“You dare question me in front of others? You are my consort in public. My word is your word. My opinions yours.” His eyes flashed angrily.
I clawed at the magic over my mouth, digging until my fingers clawed through my own skin. Cade stood, approaching me, then swiped his hand across my mouth so that the magic crawled back onto his own fingers.
“What did you do, Cade?” I asked, my voice raw.
With a cold glance, Cade said, “Exactly what you asked me to. I saved their lives.”
ChapterThirty-Six
“Their lives?” I gaped at him. “You condemned them to slavery. You gave them to the dryads like they were Pokémon cards at recess! Like they were a houseplant for a new neighbor!”
Cade looked up at me, a small smirk pulling up the corner of his lip. “Luckily for them, the dryads would probably care just as well for a houseplant as they would for the wolves. What other option do you think we have?”
“You’re the head of House Bartlett! Make your own rules!” I shouted.
“Even the head of the house can’t violate the rules. My hands are bound here.” Cade ended on a hiss, snake scales twisting around his neck, tighter and tighter.
“This isn’t what I meant when I asked you to save them.” My skin felt too tight, my breath coming too quickly. I was an alpha. I had demanded loyalty from the pups, and in exchange, I was selling them into slavery.
I was no better than Cade. Maybe the pups would have been better off if I had let the House Bartlett wolves tear them apart.
“You’re being unreasonable,” Cade said. “Leave.”
My lips pulled back from my teeth, and I was aware of how they were lengthening, how quickly I was losing control of my own shift. That hadn’t happened in years, not since I went through puberty and teenage hormones were rushing through my body.
Cade looked at me, his eyes completely black. “Leave!”
Magic spilled from his mouth, wrapping me up until I was contained in darkness. When it cleared, I was in the middle of the forest. I roared. Then, without thought, I shifted.
It was the same as before. Everything hurt. It was harder than I remembered. It shouldn’t be this hard, but I felt like I was carving away diseased flesh, cutting it off and leaving only healthy skin behind.
When my bones had finished rearranging themselves, coming into a form I knew as well as my human one, I ran.
The forest was fresh, and every scent told a story. Here was where squirrels nested; here, a tree had fallen and slowly rotted over the years. The fungus that grew along its fallen trunk released nutrients that fed the rest of the forest.
I smelled small traces of the wolves from last night, hints of them left in the forest.
Curious, I followed the scent trails back to their campsite, then traced them back to where they had killed the rabbit and the deer, then tried tracing them further. I got close to the wards, but I couldn’t smell beyond that. The magic dampened my sense of smell.
I blinked. The magic dampened my sense of smell, meaning if they had come through here, there would have to have been a hole for them to smell anything on House Bartlett lands. I shifted back into my human form, ignoring my nakedness.
Bending down, I lifted a pinecone, tossing it through the wards. It sailed through. Walking forward slowly, I reached out with my hand and pressed it against them.
The magic sparked against my palm, burning it. Hissing, I drew my hand back, cradling it against my chest. The burn healed quickly, leaving only redness on my palm.
This was definitely where they had come through, but now the hole was gone. Justin had been insistent that no one had let them through, that they’d all followed a scent. But if the hole was closed, that meant the hole wasn’t permanent.
Was the hole I’d found fleeing Jesaiah just as impermanent?
Voices broke the quiet of the forest, and I smelled a familiar wolf.
I shifted without thinking, following the sound through the trees. The human voices were high compared to the low rumble that was a wolf’s growl: sub-audible, something that got my own voice to answer.
As I approached, I kept low, using the thick, overgrown forest brush to hide me. When I was close enough, I peered through the branches. The dryads stood in a small clearing. One massive tree had fallen, taking two of its neighbors with it.
The roots had been lifted out of the ground when it fell. They smelled foul. My wolf eyes didn’t have the color detail of human ones, but I could see something dripping from the roots, shining and slick where it fell to the earth.
“This is obscene,” Oak said. He stepped back from the tree, his entire face gnarled. “This is worse than the reclaimed lands. And you say you have more of these in your forest?”
