Chapter 19 - Dani
Dani saw the first hybrid hit the lower ridge, and everything exploded.
Wolves surged forward in a ragged wave, clothes ripping, bones cracking as they shifted mid-stride.
The vampires moved in the opposite direction, not away but around, slipping up the slope at an angle, fast as thought, fangs already bared.
The air turned sharp with fear, fury, the metallic tang of gathering magic.
Spells crackled at the edge of her senses, Lavinia’s cool, precise sigils, Kiara’s sly, tangled weaves, the other witches’ earth-heavy wards. Snow shuddered under the weight of it.
Dani didn’t think. She stepped forward with her sisters.
Fire rose in her blood like it had been waiting.
Her hands were already lifting when Arthur grabbed her arm.
“No,” he said.
Just that. Short, hard, with the kind of authority that made half the damn basin flinch on instinct.
She jerked around to face him, ripping her arm free. “Excuse me?”
He was already halfway between man and wolf, pupils blown, teeth a fraction too long, his body held in that tight, vibrating line that meant it was taking everything he had not to shift.
“Fenred!” he barked over her shoulder. “Get those who aren’t battle-ready back to the compound. Now. Lock it down.”
“I am battle-ready,” Dani snapped.
“You’ve never fought these things,” Arthur shot back.
“This is the whole reason we’re here,” she said.
Another hybrid crested the rise, mouth red, eyes flashing. A Nordan wolf hit it full-force, and they went down in a blur of fur and teeth.
Edith swore viciously beside her. “We don’t have time for this pissing contest, Arthur. We can help—”
“Then help by making sure my people are alive when I get back,” Arthur snarled. “Lavinia, Kiara…fine, stay, gods help me. The rest of you go. Now.”
“You don’t order us,” one of the Juneau witches began.
Lavinia cut her off with a sharp gesture, “We move,” she said. “He’s right. We need healers and more wards in place in town. We’re not ready for a fight. Dani—”
“No,” Dani said, voice high with fury, “I’m not running because he can’t get over himself.”
“This isn’t about me,” Arthur ground out, “it’s about you. And Aurelia. And the fact that if you’re in this clearing when those things hit, I will spend the entire fight watching you instead of their throats, and we’ll all die for it.”
That landed like a slap.
“So I’m just a liability now?” she demanded. “Is that it? Your great weakness?”
“You’re my mate,” he said, low and raw, “that’s what you are. And I cannot”—his voice cracked, he forced it steady—“I cannot lose you again, not days after I finally—”
Another howl split the air. Closer.
Fenred barreled up beside them, already shrugging off his coat. “Alpha?”
Arthur didn’t take his eyes off her. “You take her,” he said, “Dani, Lavinia, and whichever witches aren’t prepared to fight. You get them to the compound. You do not let anything touch them. Understood?”
Fenred’s jaw tightened, “Understood.”
Dani stared at Arthur. “I am not five,” she said, “you don’t get to send me to my room because you’re scared.”
“You can hate me for it later,” he said, “right now you get out of this valley alive.”
“Arthur—”
He stepped in, hands bracketing her face for one dizzying second. His eyes, wolf-bright and desperate, locked on hers.
“Dani,” he said, “go.”
The bond surged, hard and painful, the command in it as much instinct as rank.
Anger roared up to meet it. Underneath, small and hateful and unwanted, something else stirred.
Fear.
Adrenaline. The memory of hybrid teeth in the stories. Of Kiara’s voice saying, They’re learning.
She thought of Aurelia, back in town, thinking the worst thing that would happen today was a boring morning with the other kids.
If something got past this line… if something already had—
A snow-blind witch with no battlefield training wasn’t going to be the one who turned the tide up here. She knew it. He knew it.
She still hated it.
“You’re a bastard,” she said, voice shaking.
“Aye,” he said, “now move. Fenred—”
Large fingers closed, firm, around her elbow.
“Come on, Luna,” Fenred said, “we’re wasting time.”
Around them, wolves slammed into hybrids with bone-breaking force. A vampire went past in a blur, cloak snapping. Kiara flung something bright and ugly up the slope, and it hit a hybrid mid-leap, detonating in a shower of sparks that smelled like burned ozone and old blood.
Lavinia was already hauling back the two youngest of the Juneau witches, cursing under her breath. Several of the Salem Coven hesitated…then stayed, falling into formation beside Kiara and the vampire, faces hard.
Dani wrenched free of Arthur’s hands and barreled after Lavinia, fury shivering under her skin.
They ran.
Down the mountain, away from the screaming.
Dani hated that most of all.
