AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He’d staggered when he’d landed and climbed to his feet slowly. He and his cousins used to have jumping contests over the fences, but now he could barely clear them. “Those used to be shorter.”
“You used to be younger,” his mother said.
He walked to the center of the field, mindful of droppings. The scent of them and the horses played havoc with his nose, but he was reasonably sure they were alone.
“It’s lovely to see you home,” she said, but he could hear the stress in her voice. She always worried when he left the land. He’d never asked her if it was worry for him or the rest of humanity who had to interact with him.
“It’s a nightmare to be home.”
“I heard about the fight,” she said, staring into the black sky. Clouds had covered any stars, and he realized she had to be nearly blind. Even in his human form, his shifter eyes were good enough to see the hulking barn and the hills behind it. The only light was a yellow porch light on the big house behind the barn a hundred yards away.
“You mean the unprovoked, baseless attack on a rival?” he asked after the silence became awkward.
“Unprovoked and baseless mean the same thing,” she said quietly.
“Unprovoked, baseless, groundless, unjustified, um, unwarranted. I’m out of synonyms.”
“Why are you...” she trailed off.
“Why am I what?” He couldn’t imagine how she was planning on finishing that sentence. Why was he out here or confronting Nathan or involved at all?
“So scared?”
He sagged; she could always read him.
“They kidnapped a woman and dumped her at my house. I’m trying to get her home.”
“What on earth were they thinking?” she asked at ten times her normal volume, and a horse neighed from its stall in the barn. The high whinny rang out across the valley.
“Sorry, dear,” his mother called to the horse. They were her horses. She’d run from her family decades ago and taken refuge with the wolves. She’d brought a prized thoroughbred with her, Blue Roan’s father, and had spent Aiden’s youth turning that one horse into the biggest breeding operation in West Virginia. Mostof the pack worked in the business, and the income had turned them from subsistence hunters into wealthy wolves.
“Wait,” his mother said. “Why did they leave her at your house?”
He laughed without a lick of humor. “My wards. I think they thought I’d take care of her one way or another when they realized how much trouble they were in.”
“That poor woman!”
“Speaking of wards, can you open them?”
She frowned. “You just have to walk out if you’re human.”
“No, Ma, the wards around the land. Buck closed them.” He paused. Had Buck closed them? “Someone closed them and won’t open them, and I have to get her home.”
Her face wiped of expression. “They stole a witch, locked her up, and then closed the wards to make sure she can’t get home?”
She was getting calmer, which, like his wolf, meant she was truly angry.
Mine,the wolf chimed in with a wave of possessiveness. “Yeah, they did.”
“I can’t open them,” his mother said miserably. “That was part of the deal. They didn’t trust me to ward the place unless they held the keys.”
“At all?” he asked, his heart sinking.
“Unless you want me to take them down completely.”
“How quick would they be to put up afterward?”
She laughed loud and hard. “Well, they’ve been thirty years in the making. Now that I know what I’m doing, I could probably speed that up. I’d say ten.”
