Chapter 13 - Dani
Dani sat at the big oak table in Thistlehouse’s front room, hands wrapped around a mug of cooling tea, watching snow slide lazily past the windows.
A log crackled in the stove. Someone had hung herbs to dry from the rafters; they brushed the top of her head when she leaned back, a familiar sensation from home.
Arthur was a knot at the back of her ribs, a steady tug of a presence headed downhill with his men. The bond said he was focused, grim, but not in immediate danger. That was the only reason she wasn’t already halfway through the woods to be out there with him.
“Honestly,” Penelope said, primly sipping a cup of tea opposite her, “if the Volkhov don’t just rip the Volnoye’s throats out on sight, I’ll be disappointed.”
“Dominic won’t risk an open fight so close to town,” Lavinia said. She sat near the stove, knitting something unrecognizable. “Not during daylight hours, at any rate.”
“Then he can invite them up to the mountain and rip their throats out there,” Penelope said. “Problem solved.”
A couple of the Juneau witches laughed. Someone made a low, appreciative noise at the thought of Dominik Volkhov losing his temper.
“They’re not all idiots,” Dani said, before she could stop herself.
Heads turned.
Lavinia’s needles paused. Penelope’s eyebrows went up. Edith, leaning against the doorframe with her arms folded, watched Dani over the rim of her mug, and narrowed her eyes.
“The Volnoye?” Penelope asked. “Everyone knows the threat they pose.”
“I meant the Volkhov and the Nordan,” Dani said, pulse thudding harder. “Dominic isn’t going to start a war unless he has to. Arthur won’t, either.”
“Arthur won’t breathe without worrying about how it looks to his wolves,” one of the Juneau witches snorted.
Another ripple of laughter.
It hit her wrong.
Dani shifted her fingers on the mug. “He’s under pressure,” she said, keeping her tone even. “With the hybrids. With us being here. All of it.”
Penelope stared at her. “My word,” she said, “listen to you.”
“What?” Dani snapped.
“You, defending the big bad Alpha,” Penelope said, “I could weep. I really could.”
“Penny,” Lavinia murmured in warning.
Penelope ignored her. “I mean, come on, Dani. We all know what you’re about.
” She sniffed imperiously. “Lavinia offers you up as a peace offering, and you get the chance to bat your lashes at the sexy local Alpha, let him bite you so his pack stops frothing at the mouth every time they see a witch. It’s clever.
” Her smile sharpened. “We didn’t realize you were actually going to catch feelings in the middle of it. ”
“Wow,” Dani said. Her skin had turned oddly cold. “Thank you so much for the insight into my emotional life; it’s really valuable.”
“You can’t blame us for being surprised,” another witch, Tamsin, from Juneau, said. “You didn’t seem so comfortable a few days ago.”
“We’re mates,” Dani said. The words came out flat.
“And now you’re living in his house,” Penelope pointed out, “his bed.”
Heat flashed through Dani’s magic, quick and dangerous. The mug warmed in her hands.
“Enough,” Lavinia said softly. The room stilled. “We can discuss Dani’s choices without turning into teenagers.” Her gaze cut to Dani. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation. That includes us.”
Dani let out a breath. Still, the prickle under her skin didn’t ease.
“We’re not blind, Lavinia,” Penelope said. “We see the way the wolves look at us. Like we’re bombs. We see the way Dominic uses Layla, yet still refuses to acknowledge what she truly is. They’ll use us as long as we’re useful, then they’ll fall back on their hate. Same as ever.”
“Penelope,” Lavinia said, sharper now, “I said enough.”
Penelope’s mouth snapped shut. She drank her tea with aggressive interest instead.
Dani stared into her own mug. Her magic hummed low, restless, picking up every thread of tension in the room.
She understood the anger. Of course she did. Witches had been killed by shifters. They, too, had suffered because of witches. With their lifespans, the war was not that long ago. Both people carried scars.
She also remembered Arthur on the ridge last night, voice rough as he said he was a coward and that he was sorry. The way he’d wrapped the blanket around her after without thinking, as if keeping her warm had always been the most natural thing in the world.
“It’s not just politics,” she said quietly, “not after we… spent the night together.”
There it was. Out of her mouth before she could call it back.
The coven room went very, very still.
“Oh, Dani,” Tamsin said, half pity, half exasperation.
