deepening sense of dread, like we’d come all this way, only to have our gamble not pay off.
Eli tensed against me, his breath shuddering to a stop. A second later, I heard it, distant, faint.
An answering howl cut through the air, a ghost of a noise, slipping along my skin.
Eli’s arms went tight around me, and he shoved me behind him, putting himself between me and whatever wolf had responded to him.
“Eli, what?” I whispered. He shook his head sharply, holding out a hand as a signal for me to quiet.
The howl came again, closer this time, shivering right through me, and rooting me to the spot.
Five
Darcy
They came through the shadows. Silhouettes at first, appearing at the edge of the forest, I had to squint to make them out. There were three men, tall, broad as mountainsides, their shoulders hands above where my head ended.
I stopped breathing as Elias stood stock-still in front of me, his gaze never wavering from them.
They were wolves. I knew it as soon as their scent drifted to me on the breeze, the hint of wildness, of overgrown fields and the darker, subtle hint of cold weather. Maybe being with the pack had made me more sensitive, but I could tell the difference in these wolves. They didn’t smell the same as my pack, or Frank., but of something different and strange that I’d never encountered.
A metallic tang was the final note, almost like blood, that wafted to me. Eli let out a soft growl, so low that I hoped only I heard it.
“Phoenix,” one of the men called out, stepping out from the brush. He was huge, easily as big as Eli, a thick beard banding around his jaw and up his cheeks. His eyes were in shadow, his hair long and dusting his shoulders. I gulped a breath in and held it.
“Dragon,” Eli replied. This pack must’ve been Dragonpack, then, and Eli recognized them, or at least their scent.
“What brings you to our territory?” the wolf asked before his gaze flicked past Eli to me. My muscles locked up and I was frozen in place. The men beside him went still for a second, one of them shifting his weight, the other rearing back somewhat, becoming impossibly taller.
“I seek safe passage—”
“For you? For the witch?” The wolf’s eyes burned.
“For myself and my mate,” Eli said, smoothly, as if the threat to my safety wasn’t real and imminent, and as if we’d, y’know, been together. My cheeks heated so fast even the breeze couldn’t cool them. The wolf laughed, slapping his hand on his chest.
“He’s mated to a witch?” The second wolf asked, shaking his head. Behind him, there was a stirring the shadows.
Fear spiked inside me as more wolves emerged; I counted five of them. Suddenly Eli’s idea of leaving me behind at that diner seemed like the better idea.
Eli, to his credit, didn’t even seem ruffled.
At least until another handful of wolves poured out of the trees.
They were all built like giants, the growing dawn lighting up the lines of their muscles under worn t-shirts and jeans that hugged powerful thighs. They looked like they could run for miles, chase someone like me down and grind me into the dirt as I choked on my own blood.
A spark of light jerked my attention downward. My fingertips were sparking up. I shoved them in my pockets, but not soon enough.
“She threatens us? She? She dares to?” The first wolf, who appeared to be the alpha, stared at me and then narrowed his eyes at Eli. “And you stand for this?”
A small, hysterical part of my mind reminded me that these were Canadian wolves, and Canadians were supposed to be nice. So why were they all looking at me like they wanted to eat me?
“She has newly come into her powers,” Eli explained, his voice slow and patient. “She doesn’t mean any threat by it, I can assure you. It’s almost like an unconscious tick.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong. I bit back any desire to get angry at him for revealing my secrets. I was out of my depth, and in the corners of my vision I could see more wolves, men and actual wolves in their shifted forms, filling out the spaces between the trees. Fear pounded in my heart, twisting my stomach so tight I thought I might throw up right then. We were so outnumbered it wasn’t even funny. There had to be over fifty wolves coming through the trees, their eyes trained on the two of us.
I felt the heat of their scrutiny like it was physically burning, scraping over my skin until it was all I could do to keep breathing.
Eli never looked back at me but I felt his awareness envelop me, like he was waiting for someone to move, make one wrong move toward me, and he’d fly into action.
I should never have come with him. He was right. This was the biggest mistake I’d ever made in my life.
“Tell me,” the alpha wolf stepped closer to Eli. The hair on my neck tingled. “She is your mate? I don’t scent you on her. Other wolves, yes—”
“My packmates,” Eli said, lifting his chin in a challenge. In my mind I could imagine the expression on his face: serious, almost angry, his eyes hard and dark.
“And yet you are here with her alone,” the wolf said, spreading his hands. “I thought Phoenixpack was dead.”
“We survived.”
“Barely, it seems, unless there are more of you than the four I scent on her.”
“Six, that we know of,” Eli admitted, sounding like it hurt for him to say. The alpha narrowed his eyes and then glanced away.
“We are sorry for your losses. Hunters?”
“Our heartstone was destroyed, yes, and then hunters came for us,” the ache in Eli’s tone sucked the breath right from my lungs. He hated admitting weakness, the rage and pain was radiating off of him in unending waves.
“That is the way of the world now. It is not so different up in the mountains, but there are too many of us, and too much land for the hunters to cover. They do not find us in the trees until it is too late for them,” the alpha said with a smirk that promised nothing but a grisly death for any hunter that happened to stumble across Dragonpack. “They become our hunted.”
