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I explained my chat with Callum, touched briefly on my mother abandoning me and why Grandmere worried it wouldn’t be safe for me, which was why I hadn’t been with the pack when Eugenia and Ben were born. I told her everything, figuring she had
earned my honesty. If not for her and La Sorcière, I wouldn’t be alive to tell the story. I admitted, finally, I was only there to take her back to the pack.
After I was finished I felt exhausted all over again. I needed to feed soon, and there weren’t a lot of options out here unless I wanted to hit an alligator up for a donation. Holden must have sensed the building tension in me because he reached out and stroked my hair.
“You want me to go back to Callum?” Eugenia asked, but from her tone she knew the answer to her own question.
It wasn’t an outright refusal, so I continued. “I know you left for a reason, and believe me when I say I understand what a bunch of uptight assholes the werewolves can be. But I’ve started to think Callum might have our best interests in mind. I don’t think he means to do us harm.”
“But he isn’t the only reason you’re here.”
“No. Without his blessing I can’t marry my mate. If we don’t get married, then the entire Eastern pack could be crippled by in-fighting and uncertainty. I’m pack protector. I can’t let anything jeopardize the pack.”
“And?”
“And someone is trying to kill me. Once Lucas and I are married, I think they’ll stop.”
“You think by bringing me back to Callum you’ll be able to get married, save your pack and save your life?” She had been sorting through bundles of dried herbs, tying them with bits of twine, but she stopped to ask me one last question. “That’s an awful lot of pressure, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Do you know why I left Callum’s compound in the first place?”
“I don’t. He said you became difficult after you were Awakened, and not in the typical teenage ways.”
“It was polite of him to put it that way.”
“How would you put it?”
“I blew things up every full moon.”
“You…blew things up?”
Eugenia wrapped up several sprigs of lavender. “You know most werewolf teens are Awakened when they’re thirteen, obviously. Do you know what age hereditary witches come into their power?”
“I’ll hazard a guess and say thirteen?”
“Bingo.”
“So you were turned into a werewolf and had magic powers spark to life at the same time?”
She nodded. “I wanted to be a good werewolf. Ben was a natural—he took to the change right away, he showed alpha tendencies early on, he was so good at it. I wanted to be half as good as he was. The problem is, moonlight heightens a witch’s powers. So when I shifted, my magic would react, but I couldn’t control it and manage the shift at the same time. The magic lashed out, violently.”
“And stuff blew up.”
“Yep. There were about twice as many cabins on the property before I started knocking them down by accident. The first time it happened I thought it was a coincidence. After the third full moon and the third flattened cabin, I knew it was my fault.”
“So you left.”
“So I left.”
“How did you know to come looking for her?” I asked, pointing to the witch who had done an excellent job of ignoring us up until now.
“I didn’t. She found me. She showed me how to control my magic even when I’m not in control of my human form. I can’t cast spells in wolf form, but at least I don’t blow things up anymore.”
“Does Callum know you’re a witch?”
“If he didn’t at the time, I think he figured it out when I started living with her.”
