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“In theory,” Keegan said. “We’ve had to do something like this before,” he added tentatively.
“Okay.” Quinten glanced among the witches. “And that person survived?”
“I did,” Rick said, crossing his arms over his chest. He was acting unbothered, but Quinten noticed his skin looked paler and his eyes were locked on the jaguar in a way they hadn’t been before.
“It almost killed him first though,” the big guy said, stethoscope in his ears. “He was a lot further along by the time we were able to get him help than this guy seems to be. That, or it’s a much weaker variation of the spell.” He glanced at Tashmica. “Which would make sense. The version used on Rick was done by an extremely powerful coven.”
She nodded, pulling out her phone and starting to type a message. “Agreed. Plus, he’s not as strong as Rick is. It doesn’t have as much fuel for the spell, so it’s moving slower. That’s to his advantage,” she added, glancing at Quinten like he would think that was an insult.
As far as he was concerned, he didn’t care if the cat was the weakest shifter known to man. He just needed him to survive. He wasn’t quite sure why he cared so damn much, but he did. Them meeting in the warehouse might have been orchestrated by Tiho Draža, but it felt… inevitable.
There was no way he was leaving Kincaid’s territory without him.
“So what do you need to do?” he asked.
“Concentrate,” the little guy next to the doctor said, shooting an apologetic smile toward him and Darius. “We need to concentrate. Anyone who isn’t needed in here should leave.”
“I am not going anywhere.” He turned to the silent wolf next to him. “He’s right though. Wait in the hall, Dare.”
Darius curled his lip in a silent snarl but didn’t protest. He waited just inside the room, though, until Gabriel put his hands up in surrender and walked out too. Rick stayed, but it wasn’t like anyone could tell him in his own house to get the hell out. The Enforcer, Ericka, had slipped away not long after the doctor and his mate showed up.
Hours passed.
The witches and the doctor worked together. He assumed they were making progress since the cat wasn’t dead yet, but the magic stuff went right over his head.
Rick left at one point and then came back a while later, silently holding a bottle of water out to Quinten. Now, he was posted up against the wall just inside the room, eyes on the bed.
Quinten hadn’t moved except to take tiny sips of the water. His eyes were getting scratchy because he kept forgetting to blink, and his low back was killing him, but still, he didn’t move.
The sun was starting to set when a soft knock came to the ajar door. Quinten glanced over, his eyes stinging and bleary. He recognized the man standing in the doorway. Tall, shaved head, dark brown skin—that was Rick’s second-in-command, Bennett Young.
He was surprised to see a small child in his arms though.
The baby had alabaster skin and was maybe eight or nine months old. It was hard to tell. Quinten wasn’t that familiar with kids. Plus, anything looked tiny next to the giant second. The baby was passed out, mouth gaping, and his bald little head tucked up underneath the tiger’s chin.
Bennett glanced at the bed and then Quinten before turning to Rick and saying something too quietly for him to hear. Rick nodded and followed him out of the room, not giving a second glance to Quinten. He supposed after all these hours of him not going berserk and trying to murder them all meant he’d been deemed not much of a threat anymore.
More hours passed.
The world outside the windows was pitch-black. Quinten had finally been forced to move his vigil to a chair a few hours before, though he’d pulled it up next to the bed.
He was so used to letting the others’ voices flow over him that he almost missed when something changed.
Over the course of the day, people had popped in carrying different things like spell ingredients and books, crystals, mortars, and pestles. It was always about fifteen minutes after Tashmica picked up her phone. He’d stopped keeping track of who was coming and going hours ago.
But now, the air around him had tensed, the energy shifting.
He brought his focus up to where Tashmica, Keegan, and the other guy, whose name he’d learned was Damien, and a few others he recognized from throughout the day all stood around the bed, arms held out in front of them over the jaguar’s body.
Carter, the doctor, was standing off to the side, but he didn’t look concerned, so Quinten took that as reassurance. The witches began to slowly chant, the lights in the room flickering and then dimming, and Quinten pushed to his feet and stepped back to make more room.
The chanting continued, all of their eyes tightly closed and brows furrowed with concentration.
There was a stirring along the back of his neck, almost like a light breeze or a gentle touch, but he knew there wasn’t anything there. It was just the magic moving through the air, surrounding them.
As the words came to a crescendo, the cat was consumed by a bright, white light that forced him to look away, cursing as his eyes stung. When he could see again, he found Tashmica’s grinning face right in front of him, her hand held up between them and the pieces of the collar draped over it.
“Voilà,” she said, her voice hoarse and strained with exhaustion and probably dehydration. He hadn’t seen any of them take a break in hours. “One uncollared jaguar.”
