Page 98 of Shifters Awakening

A thousand bodies surged throughout the space, but only about a hundred moved toward the rear of the gathering place, jostling and bumping into one another.

Again, I spun toward the place where Emma had been the last time I’d glimpsed her. Only a wafting cloud of dark smoke remained. She was no longer seated in the corner of my mind, and my heart squeezed in a vice made by a panic so large it made my arms ache, turning them weaker than they were and making my legs threaten to buckle.

Emma was gone. Our multimorph, the savior of the shifters, had vanished. She had completely disappeared in a puff of smoke.

I sprinted to the vacated space and nearly wretched on the stench of Acheron’s magic. What a disgusting death mage. Magic could be beautiful, wonderful, incredible, but he used it to ruin and consume, perverting what it might have been.

“Where is she?” I roared, spinning in place, searching for her rainbow hair and flashing eyes.

Yet my mate was nowhere in the protected gathering place. I’d blinked, and she’d disappeared.

How had we missed the layout of thetrees?

Hundreds of shifters changed into their animal formsthroughout the gathering place, and the wind whipped around us. Ravens flew overhead, bears roared, and big cats darted in all directions. Torbin and Marcus moved through the large space while the magical magnolia tree blazed. Several shifters tried to use available liquid to put it out, but the flames didn’t diminish.

“The trees took her,” Olivia gasped, holding her hands up and studying her bubbling skin. “How did the trees take her? What the hell did he do?”

“Aye, it was the trees,” Jasper panted, “and she had a spell cloaking her, burning through her. We couldn’t help her, couldn’t save her.”

Olivia shoved her burned hands into the ice chest, still filled with ice left over after serving drinks. Jasper crouched down beside her, his face twisted in pain. The ice clattered in the cooler as his hands joined hers.

“Jasper, what happened to her?” Olivia whimpered. “Where did she go?”

The fox shifter stared through me. “I don’t know.”

Olivia groaned. “She’s a healer, not a destroyer, so none of that was something she did without knowing. That couldn’t possibly be her magic.”

“You two shift and get healed up. We have to find her,” I ordered.

“What’s he doing with her?” Olivia rasped.

I had no answer, but a shiver ran through me. Conjecture didn’t help.Onmywatch, we lost our magical tree… and our magical Emma.However long it took, I’d find her.

I lapped the large amphitheater,sniffing the air and consulting with my wolf. A hint of her caught my nose, but her scent had been wrapped in the stench of Acheron. Without the bond between us, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sense it at all, and I lingered in the place she had been.

Olivia and Jasper summoned their animal selves, sending a gust of wind over my skin and a surge of responding magic through me. The red fox and the blond wolf stood close together, their eyes radiating sorrow at me… as though their pity helped anything at all. Then they disappeared into the crush of the crowd of shifters.

My mouth twisted into a grimace. I bit back a furious yell as I waited for Torbin and Marcus to report. In all of our secret work to locate the traitors, not once had I considered the gathering place to be a threat, but of course, it was the only place Acheron knew Emmamustappear, in accordance with our histories and our customs. The annual Hunter’s Moon Conclave had been a logical assumption.

The spell must have been fashioned to attack only the multimorph, and the tree had gotten caught in the crossfire, collateral damage in an attack meant only for the special magic from a special shifter. It gave proof to the legend of the tree’s roots having soaked up the blood and the residual power of the last multimorph.

Had those trees been arranged like that forever or had Acheron worked his magic to trim the forest and wrap the existing trunks with spells meant to spirit Emma away to another place for him to work his black magic on her?

Torbin lumbered to a halt in front of me, amidst the tinkling of little bells in his fur. He jumped off of his front paws to stand while he shifted back into his human self as Marcus joined us. A moment later, Jasper and Olivia had returned to their human forms, and they all collected in a semicircle around me.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“First things first,” I said. “Let’s evacuate these shifters. They’re in the way.”

With so many bodies, we couldn’t effectively hunt for Emma. Too many smells, too many shifter scents muddled the air, making it nearly impossible to trace Emma’s scent.

Torbin, Marcus, Olivia, and Jasper all worked together to remove everyone from the Conclave. With their arms outstretched, they started directing traffic out of the invisible building, and a surge of several hundred marched up the aisles of the seating areas as Torbin and Marcus boomed instructions behind them. When she spoke to worried members of the clans, Olivia’s face softened, and Jasper shook the hands and squeezed shoulders of others.

Shit.

My compassion had drained from me when Emma had gone. At least Olivia and Jasper were keeping their heads on straight, and I hoped they were giving helpful advice to every shifter as they left. I hadn’t once considered how frightening the burning magnolia tree or the disappearing multimorph might have been for them.Emma twisted up my insides in ways I still couldn’t fully comprehend.

Within twenty minutes, all the other shifters had gone and only the alphas remained, and I stood in the spot Emma had been spirited through, ready to give chase.

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