Penelope groaned softly, “You didn’t.”
“Did what?” Dani demanded.
“Fall for him again,” Penelope said. “Tell me you weren’t that stupid.”
Dani’s fingers tightened till the ceramic creaked. “It’s not—” She bit off the rest. Because it was that, wasn’t it? Wrapped up in duty and bonds and Aurelia, but at the core of it, yes, she still felt something stupid and fierce for the man she’d once run from.
“You mated him,” Lavinia said, more gently, “you share a bond. Of course you feel…more than you’d planned.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Dani muttered.
“We just don’t want you hurt again,” Penelope said. The flippancy had slipped now; what was left was rawer. “You’re one of us, whether we like it or not. We don’t want to lose you to these overgrown idiots.”
“They’re not idiots,” Dani snapped.
A couple of brows rose.
“I mean, yes, some of them are idiots,” she said, ploughing on, “but when the hybrid threat rose, it wasn’t witches who faced them. It was wolves.”
The room absorbed that, quiet.
“And Arthur?” Lavinia asked softly.
Dani’s throat closed.
“Arthur,” she said, “is an idiot. And a good Alpha. And someone who’s trying very hard to unlearn the hate he was raised on.” Her mouth twisted. “Even if he does still flinch whenever he sees magic.”
“There it is,” Edith said quietly.
They all looked at her.
Edith pushed off the doorframe and came further into the room, setting her mug down with a small click.
Dani instinctively hunched her shoulders in, glancing up nervously at her tutor.
“You wouldn’t be the first woman in history to try and change a man,” Edith said, “and there is no judgment for trying. I just want you to remember that the same man who was speaking platitudes is the same one who looked you in the eye ten years ago and said he could never be with someone the pack viewed as weak.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, not cruel.
“I’m not weak, not anymore!”
Edith held up a hand, “I know, I know. But that just changes things; it doesn’t solve them. He hates what witches did to his people. He hates that he wants what he was told would ruin him. That doesn’t vanish because you and he spent the night together.”
Dani winced. The words hit too close to home.
“I know that,” she said.
“Do you?” Edith’s gaze was steady. “Because if you walk into this thinking love fixes the way men like him are raised to think of us, you risk getting hurt again. The difference is, you’re mated to him now.”
Silence again, thick and heavy.
Lavinia exhaled. “On that cheerful note,” she said, rising, “I’m going to check the house wards. Penelope, Tamsin, and me. The rest of you can find some way of entertaining yourselves, I’m sure.”
Chairs scraped. Cloaks were pulled on. The covens moved with practiced efficiency when given a task; the room emptied quickly, like a tide going out.
Within a few minutes, only Dani and Edith were left.
The quiet felt louder without the others' voices.
Dani stared into her tea. “You could work on your timing, you know,” she said, “if there’s a more brutal way to say ‘don’t get your hopes up,’ I haven’t heard it.”
Edith snorted, “You’d complain if I sugar-coated it. You always have.”
“That’s not untrue,” Dani conceded.
Edith sank into the chair opposite her, neatly crossing her legs, “I’m not saying he can’t…change,” she said. The word had an edge. “I’m saying men who’ve been taught their whole lives to fear something don’t just wake up one morning and decide everything is roses.”
Dani’s cheeks heated. “He did.”
“And last week,” Edith went on, “before the mating, he was still calling what we do a plague.”
Dani huffed out a sigh, “So what, I just…stop doing magic and keep my feelings in a box?”
“I think you let him earn trust instead of handing it over like a free sample,” Edith said, “and you remember that you are a witch first, not in a coven hierarchy sense,” she added, seeing Dani bristle.
“In a bone sense. Magic is who you are. If he can’t look at that without wanting to flinch, that’s his work. Not yours to make easier by shrinking.”
Dani’s gaze dropped to her own hands. Small burns and ink stains, the faint shimmer under the skin when power stirred.
“I know,” she said quietly.
She did know. She’d spent ten years building a life that didn’t bend to anyone’s fear but her own. Coming back here, to him, threatened to wrap her in old shapes she’d outgrown.
And yet.
He had held her as if she were something precious last night. Not a problem. Not a tool. Just…Dani. Witch, mate, mess and all.
“I just wish…” she trailed off, biting the inside of her cheek.
Edith’s mouth quirked. “You want him to accept all of you. Not just the pieces that make strategic sense.”
