Witch for the Wolf

by Annabelle Winters

  “You like them?” Magda said cheekily, twirling around as she walked so her long white gown rose up just enough to give him a glimpse of her beautifully formed thighs. “I designed it myself, you know.”

  “No wonder it covers up so much,” Caleb muttered. “Next time let me design your clothes.” He looked down at his underwear again, knocking on the metal. “I’d also like to design my own clothes, actually.”

  “And by that do you mean no clothes at all?”

  Caleb shrugged. “Animals don’t wear clothes. And neither should witches, in my opinion. Especially witches with curves like that. Twirl once more for me, please.”

  “No,” said Magda, laughing as she shook her head and stepped up the pace. “You don’t tell me what to do. Remember, I’m the witch and you’re my familiar.”

  “Exactly,” Caleb growled, taking three quick steps and grabbing her around the waist. He twirled her around so fast she gasped, and he drew close and sniffed her neck as his wolf howled for him to get a move on with what they all knew had to happen, was meant to happen, needed to happen! “And I need to get more familiar with your body, Witch. It’s time, Magda. Don’t make me wait any longer. I can smell your little fox inside. It’s in heat, just like my big, bad wolf.”

  “Your big bad wolf?” Magda whispered, looking up into his eyes as he held her by the waist. “Am I Red Riding Hood in this story now? What happened to the wicked witch?”

  “The only wickedness I’ve seen from you lately is this medieval suit that’s suffocating my cock,” Caleb grumbled, releasing her from his grip and pushing her away sulkily. “Though you know it can’t hold my wolf back. I can Change and rip through this like it’s a paper bag.”

  “I know. I’ve seen you do it,” Magda said, straightening out her gown, her bosom moving in the most divinely arousing way as she tried to slow down her breathing. Caleb could see she was aroused, that her animal could sense his animal’s heat, that the woman in the witch wanted the man standing before her. But still they were playing this game. Still there was something holding them back, just like there was something urging them on. “But you said it yourself: Shifters can’t mate while in animal form. And when you Change back, your little cage reappears like magic.”

  “Call me little again,” Caleb snarled. “Go on. I dare you.”

  “Is that a threat? I don’t think it’s wise to threaten a wicked witch.”

  “I’m not known for my wisdom,” Caleb grunted, sighing as he followed Magda along a mountainous path through the thickly wooded Black Forest. He took a deep breath, feeling the energy of the woods enter his body along with a million different scents, sounds, and colors. He could feel his wolf eagerly sniffing too, like it was delighted to be out in the wild, the peacefulness of the forest taking the edge off its stymied arousal.

  “What are you known for?” Magda asked, half-serious as she carefully stepped between two jagged rocks in her completely inappropriate shoes. “Ow. Shit. Why didn’t I conjure myself some hiking boots instead of these red pumps?”

  “Aha! So you admit that you still have access to your magic!” Caleb said. “And you also admit that you suck at designing clothes.”

  “My clothes are fine for the weather. As for my shoes . . . well, just like a man doesn’t like to be called little, a woman doesn’t like any negative comments about her shoes.”

  “Is that a threat?” Caleb said, grinning as he leaned forward and smacked her playfully on the butt as she bent down to get a pebble out from her shoe. “Bad witch!”

  “Ouch!” she squealed, standing up abruptly and turning to him, her face red with shock. “That hurt!”

  “I barely touched you, witch. And I got you right on the meaty part of your butt, so I know it didn’t actually hurt. I know what I’m doing.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Magda said, putting her hands on her hips, her eyes going wide. “Did you call me fat while boasting about your sexual prowess all in the same sentence?!”

  “Actually it was several sentences,” Caleb said, his wolfish grin growing as he imagined his finger marks on her ass. Then he felt his cock clang against the inside of his metal cage like it was banging to get out, and he just shook his head when he realized he was loving this slow build to what he knew was coming. “And I didn’t call you fat, I called you meaty. As for boasting about my sexual prowess . . . well, why is a playful smack on your butt sexual? That’s a clear indication that you’ve got sex on your mind, you bad, bad witch.”

