Phoenixflare: #6 in The Rogue Witch: A Reverse Harem Romance

by Strange, KT

  “What can I do?”

  “Wait,” the dragon said, amusement coloring her voice. “A trait I’m sure that you are not well acquainted with.”

  Rude. I held my tongue though. It wasn’t like she was wrong. She seemed to read me like an open book, peering into me with those odd eyes of hers, their flat brown color glistening bronze for a second after every time she blinked.

  Eli shifted and I jumped. His eyes opened, still glassy but more focused than before.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, wincing hard when he moved too fast and jostled his bruised body.

  “Stay still, wolf,” the dragon said to him, putting her fingers on his forehead. He quieted, staring at her with confusion on his face. His gaze cut to me and his pupils flared, relief spreading across his expression.

  “Darcy—”

  “Easy now,” the dragon said. “Don’t sit up. You were nearly lost to us.”

  “Never,” Eli said, a hint of false bravado in his voice even with how weak it was. “I had them on the ropes.”

  I rolled my eyes, even as I trembled hard. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said,” my voice shook as I spoke and he shot me a feeble grin.

  “You were worried about me, doll?”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “Next time maybe don’t take on a whole pack of wolves,” I said, “but no, I wasn’t worried.”

  The dragon laughed, the noise musical and light.

  “Perhaps I should leave you both to your lies,” she said, patting Eli on the shoulder. “Stay still. That skin won’t knit back together properly if you do anything strenuous.” She gave him a serious look. “Yes, sitting up is strenuous in your condition.”

  Morning sun glided into the clearing, and I blinked back tears (from the bright light of course). Eli was going to be okay. I still didn’t feel like I was absolved of responsibility, but at least he was going to recover.

  The dragon got to her feet, dusting off the long skirts that ended just at her ankles. It was then I fully noticed what she wore; fabric so thin that it was nearly transparent, gathered thick at her waist. It was bound tight by a pieced leather bodice, embroidered all over with bronze semi-circles that worked their way up to her breasts, like an imitation of scales.

  “Wait,” I said as she moved like she was going to leave us by ourselves. “What now?”

  “We will find you a place to spend the night, of course,” the dragon said, her tone pragmatic. “You can’t move on until he’s fully healed. You asked for safe passage, and you will get it.”

  I swallowed.

  “Won’t, uh, Redric, have a few things to say about that? He didn’t seem to want me around,” I said, thinking about how pissed off Dragonpack’s alpha-wolf would be. The dragon lifted her chin, her lips pursing.

  “He has been dealt with,” she said shortly. “Witches are not born evil, Darcy Llewellyn, and that you keep company with this wolf, and others that you bear the mark of, leads me to believe you have never been the kind of monster that Redric thought you were.”

  She knew my full name. I froze, not even moving when Eli squeezed my fingers in his to comfort me.

  The dragon gave me a long measuring look before turning on her heel and floating out of the clearing, leaving me and Eli to sit in the sunlight and bask in the warm power of the heartstone.

  “Well that was a fuckup,” Eli’s voice was rough. “Never meant to put you in danger like that, Darcy.”

  His words yanked my attention away from where the dragon had disappeared through the trees.

  “You didn’t. I was the one who forced you to take me.”

  Eli gave me a sad, thoughtful look.

  “You don’t have to force me when it comes to anything to do with you,” he said. His words made my heart skitter in my chest, a shiver skimming along the skin of my arm where our fingers were entwined.

  “Eli—”

  His eyes closed as I said his name. “I think I can move.”

  “Don’t you dare.” I put my hand on his bare chest, ignoring the way my whole body tingled when I touched him there. It had to be the heartstone, its powers conducting through him like he was a live wire.

  He quirked an eyebrow at me, a tiny smirk on his lips.

  “You’re not my mother.”

  “Well you need somebody to mother you, since you make really stupid life choices.”

