by Elle Thorne
“So, then, why?”
“He says he has a decree from the Shifter Council. That I’m to stand trial for executing shifters. They’re sending a representative to pick me up.”
“You?” Alannah fought the urge to laugh out loud. “Doesn’t he know you couldn’t do that to save your life? That you’re a healer?”
Mireille looked at Alannah through the thin webbing, then shrugged.
She was going to scream at him. And rail at him. And…
Alannah thought of the man.
He just doesn’t look seedy.
There was a clarity in his eyes, a forthrightness, an honesty she couldn’t remember seeing in too many men—especially not shifters.
Not that she didn’t love shifters, she did. The Romanoff shifters. Most other shifters, she didn’t really associate with.
Too many of them were like that damned wolf shifter tracker.
But this man, their captor, he had a look that screamed goodness.
And he was hot.
I didn’t just think that. He’s not hot.
Yes, he was. And he hadn’t hurt her, even though she attacked him with her blue fire bolts. He couldn’t be that bad, could he?
Then why is he holding us captive?
She refused to buy that crap about a Shifter Council.
Well, he hadn’t hurt her sister. And he’d fed her. But what was this business about a trial?
“Hey!” She yelled for him, grabbing the silk bars Vengeance had created.
She jerked back, burned by the enchanted web. She looked at her hands. Scorched, red, almost to the point of blistering.
One glance at Vengeance confirmed the spider was watching her intently.
“You’re a witch’s pet. So why do you belong to a shifter, you big brute of a spider?”
Another hiss and the spider sped up the rate of her spinning.
Chapter Eight
Hawke had to step out of the room and get things in order with his bear. With every breath that woman took, every word she spoke, his bear was going crazy in his head.
The pacing, the roaring, the growling, this was going to give him a headache of grand proportions.
“I’ll be back, Ven.” He turned his back on the spider and slipped up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He had no doubt Vengeance would handle the witch.
Just past the top of the stairs, he pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table.
What the hell was going on?
His bear, his testosterone, his dick. All of this was too damned much.
His bear paused, his rumbling softer, making snuffling sounds, no longer pacing like a rabid creature.
Hawke listened to his bear, heard his cause, tried to be impartial, finally he had to answer his bear.
No. She can’t be. She’s a witch, he told his bear. But Hawke knew it wasn’t only his bear he had to convince; it was his own betraying body and mind also reacting to her.
Then it hit him.
Magic. She’d caused some sort of magic to make him feel attracted to her.
It didn’t sound right, but what else could it be.
“Button it,” he murmured to his protesting bear. “You’re not always right.”
Down below, the beautiful, green-eyed witch was bellowing. Who’d have thought she’d be able to get so loud. She could double as a drill sergeant.
He shook his head at his predicament. The brown-haired one wasn’t an issue. This new one, the firebrand, was. One deep exhale and he made for the basement door.
Less than a moment later, he was surveying the sullen, now silent witch. Then he walked past her. To his amusement, her jaw dropped. Seems she wasn’t used to being ignored.
“What’s her name?” he asked the brown-haired one, indicating the redhead with his thumb.
“Leave my sister alone,” Sweetcheeks firebrand snapped.
He gave her a quick glance, then turned to Vengeance perched on the nearest shelf, watching them.
“If that witch opens her mouth again, weave her a gag.”
“Oomph.” The witch clamped her lips shut.
Turning back to the brown-haired girl, he noted her frightened, wide eyes. “Well? Your name?”
Her eyes rolled up, only white was showing. No sooner did that happen, she collapsed, then began to convulse.
She flopped around in the cage, her body jerking against the webbing Ven had woven. With each contact her body made, a sizzling sound ensued. Right after that, she’d jerk away from the point of contact, but did it so violently, she bounced herself right back onto the voltage.
“Fuck.” The little witch was burning herself on the cage.
He didn’t hear his own expletive, and it took a second to realize why.
Behind him, the firebrand was screaming bloody murder. Yelling at him to help her sister.
He whirled on her. “What the hell is going on with her?”
“She does this. She has these episodes. Help her, please! Get her out of there. She’s—”
The brown-haired witch was burning. The air was thick with the smell of her scorched skin. It would have been bad for a human’s nose, but for a shifter’s sensitive smelling senses, it was overwhelming.
Hawke allowed his bear to release claws on one of his hands and he shred the fabric quickly. Luckily, Ven’s webs neither contained nor harmed him.
Within seconds, he had an opening wide enough to step through. He entered the cage and picked up the thrashing witch.
Hell, I hope she’s not faking and doesn’t suddenly cast a spell on me.
The other witch had finally stopped her infernal screaming, thankfully, because he’d been ready to tell Vengeance to shut her up with a carefully placed weave.
Holding the brown-haired witch against his chest, he carried her out. She was still thrashing, but it had lessened. She was angling in toward him as if seeking protection.
“What’s wrong with this witch,” he asked Firebrand as he sat on a trunk.
“Her name is Mireille, you d-bag.”
