Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sienna
We left the moment Hennessy’s call came through, headed for the human village where he thinks he has found a witch.
But I’m slowing down. The third time my paws stutter against the moss, I know I can’t hide it anymore.
Now that I am in wolf form, the mark on my collarbone has decided to make itself known: a slow, heavy ache dragging from my throat into my chest with every stride. In my human form, it sits quietly. Out here, with my body running on instinct, it pulls at me.
I push myself harder. My ribs ache.
Lucas runs at the front beside Darius, his dark wolf eating up the ground in long, fluid bounds. Violet flanks me on the right, a sleek shadow keeping perfect pace. Lillian holds the rear, older but keeping up easily.
None of them have noticed me struggling. I focus on the next stride. Then, the one after that.
My front paw catches on a root.
I’m stumbling before I register the impact, my chin nearly clipping the dirt.
Suddenly, a warm body bumps against mine and steadies me mid-step.
Lucas. He has broken formation without breaking stride, his bigger wolf running tight along my left side, his shoulder pressed into mine to take some of my weight.
His eyes stay forward. The pace doesn’t change.
For the next half mile, he runs with me. The bond hums steadily between us, but he can’t ask me anything in his wolf form, and I can’t tell him anything in mine.
The trail breaks open into a clearing. A stream runs through it, pale in the lowering light. We stop. Violet pads to the water, while Darius and Lillian lie on the soft ground to rest.
Lucas turns his head to me, chuffs once, and walks toward the stand of birch trees at the edge of the clearing.
Follow.
I follow him.
We’re out of sight of the others before he stops.
The shift rolls through him in a single graceful motion, and he stands tall, naked, his hair damp at the temples from the run.
He doesn’t reach for the bag tied to his ankle.
He doesn’t cover himself. He just looks at me, his arms loose at his sides, and waits.
“Shift,” he says.
I shake my head.
“Sienna. I know something is wrong.”
The bond carries it to me before he finishes the sentence. Not anger. Concern, wearing the clothes of an order, his patience already thinning.
I shift.
The change drops me onto my human knees in the moss.
I straighten slowly, my arms folding tight across my bare chest even though we’re alone behind the birches.
The cold air hits everywhere at once. I am entirely undressed, and so is he, and my wolf is rumbling inside me in a way that is profoundly unhelpful.
Lucas can’t seem to keep his eyes on my face.
I watch him try. I watch his gaze drop to my collarbone, slide once down the line of my arm where it crosses over my breast, and then snap back up to my eyes with what is clearly an act of will.
A cruel sense of satisfaction warms me up. Good.
“I can do it,” I say.
“Sienna.”
“I can. I’m slower than usual, but I’m keeping up.”
He sighs heavily. His eyes drop again, catch on the mark at my collarbone, and stay there this time. The black tendril has clearly crept another fraction of an inch since this morning. I don’t need to look in a mirror myself; I can see him measuring it.
“Tell me the truth.”
“Lucas.”
“Tell me.”
The bond pulls tight. I’m not sure I could lie to him even if I wanted to. He would know.
“It burns,” I admit quietly. “In wolf form. Every stride pulls at it. And the longer I push the worse it gets.” I look at the ground. “I’m fine for short bursts. Hours of running is too much.”
He absorbs that for a moment. His eyes have come back to mine, but I can’t quite name what’s behind them.
“I’ll carry you.”
“Lucas…”
“In my wolf form. You ride on my back. We make better time, and you are not running yourself raw to keep up with us. I can carry you without breaking stride.”
I open my mouth to argue. He gives me a look, and I shut it again, annoyed.
He bends to the bag at my ankle and pulls out a bundle of folded clothes. He holds them out to me.
“Dress,” he says. “I’ll shift.”
I take the clothes.
He turns his back to me before he shifts, and I’m not sure if it’s for my privacy or for his own discipline.
I dress quickly. My travel clothes are soft, warm against the chill of my still-sweaty skin. By the time I’ve pulled the shirt over my head, Lucas is in wolf form again, his coat dark against the pale moss.
He lowers his shoulder.
I climb on. My fingers take hold of the thick fur at his ruff. Legs tightening at his ribs, I settle against the warm column of his back. He waits a beat to be sure of me, then walks us out from behind the trees.
The others lift their heads as we come back into the clearing. Violet’s wolf gives an approving huff. Darius’s does not comment.
Lillian is already on her feet, pulling herself out of the grass without a sound.
