“A good deterrent to keep you wolves honest,” Reyna adds.
“Does it really need to be that…deadly?” Wyatt asks.
“Do you intend to break your word?” Claire volleys back. “If not, then this shouldn’t be a problem. Blood bindings on contracts are very standard among sorcerers.”
It’ll probably be best if I take the initiative here. If I sign, Cam might feel more inclined to sign as well. “Sounds like a good way to hold everyone accountable. I’m on board. Where’s the quilt?”
Reyna does a series of hand gestures above the table, and with them, I feel a dose of magic radiate from her, like an invisible blanket that settles over the room. That magical energy then condenses and contracts until a feathered quill appears in the palm of her hand. “Which copy will we all be signing?”
“Mine,” I say since my copy is considered the official one.
Reyna slides the quill across the table to me, and I let go of Camden’s hand under the table to pick it up, examining the shimmery quality of the blue feather. I flip to the last page of my contract where my signature will be next to my printed full name, position the quill over the page, before pressing it to the paper, and feel a small pressure on my arm as I glide the quill across the page—not pain, just a strange tugging sensation—and watch with no small sense of wonder as red ink,blood, appears on the page. As soon as I’m done, the blood dries. Odelia murmurs a few words in a language I’m unfamiliar with, and my signature on the page takes on a shimmery, shiny quality.
“The first signature has been bound,” she says.
I slide the stack of papers and pen over to Camden, who repeats my actions, a slight frown marring his features. Once his signature has been bound, Odelia and Reyna add theirs.
A flush of pride and pleasure travels through me that my objective for today has been completed, and for the first time in known history, witches and shifters will work alongside each other for the greater good.
“Excellent,” Odelia says. “Now, if you wolves wouldn’t mind, I’d like a moment alone with Sierra to discuss her forthcoming training.”
Camden looks like he’s going to object, but I murmur to him, “Please, let us. They’re no threat to me or any of us; the treaty guarantees it.”
Camden’s nostrils flare as he inhales, but then, he gives me a single, tense nod. “Fine. We’ll be waiting outside.”
Camden and Wyatt clear out of the war room, leaving me alone with the three witches, all of whom stare at me with varying levels of interest. I imagine my interest in them matches, if not supersedes, their interest in me; I might be one of a kind with the ability to wield black flames, but they’ve lived with witches their whole lives, and this is my first time meeting one outside of my family.
“Now that the wolves are out of the way, I’d like to get to know you a little bit,” Odelia says. “I was very excited to hear of your existence, and saddened to know you grew up without support from your own kind. Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Of course,” I reply. “As long as you’re okay shouldering the copious amounts of questions I’ll have for you.”
Odelia smiles indulgently. “I imagine there’s much you’re eager to learn. I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can. You grew up in Aesara?”
I incline my head. “Yes. I raised my little sister, Leisel, there on a farm.”
Odelia nods pensively. “We visited Aesara a few times over the years, going around local clinics to help with healing. The destructiveness shifters wreaked with their changes was felt most heavily by humans.”
“The few who survived,” Reyna adds in grimly.
That sends my mood plummeting. I don’t like the reminder that shifters are at fault for most of the horror that was brought upon humanity, especially when I’m desperately trying to change my views of them for the sake of Leisel’s and my survival in this culture.
“My mother died giving birth to Leisel because there wasn’t any proper medical care available,” I admit. “My father died from cancer a year before that. I’d have killed to have your coven around to help save them.”
Reyna’s eyes soften. “If we’d have known there were witches in Aesara,especiallyearthly ones, we’d have been there to help.”
Odelia says, “I thought I felt faint traces of magic when we passed through in the last few decades, but I couldn’t be sure. You did very well hiding yourself away.”
“I was afraid of the persecution that accompanied being a person with magic in a village of humans that despised magical beings,” I say. “Each time I heard you were passing through, I’d hide with Leisel on our farm.” Then, more quietly, “I wish I hadn’t.”
“That’s in the past,” Odelia responds firmly. “Right now, we look to the future. Now that we know of your existence, we can protect you. Especially with your condition, I expect you’ll need more magical aid the farther along you get—interspecies pregnancies are very rare and by all accounts exceedingly difficult.”
I fall entirely still as her words wash over me, unable to process them entirely. My condition?Interspecies pregnancies?I’m not…I couldn’t be—
I think back to a week ago when I succumbed to my desires and slept with Camden. Reaching my hand up to the juncture where my neck meets my shoulder, I run my fingers over the scar of Camden’s bite that permanently sits on my skin. He didn’t warn me before marking me, and I was in the throes of so much pleasure I didn’t have the presence of mind to stop or even be mad at him. The next morning, he was so smooth, so articulate, I didn’t feel it was worth it to hold onto my anger.
I assumed that, because my bond with Camden wasn’t fully complete yet, there was no chance of pregnancy, and I didn’t bother to double-check because he told me I wasn’t at risk when I asked him about it the morning after we slept together.
Shit.
