2. Daire
Daire
There was nothing quite like driving to meet the Crescent wolves.
I vastly preferred when they came to the coven house, because driving out to them was like stepping out of time and space.
There wasn’t even a proper road once you got off the highway—just a path with enough old gravel to assume it’d been intentional, despite the branches that curved overhead and scraped the top of the SUV.
There’d be no chance in hell of finding this place if we didn’t know exactly where we were going, and I still needed Mother to point the way.
But now that they’d returned from the city, she was determined to get her hands on the witchwolf as soon as possible.
I’d read the articles online about him—Dakota Morris. He was the Igarashi heir, though he didn’t carry their name. Some circumstance of birth that had led to him getting bitten by a werewolf and becoming something impossible.
Before Morris had gotten bitten by a billionaire wolf, there were stories about the witchwolf.
Those were the kinds of tales that kept our coven searching for more, awakening with witches and vampires and any other supernatural creature we could get in contact with.
People said my great-grandmother had taken a fae to bed, but I’d never seen any proof of it.
The fae were notoriously hard to catch, and they didn’t offer anything that they wouldn’t get back twofold. Surely if she’d been awakened by a fae, we’d still be paying the price.
But before Ajax Fyse had bitten his mate and Dakota Morris had refused to die, I hadn’t been entirely convinced it was possible for a witchwolf to exist.
Confirmation had consumed Mother as soon as she learned about him, but I wasn’t sure the witchwolf would work with us. Unless Mother could turn his mind with magic, make him forget how he came to be, why would a mage work with witches?
No, there weren’t many practical differences between us—we were all mortal humans who practiced magic—but I’d never known a mage who wanted to be lumped in with witches. They thought we were wild, untrained, and honestly? Deeply unserious.
It was arrogance on their part, but there were a lot of hurdles before our coven getting their hands on a supernatural powerhouse like Dakota Morris beyond just getting him out to Idaho.
Turned out, the werewolves hadn’t gotten that far.
We arrived on pack lands to find they hadn’t even brought their alpha back, much less the witchwolf.
“Where is Grant?” Mother demanded once we’d parked and she confronted the wolves in their square.
At the sound of our approach, they’d come out of their houses, looking hollow-eyed and wary.
Looking at them made me feel the same as I felt whenever we walked past a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk in Boise—uncomfortable and guilty all at once.
Because I knew. I knew what we were doing to them.
And their discomfort with us was just as stark.
“Dead,” Aleks said as he walked forward to face us.
He’d been a common fixture at Grant’s side, visiting us often.
Plenty of witches were quite taken with him, and it wasn’t hard to see why.
He was gorgeous. Blond and tall and fit, and somehow, he managed to look like he had a freaking skincare regimen out here in the middle of nowhere.
“He challenged Crescent alpha—Crescent alpha killed him. Is over.”
His eyes scanned over all of us, and I swallowed hard and looked away, leaning back. I wished we could just leave. Clearly, they’d failed, and Mother would need to find another way to achieve her aims.
Or, like, move on. That was an option too.
Looking around, the idea that Mother had relied on a bunch of werewolves who lived out in the woods in shacks that didn’t even have electricity was the absurd part, not that they’d failed.
Mother didn’t respond right away, just crossed her own arms and sighed like she had when I’d been younger and asked too many questions, like she was more put-upon than anyone had ever been.
“Fine. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He always was useless.” She pursed her lips and tapped her toe. “Well?”
“Well what?” Aleks demanded. “You worked with Grant. Grant is dead. Deal is over. Wildwood is no longer interested in alliance.”
I grimaced and stepped back to fiddle with the door handle on the car.
Someone else could stand at her side. Preferably, someone with magic, because mine hadn’t been awakened yet.
My role was chauffeur; I wasn’t a fighter.
Of course, Mother wasn’t going to take any smart mouthing from a werewolf, so someone who could sling a spell or two would serve her better anyway.
“You listen here, you little upstart. Grant and I had a deal. Blood oaths were made. Your little pack of ragamuffins owes me a witchwolf. I. Am. Owed.”
It took effort not to flinch at the hardness in her voice, but Aleks merely stalked closer to her. His expression was every bit as hard and angry as hers was. “Grant is dead. Deal is over. You have blood oath? His blood is spilled. Absorbed into the earth and gone.”
“You’re his blood,” Mother said, leaning toward him too. “His nephew. If he’s gone, then the oath transfers to you.”
Aleks scoffed. “Grant betrayed Wildwood in favor of you. In favor of selfishness. We do not claim him. This pack follows me because I offer them change. I am alpha because they accept me. Not because of blood. Grant was no family of mine. His line is dead. Blood oath is meaningless.”
Mother stumbled back, and Kate and Tristan caught her while I stared. She was bleeding. Her skin split by the surety in Aleks. And there I was, standing still and useless, horrified and impressed and—
Fuck, she was casting.
Maybe I’d never cast a spell of my own, but I knew the shape of one.