  “OK, meaty is even worse than fat. What am I, a lamb chop?” Magda said, scrunching her face up as she glanced back at him, her eyes brown and big, so far removed from those dark slits of the “other” witch that Caleb felt a chill go through him as he wondered if they were being lured into a trap.

  He looked around, breathing deep once again, closing his eyes as he let his inner wolf take in all the sensations of the forest. His wolf had an almost otherworldly sense for impending danger, and Caleb stayed silent as he let his beast do what it did best.

  But the wolf was calm, controlled, happy even, and so Caleb exhaled and kept walking behind his mate, doing his best to keep his eyes off her big, beautiful butt. It wasn’t easy, and finally he gave up and just stared shamelessly as her rear globes moved sublimely beneath her white gown. He wanted to push her face down, lift up that dress, spread her thighs and cheeks and lick her until his wolf howled to the moon, until her fox yelped in its frenzy, until his witch wailed to be taken, claimed, mated, straight-up fucked.

  Suddenly a shadow passed over the sun-bathed green forest, and Caleb frowned as he looked to see whether some cloud cover had arrived. Nope. Still blue sky and burning sun. The forest was getting thicker, denser, more wooded as they kept walking, but Caleb was certain it had been a moving shadow. Another animal, perhaps? This was the forest, after all. He’d picked up the scent of a hundred different animals already: everything from hares, rabbits, and squirrels to snakes, wild boar, and the German variation on the mountain lion.

  He wasn’t afraid of some mountain lion, of course. His wolf could hold its own against any beast of the wild, and most certainly a big cat would have smelled Caleb’s wolf and kept its distance anyway. But the thought reminded him of that video Benson had shown them back in Abu Dhabi: That scene of Murad’s Black Dragon leading an army of Shifters . . . an army that Caleb had trained! Darius the Lion Shifter leading the ground forces. Everett the Tiger bringing up the rear guard. Both those big cats had been wild and uncontrollable when they’d been put under Caleb’s watch, but clearly they had fallen in line now—or at least some semblance of it.

  Caleb’s jaw tightened as he realized he’d have to face them at some point. Face those big-cat Shifters on the battlefield. He might have to kill them, and the thought stuck like a dagger in his heart. Only then did he realize that during those months of corralling a group of immature, almost feral Shifters, he’d actually grown attached to them, actually begun to care about them, actually thought of them as his crewmates. Not in the same way that Adam and Bart were his crew, of course—not yet, at least.

  Adam and Bart aren’t just my crew, Caleb reminded himself as he felt a glow of warmth inside him. They’re my family. My pack. All of them.

  An image of Bart and Bis’s kids came to him as he absentmindedly kept staring at Magda’s rear as she climbed up the steep mountain path in front of him. He remembered how he’d felt when he’d asked to see their cubs while they were still at Murad’s castle. He remembered that strange yearning he’d felt when he saw the helpless babes reach for their mother, giggle at their father, crying out for love and attention—insisting on being loved and attended to! His mind moved on to the memory of Adam and Ash’s kids when they were captured, and he remembered how although he’d kidnapped them, he was certain he’d never be able to harm one hair on their fuzzy little heads.

  He grinned as the thoughts made his wo
lf rumble inside him, like it was enjoying the emotions that were rolling through the human. Soon Caleb’s grin was so wide he almost cried out in delight. Shit, a moment ago he was fantasizing about spanking his mate’s ass and taking her hard and quick right here in the middle of the forest. And now he was fantasizing about having babies with her, raising children together, being a dad to little fox-wolf critters of mixed blood! Being a father! A freakin’ father!

  “Was your father always a violent drunk or did you two actually get along at some point?” came Magda’s voice through Caleb’s daydream, and the question fit in so perfectly with his thoughts that Caleb almost choked as he wondered if he’d been thinking aloud.

