Found in Flames

by Desconhecido

  That fucking witch had taken another piece of Luka’s family. And, like the first time, he’d been forced to let that smug little human bastard escape. Only he hadn’t even gotten in a good punch this time. At least he’d left a mark before.

  The woman hanging over his shoulder moaned and her heartrate increased. She was waking up. And what the hell had a human woman been doing there, anyway? She’d clearly been terrified and completely ignorant of the danger she’d just put herself in, so he had to assume that she still didn’t realize what had really happened. Luka couldn’t imagine the witch even knew her name, let alone kept her company. In all the time he’d been tracking the witch, Luka had never seen him socialize with ordinary humans. But Justin certainly hadn’t been familiar with her. So she had to have just been in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time.

  What mattered was the witch had tried to kill her. That meant she was in danger, at least as long as the witch kept breathing. And that was the real reason Luka was bringing her back to his temporary territory. Whoever she was, she’d just become a high-priority target of his mortal enemy. Only, whereas he knew what he was doing, this naïve woman hadn’t shown any signs of understanding the first thing about the paranormals in the world. She would absolutely get herself killed if he left her alone now.

  Just fucking great.

  “Alpha!” two female voices chorused as he stepped into the clearing that was the heart of their temporary home. Predictably, the twins Vanna and Morgan came rushing up to him, both having already shed the clothes they were ‘forced’ to wear in populated areas. They were the youngest matured females in the pack. What’s left of it. And they were always hanging off him, likely hoping he’d pick one of them as his mate. Little did they know he never intended to take a mate at all.

  But tonight their expressions were different, and he scented concern on the air. “Alpha, what happened?” Vanna asked, hands clasped in front of her chest.

  “Emily said she thought she heard Justin scream,” Morgan added, her longer hair the only thing obscuring her breasts.

  “Is everyone back?” Luka asked, ignoring their questions and looking past them. If they’d heard from Emily then he imagined Emily and Max, who were newly-mated and practically joined at the hip, had both returned. He was less sure about Russell, and Justin’s younger brother, Chad.

  “We’re all accounted for, Alpha,” Chad called from several feet behind him. With the wind blowing in his face Luka hadn’t even smelled him. “Except for Justin.”

  As Chad and Russell moved into view, Russell eyed the woman still mostly unconscious and hanging off Luka’s shoulder, asking, “Who’s she?”

  “Dinner?” Vanna asked, an undeniable tone of disdain in her voice, as one dark brow rose on her forehead.

  Narrowing his eyes on the sisters, Luka snapped, “Put some fucking clothes on. She’s under our protection.”

  The girls weren’t the only ones who blinked at him like he’d just started singing Disney and he growled. “Gather at the cave.” He had to get this human off his shoulders and find a way to tell his pack the bad news. It was going to be a long night.

  “Why are we protecting a human?” Russell asked as the sisters scampered off to obey Luka’s order.

  “Alpha,” Chad interrupted, hesitation in his voice. He was looking around, nose lifted slightly as he scented the wind. “Where’s—?”

  The body over his shoulder tensed in split-second warning and Luka cringed even as another high-pitched shriek tore through the air. If my ears ever stop ringing I’ll be damn lucky. And judging from the expressions of the frozen, wide-eyed, wincing wolves around him, Luka imagined he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. But he knew damned well he was the only one who’d do anything about it, so he kicked aside a rock and deliberately dropped the woman on her ass.

  Her scent rushed past his nose as she fell and he was reminded forcefully of the wave of desire he’d first felt when he’d tackled her full-figured, curvy body to the ground in that alley. For an illogical moment he’d wanted nothing more than to taste her. Fortunately, as before, he was quickly pulled back to his senses.

  “Ow!” the woman exclaimed, her scream ending abruptly as she crashed onto the dirt. The jolt of the impact only threw her off for a moment, however, as she immediately scrambled to her feet and threw a pointer finger into his face. Or, rather, as ‘in his face’ as she could from her 5’8” height. It was kind of cute the way she had to crane her neck just to maintain eye contact when she got close. “Just who do you think you are, pal?” she said, jabbing his collar with her finger. “You can’t run around kidnapping people!”

