Page 84 of Oakheart

“Where is Grant?” she demanded, looking me over from head to toe and then dismissing my importance, looking around the clearing for someone else.

Naturally. I was a servant. Someone Grant had assigned to sleep with her witches to awaken them. To be used, but not respected.

It was time for that to change.

Well, that, or she’d turn me into a toad and my pack would be without an alpha.

Only one way forward.

“Dead. He challenged Crescent alpha—Crescent alpha killed him. Is over.”

I was dropping words again, and I wasn’t immediately sure why.

Well, except that the boy who sometimes came with Ermengarde—her son, maybe—was there, and his reaction to my whole demeanor was telling. He swallowed hard and looked away, leaning back, like he’d prefer to be farther away from me.

Good.

I wanted them all far away from me.

Maybe he hadn’t specifically wronged me, but... but Viktor hadn’t been wrong. Grant had been selling my ass to these people, almost exactly as he’d been planning to do to Evie, and while I’d never be able to see myself as a victim, I had been abused. What they’d been doing was wrong, and if they didn’t see that, it just meant they were irredeemably evil, like Giselle and Grant. If they did know it was wrong, that was almost worse, since they continued on regardless.

If my Russian accent helped me seem scarier to people like this, I’d ham it right the hell up and make them wonder if I’d gotten off a plane yesterday, rather than over a decade ago.

Ermengarde didn’t immediately respond, just crossed her own arms and sighed, long and loud, like the pack teacher when I’d struggled to relearn my letters in English. I couldn’t help that Cyrillic ones simply made more sense.

“Fine. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He always was useless.” She pursed her lips and tapped her toe, impatient and annoyed, but not leaving like I very much wanted her to. After a moment, she demanded, “Well?”

“Well what?” I tried not to mimic her impatience. I was still. Calm. Breathing evenly, no fidgeting. She was not in any way my superior, and I wouldn’t have her know that I found her verypresence unsettling. “You worked with Grant. Grant is dead. Deal is over. Wildwood is no longer interested in alliance.”

At that, her eyes narrowed, and all semblance of civility disappeared. “You listen here, you little upstart. Grant and I had a deal. Blood oaths were made. Your little pack of ragamuffins owes me a witchwolf. I. Am. Owed.”

There was a sharp exhale behind me that sounded like a snort, and I wondered if it had been Mama or Viktor. He was usually better at hiding all emotion, but things had changed, so maybe that would change as well.

I took another step toward her, hardening my expression into a glacier of calm, met her eye, and held it steadily. I wanted her to have no illusions about what the Wildwood pack thought of her and hers. “Grant is dead. Deal is over. You have blood oath? His blood is spilled. Absorbed into the earth and gone.”

“You’rehis blood,” she corrected, stressing the focus as she leaned toward me. “His nephew. If he’s gone, then the oath transfers to you.”

It was my turn to snort. “Grant betrayed Wildwood in favor of you. In favor of selfishness. We do not claim him. This pack follows me because I offer them change. I am alpha because they accept me. Not because of blood. Grant was no family of mine. His line is dead. Blood oath is meaningless.”

With the words, I felt something shift inside me, and oddly enough, outside of me. It was as though I’d been tied to a boulder, dragging it along behind me, and suddenly, the line had been cut. It was gone. A burden lifted from my shoulders, and I felt a hundred pounds lighter. Like I’d been carrying a tree around for days and forgotten I even had it. The relief was profound, and I sucked in a deep, involuntary breath at it.

Ermengarde, on the other hand, fell back as though she’d been punched in the face, and a second later, a line of red appeared all along her right cheekbone, as though cut by a knife.Two of the witches stepped up to catch her and help her remain standing—not the one I considered her son, I realized idly, observing as though this wasn’t relevant to me.

As though there was no chance she was about to kill me for my insolence.

Except . . . she wasn’t.

Because, I realized, she couldn’t.

With that burden gone, there was something else there instead. There was Mama, and Viktor, and even Leo behind me. Cash, rushing between the buildings, apparently having been held up. I could tell he’d heard the exchange, could feel his worry that Ermengarde was going to kill me.

It didn’t stop with them, though. There was Evie and Henry and Tommy and Maggie and dozens of others. Even annoyed old Walter, who thought we should just give the witches what they wanted so they would leave us alone. I couldn’t read their thoughts, exactly, but I knew what they wanted. What their goals were. Whether they were loyal to the pack or only staying because they didn’t know where else to go.

It almost felt invasive, knowing that much about everyone in the pack, but also, it was because wewerepack. Because they had decided to stay and be a part of what we were building.

And the strength of every single one of them bolstered mine. Ermengarde couldn’t affect me with a spell unless she could affect all of us with a spell, and in that second, I knew that she wasn’t nearly strong enough for that.

Together, the pack could handle this threat. We’d just never been together this way before. I had little doubt my uncle had never felt this, because I’d never felt this connection with him in return, and I knew, instinctively, that everyone else could feel it the same way I could.