Chapter Forty-Two

The treaty requires two signatures of the leaders of each nation—witches and shifter wolves—as well as a witness on both sides as a second.

“I believe we are ready,” Odelia says. “If I might, I’d like to suggest forgoing the traditional signatures in ink, and instead using signatures that are magically binding so that neither side can break the treaty.”

Camden arches an eyebrow. “You don’t trust us?”

“I trust Sierra—she’s one of ours and has proven her loyalty just through the wording of this treaty,” Odelia says. “You, however, I do not trust entirely, and I hope you can understand why. I’ve lost hundreds—thousands—of my witches to the mercy of shifters.”

Camden seems irritated by the doubt of his integrity—typical wolf pride. Still, instead of being combative, I choose to use persuasion. I place a hand on his shoulder and say softly, “The humans had an old saying; Rome wasn’t built in a day. Likewise, trust will not be built in a day. You can’t fault them for wariness.”

Camden inhales deeply, takes my hand in his, and places it on his lap, then gives the witches a nod. “Fine. What will the magical signature entail?”

“You need to sign your names in blood—we have a quill that draws blood from the wielder’s body without inflicting wounds,” Odelia responds. “Then I’ll do a simple spell that’ll bind your signatures and blood to the treaty. Should it be broken by any of the signers, the blood in your body will boil and your veins and arteries will split until you hemorrhage to death.”

“A good deterrent to keep you wolves honest,” Reyna adds.

“Does it really need to be that…deadly?” Wyatt asks.

“Do you intend to break your word?” Claire volleys back. “If not, then this shouldn’t be a problem. Blood bindings on contracts are very standard among sorcerers.”

It’ll probably be best if I take the initiative here. If I sign, Cam might feel more inclined to sign as well. “Sounds like a good way to hold everyone accountable. I’m on board. Where’s the quilt?”

Reyna does a series of hand gestures above the table, and with them, I feel a dose of magic radiate from her, like an invisible blanket that settles over the room. That magical energy then condenses and contracts until a feathered quill appears in the palm of her hand. “Which copy will we all be signing?”

“Mine,” I say since my copy is considered the official one.

Reyna slides the quill across the table to me, and I let go of Camden’s hand under the table to pick it up, examining the shimmery quality of the blue feather. I flip to the last page of my contract where my signature will be next to my printed full name, position the quill over the page, before pressing it to the paper, and feel a small pressure on my arm as I glide the quill across the page—not pain, just a strange tugging sensation—and watch with no small sense of wonder as red ink, blood, appears on the page. As soon as I’m done, the blood dries. Odelia murmurs a few words in a language I’m unfamiliar with, and my signature on the page takes on a shimmery, shiny quality.

“The first signature has been bound,” she says.

I slide the stack of papers and pen over to Camden, who repeats my actions, a slight frown marring his features. Once his signature has been bound, Odelia and Reyna add theirs.

A flush of pride and pleasure travels through me that my objective for today has been completed, and for the first time in known history, witches and shifters will work alongside each other for the greater good.

“Excellent,” Odelia says. “Now, if you wolves wouldn’t mind, I’d like a moment alone with Sierra to discuss her forthcoming training.”

Camden looks like he’s going to object, but I murmur to him, “Please, let us. They’re no threat to me or any of us; the treaty guarantees it.”

Camden’s nostrils flare as he inhales, but then, he gives me a single, tense nod. “Fine. We’ll be waiting outside.”

Camden and Wyatt clear out of the war room, leaving me alone with the three witches, all of whom stare at me with varying levels of interest. I imagine my interest in them matches, if not supersedes, their interest in me; I might be one of a kind with the ability to wield black flames, but they’ve lived with witches their whole lives, and this is my first time meeting one outside of my family.

“Now that the wolves are out of the way, I’d like to get to know you a little bit,” Odelia says. “I was very excited to hear of your existence, and saddened to know you grew up without support from your own kind. Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Of course,” I reply. “As long as you’re okay shouldering the copious amounts of questions I’ll have for you.”