  “We hate in others what we hate in ourselves,” he shot back, his words stinging as they hit way too close to home. I sat back on my heels and he braced his elbow. His eyes didn’t meet mine as he sat up. He let out a hiss as he looked at his arm. Vicious bites had ripped the flesh right down to the bone, although it was slowly knitting back together.

  I felt ill just looking at it, and glanced away.

  “I’ve had worse,” he offered.

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” I said. He groaned and I looked at him in panic, not sure what to do.

  The moment was too peaceful for what was happening. The heartstone was like steady, comforting white nose in the back of my mind, washing over me and making me feel calmer than I ought to.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in front of one of those,” Eli said with a contented sigh. He shifted, turning his face up to the large, jutting rock. “Feels a bit like coming home.”

  “Can you feel it? It’s like—it feels warm to me.”

  “Mm. It’s right in here.” He tapped his chest with his good hand before shaking his head. “Nothing like the one we had, but still.”

  “I can’t imagine how a witch could destroy one of these, or hunters for that matter.”

  “Explosive’ll do it,” Eli said as he took a breath, gathering himself. My eyes widened as he slowly got to his feet, groaning.

  “You should sit—”

  “Don’t should on me, I won’t should on you.” He held his good arm out to catch his balance and I scrambled up, shoving my shoulder up against his chest.

  “Here,” I said, wrapping my arm around his waist. He sighed and leaned into me.

  “They kicked the living shit out of me,” he said with a shake of his head, then dropped his voice down low. “That Redric asshole lay a finger on you?”

  “No, his brother, Ryatt, brought me here. He helped me save you. I don’t think he and his brother see eye to eye on things, but he kept them from coming near me.”

  Eli smiled down at me, the bruises on his skin looking a little less raw, more yellow than purple. It was a relief to see his wounds disappearing so quickly. The heartstone was powerful, even if it wasn’t Phoenixpack’s heartstone, whatever that meant, it was still helping him so fast.

  Seeing him heal up was the reason my heart was thudding hard in my chest, not the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he looked at me.

  “Elias, Darcy,” Ryatt’s voice rang out, jerking my attention away from Eli. “We’ve prepared sleeping space for you, near the water. How are your injuries?” Ryatt walked into the clearing, followed by a young man several years his junior. Ryatt’s dark auburn hair contrasted starkly with the other wolf’s who was a shaggy, deep blond. The lighter-haired wolf watched me with curiosity, before glancing at Eli.

  “Better. Heartstone’s fixing me right up,” Eli said. “You kept Darcy safe? Thank you. I would’ve done it—”

  “My idiot brother would send his apologies, but he is too proud. You will have to accept our pack’s sincere regret from me and Calen.” Ryatt looked at the wolf that accompanied him. The blond wolf tilted his head to the side, and murmured something to Ryatt.

  Eli stiffened for a moment. He’d obviously heard whatever the younger wolf had said. I’d have to ask him about it when we had a second of privacy.

  “Would you come? Can you?” Ryatt asked. Eli nodded.

  “I’m good. Might need a new shirt, though.” He glanced down at his bare skin.

  Ryatt and Calen led us out and away from the heartstone toward a small cabin. It was small, just a single room
.

  “We eat at the fire,” Ryatt said by way of explanation before shooting me an apologetic look. “The latrines are out in the trees. There’s a path behind this cabin you can follow.”

  “Is this kinda like a big campsite? Isn’t it annoying to stumble around in the dark at night for the bathroom?” I asked, because the impression I was getting was that it was less of the sort of home that I’d imagined and more of a scattered, communal living arrangement.

  “It suits us as it is,” Ryatt said. Eli snickered.

  “I don’t think they use the latrine very much, Darcy,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  Calen chuckled.

  “I’ll explain it to her later,” Eli said, as it clicked in my head. They were wolves. They could shift at will. My eyes went wide.

  They were crapping in the forest.

  My cheeks went hot and if Eli hadn’t been inches from death half an hour before, I would have punched him in the arm.

  “Do you have first aid supplies, bandages?” I asked instead, not about to be ruffled by the idiot I’d followed into Canada. Ryatt nudged his friend who nodded.

