by Lib Starling
Scarlett ducked, and with one swift motion, one violent wrench of her arm, she seized Brooke by the hair and hauled her to her feet. Brooke shrieked in pain and surprise, dropping her whisk of sage twigs. Scarlett swung Brooke around just as Chase closed, and it was all he could do to swing his muzzle aside. His jaws snapped on the frosty air, missing Brooke’s throat by inches.
Brooke gasped in terror. She blanched, eyes bulging as Chase dropped to all four paws. He hackled and growled his rage at Scarlett, but no matter how he stepped or dodged, Scarlett maneuvered Brooke between them.
You coward! Chase thought furiously. Let her go and face me with honor! But of course, Scarlett couldn’t hear him.
Brooke was shaking violently in Scarlett’s grip, and there was a faint greenish cast about her mouth, as if she might be sick at any moment. But she stared at Chase with a level, steady gaze that sparked with bravery. Brooke’s eyes darted downward, and Chase followed her glance. Scarlett still maintained her ground within the partially erased circle. She was clearly reluctant to leave it. All her magic hasn’t drained away yet, Chase realized. She can still draw on some shred of the Power here.
Brooke made a small, whimpering sound. Chase eyed her face again, but despite the frightened, half-strangled sobs eking from her throat, her expression was grim with determination, and blunt with bravery. She pushed against Scarlett’s body, stepping firmly backward. Scarlett shifted, and her heel slid a fraction of an inch toward the edge of her circle.
Then Chase understood Brooke’s plan. He gave a wild snarl and lunged, snapping his teeth close to Brooke’s stomach, forcing both her and Scarlett back… back… step by staggering half-step, they pushed the witch closer to the perimeter of her failing magic.
Chase snapped at both girls’ ankles, and they edged back farther. Scarlett’s breath hissed through her teeth, a sound of helpless fury, and with another thrust of his growling, quivering body, Chase nudged the witch just past the line of her circle.
Scarlett’s wordless scream of rage was like music soaring in Chase’s spirit. We almost have her… Together, he and Brooke forced the witch farther from the concentrated chaos of her tainted magic.
“I can still use the Power,” Scarlett gasped. “I can make a blade of Air, you fool, and cut her throat! I can burn her from the inside out with Fire! You’ve taken nothing from me—nothing!”
A bluff, Chase told himself. He advanced again, the growl rising in his throat. But Brooke’s eyes flew open wide, glassy in the starlight, and a terrible, rasping choke tore at her throat. Her face darkened as her breath cut off.
Scarlett’s victorious laughter chilled Chase, sending fear rippling from his ears to his tail. He backed off one step, then another, and the growl died in his chest.
“Pathetic,” Scarlett crowed. “It’s too easy to defeat you—any of you—all of you! To think I ever thought I needed you, Chase, or Alexander. To think I ever wanted you!”
Brooke, struggling for breath against the unseen, clutching fist that tightened around her throat, flailed one hand in a blind panic. Her thumb caught the golden hoop that dangled from Scarlett’s ear lobe; it tore away with a sickening snap, scattering a few droplets of dark-red blood on the snow.
Scarlett screamed and released her hold on Brooke. She clapped a hand to her ear, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain. Brooke dropped to hands and knees and crawled away, and Chase, moving faster than the lightning the dark witch had thrown, threw himself against Scarlett’s body. His forepaws met her shoulders, and he propelled her backward as if they were both locked in some deranged dance. Scarlett’s back connected with one of the large boulders that littered the hilltop, and the breath left her chest in a rush.
Move, Chase! It was Darien’s voice.
Chase dropped to the snow and rolled sideways as the great elk’s hooves thundered past him. Darien’s antlers, pale in the starlight, crashed against stone. Scarlett stood pinned between the two great branches of his rack, her back pressed against the boulder, her eyes wide with astonishment but burning with hate.
Katrina rushed in on Darien’s heels. She reached beneath the elk’s shaggy, dark head, and grains of salt fell from her hand, describing a tight circle around Scarlett’s feet.
“Bring me Alexander,” Katrina cried out. “He’s still breathing—he’s still alive.”
