Phoenixrise: A Reverse Harem Romance (The Rogue Witch Book 5)

by KT Strange

  “Is sheltering in a dry wood heap a really good idea right now?” I asked, not able to keep the acid out of my tone. Charlie flinched like I’d slapped him. In the distance I heard the rumbling of thunder and hoped the storm wouldn’t come this way. We were too exposed to handle a night out in the elements.

  “You got any better ideas?” he shot back. A moment passed and I shook my head. He huffed, annoyed, and then reached for me.

  “Don’t,” I said, pulling away as much as I was able to without jostling my sore ankle. “Don’t touch me when you’re mad at me.” I couldn’t bear it. My eyes squeezed shut.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m not mad, just, it’s a lot. C’mon, Darcy, let me carry you, please. It’s cold out here and I’m worried about you.”

  I nodded and felt his arms gently wrap around me. He lifted me up, and I tucked my head under his chin.

  “It won’t be long,” he promised. “I’ll find us somewhere safe.” In the back of my mind, I wondered about wolves, the ultimate providers, and how much his instincts to keep me safe were pushing him onward when a normal human guy would have quit. If he’d been a normal human, we’d never have outrun the fire in the first place.

  That gave me some hope that the rest of the pack had made it out alive.

  The stony beach crunched under his feet, and I clung to my lone boot, hoping that if I kept it with me I’d actually be able to use it sometime within the next few hours.

  Charlie’s breath was hot on the top of my head as he walked for what seemed like forever. He never faltered, even when clouds crossed the moon and cast shadows all around us.

  “There,” he said, and I lifted my head. A smudge of pale white was coming into view, forming into long thin shapes as we walked toward it. It looked like someone had built a fence of whole logs stripped of their bark. They shone in the soft moonlight, their ends, pierced and ragged, rising to form an uneven crown. I pushed myself up in Charlie’s arms to get a better look as he walked.

  “That looks rustic,” I said, with a shaky laugh but the night was pressing in around us and I felt the urgent need to hide. There was the unnerving feeling of being watched that was tingling along my skin, even though as far as I knew, we were the only people between here and Wolfe’s compound.

  Up close, the structure had a rough roof made up of more logs, and a door on sagging hinges. Cracks between the logs were a few inches wide, but it was a shelter of some kind or another. Charlie opened the door with one hand and let me down on my good foot. The floor was a mixture of sand and pebbles, and there was a low rough bed in one corner with a deflated camp mattress rolled up on it.

  “Homey,” Charlie said, although he sounded relieved. “You can rest for a bit,” he said, eyeing the mattress. “That’ll inflate fast without a pump.” I didn’t disagree. It was the kind that was barely an inch thick when inflated completely, more for providing a barrier between the cold ground and a body that needed to keep its heat. I sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for the mattress, my cold fingers twisting the cap off the air intake. Charlie stepped out the door and I looked up.

  “What?” I asked. He glanced back at me.

  “Are you okay here for a few minutes?” he asked. I swallowed.

  “Why? What?”

  “You need to eat,” he said, eyes dark. “I need to get you something to eat.”

  “We’ll only be here until morning,” I said, feeling hollow. He sighed and stepped back in, closing the door. He didn’t agree with me, but there was no way the guys would let us stay out in the dark more than one night. They’d find us. Charlie had outrun the fire. So could they. “Please, Charlie, don’t leave me.”

  I didn’t have to ask again, and he took the mattress from me, inflating it and setting it down. I shifted over and he moved beside me without another word, as we both tried to get comfortable on the thin camping bed.

  “Roll over,” he said quietly into my ear. Turning gingerly on account of my ankle, I settled down. Charlie moved behind me, wrapping his arms around me. My clothing wasn’t as wet as it had been, but his warmth was something I desperately needed. I leaned into it with a sigh, the shivers that had been threatening to take hold of me finally chased away with his heat. His breath brushed over my ear, teasing at the wisps of my curls, and I let my eyes close.

  The morning grabbed me with a start and I sat up, my whole body stiff. I was alone, the door closed, the sun sending slices of warmth and light down through the roof and walls.

