Chapter 21
The searing light blinded Mateo. The vertigo hit next as he staggered toward the back door. He was fairly sure he had a crossbow bolt somewhere in his shoulder, but that didn’t matter at all.
The only thing working was his nose, and he smelled her blood. The intense scent of deep flowers was corrupted by the bright metallic scent of an injury, and it was driving him insane. He burst out the back door to see debris everywhere and wolves fighting with women.
How had it come to this? The exact thing that they needed to prevent was coming true before his eyes.
The war that no one else had ever rekindled was here on his watch, but none of that mattered right now.
He staggered across the lawn as spikes nipped him with unexpected bites of pain. That didn’t matter either.
The fire was gone. It was a crater in the ground with a bit of firewood and two books. One was destroyed. The cover was nothing but charred leather. The other looked completely untouched. Was that where the explosion came from?
He changed form as he crawled through the debris to find her body, half covered by a fallen pine branch. For a second, he couldn’t breathe. Nothing would ever be right in his life again, and then she coughed. She was alive.
Blood streamed down her legs. What had they done? She was their own flesh and blood!
He crouched by her. “Cat!”
She moaned.
“Catarina!”
Her head flopped.
“Come on, Patchouli, you can’t leave me here alone. Please.”
“What are you doing to her?”
He spun to see a redheaded woman with a crazed look in her eye almost as tall as he was.
“I’m trying to help.”
“By shaking an unconscious person like a leaf? She could have a head injury. Put her down!”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m her sister.”
Mateo lifted one hand and made a futile gesture of peace, which, considering the carnage behind them, seemed far too late.
The woman dropped beside him and reached out. He cringed and pulled Cat toward him. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m a healer. I’m going to help. I’m hoping to save her life.”
She put her hands on her sister, and it was the greatest act of trust Mateo had ever shown to let her.
She looked up at him in exasperation. “Would you put her down?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. I can’t. My wolf would revolt.”
“Because this isn’t hard enough,” the woman muttered and closed her eyes.
He braced but felt none of the sparks that flowed from Cat when she did magic. He knew it had happened, but he was unaware of how powerful it was until it wasn’t happening anymore, and she was lying in his arms, a limp lump of flesh.
He did this to her. He put her in danger. He was the one who sent her into that house, thinking she would be the perfect mole while he played a harmless distraction, and instead, he had nearly restarted the wars.
He looked around. Not “nearly.” He’d literally restarted the wars.
Shifters and witches were trying to kill each other in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Would it spread? Was this just the beginning?
What could he do? His justification seemed humiliatingly small.
Hadn’t Nonna warned him? Wasn’t she always warning him?
Cat woke.
There were no outward signs. No eyelash twitched. No muscle clenched, but he knew it because their connection flowed back, and he poured everything he had into her.
She gasped, and her eyes flew open, her pupils pinpoint, her whites bloodshot. She stared into nothing above their heads.
Her sister fell back with a gasp. “What the hell did you do?”
He could only shake his head. Words were a thousand miles away.
He hadn’t shifted, but his wolf was running things, which was an objectively terrible thing to happen right now or anytime, but all the beast seemed interested in doing was keeping Cat as close as possible.
Thank god it had decided that her sister was helping and not hurting her, or there would be a dead witch on the ground next to him.
Gingerly, the woman clambered close again and laid her hands on Cat.
This time, he could feel and see the magic working as the cuts that sliced her legs to ribbons sealed. As she grew lighter in his arms, she tensed.
For a timeless second, none of them moved. Cat stared above his head—eyes wide, mouth gaping—insensible.
The other witch seemed to pour the whole of her life force into her fingernails, until Cat shuddered and closed her eyes. She looked unconscious again, but he knew she wasn’t. Her sister dropped her hands.
He wrenched back control from the wolf with a lifetime of unspeakably painful practice.
“Come on, Cat, please come back to me.”
Cat tried to lift her head, and he quickly shifted to support her neck as she focused on her sister.
“Beatrice?” Cat asked.
The witch sagged, looking gray.
Cat rotated her head gingerly as if every inch hurt. The moment her eyes met his, everything was right in his world.
“Did it work?” she asked him with a dry gasp.
He laughed, although that hurt too. “That’s your first worry? You’re not dead. I don’t care at all whether it worked.”
Cat shook her head and groped his chest. It took him a moment to understand what she was trying to do as she got enough purchase on his shoulder to pull herself upright. He levered her up, though he didn’t want to.
“Any pain? Dizziness? Confusion?” Beatrice asked, and Cat whipped around with another groan.
The witch was lying on her side, looking like she had poured all her life into Cat and left none for herself.
“What about you?” Cat asked.
“Fine. Mom took a lot out of me before this started, or I could’ve done more. You’re going to have a headache for a week.”
“I don’t give a shit about that. You shouldn’t have drained yourself for me.”
“You’re my sister,” Beatrice said simply. “But as your sister, I have to ask, what the hell were you thinking? Who the hell is this? What were you trying to do? And why did we have a lightning strike from a clear sky?”
Cat did a similar flopping fish routine with her hands until Mateo could turn her and himself to face the center of the crater.
“Holy shit,” Cat said. “It didn’t touch it?”
She crawled off his lap with a burst of energy in her outrage, but he quickly had to help her reach it.
He expected the crater to be warm, like after an actual blast, but the ground was as freezing as ever; it was a fireless explosion.
What had knocked everyone off their feet?
Pure magic? He’d stayed away from the witches, but he’d never actively feared them until this moment.