***
The path blurred under her boots. Wards hummed faintly at the edges of her senses, the hasty work of the witches. Behind them, the sounds of battle rose and fell like a storm, howls, snarls, the strange, horrible half-human screech of a hybrid hit hard.
Edith panted, breath puffing in sharp bursts. “I’m surprised you didn’t put up more of a fight.”
Dani bared her teeth. “If it weren’t for Auri, I would have."
“You did the right thing,” Edith said, “We’re not front-line fighters. Our skills are best utilized elsewhere today. There will be injuries.”
Dani’s heart panged as she thought of Arthur facing down the monstrous hybrids. She shook her head. Focus. She needed to focus. And she needed to make sure her daughter was safe.
Fenred led the way, long strides eating the ground, a few other wolves flanking the witches. He wasn’t shifted, but his wolf rode close to the surface, scent sharp with focus. Every so often, he’d glance uphill, jaw tightening, then push them faster.
They hit the tree line above town. The familiar shapes of Skymist spread out below, deceptively peaceful. Smoke from chimneys. The dull glow of streetlights. Somewhere, a truck engine.
“Keep moving,” Fenred barked, “we get you inside, we lock it down.”
No one argued now.
The Nordan compound crouched on the outskirts, half-hidden behind a row of warehouses and a line of skeletal birches.
From the road, it looked like any other abandoned industrial site, corrugated metal walls, a sagging chain-link fence, a rusted sign that still read KAVIK FISHERIES in flaking blue paint.
Wards shivered over its skin like heat-haze.
As they approached, two wolves stepped out of the shadow of the gatehouse, human-shaped but not human at all. Arthur’s men. They took one look at Dani, at the cluster of witches, at Fenred’s face, and hauled the gate open without a word.
Lavinia paused, eyes narrowing at the ruined structure. “I think not,” she said, “I will return to Thistlehouse to prepare medicine.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Layla, “you’ll need all the hands you can get.”
“No,” Fenred snarled, and Lavinia leveled him with a cool look.
“You do not command me, wolf. I will do as I please, and I dare you to try and stop me. Or the Luna of the Volkhov, for that matter.”
Fenred looked like he was about to argue, then, with a snarl, stalked inside, “The rest of you, with me.”
Lavinia made a face, “Go on now,” she said, ushering the other witches inside, “you’ll all be safest in there. We’ll regroup later.”
Dani didn’t need to be told twice. She needed to find her daughter.
Inside the compound, the illusion dropped.
Concrete gave way to old, solid timber. The factory narrowed into a long, low building with halls branching off, an armory, an infirmary, and communal rooms. Wolves crisscrossed the corridors, some half-dressed from a shift, others already geared for another.
Dani barely registered it.
“Aurelia?” she demanded, grabbing the nearest Nordan female by the arm. “Where is she?”
“Common room,” the woman said, eyes wide, nodding toward the back. “Freya took them below when we heard the howling.”
Dani didn’t bother with thanks. She ran.
The corridor sloped gently down, toward the reinforced rooms dug into bedrock.
She burst into the wide common room the Nordan used for pups and any human kids who found their way here during storms or summits.
The TV in the corner was off. A pile of blankets and cushions had been dragged into a barricade by the far wall.
A half-played board game sat abandoned on the low table.
Four Nordan children and two young witch girls stared at her like startled rabbits.
Aurelia was on her feet before Dani finished crossing the threshold.
“Mom,” she blurted, launching herself forward.
Dani scooped her up, clutching her so hard that Aurelia made a small oof against her shoulder. Warm, solid weight. The faint, familiar buzz of her magic, jumpy with fear.
“I’m okay,” Aurelia said into her neck. “Are you okay? What happened? Freya said there were—”
“I’m fine,” Dani lied into her hair, “everyone’s fine. Your father and the others are dealing with a…situation.”
She didn’t use the word hybrid. Not yet.
Fenred appeared in the doorway behind her, filling it, another hulking silhouette at his shoulder. He scanned the room, nostrils flaring, then nodded to himself, satisfied.
“Door stays shut,” he told Freya, “no one in or out without my say or the alpha’s. Got it?”
Freya nodded, already moving to bolt the heavy steel door.
Aurelia pulled back enough to peer up at Dani’s face. Her eyes were too old in moments like this. Too knowing.
“You’re lying,” she said.
Dani almost laughed. “About which part?”
“The everyone’s fine bit,” Aurelia said. “You’re doing your tight shoulders.”
“My what?”
Aurelia mimed a hunched posture. Dani glared and relaxed her shoulders by sheer force of will.
“You know me too well,” she sighed, clutching her daughter close.