36. Annabella
Chapter thirty-six
Annabella
Sam’s hand found the small of my back. A warm, steady pressure that said, “ I’m here,” and “We’re okay,” and “I will burn anyone who tries to make good on those threats.” The mate bond hummed between us, and I let myself lean into it.
Just a fraction. Just enough to feel the answering pulse of his rage, tightly controlled and all the more dangerous for it.
“We need to declare Three Rivers a safe haven,” Mai said. “Any Shifter who needs protection, anyone being hunted by the Humans First Division, persecuted by their local government, targeted because of who or what they are. They come here. We protect them.”
Mai reached down to retrieve a toy block that had rolled near her chair, setting it back within Oakley’s reach.
“Ryan’s right. Kane just told us his timeline.
But he also told us something else; he’s scared.
People don’t go on national television to threaten whole communities unless they’re scared and trying to control a narrative they know is slipping. ”
“That’s going to paint a massive target on your backs,” Mason said quietly. Beside him, Shya’s green eyes moved between Ryan and Mai, calculating.
“It will,” Ryan agreed. “It will also draw allies.”
“And,” Mai said, giving her mate a sharp look, “it’s the right thing to do.”
Ryan dipped his head at her. “That too.”
Mason and Shya exchanged a glance. Whatever passed between them lasted less than two seconds, then Mason said, “We can help with food and supplies, but you’ll need more than just Three Rivers territory to handle the fallout.
Bridgetown will stand with you. We propose a temporary pact.
Join our territories into one safe haven.
Shared resources, coordinated defenses. Kane comes for one of us, he comes for both. ”
Ryan studied his brother for a moment. “Agreed.”
“We’ll need to fortify immediately.” Derek rapped a pen against the edge of the table. “Change everything. Patrol routes and rotations, defensive positions, early warning systems.”
“Carlito,” Mai said, “you and I will coordinate outreach. We use Shaw Investigations and their contacts to spread the word that Three Rivers and Bridgetown are safe havens.”
Carlito was already typing onto his tablet. “We’ll need human allies too. Starting with Ronnie.”
“No,” both Ryan and Mason said at the same time, just as Mai and Shya both said, “Agreed.”
Four Alphas. Two answers. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling as they looked at each other.
Mai raised one eyebrow at Ryan…just one, slow and deliberate, loaded with the authority of someone who was right and knew it and was going to wait as long as necessary for everyone else to catch up.
Shya leaned across to Mason and whispered something I couldn’t quite catch. Whatever it was, Mason’s jaw worked for a moment before he closed his eyes.
“Fuck,” Ryan said, running a hand through his hair.
Shya glanced at Carlito and repeated, “Agreed.”
Ryan sighed, gave one curt nod, then looked at Waylen. “Security upgrades?”
“Already on it,” Waylen replied without looking up from his screens.
“Bethany Rose and I will reach out to our contacts,” Talia said. “There must be other members, other enforcers who escaped Kane’s purge.”
“We can only hope,” Bethany Rose added. Her voice was cool, professional, carefully stripped of anything that might be mistaken for emotion.
But I caught the way her fingers flexed once at her side.
She’d lost colleagues today. Maybe friends.
But she wasn’t going to let that show in a room full of strangers.
“You’ll need protection,” Gideon said from his position by the door, his attention on Bethany Rose. “Kane will have people watching for exactly that kind of outreach.”
Bethany Rose’s eyes cut to him. “As I’ve told you before, Calloway, I don’t need your protection.”
“Yeah?” Gideon pushed off the wall, moving a step closer. “Because the last time you went without backup, you nearly got your throat ripped out.”
“I had it handled. I’d been tracking that witch for three months. Had him cornered exactly where I wanted him. And then you came crashing in—”
“I was trying to keep you alive,” Gideon cut in.
“—and cost me the intel I’d been gathering. The witch escaped. His coven scattered. Months of work, gone. Because you decided I needed saving.”
“You were bleeding—”
“Superficially. I was drawing him out. It was completely controlled.” Her chin lifted. “But you wouldn’t know that because you didn’t bother to assess the situation before charging in like a blind rhino with a poker up his ass.”
Beside me, Sam let out a surprised laugh. Gideon ignored him, his eyes never leaving Bethany Rose’s face. There was an intensity there that had absolutely nothing to do with professional concern.
Holy fuck! Gideon Calloway had it bad for the Council’s witch tracker.
Bethany Rose, for her part, looked like she’d rather fight him to the death than acknowledge whatever was sparking between them.
“Enough,” Talia said mildly, though there was steel beneath her calm tone. “Gideon, while it would be prudent for you to accompany us, I trust my skills and those of Bethany Rose to keep us safe.”
Gideon’s jaw worked. His nostrils flared. Yeah, he was not a happy bunny with this situation.
“Fortifying and rallying allies is all well and good. But we need to go on the offensive. Hit Kane before he gets too entrenched,” Derek said.
Ryan lifted his chin at his brother. “What did you have in mind?”
Derek leaned back and spread his hands as if to say he was open to ideas.
“The spell containment boxes,” I said.
Every head turned toward me. “Think about it. According to the intel Sam, Derek, and Waylen showed me, Webster’s close to perfecting the production method. Days away, maybe.”
“Spell containment boxes?” Henry asked.
Waylen pulled up diagrams on one of his screens, rotating it so more people could see.
“Small metal containers, about this size.” He held up his hands to demonstrate something roughly the size of a dollar coin.
“A witch captures a spell inside, then seals the box. Later, someone—anyone, a Shifter, a human—breaks it open, and the spell activates. Mass distribution of magic with no witch required.”
