Chapter 21 - Dani
They had been marched north for hours.
The forest changed as they went, taller pines, older spruces, underbrush thinning until it was little more than roots and frost-crusted stones. The witches were kept in a loose formation, ringed by hybrids who moved with unnerving precision. Not wolves. Not human. Something else.
Dani kept count.
Seven witches from Salem. Three from Juneau. Edith at her side, breathing hard but steady, her eyes narrowed to slits. Four nomads, one barely nineteen, her teeth chattering so loudly it echoed off the trees.
And Fenred. Always Fenred.
He walked at the front, relaxed, almost bored, as though the leash around his prisoners was nothing more than a morning chore. His boots cracked through frost. Every so often, he glanced back, eyes bright with a wrong, metallic shimmer.
Hybrid eyes.
Dani kept her shoulders square, chin lifted. Every nerve screamed at her to run, but she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
Midday bled into afternoon. Snow began to fall, thin, drifting flakes that stuck to hair and lashes. Dani’s wrists ached where rough rope cut skin. Every breath was sharp, cold, too dry.
At last, Fenred raised a hand.
The hybrids halted instantly.
“Rest,” he said flatly.
It wasn’t an offer. They were shoved into a clearing ringed by dead branches and leaning trunks. Dani sank to her knees, trying not to show how numb her legs had gone. Edith dropped beside her with a grimace, muttering something rude under her breath about shifter stamina.
Two hybrids threw down a handful of blankets, thin fabric, barely enough to keep the snow off. The witches ignored them.
Fenred crouched by a fallen log, elbows on his knees, studying them like a man evaluating livestock.
Dani lifted her head, eyes sharp with fury. “How long?” she demanded, voice rough. “How long have you been hiding what you are?”
Fenred didn’t bother pretending he didn’t understand. He smiled, slow, curling. “A while.”
“That’s not an answer,” Dani snapped.
“Does it matter?” he asked, shrugging. “You’re here. It worked.”
One of the Juneau spat into the snow. “You walked among us. Ate with us. Took orders from your alpha.”
“Alphas,” he scoffed. “Arthur? Dominic? Rory? Leonid? They think they understand strength.” His eyes glinted. “They have no idea what’s coming.”
Dani felt Edith’s shoulder brush hers, a silent warning. Don’t rise to him.
She ignored it.
“What are you?” Dani asked, voice steady. “You weren’t born hybrid. You smelled like a wolf for years.”
Fenred considered her.
Then he said something that made the clearing tilt.
“Witches make hybrids.”
The world went silent.
Dani’s breath stuttered. Edith went rigid. Even the hybrids seemed to still, as though they’d felt a shift in the air.
Fenred leaned back, lounging like a man on a barstool, “Thought you knew,” he drawled. “I thought Salem kept its students educated. Seems not.”
“That’s impossible,” Edith said sharply, “hybrids are abominations, creations of…of whatever came before records began. Ancient magic. Forbidden magic.”
“Ancient,” Fenred agreed, “but not lost.” His gaze slid to Dani, slow and hungry. “Our master is very clever. Found witches willing to try. Willing to bleed for the cause.”
Dani’s stomach twisted. “No witch would willingly create a hybrid.”
“Willing is a flexible word,” Fenred said, “but some are useful. For a time.”
“Because it kills them,” Edith said, voice ice-cold as her eyes widened in understanding. “That’s why you always need more.”
Fenred’s grin widened. “Tears them apart from the inside. Magic wasn’t meant to bind that much power. But the master is patient. Witches die, witches break, we find more.”
Dani’s heart hammered painfully. “Why us? Why take all of us?”
Fenred’s expression hardened. “Because the master needs more. The ritual consumes witches. So we need a fresh supply. Willing witches have long since dried up. So, we take what we need.”
Dani surged against her bonds, “You won’t survive long enough to bring us to him. The packs will track us.”
Fenred laughed.
Actually laughed.
“Your wolves?” he said. “You think they’re enough? We have more hybrids in these mountains than the four packs have bodies. Enough to kill them ten times over.”
Dani felt the words like a slap.
Lie, she wanted to say. You’re lying.
But his voice held the weight of truth.
Terror rippled through the witches closest to her. The young Juneau witch made a small, broken sound. Dani forced herself to breathe. Forced herself to look him dead in the eye.
“You can threaten us all you want,” she said, steady and low. “But they’re coming. They’ll track you down. My mate will track you down.” She let the word hang. Mate. Let him hear the promise bound inside it.
Fenred’s grin sharpened. “Your mate,” he echoed. “Arthur is a fool. A sentimental, soft-bellied fool. He couldn’t even bear to let you fight.”
Dani’s jaw clenched. Shame and anger sparked under her skin.
“He will come,” she said. “And when he does, you will wish you had killed me when we were teenagers.”
Fenred’s nostrils flared. For a heartbeat, she saw the hybrid beneath, something stretched tight over a human shape, something that wanted to rip her throat out just to silence her.
Then he laughed again, ugly and delighted.
“Fire in you after all,” he murmured. “Good. The master likes witches who burn.”
Dani’s pulse lurched. Edith nudged her sharply, eyes screaming enough.
Fenred stood with a cracking roll of his shoulders. “We leave in thirty minutes,” he said to his troops. “Rest. When the sun sets, we move fast.”
He stalked away, barking orders.