She reached out tentatively, and he braced, ready to pull her away again, but nothing happened as she took the completely undamaged book in her hands and then saw the destroyed one beneath it. “Why did one burn and the other—?”
“Explode?” he said.
“Except clearly not. It looks better than it did. Brand new.”
She tentatively flipped through the pages.
Beatrice tried to climb to her feet beside him and staggered. He wanted to help her, but he could not let Cat go.
“It must be some kind of defense in the book. It’s not going to burn. Could we try something else?”
Mateo eyed the book. It seemed weirdly alive now, not sentient, but aware. “Let’s not. And let’s not even talk about it in front of it.”
“Now you’re afraid of a book? It’s a book.”
“That explodes. You don’t know what that thing is capable of.”
She deflated. “You’re right.”
“Bea! Muster!” a voice shouted from the porch.
“Damnit,” Beatrice said, still on the ground.
He looked around and whistled. He couldn’t see any of his wolves, and fortunately, no one else had made a move, magical or furry, since the explosion.
Nico came bounding out of the dark in human form, wearing a pair of combat pants and nothing else.
The other witch shrieked and tried to crawl toward the house, but she had no energy.
“I will not eat you, little witch,” Nico said, and then met Mateo’s gaze with implacable joy.
His wolf was an enforcer, built for combat, which meant Nico spent even more time than Mateo caging it in a city like New York. Mateo had never seen the man like this, with the wolf in his eyes and a keen joy in every line of his body.
Nico looked the other witch over and cocked his head. She was still feebly trying to crawl away from him.
He bent down and scooped her up with a grunt.
She shrieked and tried to hit him, but she had no strength left in her arms.
“I will return you to your headquarters.”
“Maybe don’t provoke them anymore,” Mateo said, visions of explosions still dancing on his retina.
Nico shrugged and bounded off.
Cat shook her head. “Little witch? Beatrice is almost six feet tall. She played volleyball in high school.”
“And Nico is built like a tank. He’s obviously got her. I just hope they don’t start throwing potions again.”
There’d been a second in that battle where he was unsure whether he would escape with his skin, even though he couldn’t stop laughing as he was pelted with what looked to be Christmas ornaments.
They clearly knew nothing about wolf fur, and he’d mostly been able to shake them off without risking vulnerable parts.
Cat looked down at the book in her hands with an enormous sigh. “You have to take it.”
“Okay,” he said.
“You have to take it, and you have to get out of here.”
He froze. He had desperately hoped the shock would delete the last day from her mind. “No, I don’t.”
“God, Mateo. We had this conversation, and now there’s even more reason. There can’t ever be anything between you and me. Your pack hates me. You’ve dramatic proof of what my coven would do. And now there’s this grimoire. They can’t pull the same stunt if they don’t have the book.”
“But someone could. How many of these spells are out there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if many covens have the same obsession, but I don’t think most of them are digging through books trying to destroy werewolves.”
“That’s a hypothesis with no proof behind it, a complete guess!”
She stiffened and leaned away from him. Even that five inches hurt. “I Saw you back in New York. At least that’s where I think there’s a truly enormous desk, and the oldest office chair I’ve ever seen behind it. You’re a billionaire; you can buy a new chair.”
“I like my chair,” he said before his brain caught up. “You’ve Seen my office?”
She nodded and winced again. He just wanted to make it better for her, but that was not going to happen.
“I’ve never seen a vision like it. I was half unconscious, but there was so much power behind it. I Saw so far into the future. And Mateo, I wasn’t there.”
“That’s it. You’re just going to obey a vision and abandon us?”
“It’s not about obeying or not! I See what is. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s not what I want or what I would hope. It is just what it is.”
He had a second to feel guilty because it was his power that had supercharged her talent, especially because he seemed to have dug his own grave.
“We don’t have to live by the prophets,” he whispered.
“Says everyone who hears a prophecy they don’t like in the history of humanity.”
“I really don’t think we should take ancient Greek tragedies as anyone to emulate.”
She frowned. “What?”
“Cassandra, cursed to tell the truth but never be believed.”
“So, believe me, do me this one last honor. Believe me. Take the book. Lock it up with one of those billion dollars in a bank no one can ever get to, and live your life. Help your clients. Help your pack. Forget about me.”
“I remember my diapers.”
She looked at him as if he had truly lost his mind. He adjusted so she was slightly closer and hoped she didn’t notice.
“I remember how much they pinched and how disgusting they were from when I was less than one year old.”
“Whoa.”
“I remember everything. All the bullshit I don’t even want to think about it from the time before I could walk, so when I tell you I will never forget you, I mean that.”
His wolf warned him that Nico approached, though he saw no sign of it before the bigger man materialized next to him. He made a point never to jump, but it was a level of paranoia he hated.
“They are mustering their forces,” Nico said. “There are more crossbows.”
Cat successfully pushed away from him this time, all the way out of his lap, and heaved the book against his knees. “Keep it safe. You have to go.”
With an aching groan, he shook his head. “I can’t.”
“We’re nothing to each other!”
“You know that’s not true. There’s a connection between my wolf and your magic.” It was all he could say, but he meant so much more. He would never experience this with anyone else. There would be no other woman for him. There would be no pups. His heart would live in a tiny town in Colorado.
“Please,” she breathed.
Because his heart was in her keeping, he stood up, told his wolf to suck it up, and walked away with the book a deadweight in his arms.
She knew he would do anything she asked, and all she had asked was this.