  He had a fleeting second to consider that, under vastly different circumstances, he might have been highly entertained by the scene she presented. But he was in no mood for humor or long, loud, unfounded lectures. Fortunately, their audience wasn’t afraid to make itself known, either.

  Distinct throat-clearing from Chad seemed to break through her rage because her eyes widened and she cut a glance to the side. Luka watched as she quickly realized they weren’t alone, noting the rush of blood to her cheeks and the way her shoulders tightened as her scent changed from surprise to embarrassment to fear. She turned in a complete circle, taking in the gathering strangers, and when she was done she’d taken a partial step closer, as if she suddenly trusted him.

  “Where are we?” she whispered out the side of her mouth.

  “Safe,” Luka replied shortly. If he’d intended to say anything else, though, he supposed he ought to have known better.

  The woman whose name he didn’t yet know spun back to him, her brown eyes wide again. “Safe? Are you serious? I’ve been kidnapped! How am I supposed to feel safe?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” Vanna offered bitingly as she and Morgan stepped down from a crevice of rocks, lightweight dresses hanging off their shoulders. They came to a stop several feet away, on the other side of Chad, and kept their glares on the human as if they were sending her psychic insults. Which, Luka figured, they undoubtedly would if they could.

  But Luka really wasn’t in the mood for their crap, so he cut in with a glare at the wolf who should’ve known better. “Vanna.” He waited until she’d looked away, head bowed and silent, before returning his attention to the human woman. “You can leave whenever you want,” he said bluntly. “But out there,” he added, jerking his head over his shoulders to indicate the city lights she probably couldn’t see, “the witch can get you. And he will come.”

  The woman’s mouth opened, her scent telling him she was fully prepared to argue with his statement, and he knew the exact moment her brain processed his words. A couple of heartbeats later her mouth snapped shut and she swallowed heavily.

  “Al—” Chad began, cutting himself off and clearing his throat as he obviously thought better of his wording. “What about Justin?” he asked instead. “Do you want me to go find him?”

  Schooling his expression into the closest thing he could manage to minor frustration, Luka replied, “No.”

  “But—”

  “No,” he repeated, lifting a stare to the younger wolf for emphasis.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman finally mumbled as Chad’s head lowered in submission. “Did you say ‘witch’?”

  Luka returned his focus to the woman before him.

  After a beat, she shook her head with a disbelieving laugh and said, “Okay, this is crazy. I don’t know what lines you’ve fed these people, but I’m not falling for that. I’m here in reality and witches are a thing of fiction. So I’m just going to leave, like you said I could.” She was walking even before she’d finished, boldly striding past him and entirely unaware that he could smell her building fear.

  What, exactly, she thought they would do to her, he didn’t know. Nor did he know why the scent of her fear upset something inside him. Something he had neither the time nor the interest in understanding. Instead he turned his head just enough to be sure she heard him and asked,
“So how do you explain the fire?”

  As he’d expected, she froze. Her spine stiffened and he distinctly heard the sounds of fingers sliding over sweaty palms.

  “Hallucination,” she finally said. Even without his nose, he’d have picked up on her uncertainty. It weighed heavily over her voice. “I was hallucinating somehow. Maybe he’d released an airborne hallucinogen right before I got there.”

  “Then are you hallucinating right now?” Luka challenged with a patience he didn’t feel.

  “Probably,” she replied.

  “Then why are you afraid?”

  At this she turned back around, one hand landing on her hip, and returned, “What, you’ve never had a nightmare?”

