Harbored in silence, p.3
Harbored in Silence, page 3
I rolled my shoulders back, working the exhaustion out of my muscles, but it didn’t matter that I hadn’t slept the night before. We needed to get through this.
I grabbed some coffee and made my way to Chase and Skye’s home.
They had moved into this place after they mated. Chase had always wanted to live in a smaller home, despite the fact that he had to have these meetings at his place. Our Beta, Audrey, had been hosting some of the meetings at her place in the interim, but now as a mated couple, the Alpha pair had more space for all of us.
It was early enough that people were either still asleep or just getting ready for their day and weren’t out and about. The word hadn’t spread yet about the coven’s demise, and I was grateful. I didn’t want to deal with that. I had a feeling that would fall to Audrey. As Beta, it was her job to ensure the safety and needs of the den structure. I was there to support her as Heir. Hell, my entire role was to support. My Pack bonds were similar to Chase. I helped him deal with the day-to-day business of having to note every single instant of hope, happiness, anger, and fear of the Pack, and the responsibility that came with being Alpha.
I aided our Healer like I had earlier, and if he ever let me, I would do the same for our Omega. Hayes, the big polar bear shifter who grunted more often than not, refused to let any of us help him. It didn’t matter that sometimes during the days of war and darkness we all felt like we were fading, and Hayes was the only one propping us up. No, he wouldn’t let us help so we were forced to stand by and watch. But just like all of us, we had to deal with our own bullshit. And he was really good at it.
“Oh good, you’re here. I was afraid that you would still be at that place.” I turned to see Wynter coming towards me. I held out my arm, and she sank into my side, hugging me tightly. I still didn’t know why this human was part of our den, as far as I could tell she had no ties to any of the shifters, but she had always been here. Part of us. And my wolf liked it. It liked protecting her. We were friends, nothing more, and I was glad for it. But I still scowled down at her, tapping her nose with my finger. “What the hell were you thinking?”
She scowled at me, that fiery temper of hers adorable. She would probably burn me alive for even saying that out loud so I would keep those thoughts to myself. She was getting good at blades though.
“I was thinking that Dara was going to do whatever she could to save us. And I wasn’t going to let my friend go alone. Neither was Wren. So we went. We had a shifter, a witch, and little old human me. But I have knives, and I know how to use them.”
I kissed the top of her head as we made our way toward Chase’s house. “You are good with knives. Adalyn helping?”
Adalyn was a Central wolf now, part of the mated triad of the Alpha hierarchy. It was so weird to think that she wasn’t a Packmate anymore, even though the four Packs in our area were part of an alliance. As such, the Pack bonds were starting to blend in a way that I had never heard of before.
In essence, the Redwoods and the Talons were practically one Pack with two Alphas. Now the Centrals and Aspens were blending as well. My wolf didn’t know what to think about it, but it liked the idea of more protection, and more to protect. The human part of me knew it was going to be a pain in the ass if these Alphas ever got annoyed with each other. But so far they seemed to be getting along, and I got along with the other Heirs. So we figured it out. One war at a time.
I led Wynter inside and nodded at Cassius where he sat in the corner, looking as exhausted as I felt. His mate Novah handed a cup of coffee to him and smiled at me.
Hayes was in the kitchen, along with Wren and Steele. They talked in low tones with each other, and I nodded at them before going to sit next to Skye. The former Redwood member, now my Alpha female, smiled at me and rested her head on my shoulder.
“I’m tired. But we’re fine.”
“I guess we’re as fine as we’re going to be,” I grumbled.
Audrey and Gavin walked in just then, nodding at us, with trays of muffins in hand.
“This is the best we could do. The maternals weren’t happy that we stole so many muffins, but I have a feeling that they knew we were going to meet.” Gavin shrugged as he spoke, then handed over the trays. “I don’t think they know exactly what happened, but considering you guys were out late, they know it wasn’t good.”
I looked around and noticed who was absent, and held back a curse.
And it wasn’t just the fact that she could have been my mate. No, it was the fact that she wasn’t here. And neither was another who used to be with us.
None of us spoke it, but we knew Lily was gone. She had to be. We hadn’t found her body, but there had been no ransom note, no scent. We had searched in the weeks since we last saw our witch Packmate. But she was gone. There were no Pack bonds left. It was as if she had been sliced away from us, though we hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Dara said as she walked in. My wolf perked up, wanting to see her, to touch her. But I didn’t. Instead, I sat straighter, trying to act nonchalant, even as Hayes gave me a look.
Oh, the Omega knew. I was pretty sure he was the only one that did. You couldn’t hide your emotions from the damn Omega. But I didn’t want anyone else to know.
Not when I knew it was only going to end badly.
Chase settled Dara into her seat, then began to go over things. Skye sighed into my side and let out a breath.
We weren’t starting the meeting yet, just reviewing a few other things, so I looked at her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Beyond the obvious.”
She gave me a sad smile and shook her head.
“Baby?” Chase asked, and they all turned to us. Skye reddened and shook her head.