  “Charlie?” I called out, panic flashing through my chest. My feet hit the ground and pain spiked up my leg. A curse ripped from my lips and I froze for a moment, my hand going to my injured ankle. The skin was puffy, swollen, and tight. Gingerly, I reached for my boot where I’d tossed it the night before and pulled it onto my good foot. Squirming upward and grabbing the rough edge of one log, I hauled myself up and hopped toward the door, ignoring the ache in my leg as much as possible.

  “Charlie?” I pushed the door open, squinting as the sunlight hit me. The sky was clear overhead, no sign of a fire at all, and the beach was empty with not even a hint of Charlie.

  Overwhelmed and alone, I leaned against the side of the doorframe, my breathing coming fast and hot. He couldn’t have left me. He wouldn’t have. The logical side of my brain was calculating every detail, trying to keep me calm even as the rest of my body flew into a full out panic. It was just too much. All of it. I crumbled internally and sagged into the wood.

  The sound of running footsteps over rock, pebbles crushing against one another, filled me with relief. I pulled myself upright and wiped at the tears that had appeared on my cheeks. Charlie came into view in nothing but his boxers, soaked from head to toe. He had a large fish in his hands.

  “Shit, Darcy, I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his catch on the rocky ground and coming to me immediately. A helpless shiver passed through me and I reached for him, not caring that he was wet. It was like all the strength had been sapped from me, and all I could do was crumple against him and cry as his arms encircled me. His fingers carded through my hair, his skin chilled where I pressed my cheek against his bare chest. I let myself rest, the ache in my own chest and my ankle taking too much out of me to do anything but be held.

  After a few moments I stopped sniffling and eyed the fish on the ground.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t go to the grocery store,” I said, trying for humor.

  “You needed to eat. So do I.” He picked me up and set me on a long log that lay next to a pit in the rocky shore. Burnt ends of wood and ash collected at the bottom of it; a fireplace for the fishermen that had been using the shelter before us.

  The woods towered behind us and I looked at them, forlornly.

  “Did you go back to the compound?” I asked, even though the answer had to be no. If he’d found the guys, or they’d found him, I would have woken up to an anxious pack of werewolves, not an empty log shed.

  “The fire is still burning, and I didn’t want to risk leaving you out here for too long,” he said. “I thought I heard a helicopter earlier, but I couldn’t see it.” He was laying out tinder in the bottom of the fire pit, and working two green, y-shaped branches into the ground as a sort of make-shift spit. When he sat back on his haunches, he looked at me expectantly.

  “What?”

  “I’m gonna need your help here, Darce, or it’s going to be awhile before we get this thing cooking.”

  I blinked at him and then he wiggled his fingers. A frown creased my forehead.

  “I don’t have fire magic,” I said.

  “Yeah but a few lightning sparks’ll do it.” He grabbed my hand and I bit my lip. I’d had about enough of fire and lightning for a lifetime. With a sigh I reached down anyway, because he was right, and being stuck out in the middle of nowhere was not a time to get stingy with my powers.

  Training with Wolfe had helped, some, and I managed to get a few sparks of electricity crackling through the tinder. It caught after a mom
ent, and minutes later we had a small blaze throwing off heat and smoke. The fish was stuck on it’s spit and hung, fat and heavy, over the fire. Charlie wrapped himself around me, pulling me down onto the ground between his legs so I could rest against his chest. He’d dried off in the sun, and his skin was warm as I let myself relax.

  “You’re going to get sunburned,” Charlie’s voice buzzed into the shell of my ear and I shook my head. “We should go into the shelter for a bit when the sun gets higher.”

  “I like the breeze,” I said, even though he was right. The sun was almost too warm.

  “Plenty of breeze coming in through the cracks between those logs,” Charlie teased and helped me up. I hobbled with his assistance back into our shelter, the shade some relief from the growing heat of the day. All I needed to do was get better and wait for the fire to die down enough for us to get back to the compound, or for the rest of the pack to find us.