  “Why . . . why would you ask me that out of the blue?” he said, frowning as he reminded himself that she was a witch, that they were heading back to the place where she’d first gotten access to her dark magic, that this force Benson called the Darkness was watching them, waiting for them . . . was perhaps in them!

  Magda shrugged, her back still turned to him as she picked up the pace like they were getting close to their destination—whatever that was.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Just making conversation. You’d gone quiet suddenly, and I was wondering what you were thinking about.”

  “Then why not just ask me what I was thinking about instead of ambushing me with a question like that?” Caleb snapped, not sure why his mood had suddenly darkened when a moment ago he had almost burst into song, he was so happy!

  “How is asking you about your father an ambush?” Magda said, her own voice sharp with the rebuttal. “Does the big, bad wolf have daddy issues?”

  Caleb snarled as he felt his wolf bare its fangs inside him. It wanted to come out, and as Caleb held back the Change, it occurred to him that it was really strange that they’d been making this long trek through the forest in human form when it would be so much simpler as animals. He frowned hard as he tried to ignore Magda’s jab, but he could feel his anger rising, his wolf growling, his toes curling, his fists clenching. Her tone had been sharp, not playful like it had been before. Perhaps he was imagining it, but it seemed like she was enjoying riling him up, sticking a knife in him and twisting. What had happened suddenly?!

  Again he caught movement in his peripheral vision, a shadow passing through the dark forest around them. Now he was on high alert, his eyes wide, his wolf close to bursting forth. What the hell was happening? Was this the Darkness at play? What was its game? What did it want? Did it want them to fight? Or did it want them to . . .

  Caleb looked down at his metal underwear, frowning again as he thought about how it had started as a joke but was now a real thing. Hell, he’d have taken her a hundred times by now if not for this metal thing that would shatter when he Changed to wolf form but popped back onto him when he Changed back to the man. Yes, he’d have taken her, and she’d be pregnant with a goddamn litter of his wolf-pups!

  “What about your parents?” he asked quickly, trying to ignore questions he couldn’t answer: question about himself, questions about what was happening here—shit, what the hell were they even doing here! There was a war coming, Adam and Bart were going to be in the middle of it, and he was on a goddamn hiking trip in Germany with a chastity belt on?! How did this make any sense?!

  It will all make sense in a moment, whispered his wolf, its inner voice sounding strangely calm given how riled up Caleb the man was. We are almost there.

  Where, Caleb replied angrily in his head. And how the hell do you know where we’re going when I don’t?

  Because I have been here before, whispered his wolf. I remember all of it.

  “Bullshit,” Caleb muttered under his breath. He looked around, taking in the sight of the mountain peaks above them, the heavily wooded lowlands of the Black Forest beneath them. “We’ve never been here before. I’d remember by now.”

  I didn’t say we, replied his wolf in that same calm, cold voice. I said I’ve been here. Not we. I. Just me. Me without you. The wolf without the human. I came face to face with it. I faced it when you couldn’t. I faced it for you, to save you, to save us both. Just like her fox did what it needed to do, your wolf did what had to be done.

  15

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Caleb roared from behind Magda, and she stopped in her tracks and turned to him, her eyes wide when she heard the edge in his voice.

  “What?” she said, stammering as she looked into his eyes that had turned ice-blue. It took a moment for her to realize he was talking to his wolf, not to her. “What’s going on, Caleb? What’s your animal saying?”

  Caleb was rubbing his buzzed head and stomping about like he was trying to put out a fire, and it took a moment for him to even acknowledge her presence, he was so busy yelling at his wolf, calling it a liar, cursing it up and down like he’d gone insane.

  “It’s saying it’s been here before,” he finally muttered through gritted teeth.

  Magda frowned as she stared at Caleb and then around at the trees. “Here? You’ve been to these woods before? When?”

  “Never. That’s the goddamn point, Magda. My wolf is saying that it was here without me! The wolf without the man! That’s not possible! That’s just not possible!”

  It is possible, whispered Magda’s fox from inside her. Her animal had been quiet for days, and its voice startled her.