“I can’t say that I’m unhappy to hear that,” Eli said.
“Our heartstone remains also, which has helped.” The alpha glanced over his shoulder. Wolves, human and shifted, watched us with glittering eyes. The dawn was creeping closer, slowly crawling across us all.
The wolves who had shifted were huge. I was taken aback by the widths of their chests, the power in their haunches. They stood silently on four legs, their fur ruffling in the breeze. They looked like somebody took a picture of a wild wolf and stretched it at the corners.Silver-tipped fur lay in heavy, shaggy layers over thick muscle.
Intelligent, some curious, distrustful, but mostly intense pairs of eyes stared out at me. The wolves in human form were no better. I didn’t see a single female among them, although I’m not sure if looking at a woman’s face would have been any better. I just longed for something, or someone, familiar.
“So other than safe passage, what brings you here?” The wolf tilted his head. “I still haven’t decided if I should have you killed for your insolence, and your mate hunted like the refuse she is.”
Eli growled, his shoulders going flat and tense.
“You will not hunt her.”
“That remains to be seen.” The alpha eyed me. “She looks weak, but all witches do, drawing us in with their platitudes and promises of peace. Is that how she got you, as well? Tricked you? I hear they can cast illusions, making themselves appear prettier, more appealing than—”
Eli snarled, stepping forward.
“You will not disrespect h
er,” he said, and I almost let out a soft noise to stop him. We didn’t need a fight with these wolves. I wanted to inch back to the van, but wondered if Eli would be able to hotwire it in time for us to get out of there before the whole pack was on us.
I wasn’t so much insulted by the alpha’s rude words and dismissal of me as I was freaked the fuck out that we were both going to end up very, very dead.
“Wolfe sent us,” Eli said finally, like he was grasping at straws. “You wouldn’t insult Wolfe by implying that his protege was like the rest of the witches and their ilk.”
The alpha’s eyebrows slipped upward in surprise and he glanced at me again, this time with a measuring look that was less hostile.
“Wolfe sent you?”
“I wouldn’t have known where to go if he hadn’t. He’s sent other stragglers your way.”
“More than one group have come to us, the remains of different packs. They are now Dragonpack, for there were not enough of them to survive on their own.” The alpha smirked. “Are you seeking the same protection for your own pack?”
“No,” I said, breaking the back and forth between Eli and this rude asshole as he toyed with our lives. “We’re here because we need somewhere to hide for now. If you won’t help us, then let us pass. There are other packs in the north who will welcome us. Wolfe’s name carries more weight with them, I’m sure.” I was speaking out my ass, but I didn’t care. This alpha had a cruelty in him that reminded me of my father, playing with us, an inch away from making Eli beg for my life. That wasn’t going to happen.
Eli didn’t contradict me or what I was saying.. He cocked his head at the alpha, who sneered at me.
“Oh, the little witch has the audacity to address me,” he said. “Tell me, where were you when your people were murdering our pups, our women, our elders? Were you asleep in your fine silks and satins, dreaming of power while we endured torment at the hands of your family?”
“I never knew,” I said as honestly as I could. The alpha’s lip curled.
“You never knew?” He looked over his shoulder at the assembled packmates that ringed the woods, and a shiver of fear bolted down my spine. There were so many of them.
I stepped forward. I was not going to show them how scared I was, even if they could probably smell it on me.
“Never. It’s not exactly common knowledge that witches have been committing genocide. They don’t read us children’s stories about it at bedtime.” I took another step, then another, until I was shoulder to shoulder with Eli. He glanced down at me, although I knew it had to scare the shit out of him to take his eyes off the threat the alpha and the rest of Dragonpack presented.
The alpha eyed me with mild curiosity.
“You command the skies,” he said. It was probably as close a guess as he could get.
“In a manner of speaking.” I lifted my hand, palm-up, and let a crackle of lightning race along my skin, curling between my fingers before I clenched my fist and extinguished it. “I’m still learning. I ran away from home when I was younger, to live with mundanes. I didn’t want to be a witch anymore.”
The alpha let out a laugh that chilled me, throwing his head back and clasping his chest like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Younger? You are nothing more than a pup, or you wouldn’t try to deceive me. A witch seeking to throw off the mantle of her power? Such a thing does not exist.” His head snapped down, his eyes glowing. “You lie.”
“N-no,” I stammered. Eli tensed.
“I smell it on you. Your whole existence is forbidden on our territory.” He paced forward, shoulders settling with intent. Eli snarled a warning, shoving me behind him. “You came here to subdue us, tricking us into submission by bringing us one of our own? That was a miscalculation, little witch. Now you and your pet dog will die.”
Six
Darcy
One moment I was upright, the next minute I was flying through the air, knocked over by a blur of black and white fur. My back hit the ground, and the breath left me so fast and hard that I couldn’t inhale. Fire burnt inside me as I gasped, choking to breathe.
