Little did I know that stepping out onto the porch for a breather would give me a friend who would stay on my heels for all of his days but Snowy was exactly who I needed. He didn’t care about magic or true-mates. He just wanted someone to cuddle up with to stay warm and someone who preferably had thumbs to feed him. Later, he’d learn to play and do tricks that made us all laugh. It all played out before my eyes. He’d be there when I met my mate and he’d be there in the room when our first baby was born. My mate would wear the Grim Howler shirt Dern talked about on the day our first child came into the world. Somehow, Snowy not only brought down to earth but also lifted me out of whatever funk the failed fight against fate had unfurled inside me even if I didn’t yet know what mayhem we’d wake up to later that night. It was him that woke us up to let us know that the world might just crack apart if we didn’t get out of bed and face down evil in our living room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Wess
Nightshade Bear Territory
Apuppy whimpered somewhere, pulling me up out of sleep. Why did the pack have their babies so close? Had I fallen asleep outside and rolled down near their caves again? A little bear nose hit my elbow and I sat straight up.
That wasn’t a wolf puppy. That was the fluffy snow muffin that Mori dragged home after the party. Every hair on my body rose to the occasion. Someone was here. Someone was inside the house. I’d lived close enough to wolves to know the sounds of canine young whimpering because they feared they were about to be gobbled up. I shoved Andy under the blanket and slid out of bed. I held my breath moving as one would through a forest to take down a buck. Only I knew, the prey in question had more than antlers and hooves to fight back with. This wasn’t Colton oranother sibling leaving presents. Puppies -even the non-shifting domestic dog sort- weren’t that oblivious.
A door down the hallway opened and a little feminine gasp tore through the house. No one else stirred and I shook Preston gently with one hand. If all the instincts shouting inside me were correct, Sharon Claudis had just discovered where her son had run off to and he needed to wake up. It might be time for him to grab his machete. I’d freeze her but who knew what powers the shebear witch hid from the world?
Mori’s bedroom door swung open and I swore under my breath. I moved quickly, without thinking, but Preston followed on my heels, locking Baby Andy inside the bedroom. There she was standing in shock in front of her ice sculpture of a son. Sharon fucking Claudis. I’d know that scrunched up face with the arched brows anywhere. It was the same face that haunted my mate’s dreams. Now it was time to eat it up.
Sharon’s breaths came in pants, and her eyes were glazed over in the dim light. She brought her fist up high above her head. I thought she meant to undo my spell, but she brought her now clawed hand down hard on the ice sculpture’s chest and it cracked with a sickening, bone-shattering crunch. Blood bubbled out of the ice as the pieces fell apart. She breathed in the cold and the energy flowing from the ice. Her eyes glowed as if someone turned on a flashlight inside her brain.
“Don’t let her do that!” A voice reached my ears and I glanced in every direction to discern its origin.
Venal’s specter stood in the hallway, seemingly not very concerned with his own recent demise. If he was unhappy about no longer being inside his physical body he didn’t show any signs. He scratched his spectral beard and pointed at his mother.
“That’s for the baby! If she takes my magic too, you’ll never defeat her!” the specter said and our door opened.
I didn’t know whether or not Venal’s specter was to be believed but I pounced on Sharon anyway. Either way she was dead, frozen meat. She was an intruder and had terrorized my mate and baby for long enough. Her reign of terror ended that night. I managed to get one hand around one of her wrists and shoved two of the fingers of my other hand up her nose. She snarled and roared and fell back crashing onto the floor with me, but her arm had already turned to ice and didn’t stay attached throughout the impact. She shrieked and rolled over on me, still breathing in hard, trying to suck in all her son’s magic. I guess there was something to her whole ‘steal the baby’s magic by killing him’ theory after all.
Mori and Preston moved at the same time, and I wasn’t sure which of them started the fire, but it burnt through her until she had to roll off me and roll around to try and put herself out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the specter of Venal standing next to a sleepy and frightened Baby Andy back in his human form. The baby wasn’t crying yet but with each breath he took in a little more of his dead sire’s magic now that his grandmother was distracted.
The omegas moved to pounce Sharon, but she whooshed out of the way. It was as if the wind itself moved her, spraying blood from her empty shoulder socket through the hallway and all over the living room. Thank the ice gods that Mori had put a shield over the tree after the ice and fire mishaps. We’d never hear the end of it if that psycho decked the halls with blood instead of holly.