  Charlie lay me down on the small air mattress and I looked up at him. His hair was drying in waves, the dark locks stiff from the lake-water. They were begging to be brushed out. I reached a hand to run over his cheek, and his eyes fell shut. All the hurt from him pushing me away, from him pulling away from the pack, had dissolved in the wake of the fire. Maybe it had burnt off and gone up in smoke.

  “Darcy,” he said, dropping to his knees at the edge of the bed. There was a look in his eyes I couldn’t quite place.

  “What?” My fingers traced along his temple, into the line of his hair. A sigh escaped him and his head dropped, his lips finding mine. The kiss was urgent and anxious, as he took what he needed from me and I clung to him, seeking something, anything, solid. My lips parted against his and he groaned, shifting over me until one of his legs slid between my knees. The pressure and weight of him over me was as addictive as it was soothing. His tongue licked into my mouth, his hand sliding over my hip, and pressing the stiff fabric of my shirt up my body. He was almost naked and I took advantage of that, letting my fingers drag up his chest until he growled and pulled back from our kiss.

  His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, and he shook his head.

  “Don’t say we shouldn’t,” my words were calmer than I felt, my pulse jumping under my skin when he moved to kiss me again.

  “Whatever you want,” he murmured, before he stole the breath from my lungs. His hand ran under my shirt to cup my breast, fingers pulling at my bra. A flare of heat flashed across my skin and I moaned.

  The heat intensified, followed by a loud crackling pop, like a small explosion. Charlie pulled off of me and in the next instant had me up in his arms. Through the cracks in the logs, all I could see was a wall of fire. Smoke engulfed us and I choked, the burning racing down my throat just as quickly as the heat surrounded us.

  Three

  Charlie

  I should have kept a closer eye on the fire, was the first thought that crossed my mind the split second before I kicked the door open and stumbled outside. Red fingers of flame crawled up the outside of our shelter. Darcy cried out, clinging to me tight as I staggered away, tripping over boulders in the thick haze of smoke. She coughed hard; I dug my feet into the ground and ran, ignoring the rocks as they bit into my soles. Twenty feet away, and out of immediate danger, I stopped and turned. The fire somehow jumped from the pit up to the shelter, consuming a long beach-washed log along the way, but there’s no way it could reach us where we stood. There was too much of a dead-zone, with yards of rock and gravel between us and any kindling.

  Darcy coughed again and I stepped to the edge of the water, bending down with her in my arms. I scooped up water to rinse her face off and then a handful for her to sip when she was able.

  Panic was alive and well in my chest, and I eyed the flames that surrounded our shelter, each log going up, one after another, roaring and snapping.

  This wasn’t normal. Dread was growing deep in my gut — dread and awareness that what was happening shouldn’t be. The fire wasn’t big enough to be a threat, and any embers would have gone out in the air before they landed on the shelter. There was a reason the fishermen had dug the pit as far as they had away from their wooden shelter, and deep down in the rocky beach. Things were ticking in my brain, clipping together and falling into place, and my thoughts kept circling back to this being another fire that had become dangerous and uncontrollable when it shouldn’t have been. Bad things came in threes, and this was the third time, if you included Max spontaneously combusting.

  Darcy cleared her throat.

  “Holy fuck,” she rasped, slipping out of my arms and putting her uninjured foot on the ground. I kept her close, one arm linked around her waist and she leaned into me, her eyes wide.

  “Do you ever get the feeling you’re running into too much bad luck for it to be coincidence?” A feeling of foreboding was growing inside of me, like I’d been split off from my pack on purpose. Darcy was injured. She was missing a boot and barely able to walk. There’d been no sign of my pack, either. None of it was painting a picture I particularly liked.

  Darcy’s mouth pulled into a frown as she watched our meager shelter blacken, puffs of smoke billowing up from it. She flinched when the roof caved in, some of the logs falling outward. I’m just glad I pulled her far enough away. Even from where we stood, I could feel the heat on my face.

  “I’m scared,” she admitted, leaning into me hard. I swallowed to keep myself from telling her that I was too. It’s a rough world for a wolf alone, trying to keep a human mate safe. Darcy could fend for herself, somewhat, and I only hoped that all of this had been coincidence and something darker wasn’t at play. The constant fires made me think of magic, even though I’d never heard of hunters using something as outright offensive as that. They prefered daggers, so they could be up close and personal when they kill us.