He looked at her like she’d gone crazy. She had more guts than anyone he’d ever met, male or female. He brushed hair away from Mireille’s face and winced at the sight of the burns she had on her cheeks and forehead. He glanced at her exposed arms. There too. Angry red slashes with blisters.
“What’s wrong with Mireille?” he asked her sister.
Firebrand’s shoulders slumped as if in defeat. “She’s done this since she was a kid. Some sort of seizures.”
“Why hasn’t she seen a doctor?” Not that he’d call one to come here. Not now. Not with them being held as captives in his home. Yeah, that wouldn’t do.
The firebrand sighed. “It’s a witch thing. A human doctor wouldn’t do.”
“So then why haven’t the witches taken care of it?” Right after voicing that, he asked himself why he bothered. Did he even care about witches anyway? The answer was clearly no, but yet, here he was with one in his arms, holding her like a little child, protecting her from whatever it was tormenting her body and mind.
“It’s complicated.” Firebrand set her jaw, as if not willing to answer anymore.
Mireille was still having tremors, though, at least she’d stopped thrashing.
“Please, let me hold my sister. I swear, I promise, on everything I hold dear, I will not do anything. Please.”
He didn’t want to. But he had one image that kept returning to his mind.
Renee’s broken body and how he never got a chance to hold her. The shifters there to clean up wouldn’t even let him get close enough to hug her. Said there was too much devastation.
“Ven.” He nodded to the spider, who’d been watching them carefully from the shelf. “Let her out.”
“Thank you,” Firebrand managed between tears streaming from her eyes. Tears that the little spitfire was clearly trying to hide.
“If she tries anything, Ven. Put her back in a cage. And then gag her.”
He was still the witc
h hunter, after all.
Vengeance leapt from her spot on the shelf. Using a line she’d made herself, she swung across like it was a vine in a jungle. She alit on the cage, and with precision, sliced through her own woven web, allowing an opening large enough that the witch stepped through.
The witch came closer, sat next to him on the trunk, put her hand on her sister’s forehead.
“What’s your name, witch?” He couldn’t keep thinking of her as Firebrand or calling her Sweetcheeks.
As if caught off-guard, or not realizing who she was talking to, or maybe she was involved in checking on her sister, she murmured, “Alannah.”
Alannah.
The way she said it, it was like hearing a sigh on an ethereal wind. It flowed through him. Touching him in places he didn’t think he had anymore, striking chords and emotions that he’d have denied existed if ever asked.
He let the name roll around in his mind. His bear roared. Hawke tuned out the bear. This was the time for logic, not to be driven by emotion or nature.
Mireille was beginning to settle, but that made her burns even more obvious. Guilt plagued him.
Why? Why do I feel guilty that she’s burned? She’s wanted by the Shifter Council to stand trial for killing shifters.
But yet, she looked and seemed so innocent.
It’d be a lot easier to believe the Firebr—Alannah, he corrected himself—had been the killer of shifters.
Though there was a part of him that denied this. She simply did not seem like one to do that.
“I have salve that will help her with the burns. How long is she usually unconscious when this happens?”
“Thank you. Please. It varies.”
“I’ll get it.” He moved Mireille into her sister’s arms. “Ven will be watching you.” He voiced the warning, though he didn’t feel he had to. He didn’t think she’d try anything.
“As if I can carry my sister out of here.”
True. But he didn’t want to agree with her. Plus, her sister could wake, and then they could try something. Though he didn’t think Mireille would be in a condition to do anything, even after she did wake. Those burns were going to hurt like hell.
The salve would help. He made for the stairs and again took them two at a time, trying not to be too loud, not wanting to disturb Mireille.
He found what he was looking for in the back of the cabinet above the sink. He’d not used it in so long that the seal was stuck. It had been left over from the time he’d spent in the military. He pushed the thought away. Days he’d rather not think of. Days when he’d tried to deal with losing Renee.
Back in the basement, he held the jar out to Alannah. “This will do the trick.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me,” he said softly.
Chapter Nine
Trust him? How can I trust him when I don’t even know him? Alannah dipped her finger into the jar and found herself touching something the consistency of petroleum jelly, but with a cool temperature and a light tan hue.
She raised it to her nose and sniffed, her eyes on the large man. It didn’t have an odor. And it didn’t seem to be affecting her fingers. She dabbed a bit on the top of her hand.
No effect.
Maybe she could trust him.
“I don’t even know your name.” She bit down on her lip. She hadn’t meant to say that.
He frowned, not in anger, but almost in confusion. “I’m Hawke.” His voice was a deep baritone, deeper than it had been before.
She studied the face that belonged to this man named Hawke, looking for signs of deception, but instead, she found honesty.
How can that be?
He had a strong jawline, deep set eyes that glowed with an intensity that shook her to the core. Lips that were full, but not unmanly.
Who was this man who’d abducted her sister and held her for the Shifter Council? Mikhail Romanoff had connections with the council. Alannah needed to ask him for yet another favor.
She rubbed the salve over the burned areas on her sister’s face. The urge to hurt him, to use her magic to destroy him and his spider was great. Maybe not as great as it had been earlier, for he was helping them, after all.
