Pack witch, p.3
Pack Witch, page 3
part #5 of The Splintered Bond Series
The only way I could stay alive was by fleeing as well, like a coward, or by joining forces with evil. I would die before fighting my own brethren at the side of the Russian bastards, though. Honor was all I had left now. No family, no pack, and no position.
No magic.
My wolf lay silent and still in my chest as I darted between two trees, then crossed an open space to reach the shadows of another. He wasn’t dead, even if it felt like it, but he’d protested the scarring so violently, Camellia had been forced to lay a very heavy sleep spell on him. He would wake in one moon, she’d assured me, hopefully after the tattoos healed.
Voices crying out behind me had my feet moving again, ignoring the sharp pain, though everything other than my skin felt blunted, dull. My vision, my hearing, even my sense of smell was as asleep as my wolf side.
I would have to cope. I was almost close enough to the outer edge of the pack to find the river and swim downstream for a few miles. Maybe go over the falls, if I had to. The river led south and east, and would take me closer to Mountain, the one pack I’d heard might give me sanctuary.
I sucked in a steadying breath as I moved toward the protective shade of a grove of birch trees. I had to go slowly, to not attract attention, but when I reached the birches, I realized I had failed.
“Hello?” The voice was young, feminine, and completely unfamiliar.
Who was it? I couldn’t see her at all, but I was almost certain she was close enough to touch. Was she hiding herself with magic?
I leaned forward. “Who are you?” When I felt her hand on my arm, her fingers sending new bolts of agony through my entire body, I hissed in pain and pulled back.
“I’m Zinnia,” she replied, like I should know that. Know her.
The voices in the distance grew closer. Who she was didn’t matter; I had to run, now. “Tell no one you saw me, girl. Don’t say anything unless you want to die.”
Then I ran, the fire on my skin joined by a sensation of tearing that burned in my heart.
“Sergeant!” The distant yelling woke me, and I leaped to my feet.
Leroy?
His voice cracked as he shouted my name again. “Sergeant! There’s a grizzly! It’s headed toward Grandma Ida, and we think it’s got rabies!”
Bo’s voice was quieter, but clear. “We’ll need to shift, Lee. We gotta save her.”
I spotted them racing toward the river and the blurry place, shedding their clothing as they ran. Then the two of them were in wolf form, vanishing beneath the canopy.
Fuck. I was too far to reach them on human feet. I called on my wolf, who groaned and then answered, pouring his energy out.
On four paws at last, I ran to save my friend Ida and my adopted idiot pups.
Chapter 4
Zinnia
“Why do my knees sound like someone’s throwing popcorn in a campfire?” I grumbled as I pulled myself off the ground.
Ida snorted as she gathered up her things, repacking the picnic basket. “Just wait. By the time you’re my age, you’ll sound like somebody’s pouring milk on rice cereal every time you stand up.”
I wasn’t sure she’d even noticed my turbulent emotions as we’d eaten and caught up on pack news, but the animals nearby had. The squirrels hiding in the aspens nearby chittered angrily, though that could’ve been because Brigid had landed on a nearby pine branch, watching me closely.
“I’m grateful to you for letting my friends join us.”
“Friends?” I frowned. What did she mean? “Join us? You said meet—”
“Well, yes. He’s not far. I left him and those two empty-headed boys of his a few miles back. We don’t have to let those two cross the border, I suppose, though the moon knows what they’ll get up to left on their own.” Ida turned and held her head to one side, the wry smile on her round face dropping when she saw my expression.
“Wait, he’s here? Julian?” His name was a dagger in my throat. My heart. “No. I can’t. I can’t!” If I saw him again, if he left me again, there was no way I could survive. It had taken all my focus, and all of my wolf’s life energy, to keep breathing for so long. “I can’t!” I stepped back, unexpected sparks flying from my fingertips and lighting the dried leaves near my feet on fire.
“Zinnia!” Ida stomped out the burning leaves, darting a worried glance my way as she made certain the sparks were extinguished. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything! I can’t!” Agony ripped through me, the old wound torn wide. I had to run, to escape.
