Chapter 18
Cat clattered down the stairs after Mateo, her hand in his. He didn’t seem to want to let go. Her vision fuzzed and spritzed with the future. It seemed like there were so many stairs between them and the ground.
It wasn’t the first time in her life that she’d gotten a vision unsought.
Important moments in her life, on very rare occasions, intruded without her asking.
She thought back to the moment the vision had come.
She’d been touching him, impossibly drawing on his wolf.
Maybe it wasn’t some huge portent; maybe it was just him.
She had to be using his wolf’s magic, but that was impossible.
They had no idea what was possible or not.
She tried to contemplate the implications of this—that not only did witches make shifters, but that magic was still within them, fizzing away. Of course, it was. A human being couldn’t transform into another shape without a lot of magic. His being in some impossible way was a spell.
That was what the twins wanted to destroy. All that magic. They were deranged.
Another vision flickered as they hit the ground floor, and she noticed his family spread out before them. They pulled away from each other, and she didn’t know who made the first move to separate. She thought it would stop the vision, but one still flickered.
Not now, please not now.
She noticed smirks on some faces and absolute horror on the old lady’s. What had they been thinking? They hadn’t been thinking. They were making out in the home of his pack, and now everyone knew.
Her vision sparked again.
Seriously, she begged her magic, you’re supposed to be a part of protecting me and helping me. If you have any sanity left, you would know that now is the absolute worst time in my entire life to get a vision.
Mateo put a hand on her back.
The room disappeared; it felt like she was falling into a crystal ball or a pool of water, even though she was staring at a muddy, textured wall.
She felt paws on the earth and harsh breath in her lungs as the gigantic house of the interloper came into view.
Nothing felt right in the world. Since the alpha elect had disappeared, the pack was in chaos.
They had to find Friedrich. He did not want to be the focus of his father’s wrath; it was intolerable.
Friedrich had gone out to search for the new pack encroaching on their territory, disappeared, and now everything was wrecked.
“Cat!”
He was almost sick with fear but didn’t know what else to do. His life didn’t matter. He couldn’t have the one thing he wanted, so he could have this instead.
“Catarina!”
The cold earth beneath paws faded to be replaced by a fresh fear.
Amusement and curiosity on the surrounding faces had turned to shock.
She met the old woman’s eyes, steely with fury. It was not the anger that her precious baby boy was dating the wrong woman, but of a werewolf with a witch in her den.
“There’s a wolf in the woods,” Mateo said as he headed for the front door.
Nobody moved or looked away from her.
“Get going!” he said, and two older wolves jolted. Mateo snarled. “She’s the reason we have a warning at all.”
“Strega,” Nonna hissed. “Witch.”
“Nonna, she’s only helping us.”
“They don’t help us. They kill us. For centuries!”
“She hasn’t done a single thing to a werewolf,” Mateo insisted.
Visions of an old fight with a lone wolf popped into her mind, but technically, Mateo was still correct.
They hadn’t landed a scratch on him because all their defenses, it turned out, were ill-calibrated to a dynamic shifter who wanted to avoid them.
Cat remembered an echo of her old self-righteousness as she defended her family from a threat.
She’d always thought of receptive magic as a little useless, just a report of the world, but this didn’t feel useless or inconsequential now, judging by the wolves looking at her.
One younger man took a step toward her, and Mateo froze. “If anyone harms a hair on her head, I will kill them,” he said with absolute calm.
“What the hell happened to you, man? We’ve been out of New York for a week, and you’ve disappeared into a blizzard, gotten into a dominance fight, and brought home a witch!”
The little girl—who looked so much like Mateo that Cat had thought for a second he was hiding a daughter—ran to the shouting man and hid behind him.
She’d hidden from Cat. That cut deep into a half-formed picture of a girl with dark hair, whom Cat wanted to be a prophecy but knew was only a meaningless wish.
She met Mateo’s eyes as she was plunged back into the cold and the dark, looking at the world from all fours, and wrenched herself out this time by biting down on her arm.
“Hey! Whoa, what are you doing?”
She gripped her teeth against the vision. “He’s closer.”
“We’re going.”
“Nothing’s getting through Nico,” the man protecting the little girl said with a shake of his head.
“Do you know how big a hundred acres is?” Mateo asked. “He’s a werewolf, not a god. And the attacker knows these woods.”