“Holy fucking hell,” Henry breathed. “Do you understand what will happen to society if this gets out? Not just the consequences of ripple production increasing a hundredfold, but any spell? Any witch’s spell can be captured by these boxes?
They’d sell for thousands. Witches will become millionaires overnight.
And the influence and power that kind of money buys?
” He stared at a point above my head, already lost in the cascading implications.
“It would change the power structures between the species forever.”
I nodded. “We need to stop them from perfecting the boxes.”
“We need to stop them,” Henry agreed, and I got the impression he was no longer fully with us. His mind was three steps ahead, running calculations.
“Is it the boxes themselves that allow it—some sort of metal that can hold magic—or is it a special spell?” Shya asked.
Esme’s fingers twirled a strand of her hair. “Both,” she said softly. “The boxes…they’re not just metal. Iron and copper, yes, but also rowan. Rowan charcoal, all mixed together when the metal is hot-hot-melting. Makes it special. Makes it able to hold.”
“Hold what?”
“The sparkly bits. The magic.” She held her palms up and twiddled her fingers, and a few tiny points of light actually danced between them; witch-light, playful, gone as fast as it appeared.
“Regular metal, it’s like trying to catch water with your fingers.
Drip, drip, gone. But this metal, with the rowan inside…
it makes little pockets. Little homes for the spells to sleep in. ”
She paused, one hand drifting to rest near Jem’s on the table. “One of Derek’s little spies brought a box. I looked at it. Felt it.” Her eyes went distant. “The metal hums. Like bees. Waiting, waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Mason asked.
“For the spell to make it whole. It wants that, you see. To be made whole, so it can capture and hold all the other spells, like the one that makes ripple.”
“Esme, can you do this…” Mason waved his hand, “…holding spell?”
Esme shook her head. “It’s new magic. Not the old kind. I haven’t seen how they do it, but…”
“But?” Mason’s voice was patient.
“But magic follows rules. Water flows downhill. Plants grow toward the sun. Even naughty new spells have to follow the rules. If I can get a sneaky peek at the pattern, I can see how the spell curls up inside the metal. How it sleeps there. Every spell has a shape, you see. A shape.” She cupped her hands together, then slowly opened them, like releasing a butterfly.
“And if you can see the shape, you can find where it’s stitched together.
The seams. The little tuck-tuck-tucks where the magic folds. ”
Her eyes went wide and bright.
“And then…” She made a gentle sweeping gesture with her hand, slow and deliberate. “We can sweep, sweep it away, unstitch the tuck-tucks.” She blew softly across her open palms. “And poof! All gone.”
“You sound certain you can reverse the spell,” Talia said carefully.
“I spent many moons making bad magic for bad men. Learned how spells are built, piece by piece. How to see the threads and follow them. This will be the same. Just… bigger. Darker.” Her voice dropped to something barely above a breath.
“Like a big shadow-octopus instead of a little shadow-eel. But I know how to find where it’s tangled. ”
Then she looked at me.
“Annabella,” she said. “Annabella has fire-bright magic. Together, we can burn the tangles away.”
The heat in my palms surged. Not threatening, not out of control. Answering. Like my magic had heard Esme’s voice and agreed before I’d had time to think about it.
I flexed my fingers and let it settle.
“If those boxes get perfected,” Derek said, and his voice was stripped flat, every ounce of inflection burned away to leave only the facts, “Kane arms the HFD with stored attack spells. Morrison and his people won’t need witches. No Shifter will be safe. Not in camps. Not in territories. Nowhere.”
Sam glanced at me, a question in his eyes.
I gave a small nod. He turned back to his brother.
“So we go to the source. Waylen thinks the facility is in Quebec. We go there and burn it down before they can distribute. It might not destroy the threat of these boxes entirely, but it should delay them. Buy us time to tackle Webster and Kane.”
“We’re in,” Mina said immediately.
Zeke nodded. “Damn right we are.”
“Jem and I will go too,” Esme said. Jem did not look happy about it, but he didn’t contradict her.
Gideon straightened from his lean against the wall with the air of a man being gravely inconvenienced.
“Well, I suppose someone has to go along and make sure you two don’t get yourselves spectacularly killed.
” He gestured between Sam and me. “Because let’s be honest, you,” he pointed at Sam, “have the self-preservation instincts of a drunk raccoon in a fireworks factory, and you,” the finger swung to me, “are somehow worse. Together? You’re a catastrophe in matching jackets.
You need adult supervision. Specifically, mine. ”
He cracked his knuckles, one by one, like he was punctuating a sentence. “So really, you can’t afford not to bring me.”
“Nobody asked you yet,” Sam said mildly.
“You were about to. I saved you the trouble. You’re welcome.”
Ryan’s gaze was measured, assessing us all as it moved between us: Sam, me, Gideon, Esme, Jem, Mina, Zeke.
“How long do you need to prepare?” he asked finally, and I knew we had the go-ahead.
Sam looked at Waylen. “How long to get us full intel on the Quebec facility?”
“Give me two hours. Maybe three.”
“Okay, we leave as soon as possible,” Sam decided. “Waylen can send us the intel en route. We’ll plan from there.”
“Agreed.” Ryan glanced at Mai and then around the rest of the room. “We’ll declare Three Rivers a sanctuary. Mason, Derek, Jase, we’ll need to fortify both Three Rivers and Bridgetown. Sofia, can you and Wally organize supplies for the expected influx of people?”
Sofia nodded, her face serious. “Sure thing.”
“Right, then. We’ll reach out to our contacts, start building a coalition. Sam’s team hits them back where it hurts the most. Hopefully, that’ll buy us enough time to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” asked Mina.
Ryan looked at her, then at the rest of us. “For war.”