Above, Brigid cried out and took wing. Marta lumbered from the closest grove of aspens, roaring angrily. The world around me, all of the parts of it I had threaded my life to, that had kept me alive when my wolf had wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep forever—when she had done just that, too weak to take form in anything but dreams—woke up bristling to defend me.
The hawk wheeled in tight circles over my head and screeched. The squirrels raced along the branches, ready to jump down. Even the bees that had woken for the first days of spring buzzed fiercely as the threads connecting me to nature itself, and the underlying magic of the earth, pulled taut, humming with fear and pain, anger and shock.
I wanted to run, but I didn’t even have the strength. As I sucked in a breath, I knew it was all too late. His scent found me—cedar, musk, and something darker—and the air ripped out of my lungs. Twenty-five years hadn’t dulled it. If anything, it was sharper now, a blade of grief honed by longing. My knees nearly gave out.
Marta stood on her rear legs and roared, not understanding what was hurting me, but sensing it.
Ida didn’t understand either. “Get behind me!” she cried out, ripping her flowered dress as she shifted into her wolf form. She was enormous, every bit as big as a grizzly, and far bigger than Marta, who was only a black bear. Dominance poured off her in waves as the massive wolf advanced on my valiant friend. Marta stood her ground, even with her recently broken back foot.
“No!” I shouted, throwing myself between the two of them. Marta’s shadow fell over me as she bristled and grunted, confused. I’d healed her paw as much as I could, but the bones inside were still fragile. I didn’t want her landing on it with her full weight.
Ida backed down, giving a disgruntled snarl. But before I could explain that the bear was just another one of my rescues, and not a threat whatsoever, two other wolves appeared and attacked.
Small, lean, and both of them dark as shadows—though one had splashes of white on his feet—they tore into Marta viciously.
How had they crossed the border of my spell? It shouldn’t have been possible.
My own wolf couldn’t answer the call to help. But my long-banked anger did. “Leave her alone!” I lifted my hands, calling on the world around me to assist.
There wasn’t much to answer my demand, but there was enough. Long, trailing roots of the summer grasses lay in the earth itself, and they woke, zipping out of the ground and winding around the wolves’ back feet. The hawk dove, joined by a dozen smaller birds, their small beaks shining red as they pecked at the strangers’ muzzles. Trees shook, letting loose pinecones like sharp-edged missiles.
The strange wolves yelped, dodging and stumbling, almost as if their feet were too big for their bodies…
Children. They weren’t fully matured shifters at all.
I took a deep breath, fighting for calm. The nature magic was usually slow to respond, though it had leaped to my defense quickly enough today. Finally, though Marta still reared up on her back legs in front of me, growling fiercely, the rest of the world settled.
I let out a shaky sigh, thinking the worst had passed, just as calamity struck. One of the wolves darted forward one last time, and Marta swiped out with her paw, connecting with his snout. She gave a groan as her foot buckled beneath her and she fell on her side.
The midnight-black young wolf bared his teeth and leaped at the same instant I flung myself between them to protect her. I threw up my arm just in time—protecting my throat—and white-hot pain exploded as his teeth sank deep.
Ida’s wolf yelped in alarm. Marta tried to rise again, frantic as the scent of my blood filled the clearing. The wolf who’d bitten me let go and stumbled back, panting, ears pinned, eyes round with the unmistakable panic of a pup who knew he’d done something very wrong. I felt the same panic, pulling on all the magic around me as hot blood warmed my upper arm and side. I drew on every thread I could, on the barrier itself, fighting to heal myself.
Then suddenly, another wolf was there, a massive charcoal-gray one with a silver nose and ears, and markings that tinted the fur in odd patterns. The beast was almost as large as Ida, but far more dangerous—to me at least. More than strong enough to force his way through my magical barrier.
This was the creature who’d howled in my nightmares for twenty-five years and slunk along the edges of my vision as I walked the mountains. He was as familiar as my own face in the mirror, yet a complete stranger.