Skye wasn’t a submissive or dominant. She was a Gamma. She was the balance for a broken Alpha and a broken Pack. My wolf wanted to ensure that she kept that balance, even if I was still trying to come to terms with it.
“Today’s just a bad day for other things,” she whispered, and Chase frowned at her before he cursed under his breath and stood up quickly. I moved out of the way, trading seats with him so I ended up by Dara, doing my best not to pay attention to her, as Chase wrapped his mate up into his arms and murmured to her.
I frowned looking around as Hayes let out a pained sigh, rubbing his hand over his chest.
I could only imagine the emotions in the room.
Skye wiped the tears from her cheeks, waved her mate off, and smiled up at us. “I’m sorry. It’s just the anniversary of the battle with the general. When we lost Blake, my cousin.”
We all sat in silence, and I remembered her cousin. He was the son of North and Lexi, the cousin of Parker, our Voice of the Wolves. He had been a strong fighter, a guy with a great smile, and I had only met him a few times. Our Pack had been different then, hidden in the shadows, about to go dark and break.
He had died protecting his family and it wasn’t fair. And now we were in another war, with another enemy, and it felt as if we didn’t have enough time to grieve our fallen, to remember who we had lost along the way.
“Let’s talk about other things. Things we can fix. Because we can’t do anything else right now.”
I nodded at Skye’s words, and then I told them what I saw, and Cassius and Steele added in their own parts. Wynter, Wren, and Dara spoke as well, and we laid it all out there.
“The coven is gone,” Dara began. I looked at her, my wolf in pain, agony slicing through him. But I ignored him.
“What does this mean?” Audrey asked, holding up her hand to quiet the room since everyone spoke at once. “I know it means that they’re gone. I know it means that we’re fucked. But what can we do? For the witches. And us, but there are other witches out there, right?”
Dara’s eyes darkened, and she nodded tightly. “We need to find them. And I have an idea.”
I had a feeling I was not going to like whatever idea my mate had.
Chapter
Three
Dara
Everyone turned to me and I swallowed hard, the tension thick in the air and twisting around my spine. Cruz stiffened at my side, and I wanted to turn to him, to explain to him.
There was that small part of me that wanted him to see me. To know me. To want to understand me.
But there was the rest of me that knew that he needed to stay away. For his sake, and for mine.
We barely knew each other. I knew he was the Heir to the Pack, the one who protected us. The one who put his all into our Pack even if he didn’t realize it. He was the quiet one behind the Alpha, the one others turned to when they didn’t want to bother or pressure the Alpha or Beta or anyone else.
I didn’t know his family. Didn’t know his history. Nobody did. Perhaps his best friends, but not me.
It was odd to think that the fates had decided we should be together, that our souls would be bonded as one and we would find an eternity of bliss and happiness or whatever else the fuck they thought it would be.
Only, I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know how I had joined the Pack or where I had come from. We’d fought side by side, shared meals, become Packmates, but we didn’t know each other the way we should. We only knew about our potential, and that was the problem with the goddess and the way that she played with our lives.
I cringed inwardly at that thought.
Cruz leaned into me slightly, pressing his arm to mine. I didn’t have a shifter inside me, didn’t have the ability to calm myself like that. But I could sense his wolf. That was odd though, that had never happened to me before, but I knew. That this was his wolf, sensing my stress and needing to protect me in some way.
I huffed out a breath and spoke. “We need witches. We need to protect our den and the dens around us.”
“We’ve tried that, and even before this happened to the coven, we didn’t have enough,” Audrey said, not unkindly.
I nodded, looking at the rest of them. I usually didn’t have a problem speaking in front of others, telling them what I thought. But right then I wanted to hide. And then Cruz pressed into me again and I felt relief.
I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. Not when I needed to focus.
“You’re right, it didn’t work. The witches that we have in the dens are strong. Even those without the magic reserves some of us have, every single person who has helped has been strong. Has pushed and done their best to ensure that our Pack was safe. But we don’t have everything that we need. And the coven is a large part of that.” I paused, an odd sense of shame sliding over me. “Was a large part of that.”
There was a moment of silence as we mourned the dead, even though they had been our enemy. Death wasn’t something that was right in any case. It didn’t matter that I was an actual death witch, could hold death in my hands. I didn’t like the idea of loss surrounding me.
“We have earth, fire, air, water, and spirit witches on our sides. And I’m a harvester death witch.” Nobody flinched around me, they just nodded.
It was a novel idea, the fact that they weren’t afraid of me. At least not so much that I noticed. Which was amazing, because when I first joined the Pack, they had been afraid of me, of what I could do, because they didn’t know. The fact that I hadn’t known either probably hadn’t helped.
“But there are more.”
“More harvester witches?” Cruz asked, his voice soft though everyone in the room heard him.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure about that. Witch magic is hereditary, as is evidenced by Nico being an earth witch and a shifter from all of his parents,” I said, speaking of part of the Alpha triad in the Central Pack. “But there are other powers we could use. I know I probably shouldn’t have, but I spoke to Hannah, and she’s working on bringing in all of the elemental witches that she can find, now that we don’t have the coven telling us no.”
