The town is in shambles when we pass through. The scent of death and blood hits me like a sledgehammer. Witches and wolves clash in the open and a few bodies are already down. A she-wolf lunges for the throat of a dark-cloaked witch, while another is flung back by a blast of power so cruel, her bones snap in midair. The brave omega is dead before she hits the ground.
For a heartbeat I think I’m watching a battle between the Craddock wolves and Ashvale’s resident witches unfold, but Rhosyn told me about the love between Lowri Craddock and Amara, the coven’s High Priestess.
No, this isn’t a civil war.
This is an invasion. One that, by the dark magic humming in the air around us, is being led by an unknown faction of witches.
I want to help. My alpha instinct screams to jump into the fight. But I don’t stop. I can’t. Not when I haven’t found Noa.
My mate is my priority.
We fly toward her house, the deep maroon Victorian structure waiting for us a few streets down from the bloodshed. From the outside, it appears to be untouched. It sits too still, too silent. But I can smell the smoke. Something within the structure is burning.
The same instinct that pulled me back to this town now screams that Noa isn’t inside. It claws at me, ordering me to go to the back of the property. My wolf runs parallel to the ironfence he vaulted over just last night, pacing its length until he reaches the far corner. There, half buried in ivy, a small gate creaks on rusted hinges.
Just beyond it, smoke rolls up from a hatch left open in the pine-needle-covered ground. The source of the fire. My heart twists knowing what that hidden dwelling below means to her.
My wolf lifts his nose to the air. He breathes deep, desperately searching for a hint of the scent that calls to him like it’s salvation. Brown sugar and spiced fig.
Canaan closes in behind. His large reddish-brown-and-gray wolf already has his nose lowered to the soil, hunting for the trail that will take him to his own mate. To Rhosyn.
At the same moment my wolf catches the sugary thread of Noa’s scent drifting on the wind, leading into the dense woods flanking the right side of the manor, and Canaan’s head jerks up. He turns sharply, facing the opposite direction from where my feet are already pivoting. He whines low in his throat, torn between instinct and duty. Between the pull of his mate and the role he’s bound to by pack rank.
For a singular second, I hate myself for not sending for more of my enforcers when we turned around. For assuming this bone-deep urgency had only been about the strained bond. I thought I was just unraveling from the separation; I never expected to return to find her home under attack.
But I don’t have time to dwell on this mistake.
My wolf gives a single sharp, commanding bark—a wordless release of the obligation Canaan still clings to. He doesn’t hesitate after that, he takes off toward the other side of the manor, following the pull of his own female.
I sprint down the trail that leads into the woods.
Away from the smoke and madness hemorrhaging in Ashvale, Noa’s scent sharpens. It’s stronger here, easier to track, and with this new clarity comes the full detail of it. Sweet as ever,but it’s contaminated now with a note that makes my gut twist. Fear. Grief. The taste of it makes my wolf’s jaw snap, his chest rumbling in warning.
But there’s something else. Something dark and reminiscent of the malicious power that hovered in the airback in town.
Another witch is out here with her.
Murderous rage thunders through me as my wolf barrels through the underbrush, following the trail she left behind. His limbs are a blur beneath us. The river roars below me to my right, nearly drowning out the murmured voices coming from up ahead. I catch a flicker of movement, a whisper of something just up the trail, and then?—
A scream.
Not a cry. Not a shout. A piercing scream so full of dread, it nearly stops me in my tracks.
I can’t be sure if it’s hers, but if it is, if even a single note of that pain belongs to Noa, nothing on this earth will stop me from ripping apart whoever inflicted it.
Rounding the bend in the trail, the scene unfurls before me faster than I can fully register it.
There’s a figure crumpled on the ground—knees to her chest, hand held up like she’s keeping something invisible at bay—but this whimpering witch doesn’t hold my interest long. Because beyond her, through the branches and leaves, I catch movement that makes my lungs seize and then release in momentary relief.
Noa.
Her hair is wild and streaming behind her as she runs deeper into the trees, every step she takes unsteady like her body is acting purely on fear-induced instinct. She clutches something tight to her chest, the shape obscured by her arms and movements.Her head turns, looking over her shoulder, but her eyes aren’t searching me out. She’s making sure she’s not beingfollowed. My omega has no idea that I’m here, that I’m not going to let anything else happen.
That fleeting glimpse is all I get, but it’s enough—enough to reignite my body, giving strength to my drained muscles and bones.
I don’t know what Noa has endured or if she’s wounded herself, but just knowing she’s close by and fuckingbreathingallows me to redirect my focus on what’s before me.
My wolf skids to a stop in the packed earth, snarling as he closes the distance between us and the witch slumped in the path.Her eyes are sightless white orbs at first, and then she blinks. Pale-blue irises reappear, her vision sharpening back into focus. She whimpers, body trembling as fright continues to seep from her pores. Her sharp chin lifts, gaze searching for whatever had thrust her into this state, but when her attention finally snaps to where I stand, massive and seething, she goes still.