Julian.
He took in the scene: the two smaller wolves, fallen. Me, in human form, bleeding. Ida had retreated a few steps and was shifting back, probably knowing I’d need her human hands to help staunch the blood. But he didn’t wait for her to change and explain. His eyes landed on Marta and saw an enemy.
Julian jumped over me to get to the bear, or tried to. Somehow, I managed to straighten and grabbed him mid-leap. I threw my arms around his neck, pulling him toward me, toward the ground and away from the bear. “Stop! The bear is my friend!”
He gave an odd, confused yelp at the shout, as my hand wrapped around his front shoulder and closed weakly around a patch that was hairless, like he’d been wounded there with silver or magic.
My fingers met his flesh, and electricity shivered through me for the split second we were connected before he landed half on top of me, half on the ground. It was a sensation I’d felt before, but from the absolute shock in his amber eyes as he jumped up to face me, he had no idea what had just happened.
I blinked at Julian, blood still rhythmically oozing from the bite on my upper arm. He blinked back.
Huh, I thought, as darkness closed around me in the middle of the sunlit afternoon. The younger wolf had managed to hit an artery. That pup will make a good hunter someday.
Though I wouldn’t live to see it. I was too weak to draw any more magic to me, too injured to heal myself. So I closed my eyes, almost glad that death was pulling me into the comfortable darkness. I wouldn’t live to be rejected again either.
I closed my eyes, sorry that the young one would blame himself for my death. But I’d lived a long time, and I was tired.
The scent of my mate around me, fresh cedar and musk, and the weight of his wolf’s body on mine, a comforting feeling, made it almost worth the pain. I could pretend for just a moment, that he had come for me at last.
That he accepted me. Even loved me.
Chapter 5
Julian
Mate! My wolf’s howl was victorious, and grew louder as the stranger’s hand landed on my shoulder and I understood who she was to me. My true mate, the other half of my soul. The one soul in the world who completed me.
Before the thought had fully formed, I collapsed, half on top of her, and her scent hit me. Rosemary and mint. And then blood.
Too much blood.
My fur grew warm where her arm was caught under me. Sticky and sharp-smelling. She was bleeding out. Dying, right in front of me.
No. No, this can’t be the end. I couldn’t wait my entire life, find my true mate in an instant, and lose her just as fast.
I heard Ida shouting at the boys as I shifted faster than I ever had before and wrapped my hand over the pulsing wound. Her face was tanned, possibly from hours spent in the sun, but was growing paler as I watched.
“Mate,” I muttered, my voice a croak. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t rouse. The corners of her lips turned up slightly, though, as if she wasn’t afraid.
Mate! Claim! my wolf insisted.
I was horrified. Claiming her might save her, though if she was too far gone, it might also take me along with her. The idea didn’t stop me from pushing the blood-soaked fabric of her dress away from her neck and shoulder. We would run with the moon side by side, if we both died. We would be together as we were meant to be.
But first, I would try to save her life. I’d claim her, even though doing it without her permission was almost a crime. Without moving my hand from her wound, I lifted the woman’s narrow frame to my face. Kneeling with her draped over my arm, I set my lips on her neck and whispered, “Forgive me.”
The bear, whom I hadn’t forgotten, gave a rumble of disapproval.
The boys loosed matching, alarmed whines.
“Absolutely not.” Ida’s sharp voice cut in, as she grabbed me by one shoulder and pulled the woman away, though I kept my hand on her wound, unwilling to let up on the pressure. “Julian, stop growling. You can’t claim her, not unless she accepts you.”
She barked a few more orders at Bo, who was shivering on his feet in human form, muttering, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to hurt her, Sergeant.”
I wanted to reassure him that I knew, but my tongue was frozen in my mouth. I couldn’t even move my head to look at him.
Ida murmured, “We all know that, sweetheart. Go on and get the kit; it’s just inside the door, on the pine table.”
