Chapter 27

Even after all we’dbeen though, it still surprised me that the Crafting Circle ladies were hot on my heels as I raced through the apple orchard to the eastern forest. The bigger pixies roused from their birdhouse at all the ruckus, a flight of silver darts swarming above our heads. Flora clung to Daphne’s braid as the older woman hiked up her skirt and ran like a gazelle. Shari, oversized sweater sleeves flapping like limp squid tentacles, brought up the rear with Ame at her ankles. Sawyer, as usual, sprinted ahead of us, his young legs easily propelling him towards the fence line.

“Lass,” Roland called, a light blooming in the darkness as the hobs’ barn door was slid back in its track. “What’s all the—”

“Stay in the barn!” I commanded. If the magic hunters were here, they might go after the hobs next. They were Fair Folk through and through, just like Flora was.

“Protect the wassail,” Ricky cried.

We found Lewellyn at the forest edge, no longer contained to the farm by the collar. And he was human, crouched in a fighting stance, every naked muscle tense and quivering.

“I’ve smelled you for days now,” the shifter bellowed. “Lurking around. Come out and face me!”

Whatever he was shouting at didn’t answer him, and Sawyer’s ears pricked to the right, picking up on a fainter sound. As he prowled off, he lifted his nose to scent the easterly wind.

Then a very human voice chastised Lewellyn in a hushed and harsh tone, “Be quiet.”

Scuttling over the fence, I stalked to Lewellyn’s side, careful to stay in his periphery and far enough away from him that he knew where I was and could shift without hurting either of us.

“Get out here before I drag you out by your neck!” he shouted.

“I don’t take orders from you,” growled a familiar voice that set my pulse to hammering. “You have no right to command me. Now stop—”

“I have every right. The cider witch is my ward, made official this afternoon.”

“I said be quiet,” Arthur Greenwood snarled, charging free of the undergrowth.

Unlike Lewellyn, he was completely clothed in boots, jeans, and a lightweight tank top, revealing a large swath of muscled chest. The claws of the tribal paw-print tattoo peeked above the hemline, the dark ink contrasting against his tan skin. His off-duty-from-Cedar-Haven leather jacket fit snug across his shoulders. Anger twisted his features in a way I’d never seen before, and I actually stumbled back a step in fear.

The movement startled him, the anger melting away to surprise as his hazel eyes homed in on me. He hadn’t scented me, not with the way the wind had been blowing.

“M-Misty,” he breathed. Then his voice hardened. “Get away from that Nemean wolf. Get away from here.”

“Where are the magic hunters?” Daphne asked, breathless as she dropped down from the fence. “From all that ruckus, I sure thought I’d be swinging my shillelagh a lot more.”

“And where’s the fiáin?” Flora demanded, her tiny fist glowing green and ready to deliver a magical sucker punch.

Arthur threw Lewellyn a black look. “Ask him. You scared it away.”

“I smell nothing,” Lewellyn snapped. “It’s just a convenient story to keep you skulking around here, marking territory that doesn’t belong to you.”

From the corner of my eye, I marked Sawyer crouching down low and stalking off towards the southern tip of the woods. Intrigued, the pixies followed after him, but before I could question where he was off to, the shouting match in front of me quickly reclaimed my full attention.

“If I’m marking anything, it’s to keep creatures like that away from here,” Arthur retorted.

“Well I’m here now,” Lewellyn said, giving Arthur a shove away from the woods. A command to leave. Apparently he was taking his promise to protect and aid me very seriously if he was shoving Arthur, a shifter even the fiáin was leery of. “Any marking will be done by me from here on out.”

“Do not push me,” the lumberjack shifter warned, rolling his shoulders.

“Arthur,” I interrupted. “What are you doing in the woods?”

He glanced behind him as if he’d heard something, then his shoulders tensed as he answered. “I warned you about those who seek powerful people. That wolf is one of them.”

Lewellyn snapped his teeth. “I gave her my promise. It’s as unbreakable as my wolf.”

Arthur glowered at him, but slowly returned his attention to me to finish his explanation. “I’ve been patrolling. Not just Cedar Haven. But in these woods—which are technically public land,” he threw at Lewellyn. “I found the moonflower grove and assumed either you or Flora had planted it, since your scents are everywhere there. I made sure it was safe, undisturbed, like the other one.”