A few of the brothers had returned to the ridge, and not all of them remained in their totemic forms. Matthew and Logan carefully lifted the unconscious white wolf and bore him to Katrina’s side. They laid him on the snow, trembling and silent, casting worried looks at their fallen alpha as Katrina knelt beside him.
Chase drew close to Alexander’s side. He nosed the white-furred flank—blood-stained, from wounds Chase himself had inflicted. The faintest, most fleeting of breaths stirred Alexander’s chest.
Katrina turned her face down to her familiar. Tears stained her cheeks, and her eyes were dazed with loss. “He’s still breathing,” Katrina said again, “he’s still my familiar—at least while he… while he lives.” She looked up, holding Chase’s stare with haunted, mournful eyes. “If I draw through the bond now,” she told him quietly, “it might drain Alexander of the last of his power—the last of his life.”
Chase laid his paw on Katrina’s leg. Don’t do it. We can’t lose Alexander.
“I have to,” Katrina said. She couldn’t hear his thoughts, Chase knew, but no doubt she could read his pain and reluctance easily enough in his drooping ears, his tail tucked low. “If I don’t do it, Scarlett will always be a danger to us.”
Katrina hesitated only a moment longer. Then she bent and kissed Alexander’s still, blood-stained muzzle. When she straightened, there was nothing in her face, nothing in her eyes, except fierce determination.
“What are you doing?” Scarlett gasped. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m going to cut you off from the Power entirely,” Katrina said.
Scarlett thrashed in the cage of Darien’s antlers, but she could not wriggle free. “You can’t do that,” the dark witch spat, challenging, mocking.
“I can,” Katrina said calmly. “With the help of my familiar, I can.”
She laid one hand on Alexander’s chest and closed her eyes. The white wolf’s body gave a tremendous jerk, and a faint whimper lifted from his throat, a sound like the whisper of a ghost. It stabbed Chase to his heart; he lifted his muzzle to the sky and howled out the pain of his loss.
His howl was nearly drowned out by Scarlett’s scream. The terrible discord of that music, witch and wolf crying together, went on and on into the cold winter night.
.8.
T he trilling of a bird outside her window woke Roxy. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and lay listening to the simple sweetness of that song as the pale, gentle light of morning filtered through her white lace curtains. The rising sun promised a warm morning—warm for February. Chase snuggled closer against her back, and his arm tightened protectively around her body.
They had spent the whole day after the confrontation in bed, and the following night, too, speaking seldom, expressing the flood of emotions that ravaged them only by touch, by kiss—and by lovemaking, when their shared passion of relief at their reunion, and grief at Alexander’s sacrifice, spilled over.
Roxy turned carefully in Chase’s arms. His wounds, which she had tended the night before, were tender, even though he wouldn’t admit to it, and kept a stoic mask on his face. She lay stroking his rough cheek in silence while the bird went on singing outside. Chase’s dark eyes were wells of sorrow, but through that grief, a spring of gratitude and hope surged.
“How do you feel?” Roxy whispered.
Chase gave his arm a little wiggle. The bandage Roxy had tied around a slash on his bicep still held, as did the others taped across his chest, back, and thighs. Each time Roxy saw those reminders of the white wolf’s flashing teeth and tearing claws, rents reopened in her soul, just as deep and painful as Chase’s physical wounds.
“I’m all right,” Chase sighed. “I’ll survive. And I’ve got you back. That’s all that matters to me.”
“It’s all that matters to me, too,” she said. But her thoughts turned melancholy, and she pressed her face against Chase’s chest, breathing in his wild scent. We’ve gained each other, she thought, but have we lost too much?
Her phone, charging on the nightstand, buzzed on an incoming text. Roxy’s throat tightened, and Chase’s hand clutched reflexively at her back. Darien was at Alpha House, helping tend to Alexander. The last time Roxy and Chase had seen the alpha, his heartbeat had been faint, and his chest had hardly stirred with his breath. His brothers had carried him back to the frat house, and Katrina had promised to keep a vigil at his side—but no one, not even Alexander’s bonded witch, really expected him to survive. Roxy didn’t want to pick up her phone, didn’t want to hear the news. She didn’t want the loss she already felt for her friend redouble, until it broke down the fragile walls of her happiness and towered over her life, shadowing everything with its inescapable fact. As long as she still lay in Chase’s arms, she could pretend that Alexander had hope—that he might somehow, through magic or sheer force of will—come around, and be his old self again.
