Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
My story, she realized, is the origin story of a very wicked witch.
Footsteps neared the Mount.
She stood in the moonlight, naked, her orgasm dried on her inner thighs. No matter. Meek Meera was gone. In her place rose a voluptuous enchantress with no reason to fear anything. She lifted her blazing palms and dared this interloper to say
one
wrong
word.
Anyone who tried to intimidate her ever again would pay the price. I will smite them, mothering their wrath against themselves.
Into the clearing burst Thane—full beast—carrying Ditch in his arms.
Meera’s jaw dropped. He was hauling her toward the portal to the mortal world!
Her power thrummed, tasting the magic tangled around him. Rosewyn’s clung to the king. Clever little viper. She must have tampered with the containment spells even before Meera ever sent them.
How did I miss that?
Ditch would figure it out and blame Meera. She’ll kill me for my failure.
Or she’ll try to.
“Meera!” Ditch screamed, hardly noting her nakedness. “Thank Hecate! Use your power on him!”
Meera hesitated. Could even Ditch handle the fury Meera Newteye planned to unbridle on Lowell and his kind? On Lowell and his new mate? Meera’s lips drew back from her teeth. Maybe Ditch taking a permanent vacation was exactly what needed to happen.
Then a flicker of her former loyalty resurfaced. A Lykae was attacking a fellow witch, and she could stop it.
Just as Meera was about to strike, Ditch shrieked from the mountain path, “You traitorous fool! Follow my fucking orders, or I’ll dine on your corpse!”
Just as she had with Lazara, Meera’s friend and mentor.
The reminder turned Meera’s cold heart colder. The Wrath Mother gave Ditch a cheery salute and called, “Go with gods!”
Thane and Ditch disappeared up the path on their way to another world.
Just as well.
I’m the high priestess now.
Chapter 60
Rose
Rose’s skin glowed, luminous and healed, from Meera’s bounty of power. As she returned to her secluded cottage, her body felt lighter than air, as if rage itself carried her aloft.
Her mother, Hecate rest her soul, had once told her friends that every witch’s body was a cauldron: What you poured into it determined what boiled out. Tonight, Rose’s was overfull with magic and defiance, her cauldron brimming.
Otherwise, she might have hesitated before standing down in the face of a Lykae attack. Might have hesitated to use the Riders to neutralize Ditch’s carefully woven traps and containment spells. The laws of the covenants forbade tampering with another witch’s power. But needs must; Ditch deserved punishment.
And those traps weren’t really to keep the coven safe. They were to keep two royal Lykae brothers from reaching her, an outcome Rose wanted above all things.
One brother meant to abduct her from the Skein. The other meant to kill her.
And Rose—well, she could’ve gone either way.
Now she felt it like a tremor in her bones: Thane was on his way to the hidden portal no one was supposed to know existed.
Rose had broken worse laws for far less. She’d bartered charms to the stone nymphs for secrets, selling forbidden spells for whispers. What was one more sin when the payoff glittered so bright?
When she’d heard Thane’s rough howl carrying from a distance, she’d laughed. Take her far, wolf, she’d thought. All the way to Gaia. Even now, imagining Ditch’s outrage made Rose smirk, her expression sharp as glass.
The smirk froze when another howl split the night—closer, deeper, threaded with fury.
Rose stilled.
The other brother.
Shouldn’t he be pursuing his prey?
Another call, even nearer, ripped through the trees.
Her stomach plummeted. “To…my house?” she whispered.
The air thickened around her, heavy as vapor. He would find no defenses. Because she had disabled them all.
Another howl. Too near this time. The walls shivered with it.
Her pulse pounded like a drum in her throat. A rampaging wolf was the fear she could never quite banish, the nightmare that returned whenever she closed her eyes…
Concentrate. Stay calm.
Meera’s wrath roiled inside her. Rose was fully empowered, could turn a Lykae into a smear right now. Her palms radiated light. Her glow spread, searing through her clothes, veins incandescent. Rose’s cauldron had been set over ungodly heat and sealed too tight. Pressure building, ready to blow—
Her door exploded inward.
A shape filled the frame, shoulders brushing the splintered wood, the moon clinging to his naked body like smoke.
The male from her nightmares.
I know him.
Blood streaked his face and regenerating throat. When his fevered eyes locked on her, memories crashed over Rose.
She clutched her head as a past life from eons ago poured through her mind in a cascade of pain and revelation. A red riding hood as a girl. Training for high priestesshood. Beloved by my coven. A wolf in the shadows. Screams. Blood.
His name came to her like a curse:
Straegan.
King Thane’s younger brother. Her murderer. The one who had devoured her.
Not some ancestor, not a distant beast buried in story and dust, but the same creature breathing before her now.