Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
The green space outside the Stewart Central Zoo teemed with people.
Families with young children were out having picnics.
There was what looked like a class of elementary schoolers gathered around a fountain.
People walked their dogs, and more than a few bikers pedaled past Reece and Nico on the sidewalk so quickly that they nearly bowled them over.
A few hundred yards ahead, the fountain the kids were clustered around shot a single plume of water about six feet high, its stone basin green with algae at the waterline.
Out here was very different from in the pack. He didn’t see wolves casting worried glances over their shoulders, ready for a fight.
No one seemed to be too concerned with dominance or any of the other bullshit that came with it, and nobody was looking at them like they expected them to have all the answers, which was a relief.
Reece liked his position in the pack. He liked being a beta. He liked the responsibility and respect that came with the role.
But some days it was nice to chuck all that off and just be a normal guy in town.
He and Nico had just grabbed lunch, and Nico had mentioned something about needing to stay in town, which Reece assumed meant he was sneaking off to go hang out with Elise somewhere—which was why Nico had insisted on taking different cars from the pack house.
He glanced over to say something, and Nico’s face lit up.
He was a serious man who usually wore a dour expression, except when he spotted his girlfriend; then he was an open book. A man in love and unafraid to show it.
It was disgusting.
And this whole thing was feeling more like a setup by the minute.
Elise was walking down the path toward them, with a woman at her side. Delainey.
Of fucking course.
Reece had gone home after the bar the other night, confused and horny and certain he needed to get this woman out of his mind before he went out of his own.
He was a grown man, damn it.
He didn’t have time to get strangely obsessed with a witch who looked at him with the devil in her eyes—and he had to keep reminding himself of the devil part.
Witches, magic, all that bullshit—he did not need it in his life.
Delainey wore a loose-fitting denim jacket over a plain black top, her corkscrew curls pulled up and away from her face with a wide band, gym shoes on her feet and jeans that tapered at the ankle. She walked with her chin up and her shoulders squared, as if daring the path itself to get in her way.
“Hey,” Elise said brightly, reaching out and tracing her arm over Nico’s biceps when she got close enough. “Surprised to see you here,” she said.
Reece leveled a droll glance at her, and on instinct looked over to Delainey, whose expression mirrored his own.
“It’s a nice park,” Nico said. He curled his arm around Elise’s waist and drew her to his side, his thumb hooking through her belt loop. The fake casualness was so transparent it was almost insulting.
Delainey’s mouth dropped open a little, and she narrowed her eyes. But the couple were grinning at each other like fools, and Delainey and Reece might as well not have existed to either of them.
“You know, I heard there’s an ice cream stand opening up over by the zoo,” Elise said, and batted her eyelashes. She looked almost like a Disney princess. Reece was relegated to the role of Dull Villager, and he didn’t like it.
Delainey’s hands had come to rest on her hips, and she rolled her eyes toward him—but not at him. It was strange to know he was on the exact same wavelength as Delainey.
They both agreed this was nauseating, and he was pretty sure she suspected this had been planned on the part of their friends.
“Did you guys want to come with us to get ice cream?” Elise asked, taking Nico’s hand and nodding down the path.
“I’m good,” Delainey said. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight onto one hip, angling her body away from the path Elise was pointing toward. “I don’t have much of an appetite right now.” She was clearly struggling not to let her true emotions show.
Elise raised an eyebrow at Reece, but Reece shook his head. “I’m good,” he said. “Go have fun.” He waved them off, all the while feeling awkward and exposed.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he hated that he felt tricked. If Nico wanted to meet up with Elise, he could just meet up with her. Why did he have to make it into a whole thing?
“I swear those two get off on sneaking around,” Delainey muttered. She was watching Nico and Elise retreat down the path, Elise’s blonde ponytail swinging between her shoulder blades as Nico leaned down to say something in her ear.
“You think that’s what it is?” Reece reached up and scratched at the back of his neck, trying to get rid of that discomfort. There were too many people around.
Delainey must have felt the same—when a jogger passed between them and nearly brushed by her, they hurried a little further down the path and turned a corner to where it was much quieter, as if they had passed through some sort of secret passageway that only a few people knew of.
It wasn’t magic, just a bend in the path and more trees, and something like privacy.
The path here was packed dirt instead of concrete, shaded by a canopy of oaks whose lower branches had been trimmed to about eight feet. A wooden bench with peeling green paint sat to one side, and beyond it a low stone wall separated the walkway from a drainage culvert choked with leaves.
