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“Stay still!” Juniper repeated to the boy, who now looked at Rowan. He looked terrified for his life. With good reason. Rowan watched him with murderous intent, resisting the urge to throttle the little fool.
“What the hell?” Rowan finally spat. “What’s wrong with you? What are you doing out here?” Rowan battered the boy senselessly through their mindlink, pouring out his rage into their connection.
His wolf was also extremely upset with the boy, and the boy’s wolf whimpered from the intensity of the emotion. Rowan knew that questioning him while he fought for his life was not the best practice in the world, but he didn’t care.
The wolf breathed hard, searching for words. He licked his lips nervously and tried to speak again, with a similar result.
“I said. What. Are. You. Doing. Out. Here?” Rowan bit out the words in a growl-like voice, his eyes cold and angry.
The wolf gurgled and swallowed, panting madly. “For weeks, I overheard people saying that the witch was only looking for attention. That there was no real danger out here in the woods. That she dropped in out of nowhere, and suddenly all our lives had to change.
“People had already decided to resume hunting again. Quietly. So I decided to go for a run through the woods, with my dog.” Tears poured out of the young wolf’s eyes. “I wish I had listened to you, Alpha Rowan. Buster ran away when I got attacked, and I have no idea where he is now!”
Rowan frowned deeply. “Do you remember what attacked you? Do you remember anything? Can you tell me what you saw? Tell me what you remember.”
“I…I didn’t see anything, Alpha Rowan. It all happened so fast. I didn’t even hear or sense anything. One moment, I was racing through the woods. The next moment, I felt a dark presence against me, faster than I could blink. I’m so scared, Alpha Rowan. What was that?”
Rowan listened quietly, watching the boy with intense eyes. The boy trembled violently as tears poured out of his eyes.
Rowan was livid, even more so than before. They had been flouting his orders and taking his warnings for granted.
What could Juniper possibly stand to gain by lying about an existential threat? And if they thought she was lying, did they think the same thing about him as well?
He wondered about the people the boy had spoken of. How widespread was the contempt for the order to avoid the forest? What could he do to put an end to such conversations within the pack?
He had been presented with a whole set of problems, starting with the young boy fighting for his life.All they had to do was follow instructions, damn it.His contempt and anger assaulted the boy through the mindlink, and Rowan could hear his blood pressure increasing in panic.
“Calm down, Rowan. Your anger right now is not helping,” Juniper said quietly. “Your anger is, instead, making things much worse. You’re scaring him, and his heart is racing. I can’t heal him if he keeps pumping blood through his cut. At this rate, he will bleed out before I can do anything to help him.”
Rowan grunted and walked away. He quietened his angry wolf and closed the mindlink between himself and the child. Then he began to investigate the scene, looking for clues.
He doubted he was going to find anything, but he needed to keep himself occupied or he would be tempted to smack him silly.
He let out a sigh. The more they hunted whatever this thing was, the further away from it they seemed to be getting. Rowan didn’t believe in concession, but he was running out of ideas.
The boy’s panting and whining had reduced, so Rowan walked back toward the pair to see how much progress Juniper had made. He glanced around cautiously as he walked.
He wasn’t comfortable with them being so far away from the barrier. While he trusted his own power and skill, there were two other people present who he would have to defend if the beast decided to return.
He doubted it would, however. He and Juniper had come into the forest far too many times and had never caught a glimpse of it. Rowan sometimes wondered if that was a mere coincidence, but put the thought out of his mind temporarily.
Juniper had staunched the bleeding, thankfully. Under the glow of the purple mana, tissue reformed in the wolf’s gut as Juniper knit up the wound. Layer after layer of new skin twisted together until the wound finally closed up. He shifted into his human form immediately.
The new flesh was red and raw, and the boy collapsed on the floor, breathing deeply. Blood had dried up on his entire upper body, but he was finally out of danger.
Juniper’s hands stopped glowing, and her eyes as well. Her forehead was covered in sweat and she was hyperventilating. Worried, Rowan reached down to help her to her feet, but as he touched her shoulder she fell to the side, unconscious.
Rowan tried hard not to panic. This had happened before. She had pushed herself and her powers to the limit again in her bid to save the boy’s life. It was a deathly wound and had evidently demanded a lot from her.
His initial reaction to seeing the boy’s injury had been to think that there was no way the boy could survive, not with his guts spilling out of such a big hole. That was why he had interrogated the boy the way he had, looking for what answers he could find before the boy died.
And yet, Juniper had managed to save him. Rowan could still hear her heart beating, although it sounded dreadfully slow. He crouched beside her unconscious body and touched her forehead. She was burning up furiously.
While Juniper had shown Rowan the depth of her power, her main strength was her visions. Using her powers the way she had been doing since she’d returned to Moonwood appeared to be taking a toll on her health.
She had been doing all other forms of magic, including healing, and pulling people back from the gates of death. Rowan knew that he had to find a way to slow her down. But how?
Rowan nudged the boy. “Hey, get up. Congratulations, you’re not dying anymore. We need to leave.” The boy looked at him and shook his head, whimpering quietly.