Her spell lashed out at the new Wildwood alpha, but another jumped in front of him.
This one was large and lean and wild looking, with long hair that fell out of place with the force of the magical impact.
The alpha caught him before he could fall.
And when the spell hit his chest, I felt it too.
It was like a magical tornado ripped open the space between that werewolf and me. It tore something from me and pummeled me with the broadside of a flying barn.
But it was invisible to all. There wasn’t even a breeze to tell what Mother had done. Only I knew that it had changed something—something in me.
At the provocation, the werewolves attacked.
I rushed to shut the door behind me when I threw myself in on the driver’s side, and Mother got in too. Tristan had to help her into the passenger’s seat before he and Kate got in the back.
Then we took off, the others driving behind us too close, knowing that none of us would hit the brakes until we were well free of the wolves.
They snapped their jaws at us, running beside our tires until we were far from the center of their community, and as soon as we were free of them, I shoved my foot onto the brake. It was something of a miracle that Destiny didn’t hit our back bumper.
Gravel crunched beneath our tires as we stopped. If the wolves were still chasing us, what were they going to do, rip the door off its hinges and drag us out into the dirt to tear us apart? Not a chance.
If the werewolves wanted us dead, they had plenty of opportunity and justification to see it finished.
They wanted us gone, which was an entirely different thing.
“What are you doing?” Mother snipped, turning my way with pale, narrowed lips and a sharp glare. “Move.”
“No. I’m not going another inch until you tell me what you just did to me.”
Her eyes narrowed, her lashes inky black and covering the whites at the outer edges. “I did nothing to you,” she sneered.
I gripped the steering wheel hard enough that my knuckles went white and kept my gaze level, straight out the windshield, like if I met her eyes I’d fall into a trap and lose my grip on what was true.
No matter what she said, I wasn’t making it up.
She couldn’t just lie to me and expect me to buy it.
“Bullshit. I felt it. Your spell hit the wolf, and it hit me, so what the fuck did you do?”
I knew from the first syllable that I’d messed up. Kate and Tristan behind us were completely still. Mother’s lip curled. By my second curse word, her fingers rippled through the air.
A tug of magic, and all the air in the car was gone.
At least, it was gone for me.
I gasped, desperate for oxygen she’d already stolen, and grappled at my throat. She’d closed it. She’d—
Fuck, I didn’t know, but the world was going dark at the edges, and I didn’t know if that was because I couldn’t breathe, or because she was so angry.
Nightmarish tendrils of shadow played across my vision.
They curled around her pale face and sharp cheekbones as she leaned closer.
The way my vision swam, she had too many eyes. Six or eight.
“How dare you use that tone with me,” she growled through her teeth. “I am your mother.”
As if I might’ve forgotten. But the terror that coiled in my gut was too familiar.
The shadows combed through her hair like they were part of her.
“I’m sorry,” I mouthed, but no croak of sound came out.
Her lips pursed, and she held me there, like that, another second or two before she flicked her fingers out and clean air returned. I gasped, chest heaving as my body struggled to make up for going without, and I slumped against the steering wheel.
“What was that?” she asked.
I sucked in one more deep breath, struggling to master my desperate gasps before I sat upright and stared ahead.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
She hummed, and I hesitated to turn, to see if such a short apology would be enough. I could feel her eyes on the side of my face. Nervously, I swallowed and glanced in the rearview mirror, but Tristan was looking out the side window, pretending not to notice what was going on in the front.
“Then all is forgiven,” she said after a moment of letting me twist. “What I have done is given you a future. You are our promised one. You’ll see us through our ascension.”
Right then, we’d be lucky if I saw us through the whole ride home, but I nodded. I wouldn’t shake.
It was just a moment of holding my breath. That was all it’d been, and there was no sense falling apart about it. That’d only make her angrier.
“Thank you,” I said when I could, keeping my eyes trained ahead, because that was easier than holding her gaze while I admitted wrongdoing.
I put my hand on the gearshift to take the car out of park, but her hand closed on top of mine to stop me.
“Daire?”
Her voice had returned to normal, soft and sweet.
Still, a shivering cold ran through my belly as I dragged my gaze away from the windshield and the trees around us to force myself to look at her.
“Yes, Mother?” I whispered.
Her smile softened, and she leaned across the center console and touched my cheek, but her thumb stretched beneath my jaw. A second later, and her smooth fingernails were pressing little moons into my face as she dragged me closer.
“Darling,” she purred, holding me so tight I couldn’t look away, “don’t you ever forget, I brought you into this world . . . ”
And you can take me out of it.
I struggled to nod in her grip. “Yes, ma’am.”
Satisfied, she dropped back in her seat and let me go, only to wave her hand vaguely in front of her.
“Good. Then drive. We have work to do.”
When I pulled back onto the path, the witches in their own cars followed us out. Our whole world turned on my mother’s whims, and whatever work she meant to do, I had a sinking feeling that what she’d already done to me was irreparable.