Hannah was the former Healer of the Redwood Pack, and an earth witch, as well as Nico’s mother.
I looked towards Chase and cringed. “I’m sorry for not asking you first. But things needed to happen quickly, and well, I didn’t have time to ask permission.”
Chase’s lips twitched and Cruz stiffened at my side, leaning forward so he was slightly in between me and the Alpha. I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t even think he realized he had done it. That was all his wolf, and he probably wasn’t going to be happy when he realized it.
“That’s good. And as it happens, I’ve already spoken to the Redwood Alpha, so we know that she’s searching for more elementals.”
“There are many witches out there, elementals and not, who weren’t allowed to be part of the coven because they didn’t fit in with the image that the new coven members were imposing. And even before that, with Diana and Amelia and the others, they didn’t want to be part of the coven. They didn’t want an organization to tell them what to do, or to put a target on their backs. I get that.”
I looked around as that familiar sense of loss hit me from speaking those women’s names. “I wasn’t coven, at first because I didn’t want to be, and then because they didn’t want my magic. But I have Pack. The Aspens, you let me join you. And it might have put a target on my back, just like others were fearing, but I’d rather be here with that target than not.” I took a deep breath and continued to speak before anyone could respond. “And while we’re discussing that, there are others like me, like I said. Others who aren’t elementals. Other witches that use powers that might not be so traditional as herbs and air and wind and earth. Others that the coven didn’t want out in the open because they feared what the humans might say. But they’re good people. They just have powers that scare others.”
“Are they safe to be around our den?” Steele asked, ever the Enforcer.
“The people that I need to find, the ones who are underground and try to stay out of the way, were my friends in the past, or helped me in some way when I was searching for a home. I wouldn’t call all of them my friends because I don’t know them as well anymore. But I used to trust them, and I hope I can again. But these aren’t the people that you can ask for help over the phone.” I stared at my Alpha. “I’d like your permission to go and speak to them. To find these witches that I know can help build a stronger ward. I know it’s asking a lot. Hannah and the other elemental witches will be here, to try to stabilize what we have, but I can’t watch us fail because we’re not using our resources. And I think I can find better resources. So please, let me help.”
“You’re going to go alone, on this trip finding witches that you haven’t spoken to in how long? Witches with powers that we don’t even know. No. Not happening.”
I turned to Cruz as people stopped talking and stared at him. And then at me, and then between the two of us.
My hackles rose and I narrowed my gaze at him. Nobody knew we were mates, potential mates, and nobody needed to know. But if he kept acting like this, the dominant asshole who wanted to protect me even though he had no idea what the fuck he was doing, people were going to figure it out soon.
“You’re not my Alpha. You don’t get to tell me what to do. So fuck off.”
I smiled as I said it, and Steele whistled between his teeth.
Hayes looked at me, raised those big brows of his, and I winced.
Oh no, there was someone who knew. The Omega always knew.
“While I love watching the two of you fight, you’re both right.” We whirled on Chase, who snorted and said, “Don’t look at me like that, I’m more dominant than both of you. So lower your gaze, before I have to get all wolfy on you.”
Cruz growled, and he did lower his gaze. It was his wolf pushing at him, and I understood it. I had to balance my own power, but Cruz had to do it as well.
“Who are you going to find? What is your plan?” Chase asked.
I nodded. “I know of five witches. I think they can help.”
“What do they do? How do you think it can help?” Audrey held up her hands as I turned to her. “I believe you. I will do all that I can to help you. I promise. But I want to know. Because I want you to be safe, too.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded, an odd warmth filling me. I wasn’t good at being friends. I was trying. I had girlfriends that I was working with and trying not to ruin those relationships, but sometimes my magic got the better of me, just like their wolves and cats did.
“I’ve known Jade the longest, so I want to find her as quickly as possible. I have feelers out, I’ve always had those out by the way, to know where they are. Jade is a fire witch, but a little different than the fire witches we know.” I shook my head. “I can’t tell you all of their powers other than the fact that as long as I’ve known them they have done their best to use them for good. Or at least on the twisted side of good.”
They all stared at me, and I shrugged. “You use your claws and your fangs to rip into flesh and to fight vampires. You all have your animals deep inside you, fighting yourselves. We’re not human, none of us. I have a power within me that calls to death. And I might be a harvester, but I don’t harvest your deaths.” And I wouldn’t, despite the fact that I could. But they didn’t need to know that. “We all have the twisted sides of us that we fight against, or lean into. But I believe that if we find them, it’ll be worth the risk.”
My body started shaking, and once again something came over me that I’d tried to hold back.
My head tilted back, and I knew that my eyes were glowing but unfocused.
Wren moved to me quickly, though I knew the others were near. “It’s the goddess. It’s happened before.”
My magic pushed at me, and I fisted my hands at my side, trying not to throw up.
“Death is righting a wrong for a past forsaken. The lost son will return, and the tears of pain and agony will dry. Though the sacrifice of cost of an action will never be equal, but will return threefold.”