Odelia smiles indulgently. “I imagine there’s much you’re eager to learn. I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can. You grew up in Aesara?”

I incline my head. “Yes. I raised my little sister, Leisel, there on a farm.”

Odelia nods pensively. “We visited Aesara a few times over the years, going around local clinics to help with healing. The destructiveness shifters wreaked with their changes was felt most heavily by humans.”

“The few who survived,” Reyna adds in grimly.

That sends my mood plummeting. I don’t like the reminder that shifters are at fault for most of the horror that was brought upon humanity, especially when I’m desperately trying to change my views of them for the sake of Leisel’s and my survival in this culture.

“My mother died giving birth to Leisel because there wasn’t any proper medical care available,” I admit. “My father died from cancer a year before that. I’d have killed to have your coven around to help save them.”

Reyna’s eyes soften. “If we’d have known there were witches in Aesara, especially earthly ones, we’d have been there to help.”

Odelia says, “I thought I felt faint traces of magic when we passed through in the last few decades, but I couldn’t be sure. You did very well hiding yourself away.”

“I was afraid of the persecution that accompanied being a person with magic in a village of humans that despised magical beings,” I say. “Each time I heard you were passing through, I’d hide with Leisel on our farm.” Then, more quietly, “I wish I hadn’t.”

“That’s in the past,” Odelia responds firmly. “Right now, we look to the future. Now that we know of your existence, we can protect you. Especially with your condition, I expect you’ll need more magical aid the farther along you get—interspecies pregnancies are very rare and by all accounts exceedingly difficult.”

I fall entirely still as her words wash over me, unable to process them entirely. My condition? Interspecies pregnancies? I’m not…I couldn’t be—

I think back to a week ago when I succumbed to my desires and slept with Camden. Reaching my hand up to the juncture where my neck meets my shoulder, I run my fingers over the scar of Camden’s bite that permanently sits on my skin. He didn’t warn me before marking me, and I was in the throes of so much pleasure I didn’t have the presence of mind to stop or even be mad at him. The next morning, he was so smooth, so articulate, I didn’t feel it was worth it to hold onto my anger.

I assumed that, because my bond with Camden wasn’t fully complete yet, there was no chance of pregnancy, and I didn’t bother to double-check because he told me I wasn’t at risk when I asked him about it the morning after we slept together.

Shit.

I force myself to recall the few texts I’ve managed to get my hands on about mate bonds. There was nothing available in the library that spoke on negatively impacting them, but there were two books that helped explain them.

In one book, there was a chapter describing the necessities between mates for pregnancy to become possible. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember the specific passage that talked about pregnancy with shifter mates; after an intense moment of concentration, I recall the exact words, scrawled on an old, yellowed page: for a seed to take root, the pair must be bound by marks with a consummated, if not complete, bond connecting them.

It was also said that full moons are hyper-fertile times for wolves.

That night was a full moon. Camden marked me. He came inside me. I’ve been so distracted preparing for our meeting with the witches, I didn’t have time to dwell on the horrific possibility of pregnancy; it didn’t even cross my mind, especially since he told me I wasn’t at risk.

Reyna makes a faint sound in the back of her throat. “Oh, fuck. That bastard Alpha didn’t even tell you, did he?” She turns to Claire who’s staring at me with wide-eyed shock and barks, “Make a sound barrier, now!”

Claire shoots out of her seat and walks the perimeter of the room, murmuring quiet chants that cause a faint shimmering shield to form in front of the walls and doors. Meanwhile, my mind spirals further and further into despair.

“How do you know? How can you be sure?” I whisper.

“I can sense the presence of life,” Odelia responds. “That includes pregnancies, even in their earliest stages.” She pauses. “Sierra, did he…force this on you?”