Lucas pushes off into a smooth lope, and the ache in my chest eases. I let my forehead rest against his neck and close my eyes.
The rest of the journey passes under me in shades of green and brown. Forest, ridge, the long meadows of the eastern buffer. Lucas’s pace evens out with my weight on him. He’s being careful. I drift somewhere between sleep and waking, my arms snug against his shoulders.
The sun is dropping behind the trees when I feel him slow down.
The village sits in the hollow below us, a thin line of smoke from the smithy chimney bending east. The others shift behind the cover of an outbuilding and change into the clothes in the backpacks tied to their legs.
Lucas runs his eyes over me. “How’re you feeling?”
“I’m fine now,” I assure him, but he doesn’t seem entirely convinced.
“Let’s go.” Darius is already walking.
The high street is narrow, the last of the market stalls coming down for the evening.
I walk at Lucas’s left shoulder. The man unloading crates outside the cobbler’s pauses with a wooden box halfway to the door, watches me for too long.
Two younger men leaning against the tavern wall turn their heads as Violet and I pass.
We don’t look at them.
Lucas’s hand moves from his side to the small of my back. He spreads his fingers possessively against my spine, the gesture clear. The second man at the tavern wall lifts his eyes once to Lucas’s face and promptly finds something interesting to look at on the cobblestones.
I don’t say anything. I know exactly what Lucas is doing, and I let him.
Hennessy meets us at the edge of the high street and pulls Lucas aside while the rest of us wait by the apothecary. His voice is low and quick. Lucas nods twice, and when he comes back, his expression is focused.
“Her name is Fiona,” he tells us. “Hennessy’s been watching her for a day.”
“And?” Lillian asks.
“He thinks she’s a witch.”
I look at Lillian, who is saying, “Let’s talk to her.”
The apothecary is closing for the day when we walk in.
The woman who must be Fiona looks up from the counter, a cloth in one hand and a glass jar in the other.
The look on her face reveals several things at once when she registers the size of the group filling her shop.
Wariness. Confusion. Some private calculation she does in her head.
“We’re closed,” she says cautiously.
“Five minutes,” Lucas says. “If you want us out after that, we’ll go.”
She sets the jar down. Her eyes move across us. Lillian. Me. Lucas near the door with Darius behind him. Violet at the window. Hennessy, who has already broken the ice by buying things from her for the past day, gives her a small nod from where he’s leaning against the herb cabinet.
“Five minutes,” she agrees.
She walks to the door, turns the sign, and slides the bolt home.
She looks to be in her late twenties, with dark hair and the careful self-containment of a woman who learned young to keep her own counsel. She comes back to the counter, folds her arms on the wood, and waits.
Lillian and I move closer. Lucas and Darius stay by the door; a delegation of alphas crowding her would shut her down before we got a single word out of her. The women will do this.
The shop smells of dried lavender and something sharper—peppermint maybe, or wormwood. I can see bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters in the back room. The shelves behind the counter are lined with small, dark bottles, each one labeled in a careful, slanted hand.
Lillian steps up to the counter. “Are you a witch, Fiona?”
Fiona scoffs. “Witches are from stories you tell children at bedtime.” Her chin lifts, and she holds it steady. “This is a village of farmers. What sort of question is that to walk into a shop with?”
Lillian doesn’t argue. She simply lifts her hand toward an unlit candle on a display table.
The wick catches fire.
Fiona stops scoffing. Her arms drop from the counter as she stands up straight. She looks at the candle, then at Lillian’s hand, then back at Lillian.
The shop has gone very still.
“Who are you?” Fiona demands. Her tone is not polite. The easy wariness from the start of this is gone. Defensive distrust has taken its place.
Lillian doesn’t flinch. “You have witch blood.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have witch blood,” Lillian repeats, gently but plainly. “I can feel it in you. You must have an idea.”
Fiona is silent for a moment before her eyes slowly move across each of us—assessing, deciding whether we are something to run from.
“I’ve met your kind once,” she says quietly. “Twenty years ago. The day my Aunt Meera disappeared.” She doesn’t elaborate. “I have no reason to trust you.”
Nobody responds to her right away. I move forward. Half a step, no more. I don’t reach for her; I simply put myself in her sightline, keeping my voice level.
“Fiona, we are looking for witches to help us with an important task. We don’t mean anyone any ill will. We don’t know what happened the day your aunt went missing, and I am sorry if it was our kind that took her. But we are not them.”