Page 23 of A Wolf for Winter

“That is enough, Ms. Stonewell,” Allen said icily, taking a step to herd the hedge witch away from the booth. Away from her. “I suggest you leave before you say anything else you might regret.”

“You’re too good for her, for this entire place,” Prue rambled on. “I warned you, Allen Sharpe, to leave while you still could, but you didn’t listen. You don’t know what she’ll do to y—”

“I’ll do nothing to him that he doesn’t deserve.” Lilac eased out of the booth like a panther, all fluid, predatory grace. While she was burning inside with rage, she kept her features and tone glacially smooth. “And in regards to your grandson, perhaps you should’ve raised him to respect that when a woman says ‘no,’ she means it. It was only out of regards for you that he can still eat without a feeding tube.”

Prue glared at her, tears brimming in her eyes, jowls quivering as she clenched her jaw. “You went too far, Lilac Hawthorne.”

“Grandmother didn’t think I went far enough. Perhaps you’d like to take it up with her when she returns, especially since she thought this matter settled years ago.”

The hedge witch turned to Allen once more, perhaps to implore him to see reason, but she found no ally there. And she certainly found none in Sam Barley, who had come to the table. Talia, obviously enlisted by Sam to help intercede, looked miserable. At her employer’s prompt, she took a tiny step forward.

“Please, Prue.” The young woman hesitantly reached for the hedge witch. “Let me take you back to the lodge and—”

The hedge witch snatched her elbow out of range of Talia’s hand. “I will not be placated by a base practitioner! And you, pupil, consider your next lessons at the lodge revoked.”

Prue Stonewell spun on her heel and marched for the door.

“Prue Stonewell.” The power in Boar’s voice stayed her and rattled the windows in their frames. If the pub wasn’t silent before, it certainly was now. The hedge witch threw a glare over her shoulder, but she did stop. “The Hawthornes accept your gift. May the Cailleach Lodge be evergreen.”

The hedge witch lifted her chin and stormed out of the pub.

With her exit, the entire pub breathed a sigh of relief. Conversation resumed, the music rediscovered its melody, and every eye purposefully found something else to look at other than the Hawthornes in the corner booth.

But Lilac didn’t return to her seat. Not yet. She stood there watching the door as if the leader of the hedge witches would return on her broomstick and curse them all.

“That was magnanimous of you, brother,” Rose mused, picking up her beer.

“’Tis the season, I suppose. I think Grandmother would’ve wanted leniency rather than punishment.”

“Lilac.” Allen Sharpe’s voice was so soft, so comforting, and for a moment, she forgot she was not supposed to trust him.

“You know what I did to protect her. What I would do for any of my charges. Including the Hawthornes.” By the Green Mother, she’d believed him when he’d said that. The conviction in his words . . . that couldn’t be faked.

“Are you alright?” he murmured.

When she shivered at the warmth and comfort in his voice, her own body betraying her, she whirled an ivy-green glare at him. “I don’t need your protection.” Then she turned her icy fury on her brother. “And you. Grandmother would’ve wanted leniency? Our matriarch would’ve protected her own, something you should’ve done instead of leaving it to the caretaker! By the Green Mother, you’re my brother, Boar. Maybe you should act like it.”

“Not here,” Boar warned. “We’ll have this discussion in private, Lilac, or not at all.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t want the whole village see how your first day as Master Boar was a colossal—”

“Lilac,” Rose snapped. “Shut your mouth. Right. Now. People are watching.”

Then she let out a merry laugh, wiggling out of the booth and practically skipping to where Sam Barley now stood behind the bar. She paid him some boisterous compliments about the beer, how it was such a delight to come to the Cat & Cauldron every year, and many other loudly spoken accolades that drew the pub’s attention to her and nothing else. Rose had always been something of a hedonistic hurricane—she blew in with good and wild times and blew out just as quickly, on to her next adventure.

Seizing the opportunity of her distraction, Boar thrust Lilac’s beribboned package at her with a look that said if she didn’t high-tail it to the door, he would carry her out over his shoulder. Like Prue Stonewell, Lilac lifted her chin, swirled her cloak over her shoulders, tucked the package under her arm, and left the pub at nothing less than a serene walk. She was still a Hawthorne, after all, even if she was in for the reprimand of a century.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was a cacophony of slamming doors when Allen and the Hawthornes returned to Hawthorne Hall. Allen’s headache had returned, not from all the scents down at the pub, but from the cacophony he’d endured of all three Hawthornes bickering at each other in the Roots’ delivery van.

Boar had attacked Lilac for embarrassing him (to which had set Allen’s wolf bristling and snarling), and Lilac had seethed in her icy calm that Boar should’ve been stricter with Prue Stonewell, first for the disrespect she had shown their family and second for the personal attack on Lilac, something she never would’ve done if Grandmother was around. Rose had been in the back, trying to keep the parcels from bouncing around too much while simultaneously taking either sibling’s side when the other got out of line.

Not soon enough, they were all back at the Hall, Allen’s opal ring deactivating the shield barrier, and the slamming of doors had started. Boar had irritably told him just to pile the packages in the first floor library before doing whatever else he wished for the rest of the night.

He had groceries to unpack, but the cellar was cool and the food would keep in their coolers, crates, and boxes for another hour yet with any damage.

Allen Chase needed to let the wolf out. He needed to run.