Tears well in my eyes as the full weight of the situation washes over me. I’m pregnant, with Camden’s child, after one night of stupid sex. A royal heir. Something that will permanently bind me to the Alpha King. He didn’t force himself on me, but in a sense…he did force this pregnancy on me. He had to have known the possibility and he didn’t fucking tell me. In fact, he outright lied to me about it. Gods, that hurts. I thought we were past the lies, deceit, and trickery in our relationship; evidently, I was dead wrong.

I should’ve trusted my mothers’ words, telling me that all shifters are fucking monsters. She was right. I allowed myself to forget that for a moment, in favor of trying to better the lives of humans and work with shifters, and here’s where it landed me.

“He…he didn’t force the sex, but he didn’t tell me the possible outcomes,” I manage through numb lips. “When I asked if I was at risk for pregnancy, he said no. He lied to me.”

Odelia exchanges a grim glance with Reyna.

“When did you have intercourse?” Reyna asks me. “Wait, let me guess…on the blood moon that occurred a week ago?”

I nod stiffly, feeling like there’s ice coursing through my veins. An awful sensation takes up residence in my chest, feeling like a lead weight that constricts my breathing. I stand from my seat abruptly and start pacing back and forth in front of the table, my thoughts a scrambled mess of, Oh gods oh fuck oh gods what have I gotten myself into?

“Fucking shifters,” Reyna shakes her head. “And we just pledged our resources to them in the upcoming war. Un-fucking-believable.” She turns to Odelia. “How do we get out of the treaty?”

Odelia thinks for several moments, eyes fixed on me, while I retreat further into a shell of terror that feels like it swallows me whole. My hands move down to clutch my stomach, which will soon swell with the presence of a life I did not ask for or even know I was at risk of carrying. I may have been a de facto mother since I was fourteen, but that was by choice. I fell in love with Leisel the moment I saw her, I wanted—needed—to raise and nurture and care for her. This thing inside of me…it was conceived in a bout of trickery.

“Blood moons are hyper-fertile times for witches,” Odelia tells me. “They often send witches into our equivalent of heat—a time when we’re very sexually active. With you marked and your bond consummated, it was just about guaranteed you’d get pregnant.”

“Which Camden knew,” I say monotonously.

She nods. “There’s no way he didn’t.” After a pause, she says to Reyna, “We won’t break the treaty. Besides it being magically binding to both parties, it’s also too beneficial. But we also won’t leave a sister witch in need.” Her eyes move back to me, and she says, “Have a seat, Sierra. There’s a way out of this. A difficult way, but…you won’t have to give birth to a mutt you didn’t expect or ask for.”

Feeling shaken to my very core, I drop into the nearest chair and run my hands through my hair, feeling like I’m on the verge of losing my mind. This is all just too much to take in.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Odelia vacates her seat, pulls up a chair beside me, and tells me, “Witches hold all life as sacred. It’s why we help humans in need, even if we’re not particular fans of the way they nearly destroyed this planet. What’s growing inside you right now, though, isn’t yet classed a life—it’s just a cluster of cells. I can only sense it because I’m especially gifted in this area.”

Reyna drops into another chair, adding in, “It’ll only be considered a life once there’s a heartbeat, which usually happens at the end of the fourth week of pregnancy. That’s also when a soul starts to form. For witches who are careless with birth control and need to end unwanted pregnancies before they really start to develop…there is an elixir that’ll cleanse your womb. It’ll be very painful, but it’ll take care of your problem.”

Those words wash over me, offering an escape from my predicament, from the madness that was the cause of it; offering me a way out where I won’t be trapped. For a moment, I consider it. I consider taking care of the problem before it actually becomes a fully formed problem. I consider Reyna’s words, indicating that a lack of soul is equivalent to a lack of life.

A wave of disgust washes over me, poignant and pungent and nearly suffocating. No, I can’t do something like that. Whether or not I asked for this pregnancy, it is indeed a pregnancy; it requires intervention to be rid of. If I take the elixir, I’ll still be preventing a life, which in my mind is equivalent to killing an innocent. I’ve learned recently that I have no compunction with killing to protect, but that extends to people who threaten me or my sister and therefore deserve death. This thing inside me that will soon become a child does not deserve to be destroyed, no matter my sentiments on how I got pregnant.