  For the first time in months, Luka felt his lips twitch with amusement. She could think on her feet, at least. He could admit that much. Unfortunately, he didn’t have all night to mince words with her. And since she wasn’t playing along with the macho angle, he opted to try for another in the hopes of speeding the conversation up. “I tell you what,” he said, gesturing toward a rock a couple of feet away. “Sit down and wait it out, then. If you wake up in the hospital, you were right and all’s well. If you wake up out here, you might want to start paying attention.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, obviously disliking his suggestion. But she didn’t immediately shoot it down or resume walking away. Instead she slid her gaze to the rock, possibly expecting it to grow horns or something, and then slowly looked around at his small pack one more time. “Fine,” she said at length. She pulled in a breath and added, “But don’t expect me to drink from your water supply.”

  Torn between wanting to laugh and growl in frustration, Luka settled for grinding his teeth. “Your call. I’ve got things to deal with tonight, so here’s what you need to know. The man you saw tonight was a witch. An evil bastard who’ll kill you just for having seen his face. If you choose to stick around later, we can go over the details.”

  “A witch,” she muttered as she sat, shaking her head. “What a trip.”

  Luka opted to ignore her last comment, instead turning his attention to his pack. He could sense their growing confusion, and increasing concern for their missing Beta. He would’ve much preferred to sit and argue the reality of witches and werewolves than have to deliver the bad news he was about to deliver. Everyone loved Justin. In a lot of ways, Justin had been the humanizing aspect of Luka’s rule as Alpha. Luka knew he was hard to deal with on most days. But the worst, by far, was going to be Chad’s reaction.

  Chad was one of Luka’s best hunters. He was young enough to have the stamina of an adolescent, with the strength of a matured wolf, and he’d willingly left his former pack to join Luka and Justin when Justin had called on him. Chad had a lot of potential he hadn’t yet reached. Luka didn’t relish the moment now upon him.

  ****

  She should have been freezing, and something beyond starving, but for the life of her, Joella could only say she was in shock. Dawn was breaking now and she’d spent the entire night outside, under the open sky and surrounded by beautiful, grieving strangers. Or, rather, watching those strangers.

  As soon as he’d finished insisting the mystery man with the fire from before was a witch, the man who’d kidnapped her—whose name was Luka, she’d learned—had turned around and somberly informed the other strangers that they’d lost a friend. Or colleague, or whatever term they preferred. The charred body she’d seen on the ground the night before. Apparently his name had been Justin, and Justin had been well-loved. The wailing and collapsing and sobbing hysterics that followed were understandable. Her heart could sympathize with that. She would always remember the day she’d learned her beloved mother—her rock, and her only true family—had been taken from her while she’d been studying at a friend’s.

  Time never really healed those kinds of wounds.

  What she was having trouble with was the witch thing. Plus the idea that this group of good-looking people, including the family she’d glimpsed near the back of the crowd, seemed to live out in the wilds of Nevada. Nevada barely even had ‘wilds!’ But he clearly said ‘witch.’ And no matter how much she didn’t like it, she was sure she’d seen that man shoot fire from his palm. Okay, so there hadn’t been a wand in his hand and he wasn’t wearing a pointy hat, but maybe those things weren’t necessary for throwing fireballs. How was she to know?

  That was what she’d been pondering, in her effort to drown out the sounds of mass grief, when a new sound had joined the cacophony. Howling. Too close to be sneaking up on them, and too mournful to be threatening. Her head had snapped up, eyes wide, as her instincts froze her in place while she attempted to ascertain the source of the echoing howl. Her eyes landed on the group of mourning strangers and, even in the dark of night, she could clearly see that the howling was coming from a wolf, and that wolf was standing near the center of the group, head tilted up to the sky.

  Joella had watched in breathless disbelief as the snarky girl and her long-haired twin shed their simple dresses like they were stepping out of a pair of slippers. Their skin rolled visibly, their backs arched, and a moment later the girls had been replaced by graceful-looking wolves. As they joined in the howling more of the group discarded their clothing to cry their sorrows at the half-moon.

  Werewolves….

  Even now, hours later, the word echoed around in her head with an eerie surrealism. She’d watched everyone go from two-legged humans to four-legged wolves before her very eyes. Everyone except Luka, who’d walked out of sight shortly before the howling had begun. She herself hadn’t budged from her designated rock, though her gaze had, at some point, lifted back to the sky. Maybe for a sense of familiarity.

