6. Daire
Daire
Ever since I’d let Altair out of his cage, Mother had eyed me with suspicion.
Not only had I failed to adhere to coven law, but when Ivan descended on us, she blamed me for it.
Frankly, she was right to. In my wildest imagining, I couldn’t have predicted that letting a vampire go after decades trapped in our basement would send his sire right to our doorstep.
Of course, I’d never thought to ask.
I’d never thought to have a proper conversation with Altair at all. I wondered if any other witch had.
Sounds lonely.
Yes, well add that to my list of crimes, including tolerating his imprisonment, letting him go, and in the meanwhile, getting witches killed either in the attempt to return him or simply at Ivan’s whim.
All I’d done lately was fuck up, and my fractured mind wasn’t helping any of it. I just felt terrible all the time.
Terrible for what I had done, and what I hadn’t, and that my mother wouldn’t even meet my eye anymore.
At first, I had wanted to think that she held me apart because she wanted to protect me from Ivan’s violent outbursts, but deep down, I knew better.
Mother had never hesitated to inconvenience me, had never before kept me apart from her non-magical dealings.
Because my time wasn’t taken up by magical pursuits, I worked with the service to schedule guards, kept the bills paid, ran errands.
I’d always been the first person she sent on busywork.
If she wanted to push me away all of the sudden, it was because she blamed me for this. She no longer trusted me. And why should she?
I’d known that I was going against her word when I’d let Altair go. I’d let myself out of his cage before the sun rose, but when the others had discovered him gone, I hadn’t tried to hide what I’d done.
Once, I’d have lied about it to cover my own ass. I’d have said that he had gotten out on his own.
Now, lying felt . . . strange. Unwise.
I’d simply said that we didn’t need him anymore. Mother had called me a foolish child, and when Ivan had come, it’d been impossible to argue with her.
I wasn’t sent to retrieve him. When the others had planned to go, I hadn’t offered, though perhaps I should have. No doubt Mother would have sneered that I had no magic with which to fix my mistakes and ignored me.
But . . . I could have offered anyway. Something stayed my tongue. Maybe just not fully believing that I’d done the wrong thing, even when Ivan was stalking our halls, demanding meals. Even when we sent Kate and Tristan out after Altair and they’d never returned.
When Ivan had finally determined to go himself, I’d texted Tristan and Kate both, warning them that he was on the way. Perhaps that’d been foolish of me—at the time, I’d presumed they were both dead—but I hadn’t known what else to do. Whatever side I was on, it wasn’t Ivan’s.
I’d thrilled to see that, while my message to Kate had only been delivered, Tristan’s was read. Someone knew that we were coming, and they’d been prepared.
We hadn’t.
We hadn’t been prepared for werewolves, or for Ivan himself to snatch Loretta, tear into her neck, and drink her dry. The witches had broken and fled after that, and Mother had hissed at me to get in the car.
We’d gotten away, and the moment we’d returned home, Mother and the others had warded the coven house like never before. By the time they were done, I wasn’t even sure I could leave.
But Ivan hadn’t returned. At some point, we’d had to presume he was dead. The wolves had killed him.
Mother was even pissed about that, because it meant the pack was stronger than she’d assumed.
And then, the wards had caught an intruder, and I’d had an icy, horrible feeling that we’d been wrong. Ivan was back.
In the chaos of witches rushing to counter the threat, I found myself stumbling outside only to come face to face with the werewolf Mother had struck with her spell.
He stared at me like he recognized me too, both of us frozen for a split second—that was all it took for Destiny to cast her spell.
The wolf’s eyes went blank and fluttered shut. He hit the ground hard, and no one moved to catch him.
Not even me, stuck as I was, a wicked howl ringing in my ears.
Mine.
Mine? He wasn’t mine.
He’d—he’d . . . Lauren was on the ground, and Ryan couldn’t get her to open her eyes.
The screen door banged when Mother stormed out. With a complicated bit of spell work, she lifted the wolf off the ground. He levitated, his arms hanging uselessly, fingers trailing over the painted porch floorboards.
“Take him inside,” she snapped at Destiny. “Lock him in the basement.”
A sharp whine caught in my throat. “What are you going to do with him?”
“He attacked us,” Mother snapped, meeting my eyes for the first time in weeks, only to glare at me. “Should I leave him free to do it again?”
I swallowed, my throat dry and rough. “No.”
“Well then, come along.”
It was the first notice she’d paid me in so long, a little piece of me thrilled to have her attention.
I followed her to the library, where she snatched old, worn bound books off the shelves, picking them out particularly and without a moment’s hesitation. She knew exactly what she was looking for.
“Do you know what a witchwolf is?” she asked me.
I shook my head. It was impossible to miss her obsession with getting one, but I’d never fully grasped the significance. “A werewolf who can do magic?”
Mother scoffed, slamming the books down on a table I’d spent countless hours reading at.
Just because I didn’t practice magic yet didn’t mean I wanted to be unprepared for when I did, and reading was the closest I’d gotten.
The sharp sound made me cringe. The books themselves had always made me think this was a quiet place, but not with Mother occupying it.
“They are unlimited potential,” she said. “A witch with no bounds to their magic. Have you seen a shifter heal?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t like I’d ever stabbed a werewolf or anything. “It’s fast, right?”
“Faster than a human could comprehend. Their bodies are made for magic. From magic. Imagine if a witch were powered by a nuclear reactor. We could go and go, never tiring. We can burn ourselves out pushing past our limits, but a witchwolf would never find theirs.”
I sucked in a breath through my nose, drawing it deep into my belly. “And what would we do with all that power? How would you even manage someone who could do anything?”
Mother’s lips twitched up on the left side. “You’re right. It was a fool’s errand, trying to take the Crescent witchwolf. We need one of our own, so we will make one.”
“With his wolf?”
She hummed. I heard her heartbeat pick up, saw the excited twinkle in her eye. She was thrilled.
It was his wolf.
My stomach rolled. What would it do to a werewolf, to lose their wolf? We’d killed each other before—our coven and the Wildwood pack—but I’d never . . .
Oh, I was going to be sick.
“He came here because you stole from him.”
“We took what Grant promised us. Nothing more or less than that.”
A snarling filled my head, blowing like a storm around my empty skull. What the fuck was I supposed to do with this?
Before I figured it out, Mother flicked her fingers through the air. “Go. I must prepare for the ritual, and you, my darling boy, aren’t needed yet.”
Acid was bubbling up the back of my throat by the time I stumbled into the hallway. I gasped, but the second I opened my mouth, a snarl tore out of my throat.
She’ll kill us.
Horrified, I clapped my hands over my mouth. Willa stared at me like I’d gone crazy, and proving her point, I laughed and double-timed my way toward the stairs. Up to my bedroom. Anywhere I could think.
Because I was wrong. She was my mother; maybe she didn’t need me, but there was no way that she meant me harm.
I just . . . didn’t think I could sit idly by while she brought harm on that werewolf either.