32. Daire
Daire
Cash and Aleks never came back down. I tried not to listen too carefully, but it was hard to ignore the devastated whines from upstairs.
Cash sounded like a man whose heart had just been ripped out of his chest, and Aleks’s words were so quiet I couldn’t make them out, but they were soft and comforting.
I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only person at the table with half an ear out for what was going on. Katya and Leo talked less than usual, leaving Drew and me to fill the quiet.
He was curious about magic though—if it always needed a spoken spell to hold, which it didn’t. We hadn’t said anything when laying down the wards, but it helped focus intention and that was important when the need was great and specific.
Most of lunch, we talked through how to approach spell work while Katya was just as determined to see that Viktor ate as I was. She took a whole plate of sandwiches up to Cash and Aleks, and rejoined us at the table to eat her own lunch.
Once everyone was full, Leo raised a brow at his brother. “You think we should get back out there? It might assure everyone things are okay . . . ”
And as it stood, I wasn’t sure Cash and Aleks were coming down any time soon. Maybe if Aleks thought the pack needed him, but the kinder thing would be to give them time to themselves.
I just wasn’t sure if Viktor was up to it. When I glanced his way, he shrugged.
“Not like I’m doing a bunch of heavy lifting without my wolf anyway. We’ll take it easy.”
I smiled. “Okay, yeah. Let’s get back out there.”
But I still stayed close to his side and held onto his hand. He wasn’t going down without me being there to catch him.
We got outside to find that Evie was already there, directing people on what to do. Notably, no one was using anything dangerously sharp or large. Some people were sanding and treating logs, some people were working on . . . well, when I asked what it was, they called it chinking.
Everyone was keeping a positive mood, though it felt a little strained. It was still better than when something had gone wrong at the coven house and everyone retreated to their separate corners. Here, people came together.
While I’d gone back to sanding, Evie wandered to my side and frowned at me with her hands on her hips. “So . . . magic.”
I smiled at her. She looked a lot like Cash, with her dark hair and emerald eyes, but when she looked me over, it felt more like those early hours when Viktor was still sizing me up.
“Yeah, magic.”
She snorted. “Okay, so it can heal people, put up wards for protection. Say we had a witch around permanently—how else could it help us?”
While I continued to sand, we went through magical fires, heating up water, and how magic could help protect the garden I’d seen tucked between some of the old houses.
“And solar panels?” she asked. “We’re working on getting some so we have power out here, but we’re in the woods, and they need direct light, right?
We don’t want to lose all the trees around us, and we can’t account for storms and cloudy days, but that seems like the best option to make sure we have a steady supply of energy. ”
I stood back and shrugged. “Theoretically, sure. The first thing a witch learns is how to conjure light, but our power is limited to what our bodies can process, and if we’re not careful, we can burn through our magic and our lives both.
It’s why Mother wanted a witchwolf in the first place.
Your innate magic is like . . . it’s like an infinite source of power.
A witchwolf wouldn’t have the same limitations that I would have, or that Viktor has with just my magic.
But I guess someone like the witchwolf wouldn’t have much trouble making sure the panels get enough UV light to keep working. ”
She pursed her lips. She looked young—fifteen or sixteen max—but I could see her mind working behind her eyes. “Cool,” was all she said, and she pulled out a cell phone and started typing away at it.
I sighed wistfully, and Viktor stared at me, his head cocked in silent question.
“I miss my phone,” I said.
“Take Tristan’s. He’s made Evie charge it more than a few times.”
I snorted. “I’m not stealing his phone. And there’s nobody I want to contact anyway. I just miss scrolling, which is . . . honestly? Kind of pitiful. It’s just addictive, watching people do ridiculous shit on the internet. This is just like a tech detox. It’s probably good for me.”
“Is it?” Viktor asked, genuinely curious. “Being out here in the woods with no modern conveniences is good for you?”
I bit my lip. Strangely enough . . . “Yeah, I think so. I mean, my head’s clearer than it’s ever been. The inconveniences aren’t so bad, and there are, ah, benefits that outweigh them.”
I glanced at Viktor through my lashes then, and his pulse quickened slightly. He was pleased to hear it, and I smiled to myself as I went back to work.
Everyone kept at it, steadily, together. I noticed when I walked past the sawhorse that someone had picked up the bloody pieces of the saw and taken them away. They’d turned over the dirt. Nobody had to ask for what they needed, because people jumped in and did what they thought needed doing.
At the end of the day, I washed my hands off at the spigot beside Katya’s home. Wood dust was surprisingly sticky when mixed with sweat.
While I waited for Viktor to wash up too, I sat on the edge of the porch to wait and looked out toward the big house.
It was more rustic than the coven house, for sure, but it looked like it’d house just as many people, and I suspected it’d be a more comfortable place to live, without people always trying to size each other up, or compete for positions only my mother could grant.
Someone walked out onto the porch and sat down beside me. I saw the dirty knee of Cash’s jeans and froze.
He took a deep breath, but he didn’t say anything.
So of course I was the one to break. Couldn’t just keep my mouth shut for a whole minute. “How’s Aleks?”
“Good,” he said. “Perfect. His hand is—thank you.”
The sincerity in his voice made a lump rise in my throat. I shook my head. “Viktor did the work, and anyone would’ve helped if they could.”
“That is . . . not true.”
“Nobody helped your dad?”
Cash’s throat clicked when he swallowed. “No. No, the alpha . . . took his leg on purpose. Tore it off.”
My breath caught. “That’s horrible. Why—” I caught myself and pressed a palm into my forehead. “No, there’s . . . there’s no why to a thing like that. I’m so sorry.”
Cash shook his head. “It was because of me. Because my friends left the pack, and I think Alpha Reeve had planned to stop me from doing the same and set an example for everyone else, but Pa stepped in instead. But today, with Aleks—we wouldn’t have known what to do, except tear it off, and you saved him, even when I didn’t want you anywhere near him. I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you.”
I laughed awkwardly, waving his concerns away. “I get it. Really. I don’t think I’d like me either, in your shoes.”
“No. I haven’t given you a chance, but I know you didn’t . . . the worst thing you’ve done to Aleks is not fix injustice you didn’t know how to fix, and we have experience with that here.”
Yeah, they did. They had a good alpha now, but I’d known Grant well enough to know he was a piece of shit, and it sounded like the one before him was even worse.
It wasn’t the coven alone that was capable of poisoning a well. Anyone could do it, but the wolves were building something better now, while the coven continued to poison itself.
I smiled at Cash. “So maybe we fix it now. All of us.”
Cash held my eye for a few seconds. His nose flared when he breathed in, and he nodded. “Yeah. We can do that.”