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Kian

Ileave her trembling against the wall.

The truth that she demands isn’t so easily torn from my lips. The truth has been a pack secret for a century. I won’t admit to a witch what we can barely stomach aloud ourselves. We’ve endured it in silence.

It twists inside me like a living thing, always haunting me. The clock hanging over Jessamine has worsened the feeling.

A hundred years ago, a witch cursed wolf shifters—but it originated with my bloodline. It comes with unusual magic, but it also comes with guilt.

It seems like my own fate hangs in the balance with this one.

I like her, my wolf says. His voice is a surprise—and with those words, not a welcome one.

Well, don’t.

He huffs. I know he likes her—when we shifted, with her watching, it took everything in my power to keep us loping away from her. But then she screamed, and I swear we could hear it from across the village. His instinct took over.

Breaking down the door to the guest bedroom, I’ve never seen such a sight.

A demon in my house. Hovering over Astra. The thing was clawing into her back as she’d lain there, but there was ice on her skin. It was having a difficult time because of it. Like it had to break through that layer, first, and was struggling.

Another sign that things aren’t what they seem.

She doesn’t have a water affinity. She seems to have mastered basic spells, and that’s it. The power that we tasted last night isn’t evident. There’s no trace of the magic we witnessed when my cousin attacked us. The scent of her magic tonight is barely a tendril, as impossible as that sounds.

She must be lying. Masking her power somehow, or it’s receded after the massive explosion of it in the forest. More things to consider, more to contemplate. A witch’s ability to deceive should never be underestimated.

My cousin is another matter.

Gage is furious with me. He’s always been a bit obsessive over things that shouldn’t matter, but somehow end up mattering the most. Like the witch. I lured him into a chase, then took his prey away.

Well, to be fair, she took herself away.

We weren’t meant to linger in his territory for so long. I didn’t expect her to argue with me when I laid out what I had done and what would happen. I thought she would agree. Or better, beg. I would’ve pushed her farther if I knew I could get her there.

He wasn’t supposed to catch her.

But Gage is fast, and as alpha of his pack, he knows his land better than most wolves. That was where he got the jump on us.

On me.

Unlike a lot of wolf families, Gage and I did not grow up together. My father and uncle were constantly at war with each other growing up, and their father, at the time the alpha of the Silver Ridge Pack, encouraged the violence. Everything was a competition.

My father challenged his and won, and he exiled his twin. My uncle was accepted into the neighboring pack, and two short years later, fought and won against the alpha that had welcomed him in.

Gage and I were both born from wicked men, but I don’t know whose upbringing was worse. We only saw each other when the pack leaders needed to meet. Back then, it was a whole production, and not just between my father and uncle. Those week-long summits were the only time my cousin and I spent time together, and it was often without supervision.

We did not get along.

He left a message for me earlier. The demand in his voice made my skin crawl. He thinks Astra belongs to him—and he wants me to bring her to him. He doesn’t realize I pushed her there. He thinks I wandered into his territory and took something meant for him.

He can’t have her, my wolf whispers. He sends me an image of his teeth sinking into my cousin’s throat, ripping it out.

I frown.

“What are you going to do about the witch?” Roman catches up to me on the path toward the orchard.

He’s Jessamine’s mate and one of my best hunters, although he doesn’t look like it in human form. Tall and lanky, with bright-red hair, he gives off the air of a goofball more than a warrior. Right now, he sports his regular grin, but his eyes are a bit too wide. The stress rolls off him in waves.