“You would trust her over your own pack?” someone else shouted from the back.
“It’s not one or the other,” Mateo said, sounding a hundred years old. “We are not enemies.”
“I want to help!” Cat added, and they winced at her voice.
She cried out again as the vision took hold.
“Come on!” Mateo shouted and plunged into the night, her hand in his, which only made the vision stronger.
When they were off the porch and in the dark, she couldn’t see a thing, but Mateo didn’t hesitate. He leaped off the porch, looking this way and that and breathing deeply.
“I got nothing,” he said. She realized he was scenting the air.
Another wolf said, “Me neither. I don’t smell a thing.”
She realized the girls’ father had followed them outside.
Mateo turned to her. “Where?”
She was about to protest. How should she know? Then almost of its own accord, her finger rose.
They headed off. She could barely keep up, and she felt vaguely resentful of his fitness.
Most people took months to adapt to the altitude, but even the wolves slowed down as they got into the forest. The snow wasn’t as bad as what they had waded through in the blizzard.
The trees were more sheltered here, so the drifts weren’t as high, but it was still deep.
The other wolves split off after a few moments and disappeared, but Mateo didn’t comment.
“Which way?” Mateo asked, and she was about to point when a wolf materialized in front of them. She could barely see it in the snow because its fur was pure white. It was huge and stepped forward with a growl until it caught sight of Cat and froze.
“She is not yours,” Mateo said, sounding far from human.
The wolf morphed into a tall man with blonde hair almost as white as the wolf’s. He stood entirely naked in the snow.
Cat chirped, and Mateo cursed. “Per l’amor di dio…”
He shoved out of his coat and threw it at the man, who wrapped it around himself like an apron with a smirk that faded when he met Cats’ gaze.
“You don’t look at her,” Mateo said in that otherworldly voice.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“Do I know you?” Cat asked just as Mateo said, “Do you know him?”
She gasped, summoning a memory of high school.
The pack had attended the regular high school at the edge of Silver Spring for a few years before they disappeared completely into the woods.
It was also when they stopped wearing jeans or other commercial clothes or going into town for food.
The twins had called it a victory. Cat was never sure if they played an active part in the decision.
There had been a blond boy in her year…
“Annie. You know Annie,” she said, and the man stiffened.
“Is she okay?” he asked. “What’s happening?”
“You don’t go near her!” Cat said and then grimaced.
It was an automatic response built from a thousand old fears.
She tried to tell herself she wasn’t alarmed because he was a werewolf.
He was in some kind of doomsday cult in the middle of the woods.
Even if he’d been completely human, she would’ve objected.
She glanced at Mateo. She had no grounds to object.
“Sorry. Sorry,” she whispered.
“What are you doing on my territory?” Mateo asked.
“You think you can just come here and claim half the woods?” the man said, sounding defiant and terrified.
“Well, since I own half the woods, yes.”
“That’s not how territory works.”
Cat braced, but Mateo only smirked. “Are you going to take it from me?”
“I can call the pack,” he said stubbornly.
Cat gasped, realizing he had never intended to get caught. This was a reconnaissance mission. If it hadn’t been for her vision, no one would’ve ever known he was out here.
“I’m looking for my brother,” the boy said, and Cat got another flash of a kid after school with a wicked laugh and dead eyes. He was a year ahead of them.
“I have no idea who your brother is,” Mateo said with bone-deep conviction in his voice, and Cat frowned. He’d lied with the truth. Was he really going to let this kid walk away without telling him his brother was dead?
“Mateo…”
“Go home to your pack. Tell them we’ll fight for what’s ours. We own it, and we can defend it.”
“You don’t touch her!” the blond said.
“She’s not yours to guard,” Mateo said and physically stepped in front of her. Cat couldn’t help rolling her eyes at the possessive display, though her heart was breaking. She wasn’t Mateo’s to guard either.
“I meant Annie. You leave her be.”
Mateo sighed. “That’s how it is? Of course, I’m not the only one.”
“The only one what?” Cat asked.
“You have my word,” Mateo said formally. “But if you come here again, it’s war.”
There was a whisper in the snow, and she realized there were more wolves behind them now.
Would they really fight? Was such a threat so normal in their world? It sounded barbaric and ridiculous.