Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Reece had been a wolf for so long that at that moment he was running more on instinct.
Run, protect, defend.
Delainey tried to take the lead, but he padded back to the pack house instead of heading for the cottage.
He had snuck moments in his human form, mostly in the kitchen at three a.m., making himself bowls of cereal and sneaking a yogurt or two.
But these days the wolf wore easier than his other skin.
He took her in through the back door and padded up the stairs to his own room. Delainey wasn’t asking questions, and she seemed a bit preoccupied.
Not that he could blame her. He didn’t know how he had ignored the scent of magic as they passed over the ward, which they must have done at some point.
It had smelled a bit like Delainey, he guessed, and that was one scent he was getting used to, one he never wanted to forget.
His room was a bit messy, which he might have felt guilty about in his other form. Dirty laundry was piled in one corner. An empty coffee cup sat on his bedside table, one he’d need to take down to the kitchen before it started growing a science experiment.
But he couldn’t feel embarrassed, not when he had Delainey in his space. His wolf really liked that. He couldn’t ignore it. This thing was supposed to be inconvenient, supposed to be bad. It wasn’t supposed to feel like the most natural thing in the world.
And yet it did.
Alone in the privacy of his room, Reece summoned his other form and shifted back into a man. Delainey’s eyes went wide. She nearly choked and spun around to face the wall.
He stood there naked, and it took him a moment to realize what he had just done.
“Shit, I’m sorry.” The words were gruff and a little hard to form as he was getting used to having his vocal cords back. “I forgot that you’re…” a witch, he almost said.
He could imagine the scowl even though she was facing away from him.
Reece quickly grabbed clothes from the top drawer and slipped on underwear and pants, knowing there was not really a good way to finish his statement. “Not used to naked men,” he settled on. “I’m sorry, it’s not normally a thing in the pack.”
“I’ve seen plenty of naked men in my life,” Delainey shot back.
He couldn’t stop the growl that formed in the back of his throat, but he forced himself to ignore it.
She was testing him, he knew, and she was rattled.
He pulled a shirt over his head. “I’m decent now,” he said.
“I very much doubt that,” but she turned around, and her eyes flicked up and down.
Maybe he preened a little bit under her regard, but he couldn’t help it. However she felt about him, there was a fire in her eyes when she looked at him, and a spark in her scent that he recognized all too well. If her nose was as attuned as his, she would recognize something similar in his own.
“We need to tell Cole,” he said.
She gestured to the room around them. “I kind of figured that part out.”
He didn’t want to leave his room just yet. He wanted to invite Delainey to sit on the bed, and he would join her, and then maybe one thing would lead to another.
But he knew they needed to go downstairs and find his alpha.
When they did, Briana was with him, which seemed strange. He didn’t know that the witches had become so close to the pack over the last week.
Reece kept his expression neutral. It wasn’t his place to judge what his alpha did or who he talked to. Delainey gave Briana a hug and didn’t seem at all surprised to see her coven sister.
Javi followed them in without being summoned, so he must have noticed both of them in the house.
He was strangely serious today. Javi was normally all vivacious energy and humor, but that was caged right now.
Thrumming beneath the surface, there was a look on his face that told Reece he was ready for a fight.
“What happened?” Cole asked.
“An attack in the woods,” Reece said. He and Delainey gave a quick rundown of the interaction.
“When was this?” Briana asked.
“A half hour ago,” Delainey said, dropping into a chair. “We were a couple miles away by the ward line.”
It wasn’t a couple of miles, but if her pride needed to think she had hiked that far, he wasn’t going to steal that from her. He could tell Cole and Javi exactly where they had been when it came time to it.
“Well, that points us in the direction of a witch,” Javi mused. Cole was nodding, but neither Briana nor Delainey seemed convinced.
“Someone could have been using hired magic,” Delainey said. “That’s what Austin LaSalle was doing. He had charmed artifacts.”
“But someone attacked us the second we crossed the ward lines,” Reece pointed out.
Delainey shrugged. “There could have been a trigger out there. There’s no guarantee someone was actually there. It was one blast of magic. Someone might have buried a charm in the woods and hoped for a lucky shot.”
“Someone is putting magical land mines in my woods?” Cole growled.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Briana said. “But if you’d like, we can run some scans to see.”
Cole growled again. “I don’t want witches in my woods.”
Reece expected Briana to back down, but she proved she was as much of a leader as Cole. “If you want your wolves to walk blindly into magic, you are welcome to do so. But this is something my coven could handle.”
“We could do it,” Delainey offered. “Reece and me. It’s not like we have much else to do.” The last came out as a grumble.
Reece knew it had to be weighing on her that they couldn’t stay with her coven and help directly, and part of that was on him. If only he could get over his bullshit and let her stay at her home. But no, that wasn’t an option.
He got hives just thinking of living among witches.
“Austin LaSalle,” Javi said, circling back. “Do we know what happened to him? Maybe he had some sort of underling causing trouble?”
Reece nodded along. “Yeah, what did Dawson say about him? Have you followed up on that?” he asked his alpha.
“I haven’t,” Cole admitted. “Dawson told us he was banished. What more can we do? We have no pull over the Iron Runners.”
“And why would he target you anyway?” Briana asked. “You guys have nothing to do with Nico and Elise, and it’s not like you two are—” she made a hand gesture, and Reece could interpret well enough what that meant.
“Maybe he meant to grab Nico and Elise again,” Reece guessed. “They were right there just before. If he was using hired help or something…” It was a long shot, but he wasn’t sure.
“I’ll put in a call to Dawson,” Cole said, pulling his phone from his back pocket. “I don’t know if he’ll tell me anything, but we can see if he’s got eyes on Austin LaSalle, if the man’s even still alive. It might give us a place to go.”
There was a crack of thunder outside, and Delainey jolted. Reece didn’t even think about it. He reached out and put a hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. He hadn’t realized thunder could scare her, and she didn’t pull her hand away.
He could feel Javi’s eyes burning into his skin, but he didn’t let the other beta bother him.
“I should probably get going,” Briana said.
“We’ll increase patrols within the bounds of the wards while you two scan around for more little surprises,” said Cole. “I don’t like the idea of strangers in my territory.”
Neither did Reece.
There was another crack of thunder. This time Delainey didn’t jolt.
“Do you want me to drive you guys back to the cottage?” Briana offered.
They accepted, rather than deal with getting soaked on the fifteen-minute walk back.
They rode in silence and sprinted for the front door when Briana dropped them off.
The rain came down in sheets, and by the time they crossed the ten feet from the car to the porch, Delainey’s jacket was plastered to her shoulders, and water was running off Reece’s hair and dripping from the end of his nose.
On the threshold, Reece hesitated. He had a sheltered spot outside and the rain wouldn’t be too bad, though it was getting kind of cold.
Delainey let out a frustrated noise. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re going to drown out here. I don’t care what form you’re in. Just hang out inside. Okay?”
Reece nodded and followed her through the door.