I shake my head slowly, from side to side. “I can’t do that—I won’t do that.”

Odelia and Reyna exchange a look.

Claire, dropping into a seat across from me, says, “It’s your funeral.”

“Fucking probably,” I snap, “but I can’t terminate something that has potential for a life and soul. This child has my absolute protection.”

Odelia holds up a hand, giving Claire a censuring look over her shoulder. She turns back to me and says, “That’s your choice, and our coven always respects the choices of its individual members. If you plan to keep it, you need to understand the implications and complexities attached. Witches and shifters have different timelines for pregnancies; shifters are generally pregnant for six months before giving birth, while witches are usually pregnant for ten. That might be different with earthly witches, which I’ll look into. There have only been a handful of interspecies pregnancies between shifters and witches ever, so I’ll need to find and read up on those cases before I can properly educate you as to what to expect.”

“You should come with us,” Reyna adds in. “We can protect and care for you in a way that the wolves won’t be equipped to.”

I tug at my hair, feeling like my sanity’s slowly slipping away from me. I don’t know what to do right now or where to turn to, and frankly, I can see that I’m not in the right mindset to make any decisions. Before deciding my next steps, I need to calm down, and calming down requires getting away from this castle and into nature. Forests and mountains are a second home to me; they ground me and have always helped me calm even in the most difficult circumstances.

“Not right now,” I mumble. “I can’t think straight right now. I need…time. Time to figure out what to do.”

Odelia reaches out and places a hand on my arm. “That’s perfectly understandable; you’ve just gotten quite the shock. How about this: we’ll leave you with a sigil and spell that, when drawn in blood on a mirror, turns the mirror into a portal directly to our coven house. Take whatever time you need, and if you decide to leave this place, know that you have a safe haven with us. We’d never leave one of our own without the proper support.”

Even though I feel like I’m spinning out, I still have the presence of mind to ask, “Will the spell work with the wards I’ve put up around the castle?”

Odelia nods. “Yes. As long as you’re the one to draw the sigil and say the spell, yes. Should you feel you need to get away from here, use it. You and your sister will be safe with us.”

Struck with a new thought, I ask, “Who else could’ve known about my pregnancy?”

“Every person in this castle,” Reyna replies. “Shifters have an excellent sense of smell; they’d have known you conceived within two days.”

Which means the betrayals are on all fronts, and the blows just keep coming. I thought Wyatt was better than his brother; clearly, I was dead fucking wrong about that too. Any sentiment of kindness I might have been feeling for him, any acceptance of him in Leisel’s life, simply evaporates. Once again, my mother’s words haunt me: all shifters are monsters. How right she was, only I was too swept up in royal life and the possibility of making a better world to see it.

I give my head a shake. I need to get out of here and into nature so I can think and figure out exactly what I’m going to do. Right now, rational thought eludes me; I feel like I’m being pulled in a million different directions, and my heart feels like it’s breaking.

I force myself to say, “Thank you for your visit and offer of help. While I think about what to do, is there anything else I should know about this…pregnancy?”

“The biggest issue witches generally experience is fluctuation in magical abilities,” Claire says. “Dips and surges in power are very common—at times you might find it impossible to call on your magic, but at other times you’ll have surges that can make your powers burst forward without being summoned. The best way to avoid that is to keep yourself calm; stress and anxiety are triggers to both surges and reductions.”

Considering I’m in a place that has already proven to be stressful, and will probably grow even more so, it seems likely I’ll struggle especially with the magical aspect of pregnancy. Yet another thing I’ll need to consider.

Odelia, sensing that I need my space, nods. “Of course, if you need us, you know how to get to us. Until then…I look forward to the next time we meet, Sierra. It’s truly been a pleasure.”