Page 41 of The Alpha’s Midnight Witch

His gold eyes cut to the door.

Wolf.

The porch light explodes. Glass sprays across the steps in a bright hiss. The dark rushes up against the windows. Sid arches into a black comma at my ankle, every hair on end.

A whisper slides under the door. Soft. Female. Close enough to be standing on my brand-new welcome mat.

"He cannot keep you from us."

I can't move. My hand's still on the bolt. My breath fogs white in a house that was warm ten seconds ago.

Sid presses his whole small body to my shin, growling, and then the voice comes again, no longer faint, no longer deniable, loud as a slap between my ears.

Run.

8

GAGE

TEN DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

Whatever is stalking Maren smells like grave dirt and burned rosemary.

I find the scent at the tree line before the sky goes gray, where the dew hasn't lifted and the maples stand black against blacker. It threads out of her yard and into the woods like a wire someone strung on purpose.

My wolf wants out.

For once I let him.

Bone slides. Muscle rolls. The cold breaks into a hundred separate smells, and the world drops into focus. I hit the leaf litter with four paws and run.

The trail winds past the creek. Over the old logging road nobody's graded since I was a boy. Into the dead acres where the trees grow too close and the light never quite reaches the ground. The Lantern Coven owns half of it. My pack owns the rest.

Nobody invited the Veiled Hand Coven onto either side.

But, that's never stopped them.

Mate. Low. Certain.

I know.

Fear.

I know that too. Last night her porch light burst like a bulb full of static, and she called me instead of screaming. I tried to sound annoyed about it but didn't manage. I sat on her steps until the sky went pale and she finally slept. Maren doesn't usually let me stay. Last night she didn't argue and that worries me.

The trail ends at a circle scratched into the dirt.

I stop.

Ash. Dead marigolds, the heads snapped off. A puddle of black wax gone hard. And in the center, small and bright and wrong, a scrap of orange cloth.

It's from the apron she wears at Bell & Bone. She had it on Friday, flour on one strap, arguing with a tourist about the ethics of reproduction Ouija boards.

someone cut a piece out of it.

Ours. My wolf snarls it. Someone touched what is ours.

Someone got close enough to her life to steal a thread of it. Close enough to fold it into this.