Chapter 15 - Sean
I wake up with a start during an unholy hour of the night, my heart already racing, the bond clawing at my chest like something trapped and desperate to get out.
I can tell it’s an unholy hour because there’s an unsettling feeling in the air, and it's what pulls my chest tight as goosebumps pebble across the flesh of my forearms.
It’s not the dull ache I’ve learned to live with over the years. Not the low hum that settles into the background when I force myself not to think about her. This is sharp. Urgent. Loud enough that it drags me out of sleep with a snarl tearing from my throat.
Before I can even sit upright, Dustin’s voice cuts through my mind via the pack mind link.
“Alpha Sean,” he says in an urgent tone I haven’t heard for months.
The last time I heard that tone was when Delilah and Hunter raced from Scarborough to Stowe with news that a rogue werewolf was infiltrating a pack in Montreal.
We intercepted that werewolf’s influence, discovering that he was working for Merlin Grimes—our greatest enemy to date—and then defeating one of Grimes’s evil witches, Morganna.
My muscles lock, sensing that this is as serious as what happened back then.
“Talk to me,” I snap back sternly, already swinging my legs off the bed and mentally kicking myself into gear.
“We found scorch marks near the threshold. They don’t belong to any werewolf,” he responds tersely. “And the garden outside Emily’s cottage has been thrashed.”
My vision goes red. “Where is she?”
“She’s at her cottage. Shaken, but unhurt. She called it in herself.”
That should calm me, but it doesn’t.
I sever the mind link and move fast, dragging on jeans and boots, barely registering the cold air biting at my skin as I bolt out of the house. My wolf surges under the surface, pacing, snarling, demanding blood. Every instinct I have is screaming the same truth.
Something came for her.
The short run through Silverfang is a blur. Trees whip past, the forest on one side feeling wrong—too quiet, like it’s holding its breath. When Emily’s cottage comes into view, my heart slams so hard, it hurts.
She’s standing outside now, her body visibly trembling, arms crossed tight around herself, her chin lifted in defiance as she speaks to Dustin. Her tone is perfectly measured, like she’s fighting to pretend that she hasn’t been affected by the findings.
Relief crashes into me first. Then fear. Then rage.
The scorch marks at the back of her cottage are unmistakable; jagged black scars burned deep into the earth beside the back door. They’re not clawed. Not lightning. Not magic I recognize as hers. Whatever did this didn’t belong here.
I slow my steps only when I’m a few feet away from her.
“What happened?” I ask, forcing my voice into something controlled, eyes flicking to Dustin when I’m made aware of her powerful scent like jasmine, reminding me of what happened here the other night.
Emily turns, her eyes flickering to mine for half a heartbeat before she walls herself off completely.
I feel it through the bond, mentally hear the snap of barriers slamming into place.
It feels too strange, too awkward to have such a powerful bond and not be able to do anything about it.
I can’t reach for her. Can’t pull her into my arms.
I can barely meet her eyes, recalling how she kicked me out after the most passionate tryst in her bed.
I crouch near the marks, studying them carefully. The residue prickles against my senses, sour and foreign, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck.
“This isn’t your magic,” I observe, lifting my eyes back to Dustin.
Emily exhales sharply. “I never said it was.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I counter. “You should have called me immediately,” I say without turning to her, slightly annoyed. “What else have you found, Beta?” I direct at Dustin, who appears slightly confused as he frowns.
Nothing makes sense to him, for obvious reasons. My mate is living in her cottage again, and not in my house. Now, she’s lying about the cause of these scorch marks, as if it were as simple as an experiment with her healing potions.
If she called this in herself, she was obviously frightened, and now she’s acting as if it doesn’t bother her. Not to mention, I wasn’t the one she called.
“More of these marks have been sighted near the south border, but no one has seen what could have caused them,” Dustin explains.
“The flowers in the front garden have also instantly withered, as if they’d been exposed to some sort of poison, and some were ripped out from the stems, like someone was furious. ”
I nod slowly as I straighten up, noticing how Emily shifts her weight, irritation bleeding into panic through the bond.
Fear seeps through the cracks she’s trying so desperately to seal, while anger brews in my chest. A sense of protectiveness comes over me, and my hands curl into fists at my sides.
“Go on, Beta,” I tell Dustin without removing my eyes from Emily’s face. “Do a full sweep of the perimeters, and make sure every warrior is alerted about this finding.”
Dustin nods firmly and says, “Yes, Alpha,” before he gives Emily another firm nod and jogs toward the woods, where he shifts into wolf form.
“You’re shaking,” I say matter-of-factly, but Emily tilts her chin with an air of defiance.
“I’m fine,” she lies, hugging herself tighter.
“You’re not.”
She takes a step back, eyes flashing with a glint of malice and accusation. “Stop hovering.”
“I’m not hovering,” I snap, the restraint in my voice cracking. “I’m responding to scorch marks outside your door that don’t belong to any wolf in this pack.”
Her control shatters and shudders through her as she unfolds her arms. “I don’t need you to care about me, or police my life!” she snaps. “I didn’t ask you to come here. I didn’t ask for your concern. This isn’t black ops anymore. No one’s here to see anything.”
That last statement of hers stings, as if I’d been putting on a pretense while we were in black ops, as if I didn’t truly care about her. Didn’t she hear a thing I said the other night? That I’d never stopped wanting her? Doesn’t she know that I care about her? That I always have?