But then she swallowed her momentary fear. A text—Darien wouldn’t send a text if it was bad news. He’d call. Hope, tiny and frail, fluttered in her heart, but its wing-beats were energetic, and it seemed to grow larger by the moment. She took a deep breath, then reached for her phone.
Darien’s name flashed on her screen. She tapped his message, then sat staring down at his words, wide-eyed.
Chase winced as he eased himself upright. “What is it?”
“He’s awake,” Roxy said, laughing with relief. “Alexander is awake!”
Chase’s whoop of joy was so loud that the bird outside the window broke off its trilling in alarm. “Let’s go!” Chase sprang from the bed, and then hissed in pain as his battle wounds protested.
“Slow down,” Roxy advised him. She got up, too, rummaging on the floor for her clothes. “Don’t break those cuts open again.”
When they were dressed, they found Brooke at the kitchen table, staring morosely at a sodden bowl of cereal. She looked up with dull, tear-puffed eyes as Roxy and Chase came bumbling into the room, bouncing off each other and colliding with the refrigerator and the counter’s edge in their haste to reach her, to tell her the news. Roxy knew they were making no sense, both of them chattering at once, their words a tangle even to her.
Brooke held up her hands in a gesture of entreaty. “Whoah, whoah. I barely slept last night. Slow it down, you two.” She paused, and her face paled. She clearly expected bad news. “What happened?”
Chase glanced at Roxy, grinning. “You tell her.”
“I just got a text from Darien,” Roxy said. “Alexander is awake. He’s sitting up and talking. He seems to be okay. He’s going to be okay!”
Brooke jumped up, knocking her chair backwards. It fell with a crash, but she ignored it. “He is?”
“Come on,” Roxy said, grabbing her purse from the kitchen counter. “Get your coat. We’re going to Alpha House!”
Alexander was sitting up in his wide bed, propped against a stack of pillows, when Roxy, Chase, and Brooke rushed into his room. Katrina perched on the edge of the bed, holding Alexander’s pale hand, and the dark rings below her eyes attested to the sleepless, tireless vigil she had kept at his side. It was clear from Alexander’s drawn features and slow movements that he was weak, still shaken by his ordeal. But his eyes shone with welcome when his friends arrived, and his smile was warm.
Roxy rushed to him and knelt on the other side of his bed, across from Katrina. She lifted Alexander’s hand and pressed her lips to his cool skin. “Thank God you’re okay. We were all so afraid—”
“I’ll be all right.” He gave a little laugh, but it broke off immediately. He grimaced in pain, and Katrina clicked her tongue.
“He’s still hurting,” she explained to Roxy. “That bolt of magic was a big one. It’ll be a couple of days before he’s able to do more than hobble to the bathroom.”
“But he’ll pull through.” Chase folded his arms and beamed down at Alexander. “He’s going to make it.”
“You bet your ass I am. I wouldn’t be much of an alpha if I gave up that easily, would I?”
Roxy snorted. “You call that fight easy?”
Alexander’s sinuous shrug was only slightly marred by a wince, and his accustomed mask of cool arrogance returned almost at once. “I survived, didn’t I?”
“Just barely.” Roxy paused, unable to meet his eyes. She stared at the blanket that covered him, studying the patterns of threads in its weave, letting the colors of the fabric blur as tears obscured her vision. “You did it for me,” she said at last. “I charged Scarlett like an idiot, and you took the bolt that was meant for me.”
Alexander smiled weakly. “I was only a little faster than Chase. It would be him lying here now, all banged up and bruised, except I kicked his ass so badly in our fight that he was pretty slow off the mark.”
“Ha,” Chase said good-naturedly. Then his face fell. “You did save Roxy’s life, Alexander. I can never thank you enough for that.”