  “I’ll get you some,” he said, his voice low and husky. “I’ll be right back.” He glanced from me to Eli, then took off at a jog.

  “You will stay as long as you need to,” Ryatt said after a moment. “We should have offered you safe passage and shelter at the first moment, but my brother…”

  “I have a brother too, and he’s pretty damn stubborn,” Eli said, and Ryatt flashed him a grateful smile. I rolled my eyes. Out of Finn and Eli, I knew who was the actual stubborn twin.

  “Then you understand. Most of the pack is out hunting right now, but later maybe you will join us by the fire to eat?”

  “Hunting?” Eli asked. I itched to look inside the cabin as the two wolves talked, and also get those first aid supplies so I could wrap up the worst of Eli’s injuries. He was out of the danger zone, but that didn’t mean he was safe yet. He still had lots of healing to do. “I haven’t hunted in… a damn long time.”

  “Maybe if you are well enough, you can join us tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.” Ryatt cleared his throat. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go find where my brother is sulking and remind him of his manners.”

  “Thanks,” Eli said, and before I could move, he had an arm wrapped around me. “For looking out for her.”

  Ryatt’s gaze landed on me, and for a moment I felt stuck, rooted to my spot.

  “I can imagine she is quite special for you to protect her as fiercely as you did,” he said, eyes glittering. With another nod he walked off, a breeze coming off the lake ruffling his hair.

  Eli made a low, rumbling noise.

  “I don’t like the way he looked at you,” he said after a second. I stopped myself from rolling my eyes again.

  “He saved your ass,” I said. “C’mon, let’s look inside.”

  Nine

  Darcy

  The cabin was exactly what I thought it would be: small, one-room, with a double bed in the corner. Eli took one look at it and balked, saying he’d sleep on the floor. No matter how much I argued with him, he wouldn’t even hear of sharing the space with me. I finally said that I’d get down on the floor with him if he insisted on being a complete idiot, and begged him to at least nap on the bed.

  Ryatt’s friend, Calen, showed up then with an armful of first aid supplies, and some food for us both. Deer meat sandwiches. I’d never had them before, but it was fully cooked at least.

  “There’s a town about half an hour away,” Calen explained. “They think we’re a meditation retreat, so they don’t look at us funny when we go into town and load up on enough supplies for a whole month. We trade fur and meat with the locals, and they give us things we can’t grow or hunt.”

  He also gave Eli a long-sleeved shirt to cover the bite marks and other injuries, apologizing again for Redric and the other wolves who’d attacked him. When he left, I made Eli sit down so I could wrap his cuts.

  He bitched for most of it, but when I poked him hard in a bruise, he shut up long enough for me to finish.

  Then I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the small cabin. It was just big enough for the bed, a low couch, and a dresser.

  “We’re going to need to get in touch with the pack at some point,” Eli mused, sounding tired. In the immediate panic of everything that happened, I’d almost forgotten all about the legal troubles waiting to swallow us up as soon as we stopped long enough.

  I passed Eli one of the deer-meat sandwiches and he tore into it with such a voracious hunger that I decided to save the second one for him later. He’d done a lot of healing, and I knew that he’d probably burnt through whatever blood sugar he had, and needed badly to refuel.

  “Charlie’s going to lose his shit when he finds out we border-hopped,” I said. A grin cracked across Eli’s face. “You know how much of a stickler for proper paperwork he is.”

  “Wolves do it all the time, or we did, back in the day,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Not a border guard alive that’ll catch us.”

  “You know they have heat-seeking sensors now along the border,” I said. “I’m surprised we didn’t get surrounded by cops earlier.”

  Eli shook his head.

  “Those things aren’t meant to pick up wolves. A human, maybe. We were lucky this time. When we cross back, we’ll have to be more careful. I’m guessing their dragon has something to do with keeping the border guards away.”

  “She was crazy powerful,” I said, remembering the way it felt to be near her. I’d nearly puked on my shoes.