Dani met her gaze. “You’re very rude today.”
“You’re very obvious,” Edith said.
Something in Dani’s chest squeezed.
Because yes. That was it. She wanted him to see her, whole. The girl he’d first kissed in a Nordan winter, the woman she’d become in Salem, the mother, the witch whose magic didn’t behave. All of it. And not flinch.
Childish, maybe. Dangerous, definitely.
Probably futile.
She sighed, rubbing her thumb along the mug’s rim. “It’s stupid,” she said.
“It’s human,” Edith said, “which you are. Witch or not.” She eyed her. “And you’re not allowed to sink into a mope while there are Volnoye sniffing around town. Distract yourself. Show me what you’ve been hiding.”
Dani blinked. “What?”
“Layla dropped in,” Edith said, “mentioned something about you nearly turning her bookshop into a bonfire when you lit a hearth. Don’t think you can sit on that and not let me poke it.”
Despite herself, Dani felt a quick flicker of pride. Of excitement. “It’s…not exactly under control,” she warned.
“Since when has that stopped you?” Edith said dryly. She pushed back her chair and stood. “Come on. Before Lavinia gets back and tells us to be sensible.”
They moved to the middle of the room, away from the curtains and the shelves. The wards in Thistlehouse thrummed low and reassuringly around them, containing, steady.
“All right,” Edith said, “show me.”
Dani took a breath.
Normally, she’d have reached for a candle. A match. Something small to focus on.
She didn’t need it now.
The bond with Arthur buzzed at the edge of her awareness, a distant static.
She pushed it down, focused on the deeper well that had opened in her since the ceremony, the thick, molten current that sat somewhere behind her breastbone, too big for the channels she’d been trying to carve for the sort of careful, modest spells her coven wanted her to focus on.
She lifted her hand, palm up.
“Okay,” she muttered to herself, “behave.”
Heat rose, quick as a blush. Her skin prickled. A tiny flame blinked into existence above her palm, then another, then another, little points of light hanging in the air like fireflies.
Edith’s eyes widened.
“You couldn’t do that before,” she said.
“No,” Dani said through her teeth. The flames wanted to spread, to grow, to leap to every shadow in the room. She held them, breathing slow, counting.
One, two, three, four.
She flicked her fingers.
The fireflies spun up, arcing over their heads in a loose spiral, leaving faint trails of light. The air warmed, the smell of smoke barely there.
Edith turned slowly, tracking them. “You show Lavinia yet?”
“Not like this,” Dani said. Sweat beaded along her hairline, “I’m not sure how much I can control it.”
“Your control’s better than you think,” Edith said. She reached up, hand passing through one of the tiny flames. It licked her skin and left no mark. “This is…remarkable. And you’re not channeling anything at all? No hidden candles or matches tucked away?”
Dani shook her head, unable to contain her grin, “Yeah, well, mating a shifter god’s favorite wolf apparently comes with perks.”
She clapped once.
The fireflies winked out.
The room cooled again. Dani exhaled, knees wobbling just a little.
Edith whistled under her breath. “Lavinia is going to have an aneurysm,” she said, faintly delighted, “in a good way. Mostly.”
“Please don’t say aneurysm,” Dani said, “I’m trying very hard not to panic.”
Edith stepped closer, hands light on Dani’s elbows, steadying. “Hey,” she said, “you’ve got this. You always do. We’ll work on it. You and me.”
Dani smiled back, unable to properly sort through the maelstrom of feelings in her chest. Happiness, shyness, excitement, fear. They all bubbled inside her and threatened to spill out.
So she chose silence, and they stood there, in the humming quiet of Thistlehouse, breaths puffing faint fog in the cool air. Outside, somewhere out in the woods, wolves were busy squaring up to one another. Vampires were watching. Her sisters were wrapping themselves all up in wards.
She didn’t know yet which way it would all fall.
She did know this. She had power. Real power. And she wasn’t going to hide it or make it smaller or compromise any part of it. Not for Lavinia. Not for the pack. Not for Arthur.
“Come on,” Edith said, releasing her, “show me that trick again, but slower. And then we’ll talk about how to stop you accidentally roasting any more bookshops.”
“It was one bookshop,” Dani protested.
“Give it time,” Edith said, and for the first time that morning, Dani laughed.