There’s a few old pumps we’ve maintained just for this sort of event that still work, I can use those for water if I need it. I jog over to the one closest to the fire’s location and unwind the thickhose. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to put this thing out and make it back to the pack meeting.
Move fast. Get back to our mate.
I yank the hose harder and ignore my damn wolf. He knows how to piss me off all right. I turn the hose on and head out towards the fire. I break through the treeline and scan the area. There’s no sign of a fire yet, which is…curious.
Not natural.
I keep walking, deeper into the forest. There’s a hill in front of me. The fire has to be up that way. I walk up the hill, pine needles crunching underfoot as I go and when I get to the top of the hill it’s not the fire that I see. It’s a woman.
An old woman in a long yellow dress and silvery hair that falls down to her waist. Silver flashes in the moonlight on her wrists when she scratches at something in the ground. Is she writing something?
She’s bent low over where the fire once was. There’s blackened earth all around her. It spans about forty feet in either direction. The trees around it are burned too but not completely. Half of them are dead, charred to ash and the other half are wholly untouched. It’s like the fire stopped halfway through burning them. The wind shifts and the bitter smell of magic hits my nose.
Ash floats past me in the wind like snow as the woman stands. The silver bracelets she wears fall in a jangle down her arms when she stretches her arms over her head with a yawn. “I’ve been waiting on you. Took you long enough.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a witch.”
“I said who, not what.”
It’s obvious she’s a witch. There’s no way I’d get a noseful of magic without her being one.
She turns to look at me over her shoulder with atsk. “You’re a mean one, aren’t you?”
I stay silent and watch her. My wolf is on high alert and a growl rumbles in my chest when she turns to face me. The witch wags a finger at me. “That’s no way to greet someone, now is it?”
“Suits me fine for a stranger.”
She clucks her tongue. “Such treatment and after I put out this fire for you. You don’t even want to know what would have happened if I’d let it be. I reckon it would have burned up a few acres by now. That hose wouldn’t have done you much good,” she says, jerking her chin at the hose I’m still holding.
I drop the damn hose and cross my arms over my chest. “Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I don’t need it.”
She snorts. “Now I get why they’ve paired you two together. You need some softening.”
Cordelia.
What the hells does this witch know about Cordelia?
Was I right? Is she working with witches? Is she planning on leaving? I don’t say a word, even though I want to ask her what she knows about Cordelia. The witch watches me for a minute before she sighs and pulls a cigarette out of her pocket. She lights it, takes a deep drag and then looks me over.
“You want one?”
“Don’t smoke anymore.”
“Smart.” I grunt in response and she takes another puff of her cigarette before she starts to pace, slowly walking the perimeter of the burnt ground. “It was Moonshadow Pack that did this.”
An Alpha making a power play because he’s broke is one thing but this? Setting fire to the land? Not a lot of shifters would stoop that low. We’re connected to the world in a way humans aren’t. Destroying the forest would be fucked all around…and yet, I believe her. Moonshadow’s corrupt and wrong. They don’tact the way proper shifters ought. They would do something this fucked.
“Why would they do that?”
“You got something they want. Something that belongs to them.”
“There isn’t a thing on our land that belongs to those fuckers.”
She flicks her cigarette, the end of it flares red when she takes another drag. “You’re right but it’s not a thing,it’s a someone.”
“What?” I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. She better not fucking say it. This damn witch. Not her.Not her.If she says-
