Page 58 of A Wolf for Winter

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I’m more of a beast than you think.”

Allen’s words reverberated in her mind as Lilac stared down at the unconscious naked man lying in the wolf-shaped crater in the snow. Steam lifted from his tan skin and swirled away in the wind. His golden hair was almost the same color as his wolf’s fur.

“You’re mine, Lilac.” By the Green Mother, that should’ve been admission enough. Lilac had read her fair share of romantasy, thanks to Edith, lived with both feet in the paranormal world as a witch, and still she’d been blind to all the hints. The signs, they’d all be there—his uncanny reflexes, his speed, his accelerated healing, the fact that she’d known he was hiding something about his past—she just hadn’t been looking for them. Hadn’t thought a shifter would be stupid enough to show his face in the one place forbidden him: Annesley Valley, the ancestral home of the Hawthornes.

What was he doing here?

Lilac threw the thought away. It wasn’t important now. He had taken a strike from a witch duel for her. Had shifted—signed his own death warrant—to protect her.

Voices on the wind, Boar and Rose’s, spurred her into action. She called upon the dregs of her magic and faced the practitioner and the hedge witch.

Prue Stonewell was unconscious. Completely knocked out, her lips already losing their color from the cold of the storm. Talia, on the other hand . . .

The practitioner’s brown eyes were as round as jasper cabochons, her hands covering her mouth to shield her gasp. “H-he’s a shifter? What kind of wolf was that?”

Lilac sprang over Allen’s body and seized the young woman by her upper arms. “You’ll say nothing, Talia. Swear it.” She had never called magic to anywhere but her hands before—that was only something the strongest of the Hawthornes could do—but in this moment, she saw the green light of her power in her eyes reflecting in Talia’s fearful ones.

“I swear,” the practitioner cried.

“On your life,” Lilac hissed.

“Yes. Yes, of course!” Talia pulled away, terrified.

Lilac let her go, immediately turning back to the wolf shifter. The caretaker. Allen. His skin had lost its flush, the heat of his wolf having faded away, but he showed no signs of rousing. He’d freeze out here. Frantically, she searched around in the dim afternoon light for his clothes.

He shredded them when he shifted, remember?

Oh, right. By the Green Mother, her thoughts were a mess. She was trembling too, and it had nothing to do with the cold.

Distantly, she heard someone hail her, but her attention was on something fluttering in the snow like a trapped moth. A photograph?

Lilac pinched the edge and drew it slowly out of the snow so it wouldn’t tear. Her heart, which had been risen into her throat to strangle her with panic, deflated like over-proofed bread dough, sinking into her stomach.

The photograph was of her. And it wasn’t recent. How did Allen Sharpe, who had never been to Annesley Valley before two weeks ago, have a picture of her dated from three years ago?

“Lilac!” Boar shouted.

She stuffed the photograph into her pocket and whirled to face her brother.

Rose was leaving Talia to check on Prue, and Boar was already shrugging out of his jacket, a stunned look on his face as he regarded Allen’s unconscious naked body. “What happened? Why is he naked?”

“He got hit with an incendiary spell,” she lied easily. Too easily.

She should’ve outed him as the shifter he was as any good Hawthorne would do, but Grandmother had taught her not to be rash. That same lesson was now undermining the matriarch’s rules, and the irony wasn’t lost on her. Lilac had fallen, hard, for the shifter. And while her heart burned with betrayal and loss and why did he have her picture, she couldn’t give him up. Couldn’t forget the way he had made her feel, how he had seen through the beautiful weapon her grandmother had crafted her into and to the true woman beneath.

Lilac wouldn’t abandon him. Not until he explained himself.

“An incendiary spell?” Boar asked, incredulous. “He should be missing more than his clothes. Like, his skin.”

“By all means, Boar, please tell me what happened when you weren’t here to witness it yourself.”

“Lilac, that’s not what I—”

“Prue attacked me,” Talia wailed, jerking Boar’s attention from his sister. “Mistress Lilac tried to stop her, a-and Allen sacrificed himself—Oh, Mab, is he alright?”

“He needs to get out of this snow,” Boar muttered, wrapping the unconscious man in his jacket. Then, to Talia: “Why did Prue attack you?”