  “What do you mean?” she asked her animal, not bothering to keep her voice down. Caleb was still ranting and raving at his animal, and so she might as well get into it with her fox.

  The wolf was indeed here without the man, because at the time there was no man. There was just a boy. An angry boy full of rage, full of hate, full of fury but too small and weak to do anything.

  “To do anything about what?” Magda demanded, noticing for the first time that the forest around them had turned dark even though the sun was shining above the tree cover. She thought she saw shadows moving around them, as if the trees themselves were moving in a way that trees shouldn’t move. But she ignored it, focusing on her animal, prodding it for answers. “Too small and weak to do anything about what?” she screamed as the trees around her began to thrash even though the air was dead around them.

  “My father!” howled Caleb from beside her, his hands clawing at his head as he stumbled around like he was drunk. “I killed him, Magda! I killed him before he had a chance to kill my mother. To kill me. I fucking killed him!”

  16

  Correction, whispered Caleb’s wolf, its voice still calm and controlled. I killed him. You were too young to even stand on your own, let alone fight a grown Wolf Shifter like your father. You were still decades away from your first Change, and although I wanted to come forth to protect your mother and you, I knew that if a transformation happens before the human is ready, it could kill him, kill both of us.

  “But you did come forth!” Caleb shouted as the memories rolled back through him like an avalanche. Snippets of scenes from his childhood: His father, a massive Wolf Shifter who’d never truly gained control over his animal, over his human, over his need for drink, drugs, violence. Terrorizing his own family was sport to him, and Caleb shouted again as he tried to block out those images of his father Changing back and forth in a drunken rage, beating his mother one moment, biting his son the next, clawing at his own mate until she screamed as blood poured from her shredded skin, slashing at his own son until his arms and legs looked like they’d been decorated with blood-red ribbons. “You did come forth! I remember it! I Changed and we killed the monster together.”

  No, said his wolf. Think back, Caleb. That was not your true first transformation. You had not Changed. You were still a boy, frozen in place, watching the wolf inside you burst out and do what you could not. Think about it: After that night, when was the next time you Changed?

  Caleb blinked as he searched his memories. Shit, his wolf was right. The next time
he’d Changed was decades later, when he’d already joined the military. He’d had dreams, visions, flashbacks throughout his teenage years, images of himself in wolf form, an animal roaming free through the woods. But the first Change since the day his wolf had killed his father was indeed decades later, on a full-moon night out on the ocean, during the phase of training that tested a Seal to his limits: One night afloat on the dark ocean. All alone. Always alone.

  Caleb stared at Magda as his wolf sat there in the background as if it was waiting for something. She was screaming at her fox, he could tell. What the hell was it saying to her?

  It is telling her that it is time, his wolf whispered. Her fox ventured into these same woods to ask for the power of the Darkness. I did that too. We both made deals with the Darkness, and that is why we are still alive to tell the tale. That is also why we have led you two back here. Because it is time.

  “The Darkness,” Caleb muttered, staring wide-eyed as the trees swayed even though there was no wind. “You know what it is?”

  Yes, answered his wolf after a long moment. Every Shifter’s animal knows what the Darkness is. It is the source of the animal’s power. It is the essence of the Shifter spirit, distilled over eons, animal energy in its purest, most refined, most perfect form. Pure carnal energy. It is the Darkness that drives the Shifter’s animal to kill, to feed, to run rampage.

  “What the hell are you saying?” Caleb muttered, watching Magda talk to her fox as if it was telling her the same thing, as if their two animals had engineered all of this and were now saying, Haha! Fooled ya! Wouldn’t like to be ya!

  “What the hell are you saying?!” Caleb said again, his voice rising this time. “You’re saying every Shifter’s animal is inherently . . . evil? I can’t believe that! I won’t believe that!”

  Good and evil are inventions of humans, said his wolf matter-of-factly. Please leave the animals out of it. The Darkness is neither good nor evil. It just . . . is.