“You don’t get to brush this off, Em,” I growl, pointing at the scorch marks. “Not when something is targeting you.”
She laughs, sharp and bitter. “Targeting me?” she scoffs. “Or is this just another excuse for you to play alpha where you’re not wanted?”
More words like daggers that hit harder than they should.
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“I don’t need you!” she roars. “I can handle myself. With or without magic.”
The bond surges violently between us with fear, exhaustion, and the echo of the other night still clinging to her like smoke. She turns away from me, her boots crunching against the grass as she stalks toward the front of her house.
“Emily—”
“Don’t follow me,” she warns over her shoulder before she continues toward the front. She could go through the back door, but it’s like she’s trying to put enough safe distance between us, as if she’s afraid that I’ll stop her from entering through the door.
I should listen.
But my inner wolf won’t let me in the face of the danger that has clearly come for her.
We’ve had enough experience with Arianna, Delilah, Gwen, and even Donna to know that this is not a mere coincidence.
Though I can’t prove it yet, my instincts are screaming at me that the dark lord is coming after Emily next.
The bond tightens, panic spiking the farther she moves from the cottage. My chest aches with it, with the sight of those scorch marks burned into the earth like a promise.
I can’t let her go back inside when her four walls will do nothing to protect her. Before she can intercept what I’m about to do, I grab her impulsively, swiftly pulling her toward me.
She yelps as I lean down and pick her up before I sling her over my shoulder, her fists immediately slamming into my back.
“Sean!” she screams. “Put me down!”
“No,” I say firmly, tightening my grip around her waist as I march toward my house.
“Sean!” She fights like hell, kicking, pounding, squealing as she tries to wrestle out of my firm grip, but I don’t stop. I don’t slow down. I don’t even apologize.
“Stop fighting me,” I bark. “You’re not winning this.”
“This isn’t fair! You don’t get to do this!” she screams. “You don’t get to decide for me!”
“I do when your life is on the line!” I retort, huffing as I continue marching forward.
I don’t stop until my house comes into view, shoving the door open and carrying her inside, ignoring the way her magic crackles faintly against my skin, wild and unfocused as she keeps her fists pressed to my upper back.
I haul her straight to the guest bedroom—the one with olive green walls and gold trimmings—and set her on her feet just long enough to get her inside before slamming the door shut.
The lock clicks when I turn the key on the other side, my chest pounding, aching as I plant my forehead against the door.
“You can’t lock me in here!” she screams, pounding on the door. “This is insane!”
“You’re safer here,” I sigh, my chest heaving as I flinch against every pound of her fist on the other side of the door. “Hate me later. But I’m doing this for your own good.”
The pounding eventually stops, but the silence that follows is unbearable.
I sink against the wall outside the bedroom, head falling back as I drag in a shaky breath. My hands tremble—not from exertion, but from the image replaying in my mind over and over.
Those scorch marks…
I stayed too long in the argument. Emily’s life is in danger, and there shouldn’t be any room for debate.
She’s safer here, but she’s too stubborn to see that, her mind clouded with what happened the other night.
She won’t make peace with it tonight—I can tell from the soft sounds of sobbing echoing on the other side of the door.
My chest pulls tight, and there’s a part of me that wants to unlock the door and check up on her, pull her into my arms and protect her, kiss her with the valiant promise that I’ll never allow anything to harm her.
Eventually, I drag myself to my feet, pressing a hand against the door in a silent oath that she’ll never accept now, before I head to my own bedroom next to hers.
Of course, sleep is impossible.
The bond won’t let me rest. It hums, pulls, aches as a warning siren lodged deep in my chest. Hours crawl by, and I remain staring at my ceiling until I feel a sharp tug in my chest that prompts me to bolt upright.
Something is wrong. I can feel it in my veins, in my bones, and my inner wolf growls lowly in my mind.
I move silently through the house, checking all the rooms before I slip outside, the cool night air doing nothing to calm the rage simmering under my skin. The moon casts pale light across the yard, illuminating the house in a slight way that allows me to see clearly.
That’s when I see it.
A tall shadow lurks near Emily’s window, lingering in its stillness, hovering above ground. Watching. Observing. Spying on Emily.
My wolf surges forward as I sprint forward, shifting mid-stride, claws tearing into the earth. It takes me only three leaps to get to her window, but by the time I reach the spot, the shadow is gone in curling smoke that disappears in the air above me.
All that remains is the faint scent of dark magic in the air. My wolf nostrils catch it, and I snarl, remembering the battlefield in Montreal when we defeated Morganna. It had the same stench that’s present now.
I shift into human form again, standing there with my chest heaving, fury and fear twisting together in my gut.
What happened outside Emily’s cottage wasn’t a coincidence.
It was a warning.
The dark lord is onto us. As Emily’s powers materialize, the threat catches up. It was bound to happen. We couldn’t hide her forever, our fifth witch. But that only means Emily needs to gain control over her powers and stop letting her hatred for me overshadow everything else. For her own safety.
I don’t tell Emily about the shadow outside her window. I don’t even unlock her bedroom door to check up on her. I can feel her through the bond, breathing, sleeping, even if her heart is all over the place. But that’s enough for me.
Instead, I stand guard outside her window, and when morning rolls around, I reinforce the window outside her bedroom with metal bars that are subtle but strong, anchoring them deep into the frame. I can still smell the stench of black magic outside, and I know two things for certain.
Whatever is coming for her isn’t done.
And I will burn the world down before I let it take her.