  “I’ve only met a dragon once before.” Eli looked off into the distance, his gaze going unfocused. “You don’t forget it though. She’s young, comparatively.” He shifted his weight and winced.

  “You should sleep,” I scolded him gently. He gave me an exhausted glare and then sighed.

  “I’m not going to argue.” He stretched out on the bed. “Just don’t go anywhere. Ryatt’s fine, but I don’t trust the rest of them.”

  “Their dragon will keep them in line,” I said, but I was unsure of that too. Eli’s head hit the pillow and his eyes closed immediately.

  “Stay close,” he said, and was out, his breathing going thick and heavy.

  Boredom was a real thing as I waited for Eli to sleep off his attack and subsequent healing. It was hard not to lift up the dressing on his injuries to see how well things were moving along. I took a bite of my deer sandwich and left the rest for him. It was definitely not a food that I wanted to eat on the regular.

  Eventually I curled up on the edge of the bed and closed my eyes for a minute, the near-sleepless night and the massive fight we’d had taking it out of me. It seemed impossible that only a few hours before I was fast asleep in the van as Eli drove. The ground seemed to move under me as those thoughts faded into the dark.

  A warmth shifting against me woke me, and I sat up straight. Eli was trying to get off the bed, a guilty look on his face at waking me.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No, no it’s fine.” I rubbed my face and grimaced. The light through the window was dying. “What time is it?”

  “Early evening,” Eli said as he stood with caution. He stretched with a sigh, groaning. “Feels almost good as new.”

  I eyed his bandages. “Want me to check those?” He shook his head.

  “Give ‘em a few more hours, then I should be good to go.” His stomach rumbled.

  “Oh, your sandwich—”

  “I already ate.”

  “Yeah but I didn’t like mine. Here.” I scooted down the bed, and stood up, grabbing the sandwich where I’d left it on the edge of the dresser. He took it and wolfed it down, eyes closed tight.

  “Haven’t had venison in a damn long time,” he said, almost licking his chops. “You think they’ll have more at their fire pit or whatever?”

  I looked at him with wide eyes.

  “You want to go mingle
?”

  “Not especially, but I need to eat, and so do you. I’m still hungry. Plus then we can ask about getting to a phone, give Finn a call.” He scratched at his belly, the fabric of his borrowed shirt tight over his skin.

  “Alright if—”

  A knock at the door interrupted me. Calen poked his head in. Behind him was a giggling child, no higher than my hip, I guessed a girl by her long curling dark hair.

  “Lemme see the witch,” she said boldly, her voice loud for such a tiny child. She burst past Calen, who made a grab for her, but she darted out of his reach before stopping still in her tracks, staring right up at me. She had bright hazel eyes, surrounded by thick lashes.

  “Oh,” she mumbled, then took a step back, reaching out for Calen behind her. He shot us a look of apology.

  “Sorry, I’m watching the pups,” he said, “she wanted to come with me when I said I was going to check on you.”

  “The fire’s starting,” the little girl said, before burying her face in Calen’s side, peeking out at us for a brief moment.

  Beside me, Eli was stock still. When I glanced at him, his face was white.

  He bent down slowly, holding out a hand.

  “Hey,” he said softly, a tender look in his eyes that I’d never, ever seen before. “What’s your name?”

  “Katybear,” she said, boldly, before her cheeks went pink and she looked up at Calen.

  “Katy, you’re not a bear,” Calen said with every inch of worn out patience he could muster.

  “I’m gonna be,” she said rebelliously before gazing at Eli with those dreamy eyes of hers.

  “I’m Elias,” he said. “You know how to howl yet?”

  “Yes!” She nodded hard, a scowl crossing her face. “I’m old enough now.”

  Calen’s lips twitched and he ruffled her hair.

  “Just learned a few months ago. She’s getting good at it,” he said.

  Something inside me ached. This what was Eli would have had, if witches and hunters hadn’t decimated his pack. Tiny wolf pups like Katy running around, learning their first howl. I blinked back tears. How many of Phoenixpack’s pups had been murdered by hunters?