Page 3 of Pack Witch
I didn’tneedto meet Julian. I already had, years before. Met him, touched him, and discovered who he was to me.
My true mate. The one who had left me to suffer alone, for all these years.
As Ida shared more about Julian’s plight, I slipped from the log to the ground, letting the solid earth support me when my legs could not. But not even an entire mountain could keep my mind from flying away, back to the night I methim.
Chapter 2
Zinnia
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS BEFORE
Come to me, little star.Come find me, now.
I will. Today.I sat up in bed, my magic coursing through me with a drummingyes, yes, yes.I’d never had much magic orhopebefore, but now my veins filled with a pleasant, liquid fire, and certainty.
I’d never shifted, a late bloomer even for my family, but for the past week I’d been dreaming of a tall, broad, dark-haired male who called me hislittle star. I’d felt my wolf beginning to wake up with every dream, until it seemed like my hands might become paws and my teeth lengthen into fangs at any moment. I could even smell a trace of him in the breeze that wafted through the open window from the northwest. Fresh cedar and the unmistakable scent of wolf.
I half-tumbled out of my bedroom, magic and hope moving through me in twin rivers, my wolf rising and howling in triumph thathewas near enough for us to find. He would draw her out, and she would run under the moon with her mate.
The house was empty as I ran through it to the door. My mother had vanished the year before, crossing into Northern packlands with my aunt to beg for peace. They’d butchered ourelders and children just for living near the Blue Mountains. No one ever came back.
Why the other packs had punished us for Occidens’ crimes, I’d never understand. We were healers, not warriors—a small river pack who’d kept our heads down for generations, whose magic came both from our wolf natures and from the earth itself, our witch heritage.
But it hadn’t mattered. They came for us anyway.
My father and brothers were killed before they could speak their truth. Everyone else in our family had either been slaughtered or vanished. My mother, my aunt, my cousins... The only ones left were me and my older sister Aster, and she was half-dead herself. Her wolf had been slipping away for the past week as she mourned the death of her true mate, the other half of her soul.
She was already outside, working in the light of the full moon. Dragging a fallen cedar limb across the clearing in front of our small house, and stacking it with a dozen others. I was almost certain it was her own funeral pyre she was building, but I didn’t dare ask. She’d shaved her hair in grief, and the light shone on the smooth, pale brown surface.
I stepped closer, but she didn’t turn to greet me. I spoke anyway. “I felt him, Aster. I think… I think he’s close.”
She didn’t ask who. Her chin dropped, and she pulled in a long, shuddering breath. I stepped toward her, careful at first. But the words burned in my throat, and excitement pushed me closer. She was a shadow of the sister I’d grown up with. Still, she was my only remaining family, and I wanted her to feel this with me. For me.
“Did you hear me?” I said gently. “I think my mate is calling me.”
She didn’t turn, just stared straight ahead. “I hope not.”
The words stopped me cold. I blinked at her, stunned. “What?”
When she finally looked at me, her eyes were so hollow, it felt like staring into the space someone had left behind. “Stay in the house, Zinnia. Go back to bed. It’s safer.”
My wolf snarled low in my chest. The rush of joy and magic I’d woken with began to ebb, the world going heavy again. “Why?”
“Because if you never meet your true mate, you’ll never have to suffer like this.” The way she said it—flat, final—left no space for argument.
But it hurt. By the moon, it hurt. I swallowed hard, unsure what to say as she turned away again.
My wolf whined mournfully inside my chest, recognizing that Aster had given up. Dying from a broken heart, and a severed mate bond.
I ran. Not to escape my sister’s pain, but because I couldn’t bear not to find him. I left her behind, her sorrow too deep to follow, and chased the thread of him into the trees and over a shallow river.
Then the wind shifted. Cedar, again, but now the scent held something else bitter and resinous, like ink. Why would my mate smell of ink?
Ink and blood. Was he hurt? The lure was fading for some reason, but my wolf was on the hunt.
It took me hours of running on my human feet, following the scent, until I came close enough to slow. I hadn’t run across the Blue Mountains, but along the valleys that led to Occidens, the westernmost packlands, where the Alpha Mothers and Alphas once did their great magic and ceremonies.
Hearing voices, I slid into a stand of birches near some small outbuildings, leaves pressing on my skin as I asked the trees to conceal me. It was dangerous to be so close to the pack housing.I’d heard stories that the males here had gone feral after they’d been imprisoned inside their borders. I’d heard worse rumors that Russian shifters had snuck into Occidens, ones who didn’t have honor and didn’t fear our magic, since they had their own. I wasn’t sure it was true, and I was afraid to find out, but I was good at hiding.
