Page 109 of Shifting Hearts 1
“I think you taught someone who didn’t forget.”
She turns, walking deeper into the shop. The shelves are cluttered with jars, candles, bones, and books with locks. The air hums with low magic, half-finished spells clinging to everything like dust.
“You left,” she says softly. “Ran off with your tail tucked, pretending to be human. Psychic readings? Tarot cards? Cheap tricks.”
“Better than using blood magic to control monsters.”
She spins. “You were born of monsters. I was trying to protect you.”
“No. You were trying to erase me.”
Her eyes narrow. “You were the first of our kind to carry wolf and witch blood. That’s not balance, Emilia. That’s a curse. Your father’s blood made you soft.”
“No. It made me strong enough to walk away.”
We stare at each other, a decade’s worth of hurt and hatred between us and then she sighs.
“There is someone. One of the younger witches. Nara.” The name lands like frost on my skin. “She was obsessed withshadow craft. She resented you. She thought you were the reason the coven refused to teach blood bond magic.”
“She’s wrong.” I’m not asking, I’m telling her.
“I know. But it didn’t matter. She disappeared three months ago. After her sister was killed in a rogue land dispute.”
Rogue land. Like what Lucian was investigating.
“She’s trying to raise revenants,” I whisper. “That’s why the shifters are being hunted. She’s binding their power to claim territory.”
“No, she’s rebuilding the forest in her image,” Moira says. “Just like I warned you would happen if you refused to take your place.”
“You didn’t want me to take a place, you wanted me to sit in chains.”
“And now your silence has fed a fire that will burn this town and all the other around it.”
I leave the shop with more questions than answers and a heart full of ash. Nara. We grew up together, but she was cruel in quiet ways… whispers, spells left half-cast, hexes she swore were “jokes.” I ignored her. I pitied her. And now she’s killing wolves fuelled by an imagined feud and grief.
And she won’t stop until someone stops her or dies trying. I don’t go back to the cabin not yet. Instead, I go to the lake.
Crystal Falls glitters under the weak sunlight, the mist clinging to the waterfall like silk. I kneel at the water’s edge and dip my fingers into the surface.
“Show me,” I whisper.
The water shimmers and I see an image of her. Nara, dressed in black, standing over a corpse with a silver knife. Carving and chanting. Claiming land that was never hers.
The image flickers and then shifts. Now I see Lucian. He’s bleeding and alone. And he’s walking into her trap. My heart stops. She’s going after him.
ELEVEN
A Wolf Caught in Thorns
Lucien
The scent is wrong. It’s too clean and too deliberate. It smells like someone dragged a body through the underbrush and then buried the blood.
I crouch beside the old cedar stump, inhaling slowly. Human magic. It’s not natural and it’s not feral. This is bait, I’m sure of it. And I’m the damn wolf walking into the snare. Still, I move forward because someone has to end this. And if I wait any longer, I’ll lose my edge and maybe even her.
I’ve barely slept since she left this morning. My body’s still torn up, my ribs are screaming, and my head pounding, but the bond has been thrumming like a live wire in my chest. Something’s wrong. She’s not safe.
I find the ritual circle by accident. It’s buried beneath a thicket of brambles, poison ivy and thorn rose, unnatural in their growth pattern, twisting toward each other like claws. And in the center of the clearing, a shallow grave.
