Page 15 of A Killer Crescent Valentine

“We can call her Ven for short,” Dean said, making me jump. Sneaky, agile wolf had crept up on us. Her snarl rose in volume but Dean just caught her stare and held eye contact. “We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to help. If you shift back to human and tell us your name, we can help you get home. Your mum and dad must be missing you.”

There was no masking the flash of pain in her violet eyes.

“Oh, cub,” I sighed, risking dismemberment to kneel in front of Slasher and stroke her head. Her fur was dirty after fuck knows how long living in the woods, but so soft. Baby soft. My heart hurt. “I lost my mum and dad, too. And my sister. Do you have nowhere else to go?”

I’d thought she was three or younger before, but the intelligence behind her eyes put her at double that. Old enough to feel grief carve her chest apart.

She snapped her teeth in warning, but that was all it was—a warning. So I kept stroking her head, and Slasher kept rocking her, shushing her in a gentle voice. Hugh and Dean approached with soft whines. At some point she stopped fighting. I didn’t mistake her as being submissive and well-behaved, but not trying to kill us was progress.

“Can you shift back?” I asked, meeting her violet eyes.

“What if she can’t?” Slasher asked, nuzzling his face against her fur. “It’s okay if you can’t, baby. I’m not perfect and Rebel loves me, so don’t worry about not shifting. We love you no matter what.”

I blinked, glancing from him to my wolves. They nodded. Not a single conversation, and we’d somehow all come to the same decision. I just hoped Edison and Brannigan were on board, too.

Speaking of… where was my witch? Just what was he doing to that search party?

I stroked her head one last time and got to my feet, stretching out my arms. “You need to meet my other mates,” I told her. “Edison’s kind and he loves hard, even if he looks kinda intimidating at first. Family’s the most important thing to him so he’ll be happy to have a new member. And there’s Brannigan. He’s a librarian, so he’s really smart and sweet and kind.” And a total psychopath, but I’d leave that discovery for later. “He’s gonna love you, too.”

Because one glance at my mates here with me and I knew we were taking her in. She was vulnerable and tiny and alone—and an orphan. No fucking way were we abandoning her to the woods or the shitty care system. Blake Hall wasn’t exactly a paradise, but Vengeance gave us a very good reason to reform the place. Starting with Ivelle.

“Let’s go home,” Dean murmured, brushing a hand down my arm when he stood.

“How do you feel about a tiny coup?” I asked him, my eyes on Slasher as he got to his feet, Ven cradled carefully in his scratched, bleeding arms.

“Quite favourably,” Dean replied with a smirk. “We have one of the founding members on our side.”

I grinned. Time to find that founding member and tell him he’d just become a father.

CHAPTER 10

Iblinked rapidly to hold back tears as Vengeance devoured the food put in front of her and glanced up for more. Already anticipating her appetite, Hugh was ready with a second plate. She was so intent on the food, she’d stopped snarling at us and didn’t seem to care that Brannigan had wrapped her up in a tartan blanket. He was every bit as protective of her as we were, maybe even more.1 Edison was exactly the same, my family-oriented witch not protesting for a second about us playing finders keepers with a child, like I knew he wouldn’t. His whole face had softened when I said she was orphaned.

We were cloistered away in our room now, with Ven set up in a chair that looked enormous compared to her tiny, winged body, her seat angled towards the electric heater Edison stole from a witch’s room. I had a feeling he’d used magic to freeze her so she didn’t fight his theft, but I just kissed his cheek.

“You have to chew food, tiny wolf,” Slasher said in a gentle tone, his red eyes creased in a smile as he watched her from the end of our bed. He mimed chewing in an exaggerated gesture and my heart burst with love.

This was really not how I saw our day going when I woke up this morning, but my mates and I weren’t the sort of people to walk away from a child in need. She still looked like a baby to me, so small, so fragile.

Dean grabbed the bottled water we’d brought from the kitchen and poured it into a porcelain bowl painted with ivy and honeysuckle. “Here, Vengeance. I dread to think when the last time you had something to drink was. There’s very few sources of water in the woods.”

She flicked a glance at him, but allowed him to put the bowl on the table in front of her—and only narrowed her eyes when he ran a hand down her white head. I knew his soul was yelling at him to keep her safe like mine was, knew he wanted to scoop her up and hold her like Slasher had.

“That’s too many cushions,” Edison remarked, drawing my attention to where he and Hugh were fluffing up the top of the bed into a sort of nest, trying to recreate the one she made high up in the tree. She must have flown up there originally, but with how weak she was now there was no chance of her flying anywhere.

“Where are we going to sleep?” Brannigan asked, coming to my side where I hovered by the wall, not taking my eyes off the tiny wolf for more than a second. I leaned into him when he draped an arm over my shoulders, his lips finding my temple.

“We’ll figure it out,” I replied. “This is only temporary.”

Ven’s head shot up, and my heart crumpled.

“The sleeping situation,” I hurriedly added, holding her gaze. “We’ll find you a proper bed, not a nest made on ours. We’re not getting rid of you, Ven. You’re not temporary. You can stay as long as you want to stay.”

“And if that’s forever, then you stay forever,” Brannigan added, his smile changing his whole face. My throat tightened.

Vengeance exhaled her breath in a chuff and went back to slurping up water, still suspicious but without the hurt I’d glimpsed in her eyes when she thought we were getting rid of her. As if. Every single one of my mates had hearts in their eyes as they watched her finish eating, and I had a feeling I did too.

“Do you want more food?” Dean asked, stacking her plates when she licked them clean. She shook her head and my heart skipped at her communicating. Her gaze flicked towards the bed as Hugh and Edison obsessed over making the nest just right.

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