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That much made sense, as her mother was a witch, and he remembered hearing the chanting in her mind after their mating. That Max’s covenant was tracking her because she could supposedly restore the immortality of the witches perplexed him. He’d been alive for slightly more than four centuries, and he’d never heard of a creature, at least one who wasn’t a god, that could resurrect the druids. The immortal sons and daughters of gods had been vengeful creatures and luckily his pack had never encountered them. Entire witch covenants had been wiped out at their doing.
“The druids cursed the witches to a life of mortality. Even if Vivienne is a witch, how can she reverse something done by the druids?”
***
From where he sat in the front, Max glanced at Conall. It was one of the questions he’d always posed to himself, but found he couldn’t answer. Had he thought it through before leaving the covenant, he might have asked his father. He doubted he would have received a straight answer.
“My—the Grand Wizard thinks a powerful witch can undo the curse,” he replied, catching himself before he said the word “father.” Max knew that Conall was no longer a threat to him, as he’d played a part in helping Vivienne, but he wasn’t willing to reveal that the highest authority in the covenant, the one who was hunting Conall’s mate, happened to be his father. He wanted to make sure Vivienne was safe, and he didn’t need Conall Athelwulf and his pack fighting him every step of the way.
Sighing, Max ran a hand through his hair, which was still damp from the quick shower at the apartment. He and Conall had taken less than ten minutes to clean the blood and grime from their bodies and find fresh clothing before they were heading to Scarsdale. The ride from the city usually took about an hour and forty five minutes but at the speed Conall was doing, they were going to be there much sooner.
“Why doesn’t Vivienne know she’s a witch?”
“I think that was her mother’s way of protecting her. Her powers were bound when I first met her.”
Conall nodded, remembering the first time he’d met her. He’d been attracted to her that first night in the park, but the smell of her humanity had tamed his beast. The second time he’d seen her, at his club, he’d been drawn to something else, something that hadn’t been there the first time he’d laid eyes on her, else the night would have gone differently. And that night in the hotel room, when he’d taken her, she’d been wild and demanding under him, pulling his wolf close to the forefront in his human body despite the many centuries of control he exacted over his beast.
“What are you?”
“A hybrid,” Max replied, pushing aside the painful memories the word brought forward. That was the term his people used for any mixes between the races. “Human, witch, and warlock.”
Conall nodded. “I thought the warlocks were extinct. Hunted and killed by the witches almost a century ago?”
“They were.” He paused. “My mother was human and warlock.”
Max didn’t remember much of his mother outside of what his father had told him. She’d died when he was a baby. What he knew of warlocks, he’d read about in historical scrolls kept by the witches, outlining their creation and demise. Unlike the witches, who were supposedly created by Luna, the warlocks were a breed created from liaisons between a witch and a vampire.
In the early days, when the vampires hunted the witches for sport, many of the vampire warlords would kill the male witches and keep the females as concubines. The resulting warlocks mostly favored the witches. They were immortal, walked in the sunlight, and were quick at learning spells, but their feeding patterns were similar to the vampires. While the vampires needed blood to survive, their half-breed descendants needed souls. Sometime around the early twentieth century, a group of warlocks began attacking witch communities. That became the onset of a rift between the witches and warlocks. In retaliation, the witches tracked most of them down, and killed them. Less than a handful, if any, pureblood warlocks still lived.
Conall was about to ask Max about his position in the covenant, as he remembered one of the trackers speaking directly to him, when the car phone rang. He instinctively reached for his cell phone, but it had been incinerated by the heat of the change. He quickly reached for the handset. “Yes?”
“The Council is meeting on Saturday.” As usual, Sloan’s voice was calm and cool, but Conall knew he wasn’t imagining the concern in his beta’s voice.
After centuries of bloodshed, the witches, vampires, and weres, the largest of the immortal communities, had decided to draw up a treaty that was satisfactory to each. As a result, the Council was formed. It was divided into two levels. There was the International Council, made up of representatives from each race and country, who would meet once a year to discuss politics, business, and other issues related to keeping the races in harmony. And there were the state councils, which usually consisted of representatives from the various groups in a certain area. As the leader of one of the largest packs, Conall held one of the four seats assigned to the weres in the New York area.
