Page 82 of Wolfsbane

Ingeborg lifted that unimpressed brow at him. “By refusing to let his mother murder him? I should say the coven betrayed him first. Don’t any of you go thinking we won’t be having a lot of discussions about that in the near future. You all accepted that behavior and didn’t leave. Murdering one of our own. Daire can hardly be held responsible for going and not wanting to come back. I wouldn’t either.”

He clearly wanted to deny the accusation, but perhaps he realized, as I had suspected, that the conversation was a test. How the witch on the porch responded was likely to answer what he’d be doing with his whole future.

When Ingeborg turned away from them, though, and I saw the look in her eyes, I knew I’d been wrong. She’d already decided. The conversation was simply confirming her course of action.

She met my eye and again, gave the tiniest twitch of a smile.

Then she returned to us, reaching out a hand to Aleks, shaking his firmly. “Thank you, Alpha Wildwood. The coven is in your debt. We’ll also send Daire’s restitution and gift to your pack, since I can’t imagine him wanting to stay here for even a night.”

Drew rushed back to Daire, leaping into his arms, and Daire let the burned lump of a former toy drop to the ground and stood, holding the chubby little raccoon against him and then leaning his whole body into me. “I’d rather not,” he agreed. “I’m sure most of them didn’t specifically decide it, but they were going to let Mother murder me. I don’t belong here.”

Aleks nodded to him, then looked back at Ingeborg. “He’s Wildwood, now. Tristan as well, since we were forced to bite him to defend the pack from a coven incursion.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Tristan smile. We’d all presumed he was staying, but this confirmed it.

Then, Aleks turned to Ingeborg. “But I would imagine Daire would welcome visits from you, if not the others.”

Ingeborg nodded to him, serious and formal as she hadn’t been before. “I will endeavor to make up for what my niece did to the pack, and each of its members, in whatever way I can. Even if we’re unable to truly do that, the coven will not trouble you again.”

Aleks inclined his head to her. “We appreciate that you care at all. We would consider the coven under your leadership a neutral entity, if not yet an ally. We’ll hold no grudge against the whole for Ermengarde’s behavior, so long as they hold loyal to you.”

There were a few deep breaths on the porch, and I could see relief on many faces. More of them than had wanted to follow Daire, I had no doubt.

Aleks looked up at the porch then, his expression going hard. “If something else happens to Daire’s aunt and you lot start attacking innocents again, we won’t hesitate next time. I’ll bring the whole pack, their orders will be to bite every single one of you, and unlike Tristan, we won’t be taking in those survivors. If there are any.”

I drew myself up, giving them a cold nod, and when I turned toward the truck, I realized even Tristan was nodding along with Aleks. He really hadn’t turned out to be such a bad addition to the pack.

I hoped that Ingeborg found the other witches to be the same brand of decent people who’d been badly misled. I knew there would be a few she needed to weed out, but somehow, I suspected she was up to the task.

Aleks gave her a card with his phone number on it, but then said that the pack was never available for awakenings. That seemed to confuse the elder witch, but she took him seriously and nodded, then thanked him for the pack’s aid.

And that was it.

It was over.

I sighed and looked at Aleks. “We need to go to that horrible store Jojo talked about, with all the things. Daire needs clothing.”

Aleks didn’t laugh, even though he found my aversion to stores amusing. He just nodded and hit the truck’s turn indicator to take us farther into the city.

CHAPTER 46

Daire

Goddess, we went to one of those huge stores with shelves of boxes all the way up toward the ceiling.

Drew, who’d put his dress back on in the back seat of the truck, was bouncing on the balls of his feet as he looked over the lower shelves out into the great box-shelved yonder.

“Come on!” He snatched up Viktor’s hand, which was kind of weird, as Viktor was clearly the least enthusiastic to be there, but he marched him off at a quick pace while Aleks looked on, a bemused expression on his face.

“Should we be worried?” Tristan asked, frowning.

Aleks snorted. “They’ll find their way back. Let’s get what we came for.”

And plenty else besides.

I couldn’t live out of Altair’s closet forever, but I only got a couple pairs of pants and shirts to get me through until I could get a new debit card. It wasn’t like I’d ever had grand sums of wealth on my own. I’d never had a proper job, and it wasn’t like I was paid for whatever administrative stuff the coven needed me to do, so I hadn’t been that worried about it when I’d been running for my life and left my phone and wallet behind in abandoned pants.

But if I was going to have assets of any kind, even if they were for the pack, I wanted us to be able to access them easily. Now that we were past the “will I die tomorrow” phase of leaving the coven behind, I needed to get my life in order.

And yeah, to do that, I might need some of my own pants.