  The moon was disappearing now as the sun began to lighten the sky, though the sun itself hadn’t yet shown up. The howling had ceased some while before, despite the fact that it continued to echo in her head.

  “You and I need to talk,” Luka said suddenly, startling her back to the moment. His tone was firm and his voice was hushed. She didn’t need to know him to recognize that he wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.

  Joella swallowed and dragged her eyes up to his, belatedly remembering that he was significantly taller than her, a fact which was only emphasized with her sitting down. But she was easily distracted from that detail when she realized she actually had good eye-contact with him for once. His eyes were a dark, smoldering brown that seared right through her. Powerful, cunning, and capable—that was what she got from those eyes. They suited his six-and-a-half-foot, broad-shouldered frame perfectly. But she noticed something else as she studied him from her new angle. The changing light illuminated an old scar on the right side of his face. It looked almost like a flame, licking up his cheek, and seemed to disappear beneath the collar of his tight shirt.

  She pushed to her feet without thinking, bringing herself closer to him, and barely caught herself before she’d reached for him. Something about the sight of that scar on his strong jaw, attempting to mar his raw, physical beauty, had her heart softening toward him.

  Eyes narrowing as if he’d sensed her thoughts, Luka said, “Come with me,” and he turned in the direction he’d disappeared earlier in the night. Clearly he assumed she would heed his command without question, or even hesitation. Under other circumstances she might have been offended by that, but her heart was still aching in sympathy for everyone around her. She’d had to hear their friend’s dying cry, and then she’d had to witness their grief.

  Grief, she realized, Luka likely felt, too. But he’d ostracized himself from the rest of the group, for reasons she didn’t understand. And that made the ache in her chest throb a little harder. No one should have to grieve alone. So she released a breath and followed him, having no idea what he thought they needed to talk about. But whatever was on his mind, she had questions, too. The adrenaline from her kidnapping had faded, and she had to admit she didn’t feel immediately threatened. That didn’t mean she was willing to si
t by and be bossed around with little to no explanation. Especially if witches and werewolves were anywhere near this conversation.

  She’d done what Luka had asked. She’d sat patiently on that rock all night. Now he owed her some answers.

  Chapter Three

  “Are you a werewolf?” she asked as soon as Luka came to a stop. He’d led her to a large, shallow cave a couple of rock formations away from the now-collapsed wolves. There was a small pile of clothes off to one side, just inside the mouth of the cave.

  Luka turned to face her and lifted one thick brown brow high on his forehead. “Figured that out all on your own?”

  Scrunching her nose at him, Joella crossed her arms and said, “Listen, I’m still attempting to accept that I haven’t just been drugged, okay? So could you try to be nice?”

  “What if I told you you had been drugged?” he returned as he lowered himself to sit on the patches of grass near the center of the cave.

  From his tone she couldn’t tell if he was joking. “That’s not funny,” she snapped, following him into the cave on reflex.

  He was already sitting, one long leg stretched out and the other bent at the knee. The jeans looked sinfully good on him, and combined with the tight, muscle-revealing shirt, it was safe to say she was distracted. Still, she opted to blame her lack of sleep or food and, in an attempt to retain her sanity, she sat carefully a couple of feet away, facing him. “Let’s say I can swallow the ‘werewolf’ pill,” she allowed, “and the guy you saved me from, he’s a witch? Like, ‘abracadabra, hocus pocus’?”

  Luka snorted and shook his head. “More like ‘fires of hell’,” he replied. “Witches have element-based powers. And the longer back the lineage traces, the stronger the witch.”

  Shrugging as if that all made sense, and hoping someday it would, Joella asked, “But then why would this witch come after me?” A terrible thought occurred to her, then, and her hands flew over her mouth as she gasped. “Your friend… He wasn’t trying to protect me … was he?” Had she gotten a complete stranger killed? Would she be able to forgive herself if that were the case? And why on earth would she even need protection, let alone from a witch? It wasn’t like she had any enemies that she knew of….