Chapter 5 - Dani
The moment Arthur said I accept, everything fractured.
Wolves surged into motion. Orders cracked across the clearing.
The Nordan moved like a single well-trained organism, spreading out, tightening formation, snapping at anyone who stepped too close.
The Volkhov were in motion, too, Dominic giving her one last, intense look before disappearing into the trees with his jaw set.
A few of his men, in their human forms, circled close to the coven. Guarding them, she realized.
And Arthur…Arthur was at the center of it all, his gravelly voice humming through her.
“Chase, notify the priest. Get the ceremony ready. Inform the pack. The witches are not to be harmed.”
His voice rolled like thunder, full alpha. The kind of dominance that made her knees weaken.
Not from awe.
From dread.
“Lavinia—” she began, breath hitching.
But the High Sister raised one hand.
That was all it took.
The witches fell silent. Even the wolves closest to her paused, like something in the air shifted around the ancient woman.
“Walk with me, child,” Lavinia murmured.
Dani wanted to run.
She wanted to grab Aurelia and sprint back through the woods until the mountains swallowed them whole. She wanted to pretend she had never heard Arthur’s voice again, never felt the mate bond slam into her like a blow, never seen the way he looked at her daughter.
Our daughter.
Her stomach twisted.
But Lavinia’s hand was gentle, cool, and sure on her arm.
Dani moved.
Because she didn’t have a choice.
Aurelia clung to her side, tremors running down her small body. “Mom….”
“It’s okay, Auri,” Dani said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “You’re staying with me.”
Her daughter gulped, her expression tight and scared, nothing like her normal boisterous self. Dani’s heart cracked.
“Is he…what he said…about me…”
Dani pressed a kiss into her hair. “I will explain everything, I promise.”
Aurelia looked up at her, big blue eyes swimming with tears. “So it’s true?”
She heaved in a breath, panic clawing at the edges of her control. Her daughter. Her beautiful, brave, perfect daughter. “Oh, Auri….”
“Aurelia,” Lavinia’s voice was like water over stone, “stay with Edith and the others. I need to talk to your mother.”
Aurelia gripped her arm tighter, shaking her head fiercely. “No, I don’t want to!” Her voice was ragged, on the edge of breaking, her breath coming hard and fast. Dani knelt instantly, uncaring about the snow soaking through her jeans.
“Auri, Auri, look at me,” she said, placing her hands on her shoulders, gripping her tight. “I know this is scary, I know it’s a lot to take in. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I wanted to protect you from it, I don’t—”
She choked over her words, shoulders trembling as she looked into her daughter’s watery gaze.
The pain there, the panic, the betrayal…
It threatened to bowl her over.
“Come now, child,” Lavinia said, kindly, placing a hand on Aurelia’s back, “there will be time enough for explanations.”
Robotically, Aurelia turned and followed Lavinia’s nudge towards the rest of the witches, leaving Dani’s hands hovering in the empty air where they had been holding her daughter’s shoulders. She watched woodenly as Aurelia turned towards the wolves.
Towards Arthur.
He wasn’t looking at either of them, but she could tell by the set of his jaw, the flint in his eyes, that he could hear them. He knew the distress his actions caused.
And he didn’t care.
Dani stood, her legs stiff as ice, not taking Lavinia’s hand. The older witch didn’t flinch. She just turned towards the trees, gliding towards them with impossible grace, knowing that Dani would stagger after her.
A low, sharp whistle sounded. Several hulking wolves, both Volkhov and Nordan, fell into step some distance from them. Far enough away that they could pretend they had privacy. Close enough that they knew they were surrounded.
Lavinia paid them no heed. Dani, on the other hand, flinched whenever one moved too close, whenever she glimpsed a flash of sharp tooth or curving claw.
She had never gotten used to the enormous beasts, despite making peace that she would never be one of them years ago.
They wouldn’t harm her. Not without Arthur’s command.
A shiver ran over her skin, and she ran a few steps to catch up with the High Sister.
“You lied to us,” Lavinia said the words simply, not turning to look at Dani, as if she were merely commenting on the weather.
Dani’s throat clenched. “I didn’t—”
“It’s understandable,” Lavinia continued, eyes soft but unyielding.
“After all, we all assumed you had been driven away because of your witchcraft when you turned up at our door with a baby. Why else would you request sanctuary, ask to join our coven? We’ve all experienced the hatred shifters and vampires hold for us.
I imagine it was easier to let us assume what we liked than to admit to the rather… complicated reality.”