My vision was fuzzy at the edges, and I was barely aware of the alpha launching himself at Eli, right arm hooking out. He caught Eli across the jaw, my wolf crying out at the blow before coming up swinging a second later.
There was a snarl to my left, and my head turned toward the wolf that had knocked me backward. In his shifted form he was massive, terrifying as he circled around. He darted for me, his gray shaggy head snapping open wide to reveal a mouth lined with sharp, white teeth.
My fingers crackled, lightning sparks shooting out of the tips, making the wolf yelp and back off. I coughed, dragging myself to sit up.
Eli’s attention was locked hard on the alpha attacking him. I needed to save myself, and then him if he couldn’t get away. My whole body ached; it was still hard to breathe.
My show of force caused the flood of wolves that were heading toward me to pause. I staggered up onto my knees then my feet, holding one hand out in front of me.
“Stay the fuck back,” I threatened, the noise coming out in a wheeze that wasn’t all that frightening. When one of them lunged forward, I stamped my foot. Lightning flickered along the ground, a sheet of white power that lapped up against their paws. They yelped, backing off, dancing to rid themselves of the shock. “I mean it,” I said, before looking wildly for Eli.
Another wolf in human form had grabbed him, holding his arms behind his back. Eli’s shirt was half-ripped, the alpha punching him, one fist, then the other, connecting hard with Eli’s stomach.
Scrambling across the space between us, my scream echoing in my ears, crackles and sparks of power lighting up the air around me.
I didn’t get five feet before an arm clotheslined me across the throat. Pain shuddered down my spine as I fell backward. My head thudded into the dirt, and I groaned, lifting one arm to protect my face. Hands and claws, scrabbled at my skin, and I was being pulled up, shaken like a rag doll.
The flash of panic was so heavy and hot that I couldn’t think of anything other than getting away. My powers roared up from within me, answered by the snarls of my attackers as they fell back. I staggered, barely able to stand upright, and blinked through a haze.
Wolves backed up behind their human counterparts. The men shook out their hands, like I’d hurt them. I shoved my hair out of my face and turned back to Eli, swallowing my cry.
He’d freed himself from the man pinning him, and had the alpha by the throat, lifting him clear off the ground. Eli’s muscles flexed in the dawn, silvery gray light falling all over him as he snarled, raising the alpha up into the air.
They were a blur, Eli slamming the man down, on his side, into the ground, following him down. They grappled for a minute, and my scream ripped the air as other wolves, human and shifted alike, piled on them.
I couldn’t hit them without hurting Eli too, and when I saw someone grab his blond head, pulling it back so far that it looked like his spine would snap, I was frozen, unable to move or help him. They were clawing at him, blood spattering their skin, faces, the muzzles of the wolves— he let out a low moan of pain.
That shook me out of it. The power rumbled through me, shoving me to my knees as the skies opened up. When had they gotten overcast? Rain poured down on us and a crack of lightning split the air, ozone filling my lungs. I shoved my palms onto the ground, flooding the earth with my power. It streamed out of me, racing in a split second to the melee.
One moment they were rending Eli to pieces, the next they were flying through the air, bodies tossed like leaves, blasting in all directions away from him.
I was on my feet and over to him in a second. He lay in a circle of fried ground, the grass burnt to a crisp in the instant my powers had coursed through it. Bite marks lanced his skin, and I nearly vomited at the sight of flesh stripped right down to the bone on his arm. His eyes were shut tight. I my hands slipped over his bare chest, shive
ring hard as I covered his body with mine. I lifted my head to stare at the wolves that circled us.
They slowly got to their feet, shaking off their pain. Vicious anger written in every trembling muscle of their bodies; we were surrounded from every angle. Eli’s breathing was shallow, barely reaching me as I clung tight to him. Tears ran down my cheeks, dripping down onto his bloodied, savaged skin.
“Leave us,” I whispered. “Leave him alone.”
His eyes fluttered faintly, and I swallowed hard to see him like that, wrecked, ruined, because of me. I’d come with him. If I hadn’t, he would’ve been safe, they would have welcomed him.
The ground trembled as one of them took a step toward me.
“Leave him!” my shriek rang out as I lifted my head, every ounce of power I could layer into my command making my whole body shake. The man jerked back as if I’d shoved him, and then muttered to one of his compatriots.
“Eli,” I whispered, “Eli please look at me,” I begged, the worst sort of helplessness coursing through me. His lips parted and he moaned, his eyes opening, unfocused and not tracking anything. Panic seized my heart. I’d never seen anyone like that before, his beautiful blue eyes glassy and faded.
A sob ripped out of my lungs and I bent my head to his chest, crying and out of options. His only hope would be his healing powers, whatever remained of them after being so far from a heartstone for so many years. His skin was warm even as the rain doused us, splattering in my hair, plastering his blond strands to his forehead.
The wolves of Dragonpack were silent, standing as quiet witnesses to one stupid little witch crying her heart out over a wolf that she’d ruined with her very existence.
A warm hand clasped against my back, clumsy and trembling. Eli. I lifted my head, my nose running, my throat sore. His eyes were still open, wide and unfocused, like he was trying to stay awake.