“It’s not like I’m the only hero here.” Alexander shrugged again. “Katrina told me all about how you threw yourself on Scarlett. Went right for her like a madman, pushed her out of her circle and cut her off from her magic.”
“She wasn’t entirely cut off from her magic,” Brooke muttered, rubbing her throat.
Katrina said, “We all played our part. We did it together. Without any one of us, we would have lost that fight. Scarlett would still have Chase’s stay; she would still be twisting up the Powers. She’d still be haunting Alpha House, targeting Roxy—looking for her revenge.”
“The Powers,” Chase said. “Have they changed? Gone back to the way they were?”
Katrina nodded. “They reverted to their normal flow almost as soon as I cut off Scarlett’s access to the Source. I walled up that place inside her where her magic lived. I shut it out completely.” She frowned; her face grew dark and thoughtful. “As terrible as she was to us all—to the Powers themselves—I almost felt like a worse person for cutting off a magic-user.” She shuddered and fell silent.
Alexander watched her for a moment with concern, then squeezed her hand. “You did what you had to do. We’re all better off for it.”
Katrina reached out and caressed the hard angles of his face. “The cost was almost too great. I thought you were lost forever.”
Darien edged his way into the room, bearing a steaming mug of hot broth. Katrina made Alexander sip it slowly, and as she watched him, her mouth pressed into a thin, anxious line—then softened into a thoughtful frown.
Finally, when Alexander handed the mug back to Darien, Katrina said, “I’m going to find a way to undo this, Alexander.”
“Undo what?”
“Our bond. I don’t know yet how it can be done, but surely—”
He gaped at her in disbelief, then cut her off with a short laugh. There was no flinch of pain this time. He seemed to draw himself up, rising against his pillows with his usual, authoritative air. “You will do no such thing.”
“You deserve it, after all you’ve done—after everything you’ve sacrificed.” Words failed her, and she shook her head in misery. Finally she said hoarsely, “You deserve to be free. So you can go have the future you want.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it. “The future I want is with you.”
“But Blackmeade—and your father’s business—”
“I’ll sort all that out,” Alexander said. He considered Chase for a moment, and gave him a half-amused, half-uncertain smile. “Or maybe I won’t sort it out. But that doesn’t matter. You’re all that matters to me. I want this bond—I want you.”
A lump rose in Roxy’s throat as Alexander and Katrina stared into one another’s eyes, then leaned close
and lost themselves in a long kiss. She got to her feet and edged back from the bed, giving them as much privacy as she could.
Roxy slipped under Chase’s arm and let him pull her close. The smell of sage and open sky filled her head, and contentment swelled in her heart.
Chase leaned close to her ear, brushing the strands of her red hair with his lips as he whispered, “And I want you.”
The fox inside her twisted and leaped with joy.
EPILOGUE
Dawn broke over the vast, grassy plain of the elk preserve, lighting the springtime mists with a delicate, warm-pink hue. Roxy and Chase left the Mustang ticking and cooling on the shoulder of the road, and went out together into the huge, open field. The last snows of winter had finally melted away. The earth responded to the warming sun with delicate, new shoots of green, a lush carpet that waved in the fresh morning breeze, rustling around their ankles as they walked.
Roxy remembered vividly the first time she’d come here with Chase. Then, the grass had been almost shoulder-high. She recalled the feel of it sliding and whispering over her body, and remembered, too, the feel of Chase’s hand in her own. She squeezed his hand now, reveling in his nearness, in the reassuring warmth of his touch.
“Where are we going?” Roxy asked.
“Can’t you guess?”
She squinted into the depth of the elk preserve. A curtain of mist parted, and then she saw it: the little knoll where she and Chase had first made love under the open sky. The mist drifted further, revealing more of the rounded hillside, and Roxy gasped. Four figures waited there, standing in silhouette against the soft morning light.
She looked up at Chase with a wordless question, but he only grinned back and tugged at her hand, pulling her onward.
They climbed to the top of the rise. Katrina and Alexander stood shoulder-to-shoulder, leaning affectionately against one another. Brooke and Darien whispered, and Brooke bit her lip with barely concealed excitement. Darien held a small box in his hands. His brown eyes sparkled with mischievous glee.