Dani shut her eyes. Shame and fear and old pain knotted in her gut. “I didn’t want to lie,” she whispered, “I just…it’s as you say. I was scared that if I told you the truth, you’d turn me away.”
Lavinia tutted softly. “You came to us a witch, Daniella. We would not have forsaken you.”
“But I…I…”
“You think your connection with the shifters would have changed our minds?”
Dani nodded miserably.
Lavinia sniffed, casting her eye over the passing shadow of a wolf, her gaze decidedly disdainful. “I won’t insult you by claiming there wouldn’t have been questions. But Gaia knows we’re persecuted enough as it is; there will never be judgment in my coven about who a witch chooses to love.”
“I don’t love him,” Dani said fiercely, surprising herself with the venom in her voice.
Lavinia looked at her then, her gaze full of pity, and Dani felt about two feet tall. “But you did once. Do not be so quick to deny your own history, Daniella. You do yourself a disservice.”
“But that’s what it is,” Dani choked out, “history. We’re done. We were done ten years ago. I want nothing more to do with him.”
“And yet,” Lavinia said, voice soft, “fate has decided otherwise.”
Dani shook her head violently. “Please. Lavinia, I can’t marry him. I can’t go back to that life. You don’t understand—”
“I understand very well.” Lavinia turned, looking up at the towering mountains, monolithic and unrelenting.
“You are, whether you believe it or not, a powerful witch. A fire burns deep within you, one which this frozen place may very well extinguish. I expect it was tried in the past. But Dani,” she turned, taking her hands, a rare show of affection, “it is also where you may burn the brightest. Fire is needed in the cold. Perhaps the great Ice Bear does not need more of the same, tradition, stoicism and glacial stubbornness. He needs a hearth to warm him. Fire to ignite him. Gaia has decreed that you are two sides of the same coin. I will not deny her this fate.”
Dani’s heart squeezed painfully. “It’s not that simple.”
“Nothing worth doing ever is.”
“He hurt me,” Dani choked. “You don’t know what he—”
“I know you left him. And I know you never told him why.”
Dani froze.
Lavinia’s gaze was ancient. Knowing.
“If he is indeed cruel,” the High Sister said, “you will tell me. I will protect you. But what I saw in that clearing was a wolf who would tear mountains apart for you. And Gaia does not give bonds lightly.”
Dani’s eyes stung.
“This is bigger than you,” Lavinia continued gently. “The hybrids. The summit. The threat rising in the north. You have a role to play, Dani. One only you can fill. And if you refuse…I don’t see a place for you among us any longer.”
The words settled like winter frost.
Unavoidable.
Final.
Lavinia wasn’t manipulating her or even threatening her.
She was telling a truth Dani didn’t want to hear.
And Dani hated her for it.
***
They were escorted like dignitaries.
Or prisoners.
It was hard to tell.
Wolves flanked them on all sides, tense, hackles raised. Dani loathed every second of it, prickling at the eyes, tracking her hands for sparks, her heart breaking at the way Aurelia kept glancing back as if she could still run.
And she hated, more than anything, that Arthur followed at a distance, silent, stalking their steps with the focus of a predator who had finally found what he’d been hunting all his life.
Every time she stumbled, his body shifted toward her like he meant to catch her.
Every time a wolf moved too close to Aurelia, he growled.
Every time she looked back…his eyes were already on her.
It was suffocating.
And terrifying.
And familiar in a way that made her want to scream.
The town came into view, wooden rooftops dusted with snow, lanterns glowing, the sharp salt-smell of the ocean drifting on the cold air. It looked exactly the same as the day she’d run.
Her stomach rolled.
Aurelia squeezed her hand tighter. “Mom?”
Dani forced a smile she didn’t feel. “We’re okay.”
They entered the main square, the town bustling with life around them. Most were humans who didn’t spare them so much as a passing glance. There were always tourists in Skymist, adventurers wanting to try their luck at the Aurora Peak Challenge, or to venture north to the frozen glaciers.
There were plenty of shifters, however, who watched them go with careful eyes, their gazes catching on Arthur, then on Lavinia in her High Sister robes. Their expressions would turn dark. Their lips would curl.
Dani might have been scared, except she had always suffered the mocking looks of shifters.
And that was without Arthur at her back.
However much she utterly despised him at that moment, she couldn’t deny the relief that he was with her.
Something in her knew that he wouldn’t let any harm come to her or Aurelia.
His heavy presence behind her burned bright as the sun.