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Tapping on the window draws our gaze. A big, beautiful crow stands on the exterior sill, chest feathers puffed out, beak resting on the glass, waiting to be let in.
Emilia doesn’t spring up to let her brother in. She shifts her gaze to me, asking.
And that’s when I decide that, for all her faults, for as rude and brash as she can be, Emilia is now a person I consider a friend.
I give her a small nod and she lets in her brother, my mage mate.
“Is Rafe OK?” I ask as Emilia grabs a towel from the bathroom and chucks it at Rook’s head while he’s still shifting.
“He’s fine,” Rook says wholeheartedly while also keeping his distance. Whether that’s because he thinks I need it or because he’s afraid of me turning into the creature from before, I can’t say.
I didn’t even want to think about the monstrosity I turned into at the house.
Being in that body, the elongated arms, the height, the backward but upright leg joints…
Unsettling doesn’t begin to cover it.
Is it as Emilia says, and simply a matter of getting the witch magic out of me? Or is something else at play here?
“Jonah’s fine, too, and Drago agreed to be chained with silver.”
The mention of that barbaric metal stills the blood in my veins. My fingers go icy. “You can’t be serious.” I barely get the words out.
Rook shrugs. “It was Drago’s idea. He doesn’t want to take any chances of the revenant getting control and hurting you.”
I wrap my arms around myself. It’s too complicated. I hate the revenant. I hate that it used my mate’s voice and body to threaten me with such awful things. And I hate that Drago now has to suffer under not just the weight of what the revenant did, but that horrid metal as well.
Rook finally comes close, sits next to me, and wraps his arms around me. “Whatever happens, he’ll be alright, little wolf. I promise.”
I shake my head against his shoulder, hot, angry tears trailing down my face.
“Liar. I’m hardly a little wolf anymore. And don’t make promises you can’t keep,” I say, choosing anger instead of helplessness. “That asshole in Drago’s head is part of what makes him the Champion, and being the Champion is what’s going to get him killed.”
Get us all killed.
Emilia steps forward into my line of sight. “What, what’s going on exactly?”
“A revenant in Drago went berserk and tried to hurt Willa.”
Emilia goes stiff, mouth pressing into a thin line. “Let me have at it. I can bind it.”
“That won’t work. Drago needs all the alpha magic he’s collected to offer to the scourge.”
“Oh, I get how it works,” Emilia says, rubbing her tiny hands together like an evil mastermind. “And I don’t intend to strip its power, only bind it to Drago’s will.”
My mouth falls open. “You can do that?”
Emilia nods. “In my sleep, wolf-girl.”
At least it’snot in my house.
Unlike the revenant attack, I won’t have a constant reminder of the atrocious scene before me any time I’m in my living room.
The scent of sizzling skin fills the whole meeting house, turning my stomach but not more than the ghastly sight of it.
The welts around the heavy-gauge silver chain smoke as the metal eats away at Drago’s flesh.
I hold on to Rafe’s arm for stability, both physical and emotional.