Bo repeated the apology, then wheeled and ran into the nearby cabin, emerging with a basket a few seconds later. He handed it to Ida and moved back to stand beside his friend. Leroy was still in wolf form, facing the bear, who was obviously not a threat. The thing was… crying? I had never known a bear could weep, but this one’s shoulders were rounded as it made whimpering sounds of grief.
Ida kneeled at my side. “Julian, give her to me.”
I snarled at her. “She’s my mate.”
“And she may still be your mate if you let me help her. Give me space to try.”
“I can claim her—” I began, but she was already gently pulling the woman away, moving her own hand to cover the wound. If I didn’t have the utmost respect for Ida, I would’ve fought her. But I owed her my respect, and my life, so I resisted my wolf’s impulse.
Ida pulled a mass of something—cobwebs?—out of the basket with her free hand, then pressed them to the wound. The bleeding appeared to stop, or at least slow significantly, though that may have been because she’d already bled too much.
My mate was a mess, covered with dirt and blood. Her hair was a tangled mass of dark waves with silver threads throughout, her limbs almost too slender, and her skin far too pale. One whole side of her torso was blood-slicked, her pale green cotton dress twisted around her legs and torn from her shoulder to wrist. She looked to be a few years younger than me, though it was hard to tell.
“Let’s hope this works,” Ida murmured.
“If she dies…” I snarled, ashamed of the threat I couldn’t keep out of my voice.
Ida ignored me, still holding the cobwebs on the wound as she barked at Bo to get something else out of the basket. Herbs of some kind? Bo handed them to Ida, who glanced up at me, a stern gleam in her eyes. “Chew these for her.”
I blinked, but obeyed, the foul-tasting herbs leaving my tongue numb. I handed back the masticated lump, and she took it, pressing it between the woman’s lips.
The woman. I didn’t even know her name.
“Who is she? What is her name?” I asked as Ida worked, instructing me to hold the cobwebs in place, while she pulled more things out of the basket. I sniffed and realized everything inside it reeked of strong magic. No. Not strong magic. Deep magic. As if small spells had been laid over everything inside, one at a time for years. Decades, perhaps.
“This is the one I was bringing you to meet,” she said. “Her name is Zinnia.”
Zinnia. I had called her a crone in my thoughts. She was nothing of the sort.
I drank her in as she lay almost motionless, only her chest rising and falling unsteadily, as if the act of breathing might cease at any moment. “She’s a witch.” I had almost no power over my own magic now, but since the first scar that had blotted out the tattoo on my upper arm, I’d been able to sense it again.
Like the medicines in her basket, this woman’s magic was potent. Concentrated, as if it had been increasing in strength for a very long time. But I couldn’t pick up a trace of wolf in her.
My own wolf snarled his denial of the thought, but not even he could locate a connection to her shifter side, if she had one. My magic, though, roiled under my skin more violently than it ever had before. I ignored the sensation, the pain that had become even sharper after she’d touched me.
I suddenly remembered Ida’s words. “She was a shifter?”
A long time ago, she’d said. Not now. My wolf panted, in panic.
“Once,” Ida replied, pulling her discarded dress back on. She kneeled back down and pulled a handful of dried vines and foliage from the basket, which I realized must be some sort of magical first aid kit. I’d never seen such a thing. My original pack had been magically strong and healed easily from all but the worst wounds. We never got sick. But Zinnia had human medicine in her home, which meant…
I swallowed hard, my throat dry. “Tell me.”
Ida wrapped the plants around Zinnia’s head, like a dried flower crown. It practically wept magic from every dried-up leaf and blossom on it, and I could sense it falling on Zinnia’s skin and vanishing, as if she were drinking it. “When I met her, her wolf was still… discernible. Now, well, you can feel for yourself, can’t you?”
I could. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know all of it, and what I do know isn’t mine to share. She’s a hermit, and thanks to her magic, only a few in our pack even know she’s here.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Bo, Leroy? Bring out a quilt for her. She’ll need to lie on the earth, if I’m not mistaken, but it’ll get cold soon. You two will go back to the campsite with me and leave her to heal, if she can.”