“And after this? Back to our cells?” She chanced a glance away from her task to ask him the question.
He didn’t answer. His eyes were glued to her face, it almost made her uncomfortable.
And it did something else to her.
Something she didn’t want to define and surely didn’t want to admit.
What the heck kind of name was Hawke, she wanted to add.
“Why are you holding us?” she whispered.
Chapter Ten
Hawke found himself in the odd position of not knowing how to answer that.
He studied her face, unable to tear his gaze away. Her nose was tipped just so, as if it were as stubborn as she. Her hair caught the scant sunlight from one pinprick of a hole in the blackout curtains. It gleamed, bringing to mind a burnished antique metal. Her eyes, that green, almost unreal they were so green. Her face, shaped like a heart on a body that just didn’t quit.
This woman was dangerous, and a risk to his cause. He steeled himself against her charms. Charms she clearly didn’t know had an effect on him.
She’d finished applying the lotion. He capped the jar and set it next to her. “For later, in case she needs it.”
Mireille looked like an innocent kid. He couldn’t get past that. He wondered then, if there was a chance that perhaps the sister that they sought was Alannah.
“I’ll show you,” he told her. He’d verify his reasons with this.
He checked to be sure Ven was still on guard duty. The spider’s eyes were moving left to right, ever vigilant, then he headed toward the filing cabinet in the corner.
Hawke pulled a file out and flipped through papers.
The name on the sheet was clearly Mireille Autumn.
“Here.” He held it out to her. “See for yourself. Shifter Council. Your sister’s name. A summons to appear. Here’s my contract.” He handed her the final page.
Alannah took them from him, laying them across Mireille’s arm, who was still in her lap. Surely her legs were going to be numb shortly from holding her little sister.
She scanned the first page, then the second, the last, then went back to the first.
He took this opportunity to study her features, noting an errant series of freckles on the bridge of her nose that he wanted to touch, first with a fingertip, then with his lips.
Her profile was patrician, at the same time, hinting at a wildness deep within.
She spent a long moment on the first page again, before finally announcing, “I don’t think this is real.”
“How can it not be real? Who would do that? To what end?”
“How do I know you didn’t manufacture this?” she snapped.
“How do I know they didn’t pick the wrong sister. Mireille doesn’t seem like the type to harm a fly. You, on the other hand.”
“What?” Her voice started out strong then transformed to a hiss as she looked down at Mireille out like a light. “I can prove it. With a phone call to Mikhail Romanoff. If you even know who that is.”
“I served with a Romanoff in the Middle East. Malachi Romano—”
A creak on the stairs caught his attention. He snapped his head in that direction.
Alannah did the same.
A voice came from the dimness around the corner. “Isn’t this cozy?”
It was the one who’d given him the papers, who’d offered the bounty for Mireille Autumn.
Alannah gasped. “You. I should have put this together.” Then she looked at Hawke with pure disgust in her eyes. “You’re in on this.”
He glanced from the one that hired him to Alannah, then back. How did they know one another? What the hell did Alannah mean?
He rose to his feet, stepped away from the trunk, and cast a glance at Vengeance to make sure she was at attentio
n because he had a feeling shit might just get real.
Chapter Eleven
Ilse.
What the hell was Ilse doing here?
It hit Alannah like a ton of bricks. Ilse and this shifter called Hawke were in collusion. But why?
She recoiled at the sight of the Krauss coven leader who’d been the head chair of Northfork the last time Alannah had seen her. Northfork, the guild of witches in northern New York state, touching on and actually in part of Mikhail Romanoff’s territory.
Alannah heard there’d been an upset of the leadership at Northfork after she’d helped the Romanoffs save Fiona from Ilse’s nefarious plans. Fiona, a witch and falcon shifter hybrid, was in imminent danger under Ilse’s thumb.
Until Alannah and the Romanoffs stepped in.
And now, Ilse was here.
Probably for payback.
With him.
“You disgust me,” she said to the shifter. She ignored the confused look on his face. He was clearly more than adept at acting. So sure, why wouldn’t he pretend to be surprised? She glanced at the still unconscious Mireille. She’d move slightly and let her lay on the trunk while she took care of the betraying duo. “And you, Ilse, you’ve brought anything that’s happened to you on yourself.”
The spider was perched on the shelf, her front legs raised, hissing up a storm.
Well, hell, I’ll just have to take care of all three. The spider, the shifter, and the witch.
Hawke rose to his feet, stood between Ilse and Alannah.
What the hell is he doing?
As if matters couldn’t get worse, that was the precise moment Mireille awoke, mumbling and moving about.
Alannah swiftly disengaged herself and left Mireille on the trunk, stepping to the side so if Ilse did cast a spell, Mireille wouldn’t be hurt as collateral damage.
“I should have known. The two of you are working together.” She glared at Hawke.
Hawke moved to the left. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I freelance. I showed you the papers.”
“And I told you they’re fake. I can prove it. With one phone call.”