Nodding. Sinthy pressed Maxwell’s hand to Sebastian’s chest and placed hers on top. All around us, the pack leaned in, placing their hands on each other. Those closest lay their hands on Sinthy and Maxwell. Nico never let go of Sinthy. I sat beside Nico and wrapped my arms around him, willing every ounce of energy I had into helping Sinthy to save Sebastian.
With everyone connected and concentrating, images flashed through my mind: ancient shifters hunting and running through these lands, an old crone witch drawing symbols in the dirt. In my mind’s eye, she looked up and locked her gaze on mine, then nodded with a smile.
Sebastian’s body jolted, almost like he’d been shocked by a defibrillator, and a surge of power coursed through all of us. There were murmurs of surprise and shock through the pack as everyone else felt it. Sebastian jerked again, his back arching so hard that he almost bent in half. Sinthy’s eyes opened with surprise, and a faint smile crossed her lips. An odd glowemanated from Sinthy and Maxwell’s hands. It was so bright that I had to avert my eyes.
The energy kept building and building until finally, Sinthy and Maxwell fell backward away from Sebastian’s body, both looking depleted. Sinthy, still looking like death warmed over, lifted a bloody fist and smiled at me. She opened her hand, and a twisted and warped bullet fell from her palm onto the ground.
Beside me, Sebastian, in a burst of movement, opened his eyes wide and sucked in the deepest, most intense breath of air I’d ever seen anyone take. He took in two more massive lungsful of air before coughing and falling back onto Nico’s lap.
“Holy fuck, that hurt,” Sebastian groaned.
There was a single second of shocked silence, then the entire pack screamed and roared with a combination of relief, delight, excitement, and happiness. Nico yanked Sebastian into a heavy bear hug, and Sebastian seemed very confused by the tears on his alpha’s cheeks.
“You cried for me?” Sebastian asked when Nico let go of him. “You really do care. What a softy.”
Nico feverishly wiped the tears and snot from his face. “Shut up, asshole. If you do that again, I’ll bring you back a second time and then kill you myself.”
Before Sebastian could give Nico a retort, Abi nearly tackled him. My friend wrapped him in her arms and hugged him tight, sobbing uncontrollably. Nico detangled himself from Sebastian and pulled me to my feet. Abi curled almost completely into Sebastian’s lap and pulled him even tighter. To me, it looked like his near-death had wiped away all the stupid shit they’d been going through. What was left was how they really felt about each other.
At first, shocked and surprised, Sebastian finally smiled and wrapped his arms around Abi. The entire pack was celebrating,and in the distance, I could hear sirens approaching as the police and ambulances began to arrive.
Even through the shouts of excitement and relief, I could hear Sebastian talking to Abi as he stroked her hair gently.
“You know, if I’d realized dying was all it took to get the girl, I’d have done this months ago.”
Abi let out a sobbing laugh and slapped him on the back, then wrapped him in her arms again. Sebastian looked down at her, and for a man who’d been dead only a few minutes before, I’d never seen anyone so happy in my life.
134
NICO
Helping us push back the anti-shifters, protecting as many of us as she could, and whatever she did to lift the protection spell around the pack lands had drained Sinthy completely. She’d been on the verge of death when she still managed to find a way to save Sebastian’s life, and she collapsed into Maxwell’s arms not long after Sebastian had come back to us.
My friend was beaten and unable to stand and walk on his own. Diego and Mateo had picked him up to carry him to my house—Luis and Felipe were too emotionally exhausted to help. They were still crying tears of joy as they followed my brothers and Sebastian up the hill to my house.
I knelt and scooped Sinthy up. She was almost totally insubstantial, like a dried-out husk that still had the shape but no longer the mass of what it had been. Her head lolled on my shoulder, and I couldn’t believe how pale she was. Her skin was almost translucent, and her eyes looked like she’d accidentally used red food coloring instead of eye drops. The blood-red sclera made her look much more intimidating than usual.
“Did he make it?” she murmured as I carried her.
I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. “He did. He’s alive. I think he’s gonna be fine.” I pulled her close, hugging her like she was my daughter. “Thank you, Sinthy. Thank you so much. I can’t even begin to tell you how much it means to me. To all of us. Everything you did.”
She gave a tired sigh and closed her eyes again. “That’s what you do for family.”
The lump in my throat grew harder. More tears leaked from my eyes. This girl, who was barely old enough to drink, was braver than almost anyone I’d ever met. Never in my life had I been so proud to know someone. Proud to have them be a part of my pack.
Abi helped my brothers get Sebastian settled in the guest room where she’d stayed until a few weeks ago. Maddy and my mom helped me get Sinthy into bed to sleep off everything she’d done. I left so they could undress her and get her into something comfortable.
Out in the living room, my happiness at Sebastian being alive and my heartache for what Sinthy had put herself through evaporated as I saw what was playing on the television. Live footage of the aftermath of the attack. I hadn’t even given myself time to check and see how many of our own people had been injured or killed. Instead of worrying about the innocent dead, there was only one thing the reporters were focused on. Sinthy.
I clicked through multiple channels. Every broadcast showed the same thing. Clips of Sinthy as she fired balls of fire from her hands, erected defensive bubbles around shifters, and the god-like performance she’d put on to rebuild the surrounding barriers. Witches. That was the only word anyone wanted to talk about. It ran across the ticker on the bottom of the screen; history scholars were brought in, and more than one angry voice talked about how dangerous it was that a shifter clan had a witch in their pack.
Gritting my teeth, I clicked on one channel to hear the entire exchange.
“With us in the studio, we have a professor emeritus from Southern Coast College, Doctor Eli Horowitz. Doctor, what does this mean? Witches were thought to have died out after the trials of the sixteen-hundreds,” the anchor said.
The professor was a small, chubby man with thinning hair. He smiled at her and shook his head. “The Salem Witch Trials were, as we all know, brought about by hysteria and fear of real witches. In my book,Where Are They: The Truth About Witches,I go into more detail about this distinct era in history. It was my theory that the Spanish Inquisition, which took place from the mid-fourteen-hundreds until the early eighteen-hundreds, was the true driving force that pushed witches into hiding. The Witch Trials and other anti-metaphysical hatred stemmed in part from the terror and fear of heresy that the Inquisition instilled in many people.”
The anchor leaned forward. “So, you’re saying that they’ve always been here? Hiding in the shadows?”
