Page 23 of Cast in Shadow
A fresh wave of fear scented the air again, thick and heavy,swirling around me. I stepped around the tree closest to me and almost wished I hadn’t.
The girl was there, wedged between a jagged boulder and the papery trunk. Tangled black hair framed a face tight with fear. Torn jeans. Filthy shirt. She was shaking so hard it was a miracle the tree wasn’t vibrating right along with her.
Any wolf who’d been watching me would have seen me notice her. A smart one would have followed my gaze. That gave me about half a second to come up with a plan.
Gritting my teeth, I reached into the shadows and ripped the girl from her hiding spot. She landed at my feet in a trembling heap. It felt like just about the shittiest way to handle the situation, but I needed her fear of me to feel absolutely real to the rest of them.
I hauled her up by her hair, exposing her neck, and created a ball of brilliant orange fire in my palm. The magical flames spit sparks against her bare skin that had her flinching and whimpering as she tried to pull away.
“The girl is coming with me.” I projected my voice out into the trees, trying not to let the fact that I felt like a monster for tormenting a traumatized teenage girl show on my face. “If any of you try to stop me, Iwillkill her.”
After a beat, a dirt brown wolf with a black strip running the length of his back stepped out from his hiding place, shifting from wolf to man in a move so fluid it was hard not to be impressed.
As a man, he was relatively tall, with a long and lean muscular build, and brown hair that looked like it was in one of those awkward growing out phases after a bad haircut. I could forgive the hair—we’d all been there—but the energy pulsing from him, so muddy it barely qualified as any shade of gold, made it all too easy to dislike him.
“Easy, witch,” he said, his alpha influence flooding the words.
“The girl is mine.” I let my magic flare, creating more sparks that popped against her skin. She screamed and tried to twist free of my grip, but I had her ebony locks good and knotted in my fist.
My magic wasn’t really burning her. It was uncomfortable, sure. It might leave a few red marks that would be gone in an hour, but there was only enough power behind it to terrify her. That was all I needed.
“Naomi Prentice is mine.” He took another step forward, as if he was completely unconcerned with how vulnerable his naked human form was at that moment. “And as a member of my pack, it’s my job to protect her.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of that claim. Even from the brief glimpses I’d caught of the girl, she was underfed, covered in old and new bruises, and scared shitless. No, this guy wasn’t interested in protecting her, just controlling her.
“Hand her over to me now, and we will let you leave here,” he said, lifting his arms out to his sides with his palms up.
The movement must have been a signal, because more wolves came slinking out of the bushes and from behind trees. The ones with lighter energy hung back. I couldn’t blame them. If the girl was any indication of how good wolves were treated in that wretched pack, I would have hung back too.
Except that wasn’t true at all. I would have killed my alpha. But I hadn’t been raised in the life. I wasn’t a shifter. To me, family wasn’t about blood or blind pack loyalty. It was so much more than that.
The girl’s energy stood in stark contrast to her oppressor’s. Hers was bright yellow, innocent and cheerful, like the center of a blooming daisy. There was nothing dark or menacing about her. And yet, her own alpha saw her as a threat.
“What’s your name, witch?” he asked, spitting the word at me like an insult.
“You first.” I yanked on the girl’s hair to pull another whimper out of her. It had the reaction I expected, lighting up the alpha’s face.
His eyes gleamed. He liked this. The fear. The power.
“Levi Dunham, alpha of the Clark Ridge pack,” he said, pushing more of his greasy alpha influence out as he puffed up his chest in a pitiful display.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t powerful. He was. What was pitiful was that he kept trying to use that power to influence someone outside of his pack. That was a violation of shifter law, precisely because strong alphascouldinfluence others. Other shifters, non-magical humans, and yes, even some witches. Just not this witch.
“Well, Levi, it seems we’re at an impasse. You see, I’m not some second-tier witch who can be pushed around by an alpha, and certainly not one as weak as you.”
That earned me a few growls as the darkest of the wolves closed in around us.
“Weak?” Levi let out a laugh that would have sounded more at home coming from a hyena than a wolf. “I am the strongest alpha Clark Ridge has ever seen.”
“Are you now?” I could feel the energy rolling off him, but it was nothing compared to the fury carried in the magic that was barreling toward him.
Bridget was close and she was coming in hot. I didn’t know how I knew that or why I could sense it. Hell, maybe it was my gut telling me something only the universe could possibly know, but I had no reason not to trust the feeling.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to wipe out half the pack to get the girl free of them after all, no matter how much that ideatempted me. Based on what I’d heard over the comms coming out here, they all might deserve to die gruesome, painful deaths.
“Hand over the girl,” Levi snarled. “Or I will personally see to it that you don’t live long enough to see the sun set.”
His words weren’t enough to scare me, but they had the girl writhing in my grip. “Let me go!”