So he was the supe my Scouting Spell had picked up all those nights ago. By the Green Mother, his signature had been like a bonfire in my mind’s eyes. Just how powerful was he?

“And then the fiáin came here, many times,” he continued. “I had to make sure—”

“Her protection is my responsibility now,” the werewolf cut in.

“And if you were taking that responsibility seriously, you would be scouring these woods instead of just yapping at me like a Chihuahua!”

Lewellyn threw himself at Arthur, catching the lumberjack shifter around his midsection in an attempt to tackle him to the ground. But Arthur was a boulder, merely sliding back a few feet before his meaty hands clamped down on Lewellyn’s shoulders and wrested him away.

“Would you two stop?” I shouted, surging between them. Green vines wrapped around each of them and tightened, practically lashing them upright to the ground like fence posts. “I’ve had enough of this testosterone, chest-beating, marking-territory, his-scent-your-scent ridiculousness! You, go over there,” I told Lewellyn, simultaneously poking him in the chest and releasing his bonds, “and you—”

But when I poked Arthur’s bare sternum, releasing his bonds, a crackling thread of blue light like static electricity zapped between my finger and his chest. It rippled across his skin like grease dropped into a scalding skillet, lacing around the Celtic shield pendant he wore around his neck. There was a muted pop, like the straggler popcorn kernel busting open long after the rest of the kernels in the bag had burst, and Arthur’s hazel eyes widened.

I sucked in a surprised breath as the invisible tether between us tightened. “Wh-what was…?”

“You felt it too,” he whispered.

“Has anyone seen Sawyer?” Shari said suddenly, looking around. She had Ame in her arms, fingers nervously knitting into the caliby’s fur.

As if right on cue, the tabby tomcat screeched.

That piercing note of anger and fear threatened to split the sky open.

“Sawyer!” I shouted, abandoning the men and their ridiculous turf war to go help my cat.

“Misty,” Arthur cried.

“She doesn’t need your help,” Lewellyn snarled behind me. “She’s not yours—”

“You have no idea how wrong you are.”

“Get lost.”

There was a crack of a fist connecting with a jaw, and I spun to find Arthur crashing back into the undergrowth and Lewellyn struggling to regain his balance. He’d had to put the entirety of his weight behind that punch.

Sawyer sounded again, this time an infuriated yowl, but it was almost drowned out by the thrashing in the brush where Arthur had disappeared.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Lewellyn gloated. “A mighty Coalition enforcer floored by a lone wolf? Ha! You’ll never be able to show your face again in—”

There was a ripping sound as clothing shredded, and a moment later, the brambles and shrubs thrashed again to reveal—

An opossum.

The football-sized beast ran out of the forest, beady black eyes glinting, its jagged mouth of teeth bared in… fright?

A roar thundered through the night air, and the largest grizzly bear I’d ever seen charged from the trees, his massive paws churning the ground as he barreled straight at Lewellyn. The man cursed and shifted into a wolf just as the bear struck, trampling the wolf into the ground. Righting himself, the wolf shook the dirt from his golden-white fur with a snarl and became a blur, leaping for the back of the bear’s neck. Massive jaws clamped down on the wolf’s throat, plucking him from the air before hurling him into the depths of the forest.

“Jumping hop-toads,” Flora cried, her face flushed not from apprehension, but from excitement. “Puts a whole new meaning on lumbearsnack, doesn’t it?”

“Not now, Flora,” Daphne admonished. She gave me a panicked look. “What do we do? Help Arthur?”

“Did you see the way he snatched Lewellyn out of the air?” Flora shook her head. “It’s the wolf who needs our help, not the bear!”

“We’re helping my cat,” I snapped, using his yowls to guide me into a section of the forest that was not currently being trampled by two furious shifters.

“Come on,” Shari told the others as she zoomed past them, Ame in her arms. Midstride, she released the cat, and Ame honed in on her ward, guiding us with her night vision through the gloom.

The sudden appearance of the pixies, their flute-like sounds a clashing discord, confirmed we were on the right path.

The moment I saw shifting shadows, heard challenging yowls and hissing replies, I slammed my glowing fists into the ground. But I wasn’t calling on my green magic this time. I channeled my hearth witchery in a way I never had before, and a ring of green fire rose from the forest floor, dispelling the shadows.

Sawyer was battling the fiáin, and he was losing.