Silence sank into the clearing.
And then Dani said, very quietly, “We’re dead if we stay.”
No one argued.
One of the Juneau witches shifted closer, ropes chafing against her wrists. “We can’t wait for rescue,” she murmured, “Arthur and Dominic and the rest…they’ll come, but by the time they reach us…we’ll be gone.”
“Or used,” Edith said darkly. “Broken.”
Dani swallowed hard. Snowflakes clung to her hair, melting against her too-warm skin.
She didn’t want to die in this forest. She didn’t want Aurelia growing up without her because she’d been too afraid to act.
“Then we fight,” Dani said.
Every head turned to her.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She felt the power humming under her skin—still unfamiliar, still volatile, still frightening. She didn’t know how strong she was now. She didn’t know how long she could hold the burn without it eating through her veins.
But she knew one thing.
If she did nothing, none of them would make it out.
“We fight,” she repeated, breathing past the terror. “We take out the ones closest to us. We run for the trees. We scatter. If even a few of us make it out, if we get word back to the packs, then he loses his witches.”
The younger ones looked terrified. But they looked hopeful, too.
“There are too many of them for us to win,” Edith said.
“We don’t need to win,” Dani said. “We just need to give them something they don’t expect.”
Edith’s eyes gleamed. “What are you thinking?”
Dani looked at her hands.
They were shaking.
She forced them still.
“I can make fire,” she said quietly. “Big fire. Bigger than I ever could before.”
Edith inhaled sharply. “Dani—”
“If I can get it up between us and them, that buys us time. They can’t cross open flame. Their instincts fight it.” She swallowed. “We make a wall. Then we break the bindings and run.”
The witches exchanged looks, fear, disbelief, and beneath it, a kindling spark of resolve.
“If we die,” Edith said softly, “at least it won’t be on our knees.”
“No,” Dani said. “It won’t.”
Something settled in her then. Sharp as a blade.
She looked at the others. “On my signal.”
***
They waited until Fenred drifted far enough that his attention turned elsewhere. Until the hybrids closest to them relaxed fractionally, believing their prisoners too tired, too cowed to resist.
Dani exhaled slowly.
Magic stirred.
Heat curled under her skin like a living thing.
Let it build, Edith murmured. Slow. Or you’ll burn yourself out before you cast.
A spark flickered to life in her chest.
Then another.
Fenred turned his head slightly, sensing…something.
“Now,” Dani whispered.
She stood.
The nearest hybrid snarled and lunged.
Dani threw her hands out.
And the world exploded.
Fire roared from her palms, blazing into a great, searing wall that shot up in an arc around the witches, a half-circle of light and heat so intense the snow beneath it turned instantly to steam.
Hybrids reeled back with animal screams, eyes flashing as the heat hit them.
Dani gasped, legs buckling. The magic tore through her, furious, wild, too strong to hold, but she held it anyway, teeth gritted, vision white around the edges.
“GO!” she shouted.
Edith was already slicing her rope on a jagged rock. Another witch smashed hers against a tree trunk. A third summoned enough magic to make her bindings crack.
The witches burst outward, forming a tight ring, every one of them drawing on whatever power they could still reach.
Dani staggered forward, feeding more into the fire, higher, hotter, pushing the hybrids back step by step.
“KILL THEM!” Fenred roared.
The hybrids charged—
And the witches met them.
One lifted both hands and sent a shockwave of force slamming into two attackers. Another’s magic flared pale blue as she froze a hybrid’s legs into the earth. Edith struck a hybrid with a burst of concussive sound that made the trees shake.
Dani held the wall.
Fire licked her arms, crawled up her throat. Her vision swam. She felt something crack inside her, something deep, but she didn’t let go.
Arthur, she thought wildly, desperately. Arthur, I’m sorry. Find Aurelia. Keep her safe.
A hybrid hurled itself at her. The wall faltered—
—and Edith intercepted, driving her heel into its jaw with a snarl.
“Don’t you dare die,” Edith snapped, grabbing Dani’s sleeve. “Not today.”
Dani tried to answer. All that came out was a rasp.
But the witches were moving, fighting, surviving.
Snow hissed under the fire’s heat. Trees crackled. Hybrids circled, snarling, confused by the wall, frustrated by prey that no longer cowered.
Fenred shoved forward, eyes burning molten gold. “ENOUGH!”
His voice cracked like a whip through the clearing.
The hybrids gathered behind him.
Dani’s fire trembled.
Her knees hit the ground.
Edith screamed her name.
Fenred grinned, stepping through the smoke like it was nothing. “Brave little witch,” he murmured. “But you can’t hold it. You’re not strong enough.”
Dani lifted her head, sweat and tears mingling on her face.
“I don’t need to be,” she whispered. “I just need to be stronger than you.”
And with the last shred of strength she had, she pushed.
Fire arced upward, bright as dawn.
The hybrids flinched.
Fenred hissed, stumbling back.
The witches surged toward Dani, pulling her out of the collapsing heat as the spell finally tore loose and shattered behind her.
She sagged into their arms as darkness lunged for the edges of her vision.
“Dani,” Edith whispered urgently. “Stay awake. Stay awake.”
She tried.
She really did.
But the fire took too much.
And as she slipped under, she heard Fenred roar, a sound of pure, furious promise.
“Bring them DOWN!”
Then everything went black.