Page 86 of Oakheart

A wave of magic sent me sliding back, claws dragging through the dirt. It flew up around my paws, but I didn’t go far. The witch didn’t send me flying through the air. I dug in, and the second I stopped moving, the muscles in my back legs bunched and I threw myself through the air again.

The witch screamed, and it was all she could do to sprint back to her shiny SUV, throw herself into the back seat, and slam the door behind her.

I wasn’t out here trying to kill anybody, but if a witch cared more about flinging spells at my pack than keeping their damn hands and their damn magic to themselves, that wasn’t my problem.

Snarling, I raked my claws across the shiny black paint, ruining it before turning toward the rest of the witches.

There were more wolves now. I recognized Katya and Janice and Evie—of course she hadn’t listened to me. She was small and black and fast as lightning. Even Uncle Tommy had shifted.

I stared, struck, because I wasn’t alone in this. The pack rose around me. We protected each other.

The very principle of it changed the part of me that had always felt like an outsider in Wildwood. We were defending our pack, all together, and not just those of us who’d most obviously be fighters. We were all willing to protect what was ours, and if it took all I had, I’d drive these witches away from my pack.

The head witch sneered, her lips twisting in an ugly way until her son shoved her arm. “Go!” he shouted, fear in his eyes, choking his words. He, at least, wasn’t willing to stick around and see what happened when one of us got our fangs in him.

Her eyes settled on Viktor on the ground, Aleks holding him up with a hand around his shoulders, looking pale and terrified.

The satisfaction that crossed her features then twisted my stomach. Something was wrong.

Viktor had to be okay.

But she left, the rest of the witches piling into their cars too, and Evie threw her head back and howled. The feeling of pack raced through me, and I echoed the sound. It played in my head from a dozen different voices.

I’d never felt anything like this in my life. It was heady, actually being a part of something.

But right then, one of our own was in danger.

I padded over to Aleks’s side and caught the ozone scent around Viktor.

“I’m fine,” he insisted to Aleks. His gaze flicked toward me. “I’mfine.”

I didn’t think there was a universe in which Viktor would admit he was anything but fine, but his heart was beating steadily, if a little fast.

The scent on him could just be residual magic, and it hadn’t affected him because... I didn’t fucking know why. Magic and werewolves went funny together.

There was a reason there was only one Dakota Morris. One witchwolf.

With a whine, I bumped my snout against Aleks’s hip.

Whatever had happened, I didn’t like this.

CHAPTER 42

Aleks

Fucking witches.

The whole thing had happened almost too fast to react to; Ermengarde snarling something in another language, Viktor hurling himself in front of me, and a flash of... well, honestly I wasn’t sure how much of the spell I’d felt from Viktor, and how much had been my imagination, summoning up worst-case scenarios. If there had been an actual flash of light, or if it’d just felt like there had.

The stink of ozone filled the air, and I was really starting to hate that scent. Not that Dakota’s magic had ever felt particularly threatening to me, but there was one of him, and dozens of witches.

I lunged forward in the moment, catching Viktor and keeping him from hitting the ground, and then the air filled with growling and snarling, which was somehow the most comforting sound I’d ever heard in my life.

Viktor looked stunned, like he’d been hit over the head from behind, and he was slowly blinking away the cobwebs from a concussion. Only no one had touched him with anything but magic, and I didn’t dare hope that whatever spell she’d casthad been so simple as kinetic force to his head. A concussion, he would shake off and there would likely be few consequences—that was why most people called wolves hard-headed. Even blunt-force trauma had to be enormous to actually cause permanent damage.

A howl went up around me, and a second later, every single SUV was screeching its way out, as fast as they could make their tires go on the loose gravel of the square.

Wolves followed, racing along beside the SUVs as they left, barking and howling and just doing everything a wolf could possibly do to intimidate a whole damned car. More than that, it was definitely working, as the SUVs accelerated more than was remotely safe on the gravel roads that led back to the highway.