  Missing my pack, and unsure of my next move, I looked down at her.

  “I’ve got to get dressed,” I said, “but there’s a logging road a little ways down the beach. We can take that up to the highway. Hopefully the fires won’t have reached there, and maybe we can flag down a passing car.”

  She eyed my bare chest.

  “I left my clothes down by a creek when I went fishing,” I explained. “I heard you calling and —”

  I couldn’t bear to leave you thinking that you were alone, or that I’d abandoned you, the words died in my throat before I could speak them. She gave a sharp nod.

  “I guess I’ll wait here,” she said. I didn’t like leaving her, but I needed to get dressed. I jogged down the beach, found where I’d folded my clothes, and tugged them on before returning to her.

  She was watching our shelter crumble to dust right in front of her eyes.

  “I don’t like this,” she said. I let out a sigh in agreement and then held out my hand to her.

  “You’re going to need to ride on my back,” I said. “There’s no way you’re hobbling along the beach. It’ll take us too long to get there.”

  She sighed and then nodded. I turned and she as she hoisted herself onto my back, letting me catch her as her legs settled over my hips.

  “I’m not too heavy, right?”

  I snorted.

  “Even if I wasn’t strong enough to carry three times your weight for days, you wouldn’t be too heavy,” I said, and started to pick my way across the uneven ground. The beach got smoother closer to the logging road, but I wasn’t going to risk dumping her on the ground and hurting her even more.

  Clouds were starting to blow overhead and I frowned as a wicked, cold wind picked up. Darcy huddled against my back, shivering in her thin clothes. Minutes later when the clouds that had been threatening us in the distance covered over the sky.

  “Are you fucking serious?” I demanded. I felt Darcy shift on my back, pushing her hands on my shoulders as she lifted herself higher. At the far edge of the lake, the rain was beginning to sheet down, drifting in a haze of gray that pattered down onto the water.

  We had just gotten to the logging r
oad when the skies opened up over us, soaking into the dirt and soaking us. I jogged under a thick pine for cover. In the distance, thunder crackled.

  The universe was pissed at us. Or we were cursed. I was hoping it wasn’t the latter and annoyed that it was likely the former.

  “Are you okay to keep walking?” Darcy asked into my ear. “I don’t really wanna stay here. If we can get up to the highway maybe we can find our way back to the compound that way?” She sounded cautiously optimistic, and I didn’t blame her for having hope.

  “Yeah, but I’m gonna jog if it won’t hurt you too much.”

  “There’s some sort of horse joke in there, but I’m too tired to make it,” she said. I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m not a horse,” I said and then picked up a slow jog, trying not to jostle her too much. We’d both end up with bruises, the not-sexy-kind, if she bounced around on my hips too much. The road was at a slight incline, and with the rain pelting down in my face, and the driving wind, I was wearing out faster than I had the day before. Plus there was less adrenaline running through my veins, and I was starving. My stomach kept growling, a quiet noise against the backdrop of rain, my breathing, and the strike of my feet on the ground.

  At a steady pace I could run for hours unburdened, but Darcy’s weight was getting to me, and after twenty minutes, I felt my energy flagging.

  Darcy must have noticed because she sat up on my back from where she’d been hunched to avoid the rain.

  “I gotta get down,” she said, wriggling. “Hurts.” I stopped in my tracks and helped her ease herself down. She winced visibly, squinting when the rain started pouring down harder. At this rate we wouldn’t make it up the road to the highway before it got dark, and we definitely wouldn’t make it back to the compound.

  The one good thing was that the rain would help fight whatever remnants of the fire were left.

  “Darcy,” I said, pausing when she looked at me. Her curls were damp, hanging long and loose around her shoulders. She looked half-drowned and miserable. “I think we should keep moving. We can’t stay out in the open like this.” A gust of wind tugged at our damp clothes, emphasizing my point. Darcy shivered and then nodded.