His eyes drill into mine, searching for a reaction, before he finally turns and stalks away. Who is he talking about? Which wolf? God, he can’t mean Silas, can he?
Another roll of cramps tears through me, and I forget all about what Silas may or may not have done. My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches. Each wave grows stronger, the magic burning off a little faster, like ice cubes melting in the summer sun. Every second brings me closer to Beep, but it also drags me closer to my heat. My stomach churns with a new kind of nausea.
When I want to fuck anything in sight, I won’t care that Beep is with me. Unfortunately, I won’t care who else is here, either. The thought of what—or who—I might reach for when I lose all reasoning makes my skin crawl.
My fingernails dig into the cement. I close my eyes, but can still feel the neon light burning through my eyelids. Scratching the ground, I take deep breaths, though my lungs struggle as another wave hits. Maybe Orion and Grayson will come.
I repeat their names like a mantra, whispering into the empty room, desperately hoping they’ll save me before it’s too late.
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Chapter 3: Ghost
Iglance back at Silas in the rearview mirror as I drive us toward the safe house. Fury radiates off him in caustic waves—jaw clenched, pupils so blown his eyes are nearly black. If I were weak, the alpha pheromones would be stifling.
He notices me watching him, but doesn’t react or comment. He hasn’t said a word, not since we left the compound.
Deidre’s attention stays glued to her phone, fingers rapidly tapping away. The opportunities to kill her are growing by the hour, but she hasn’t told me where we’re going yet, doling out directions like breadcrumbs. As much as I’d like to put the witch down, something bigger is at play.
The witches operate like a hydra. We need to dig out the rot, cut them off at the root. Until I know what Deidre is planning, how many witches she’s recruited for her plan, killing her will have to wait.
I’m certain Silas intends to make her death as gratuitous as Pierre’s. Holding him back may be an issue.
In the backseat, he’s a lit fuse. His fingers drum relentlessly against his thigh, occasionally tensing, white-knuckling his knees, before the tapping continues. Stormy eyes keep darting to the window, the door handle, calculating, assessing, never settling, never blinking. The air around him crackles, his alpha pulsing in wild bursts, like he’s trying, and failing, to keep himself calm.
What he did to Pierre was excessive, but controlled. Silas hasn’t snapped yet, and the explosion is still coming.
I haven’t decided how I feel about him yet. He’s messy, bleeding his emotions everywhere, but he intrigues my alpha. His scent calls to us. Petrichor, electric and vibrant. But the earthy rain scent is cut with citrus, something warm and bright, and it resonates within me, as if my body remembers something my mind has forgotten.
I’d have helped Silas regardless—Kendrick asked me to, and I’d do anything for my Máni—but something snagged at my alpha the moment I caught his scent. And then Deidre said those four magic words:we have the omega.
Beside me in the passenger’s seat, Deidre texts her sister. I’ve been stealing glances at her screen, trying to pull together a plan as we drive. Tracy’s coven in Chicago is meeting us at the safe house to collect Deidre and the omega and bring them back to the States with a full coven of protection. They’re already on their way.
Tracy seems as invested in Mona’s capture as Deidre. I’ve watched them all week, searching for motives, but whatever urgent need they have, they keep it amongst themselves—when they speak of their plan, there are gaps—sentences trail off, glances exchanged. So far, I’ve got no idea why Deidre, the High Priestess of Northwood, is so invested in Mona’s blood. Or what spell could possibly be so important to her she’d go through allthis trouble for it. She’s already one of, if notthemost powerful witch of our time.
My dual magic hums beneath my skin. It doesn’t like confinement, my alpha and I prefer to travel in shifted form. It couldn’t be helped, though.
I don’t know how Silas did it all those years, locked up like he was. I can barely handle a car ride without my alpha pacing to be released. He gets bloodthirsty when locked up too long, and we haven’t shifted in over a week, since we arrived at the compound.
With my witch magic, I can cloak my shifter-side and scent completely; most witches need herbs, incantations, or spells. I just flex my alpha’s power, and the magic flows through me.
Though she isn’t a half-shifter, Deidre has similar raw talents. There aren’t many witches like her.
Witches can bend humans easily, but they can’t control shifters—our magic is too strong. Trying to force a shifter’s magic is like trying to bend iron without heat—you need fire, you need time.
She had a lot of time with Silas.
Magic flows through us all—humans, shifters, witches—like an invisible current. The difference lies in how we wield it. Being born to a witch mother and a shifter father doesn’t make me inherently powerful. It’s within my dual nature, existing between the two worlds—witch and shifter—that allows me to see how the magic flows through either side. I can see the threads of magic connecting us all.
That’s where my power lies.
When Kendrick called me to his table a few nights ago and asked me to infiltrate Deidre’s coven, I couldn’t refuse. I owe him everything.
And so, here I am, confined in a car with a witch who has no choice but to rely on me—her entire coven was slaughtered by Grayson and Kendrick, and I was the only one left standingwhen she needed an escape—and an alpha wolf shifter who thinks I’m his enemy.
“Get off here,” Deidre mutters without looking up from her phone, and I sigh with relief that we’re almost done driving. Dawn is breaking across the sky. I pull off the highway, and we drive another twenty minutes through back roads, eventually pulling into a cul-de-sac.
Six identical houses line the street, too early for the humans within to rise for the day. We sit idling outside a quiet cape, its for-sale sign creaking back and forth in the breeze until the garage door rumbles open.
