Chapter 41
Chapter
Forty-One
For some reason, this sudden call from Briana felt a little strange, but as Delainey drove them to the clearing, Reece didn’t say a thing about it.
She wanted the nightmare to finally be over, and her coven could give them that freedom from each other.
He hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to hear that, to know she wanted to escape him so much. He’d thought they’d turned a corner. That this thing between them was real.
But could it survive the fucked-up bond between them breaking?
Deep inside his chest, the tether itched. It felt wrong, and Reece knew it didn’t belong. He knew it had to be causing trouble, but it had given him the time it took to tear down Delainey’s defenses until he could live inside of them beside her and start to build something real.
Given her attitude right now, he was pretty sure she would run at the first opportunity.
There were three cars parked in the grassy section that acted as a lot, which shouldn’t have been strange. From their journeys to the coven house, he recognized most of the coven’s vehicles. He saw Briana’s, but he did not recognize the other two, other than to identify one as a Rolls-Royce.
Reece was absolutely sure none of the coven members, all of whom were in their twenties or perhaps early thirties, could afford one. It was large and silver, gleaming in the moonlight. The second unfamiliar car was a dark sedan parked tight against the tree line, its plates obscured by the angle.
Inside of him, his wolf grumbled and looked curiously at the scene.
Delainey was standing at the edge of the car and waved at them before Reece could say anything about his suspicions.
She was already halfway across the grass before he had his seatbelt off, chin up and shoulders squared the way she always walked.
He opened his mouth to try anyway, but she got out of the car before he could say anything.
“Damn it,” Reece muttered to himself. He unclipped his seatbelt and opened the door.
He wasn’t going to let Delainey face this alone, whatever was going on right now.
The night air hit him immediately, cool, carrying the sharp green smell of the forest and, beneath it, something sour that made the hair on his forearms stand on end.
Everything felt wrong.
Reece could smell the magic, which wasn’t that odd considering the coven was supposed to have some trick up their sleeve to break the bond between him and Delainey.
But there was an oily quality to this magic, something almost bitter.
He might have called it a note of coffee if he was being generous, but all of his generous instincts had flown out the window.
All he could do was lean into his suspicions for the moment.
He jogged around the front of the car to keep pace with Delainey, but she didn’t spare him a glance. The instincts that had kept him alive for thirty-three years were screaming at him that something was off.
Briana was walking beside Delainey.
Briana was pale enough that the moonlight made her look almost translucent. Her face looked pleasant, but she kept scratching at her wrist like she had been bitten by the most aggressive mosquito. Her shoulders were stiff.
No, Reece didn’t like that at all.
Briana stumbled a step, and Delainey steadied her. But Briana waved her off with a laugh that was a little too tittering, a little too high-pitched. He didn’t know Briana well, but… this was fucking weird.
“Where are the others?” he asked. He didn’t see or smell any of the other members of the coven, and he realized they probably should have called in the pack for whatever was about to happen. Mark would be pissed at him if his wolf healing was needed.
“Come on, come on.” Briana didn’t answer his question, but she waved them forward.
This is fucking wrong, he thought to himself.
Briana kept scratching at her wrist. He could see it now: the skin around the thin braided cord was red and raised, and her nails dragged across the irritated flesh again and again.
“Is something wrong?” Reece asked.
The coven leader tilted her head, expression puzzled. “No, why would there be?”
“Whose cars are those?” he asked.
“Reece, why are you being rude?” Delainey glared at him over her shoulder.
Didn’t she feel it too?
He was about to say something, but Delainey glanced down at Briana’s wrist and furrowed her brow. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Finally! At least now she was starting to realize things weren’t adding up.
“Delainey,” he said, “we should—”
Between one second and the next, he felt the magic roll over him and realized Briana had led them into the center of a magical circle that had already been set up.
Every nerve in his body fired at once, and when he looked down, he could see the faint chalk marks on the flattened grass, a circle already drawn and charged, the lines glowing a dim, ugly yellow in the dark.
Briana took a step back and scratched at her arm one final time. He saw a piece of jewelry clatter to the ground. She looked at her raw, red wrist, then up at Delainey and Reece, her expression confused and eyes wide.
Her mouth opened and closed twice before she managed to squeak out a word. “What—”
“You called us here,” Delainey said. “You said… you could break the tether.”
“Ah, yes, I’m sorry for the subterfuge.”
Reece smelled magic just as Briana gasped and slumped over, unconscious. She dropped like her strings had been cut.
“You should probably put that back on her,” the older woman said. She stepped out of the treeline at the far edge of the clearing, and behind her came four others.
The woman herself was tall and narrow-shouldered; her pale skin and sharp features were unmistakably Elise’s, the same bone structure, the same blue eyes, though hers were harder.
She was a witch, that much was clear, as was the man at her side.