Baby Andy giggled as Venal’s specter squatted down in front of him and ruffled his hair. I couldn’t leave the baby alone to follow my mate and Mori. The rest of the Nightshade Bears would join them soon in chasing down the now one-armed intruder. The group link was pure chaos. People shouted in every direction and the words ‘atsilv ko’ flew this way and that as if they planned to go scorched earth on her fluffy, murderous ass.
“Keep her arm. She won’t be unscryable anymore because you have a piece of her. She’ll know you know what she’s up to even if she gets away. Winning a war is about winning a million little battles before you even know that they’re battles. Take care of my kid. You’re going to be a better dad than I would have ever been,” Venal said and with one last sad look at Baby Andy his door appeared and he stepped through. I saw a brief glimpse of an old woman tapping her foot and the face that I thought belonged to the dead wolf Mori often visited but I only knew him because Preston had seen him before.
I crawled across the floor, gripping Sharon’s broken off arm, and trying not to think about how much my head hurt from behind slammed against the floor by the shebear. Now that I was alone with the baby and the others had her on the run the pain was settling in to make itself at home inside my skull. She weighed more than it looked like she would. Baby Andy’s little bottom lip quivered. I picked him up with my free arm and dragged us both upright. The room spun but I made it to the sofa before wiping out. I gripped him as tightly as I could before the world went black. A little puppy whimpered somewhere inside the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Preston
Nightshade Bear Territory
Sharon disappeared into the trees and I shifted mid-motion. I tossed my energy into pushing out my bear, still running after her. This was the last straw. She’d come into my house not once but twice and now she’d murdered her own son. Venal was an asshole. Maybe he was already dead but dead men don’t bleed out. Bears who are already dead don’t have doors show up. His door was there. It had to be his door because the ghostly squirrel who had plagued us for weeks, hopped around and told us all that he felt a door and was going to make a run for it. He was tired of our stingy asses not cracking his nuts for him. She’d killed her own baby. She killed the person who grew inside of her womb and who had sided with her again and again no matter how much she dragged him into her fucked up plans. If she’d do that to her own baby, what would she do to mine?
“Preston!” My carrier’s voice reached my ears but there was no stopping me.
My bear had his hunting eyes out. Every little movement the forest made vibrated through me. I knew where every bird, small rodent, and bug was. Sharon was bleeding everywhere andI prayed whatever magic she sucked up from killing her son seeped out of her wound. I’d heard of magical lines like theirs before. Each person was usually able to choose their heir or heirs. Then when they grew old and died the magic could pass down only if the person was there with them. It grew stronger in each generation. I didn’t know where she got the sacrificing thing from but she was so fucking backwards.
“Won’t matter when I eat her. She’s half-frozen. Her shoulder and maybe one boob or something,”my bear rattled off still barreling through the trees.“She’ll be a meat popsicle – literally!”
Sharon was headed toward the Other World gateway. If she made it there before we got her, we’d have to start this all over again and I wasn’t sure I had the energy for that. Someone passed me, running through the trees. It was one of my cousin Zeke’s kids with Star Hemlock. If Star was here…. He had a passion for landing on the shoulders of his enemies and ripping their heads off. Too bad I hadn’t grown wings instead of horns.
“Fuck!” the teenager shouted and I looked over my shoulder as I passed him. He’d tripped over a root or something and I’d lost precious seconds checking on him.
Cold magic brewed under my skin, leaving a trail of frost and ice wherever my paws landed. It glided ahead of me as if it were sniffing her out like a hound dog. I caught a glimpse of hair fluttering into the portal and charged forward. I snatched the ends in my mouth and the strands froze and snapped. I plummeted through the portal, but the guards hadn’t stopped her. They never did and now she was gone again. Down an arm and a boob according to my bear but she was gone and maybe had a little more magic.
“Mate?! Do you have the baby?”I asked, sinking onto my furry haunches, panting. One of the elves poured water into a big bowl and sat it down in front of me. I drank greedily and poked Wess again. Why was he taking so long to answer? Had Sharon circled back around? Had I chased a mirage through the forest? Was she still back in the village? Was that how she managed to escape all of us?
“No,”my bear thought to me.“No, she’s not. That was her! He’s…. Wess is…. Unconscious?”
