Chapter 346 Take Me to Your Leader

Chapter 346: Chapter 346 Take Me to Your Leader

Emilia’s POV

Behind us, the fire I’d started had found its footing. It crawled up the trunks in a slow, spreading ring, crackling louder by the second.

"You might want to hurry up and decide," I added, pleasant as anything. "Because I can snap her neck, shift, and be gone before this whole forest turns into a bonfire. I really don’t have a lot of stake in how this ends."

"You disgusting half-breed!" the freckled girl spat, thrashing in my grip. "Your mother betrayed the Hollowthorn witches and whelped a filthy little mutt like you!"

Hollowthorn witches. There it was. So I hadn’t driven into the wrong patch of cursed woods after all. The thought should’ve thrilled me.

But she’d dragged my mother into it.

My clawed hand flashed down and raked across the front of her thigh, deep. Blood welled up dark and fast, soaking through the fabric.

She howled, a raw, ragged shriek that bounced off the trees and rang back at us from every direction.

"Don’t hurt Carina!" another voice cried out, ragged with panic. "We’ll let your friend go, but you leave our land. Now. All of you."

"Wonderful. Let me see my friend first," I said.

The words had barely left my mouth before the air around me began to change. The flames I’d set hissed and sank, smothered by some unseen hand, and the fog peeled back in retreating curtains. Out of the thinning white stepped four, maybe five girls, all around Carina’s age, all closing in on me with wary, furious eyes.

One of them had Lily by the arm. A strip of tape sealed her mouth, her eyes found mine, wide and frightened and blessedly alive.

The breath I’d been holding slid out of me. She was okay.

They peeled the tape away and cut her loose, and Lily bolted straight to me, ducking behind my shoulder, trembling, her hands fisting in the back of my jacket.

"We gave you your friend," the girl in front said, jaw clenched. "Now release Carina."

I knew playing mind games with a pack of terrified girls was hardly a fair fight. But desperate times, and so on. Besides, they’d jumped us first.

I slid my claws back up to rest against Carina’s throat and gave her little coven a thin smile. "I promised I wouldn’t hurt her. I don’t recall promising to let her go."

"You snake!" "Coward!" "You lying, two-faced wretch!"

I let the chorus of insults wash over me, waited for a lull, then drawled, "By all means, keep going. Shout yourselves hoarse. Though I’d keep one eye on your friend here, she’s losing quite a lot of blood while you work through your thesaurus."

They stamped their feet, helpless and seething. "You mixed-blood freak, what do you actually want? What’ll it take for you to let Carina go?"

I met their stares one by one. "Take me to whoever’s in charge." Alpha was the word that nearly slipped out, pack instinct deep in my bones, but I had no idea what witches called the one who ran their little nest.

The girls turned their backs on me and huddled into a tight ring, heads bent, whispering fast. Some spell layered over their voices, because even at this distance, with my ears, I caught only ragged scraps.

"...a wolf... forbidden..."

"...can’t let her inside..."

Lily tugged hard at my sleeve. I knew exactly what she was afraid of. She didn’t want me walking any deeper into the lair of women who could smother fire and steal a person out of thin air. The farther in we went, the harder it would be to walk back out.

And I couldn’t drag Lily down with me.

I reached for her through the mind-link. "Lily. Their spell’s slipping right now, I can feel it. While it’s down, you run. If I’m not out of here safe, you go straight to Sebastian and you bring him down on this town."

"Emilia, no. I’m not leaving you alone in this."

"One of us has to walk away, or we both die in these woods and no one ever knows we were here. That’s not a risk. That’s just a tragedy no one solves."

Lily’s teeth sank into her lip. Her eyes glistened. Then she gave a fierce little nod, shifted, and tore off into the trees, a streak of fur swallowed by the last of the fog.

Carina sneered up at me, breathless with pain. "Your friend’s so scared she bolted. You still want to come knocking on our door?"

I let one sharp claw drift along the line of her throat and drew a shallow, stinging cut.

Blood beaded up bright.

She shrieked again, high and thin.

Her wavering friends folded instantly. "Fine! Fine! We’ll take you. Just stop."

"See?" I smiled. "Was that so hard? You could’ve saved us all some screaming."

Under their reluctant guidance, I finally stepped into the town itself.

It was nothing like the grim, gothic nightmare I’d braced myself for. The houses rose in soft, washed colors, dusty rose and pale sage and butter yellow, each one arranged with a care that spoke of people who actually loved where they lived. Window boxes spilled over with flowers. Strings of dried herbs swayed under the eaves. It was, infuriatingly, charming.

Dragging a hostage through it did rather spoil the ambiance. Every witch we passed stopped to stare, their faces cycling through shock, outrage, and plain bewildered disbelief at the sight of a half-shifted wolf marching one of their own through the square by the throat.

At last the girls led me to a house set apart from the rest. Two stories, timber-framed, painted in soft shades of blue and violet that seemed to glow in the thinning mist.

It was larger than any we’d passed, and warmer too, the kind of place that looked like it had been loved into existence rather than merely built. The whole front garden brimmed with herbs, neat green rows breathing a sweet, earthy smell into the cold air.

The door swung open before anyone could knock. A voice drifted out, aged and gentle. "And what manner of trouble have you dragged home for me this time, little girls?"

An old woman stepped onto the threshold. Hair white as frost, back straight, eyes still clear and sharp despite the years in her face. Her features were soft and kind, the kind of face that belonged on a storybook grandmother.

But the way she looked at me stopped me cold. No shock. No fury. Instead her gaze filled with something I couldn’t name, aching and tender all at once, like longing and heartbreak and love all tangled together.

She stared at me for a long moment, taking in my face like she’d been waiting years for it to walk up her path.

Then Carina shattered the silence. "Grandma Margarita! Help me! This mongrel’s going to kill me!"