Reece didn’t want to be a total dick, and Delainey looked just as blindsided by this whole situation as he was.
So he was going to summon his inner peace and his inner strength and be a damned gentleman.
“If Elise ditched you in the park, do you need a ride somewhere?” he forced himself to ask. He kept his hands at his sides, fingers loose, his boots planted wide on the dirt path, maintaining as much distance between them as the narrow trail allowed.
He might actually die or go insane if he was in an enclosed space with Delainey, letting her scent surround him and remind him of that night.
Which he wasn’t thinking about.
As far as he was concerned, that night had never happened. It was just a bout of temporary insanity. Since there were no witnesses to the worst of it, no one could prove he had actually kissed this witch, except for her. And it was clear neither of them was talking.
“I’m good,” she said. Then she paused, and an unreadable expression crossed her face. “What about you?” She was forcing the words out past gritted teeth.
They were both trying for normal and failing miserably.
“I’m good,” he said.
He could just walk away now.
He had done the bare minimum and made sure she had a way to get home. His car was in the parking lot, not far from here. The sooner he got away from Delainey—and hopefully never saw her again—the better.
His wolf grumbled at the idea of never seeing her again, and frankly, it was ridiculous to expect. Nico and Elise were still firmly in their honeymoon phase, and if they were going to crash and burn, it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Which meant he was going to see this witch some other time.
The prickling at the back of his neck still hadn’t subsided.
His wolf had been preoccupied with Delainey, but now some other sense finally triggered and he looked around. The park had gone almost eerily quiet.
He could still hear sounds of people in the distance, but it was much further away than it should have been.
The traffic noise from the road that bordered the park had thinned to almost nothing, and even the birdsong in the canopy overhead had stopped, as if the air itself had been sealed inside a jar.
Reece breathed deep and caught the faint scent of magic.
In one moment he snapped into animal alertness, whipping around and trying to find the source. It didn’t come from Delainey.
He knew the scent of her magic, and his wolf liked it even if it made the hairs on his arms stand up.
Delainey noticed the shift in his demeanor. “What is it?” She dropped her arms to her sides, her fingers already spread and angled slightly downward, palms open—a stance he recognized from the last time he’d seen her summon fire.
“Something—” He was cut off by a blinding flash as magic washed over him.
The light was white hot and sourceless, filling his vision from every direction at once, and the concussive force of it hit his eardrums like a pressure change, popping them hard enough to make his jaw ache. Reece dove in front of Delainey, trying to shield her from the worst of it.
His shoulder caught her collarbone as he wrapped himself around her, driving them both down toward the dirt, his knees hitting the packed earth with a jolt that shot up through his thighbones. But Delainey was already pushing at him.
“Get off of me, you oaf,” she said, raising her hand in a magical shield as she looked around to find where the attack had come from.
A shimmer of translucent light rippled outward from her palm, curving into a disc about four feet wide that hung in the air between them and the tree line.
Dark figures were running at them.
There were at least three—dressed in black clothing, faces obscured, closing the distance at a dead sprint through the oak shadows about forty yards out.
Reece had no idea if they were witches or shifters or, hell, even humans in tactical gear.
They were insane to be attacking in the middle of a park in broad daylight—they could be seen at any moment.
But clearly the attackers didn’t care, and if Reece wanted to survive and keep Delainey alive, any risk of discovery was a problem for future him.
He shifted into a stance and summoned his claws, partially shifting into a form better for fighting.
His fingers lengthened and thickened, the nails splitting and curving into claws that were each as long as his thumb, and the bones in his hands cracked and reformed with a grinding ache that raced up to his elbows.
His eyes flooded gold, sharpening the dim oak canopy into high-contrast detail, every leaf edge and bark ridge snapping into focus.
But instead of getting close, one of the figures threw something at him.
It passed through Delainey’s magical shield like it wasn’t there and hit him square in the chest.
The impact was dull and heavy, like being struck with a sandbag—not sharp enough to cut but hard enough to cave the breath out of his lungs.
A cold numbness radiated outward from the point of contact, spreading across his ribs and up into his throat, and his half-shifted claws retracted involuntarily as his muscles went slack.
The ground tilted. His knees buckled, and the packed dirt rushed up to meet the side of his face.
Reece vaguely registered the sound of Delainey shouting as everything went black.