He stood half a step behind the witch, his posture composed, hands clasped loosely in front of him, his expression showing enough teeth that he might have been a vampire in another life.
The three others all wore ceremonial robes. Reece didn’t recognize a single one of them, other than Emerson. Emerson stood apart from the other two robed figures—still absurdly clean, still looking like he’d wandered out of a faculty meeting and into a kidnapping.
“You’ll need to work on your spell work, Emerson,” the woman said. “She shouldn’t have been able to claw that off. That is a child’s error.”
Emerson scowled at the woman.
“Brenda?” Delainey asked. “Tim? What the hell?” she demanded.
The woman who must have been Brenda held up a hand. “I’m sorry for this inconvenience. Emerson here has not been completely honest with any of us, and now we’re here to clean up this mess before it gets out of hand. This is why you don’t trust lackeys.”
“I’m not a lackey!” he objected.
“These are Elise’s parents,” Delainey muttered to him.
She took a step closer to Reece as if she could somehow protect him from them.
Her shoulder pressed against his arm, the top of her head barely reaching his chin, and he felt the heat of her body through her jacket, the faintest tremor running through her that she was trying very hard to hide. “They’re from the Wallace Grove Coven.”
“Yeah, I figured that part out.” That explained where the money for the Rolls came from. “Are you the ones that kidnapped us?”
He hated that he had to ask, that he sounded so confused by it, but clearly something had been done to Briana. Clearly Emerson had something to do with all of it.
He had a feeling he and Delainey had been caught in the crossfire, though he didn’t know why.
“Again,” said Brenda, “the problem with hired help. You tell them to take the witch and the wolf, and they don’t grab the right ones.”
“What?” Delainey’s voice was shaky. “You wanted to do this to your own daughter?”
“Like any daughter of ours would consort with filth like that.” If Tim had any less decorum, he might have spat.
“Magic would be good any time now,” Reece muttered, and hoped Delainey heard.
“There are six of them.” She looked at him. “How powerful do you think I am?”
“No, magic won’t help you right now,” Brenda said. “It won’t be able to cross the barrier of the circle until we break it. You’re trapped. This is all unfortunate, but we can fix this mess and free you from it, Delainey.”
Beside him, Delainey stood stock-still.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
Since fucking when? He didn’t say that out loud, but his mind quickly supplied why this would be an issue. They hadn’t discovered a new way to break the spell between them, just the old one they had known about for weeks.
If one of them died, the other would be free.
“You wanted Nico to die,” Delainey said. “You wanted her to kill him, didn’t you? She’ll never forgive you for this.”
Brenda rolled her eyes. “Children are so dramatic. She’ll never know. They’re going to find you here with his body beside you, and they’re going to realize there was some great accident. You tried to sever the bond yourself, and an mishap occurred. It isn’t ideal, but you won’t remember a thing.”
“Then tell me why,” Delainey said. “Just for my own edification, because frankly, I’m fucking baffled.”
Reece did not expect them to keep talking, so he was surprised when they did.
But leave it to witches from such a prestigious coven to want to stand on their own magnificent intent, explain their brilliant plans.
While Brenda spoke, Reece tested the boundary of the circle with one careful step, and the ward pushed back against him, invisible, but his skin buzzed where it made contact, and a sharp ache shot up through his shoulder.
“Elise would have been broken if that boy died,” said Brenda, “and then she would have come home. It’s as simple as that.
We would have helped her through the tragedy, healed her.
Eventually all thoughts of him would have disappeared, and she could live her life as the witch she was meant to be.
We’ll simply have to try again, though with this one dead, I’m guessing the truce between your coven and his pack will dissolve.
Elise will be forced to choose. She is smart enough to not leave her entire life behind for a man.
I did raise a daughter smarter than that. ”
“But what about the wolves?” Reece asked.
Brenda barely spared him a look, so Reece had to lay it on thick. “Give a dying man some answers before he meets his maker.”
“His maker.” Brenda scoffed. “This one is simpler than I thought. And yet you’re afflicted by the same weakness as my daughter.
” She looked at him. “Anyone can be hired for a price. They were supposed to babysit that dwelling in the woods, and they failed. They have paid for that in their blood. Now, I’m sorry, Delainey. This is very likely to hurt.”
Brenda clasped Tim’s hand, and all the witches from Wallace Grove formed a loose circle around them.
The five of them stood evenly spaced just outside the chalk line, each one raising their hands, and the air inside the circle changed, thickening, pressing down, until Reece’s ears popped and the oily smell of their combined magic was so strong it coated the back of his throat.
“I’m not going to let you kill him,” Delainey said.
But Brenda gave her a pitying look. “It’s almost cute that you think you have a choice.”
Then she summoned her power, and it crashed into Reece and Delainey.