Page 82 of Wolf Hunter

Sarah stands in preparation to surely lay one on me when Mae holds out a hand to stop her.

The rest of the room eventually quiets while they wait for me to explain why they’re nothing but giant walking turds.

I go on, “Someone got into the pack’s territory, past the wards, and killed Reid’s mother. A witch—”

“Lies!” Lavender Hair spits out. “It’s all lies.”

I purse my lips in her direction like I don’t have a care in the world. “Then maybe you should have asked me about that when you force fed me your truth serum.” I struggle against the restraints and end up chafing my skin to the point of blood. Those suckers aren’t going anywhere. And neither am I.

Someone, I’m not sure who, sends a little push of magic my way. Not to loosen the ropes, but to tighten them. I growl loudly enough for the room to hear.

“No one here has that kind of power.” Mae sounds pretty damn confident.

“Uh huh.”

Sarah sneers. “Why does that even matter? One less wolf to worry about.”

“Witches aren’t supposed to kill. Not with magic. So, maybe instead of playing Spanish Inquisition with me, you should be finding out who using their power to go against the creed. Clearly, someone is fucking with the system here.”

You know,just a thought.

The witches all begin to speak over each other until Mae is forced to whistle to get them to silence. The shrill piercing shoots straight through my eardrums and into my brain, but I have no way to cover my ears.

“You should try a better tactic if you want any chance of saving yourself,” she says to me.

“What a fucking joke,” I tell her. “You already know exactly what you’re going to do with me. At least have the decency to fess up. It doesn’t matter what I say today. Your trial is nothing but bullshit.”

The witches on the couches murmur amongst themselves. Yeah, right. Nothing I say will deter them from their chosen path. I practically smell the woodsmoke now. They’re already stoking the flames, ready to watch me fry.

And for what?

Because I started falling for someone I shouldn’t have. And I tried to kill him, several times over. Again and again, I came at him only to end up the one in trouble.

Even worse… I know he won’t come to rescue me. He’d think I abandoned him the way I threatened to when I left. When I told him I wasn’t coming back.

Or even worse yet, he would be happy I left. He probably saw me now as much more trouble than I’m actually worth. He can get back to his normal routine, his normal way of doing things, without me stoking the embers of his inner conspiracy theorist.

He and Emily might even start getting cozier. Because I definitely noticed the way she looked at him. She wanted something from him, the little bitch, and I—

I blow out a breath. I… nothing. I have no influence over the man, and although we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we could do together, I know. I will carry his memory for whatever time I have left. However long these witches let me live.

“Did you think loving him would get you out of your contract?”

Mae’s question comes from left field. I glance up at her sharply. “Excuse me?”

She leans forward, setting me with a sideways glance. “You said you love him. What did you think would happen, Tasha? Did you have some kind of fantasy about living happily ever after? Maybe the two of you running away together and starting your own life?”

I can only shake my head. “I tried not to think about it at all. It happened and I’m not ashamed.”

Only a little pissed about ending up inhertrap.

The rest of the witch council grills me for several more hours until sweat rolls down my forehead. They inevitably come to their conclusion, but I’m not around to see it. They ordered their grunts to pull me and my stool out of the room before tucking me away in the same corner closet where they’d first taken me.

They’re worse than the wolves.

I tug once again at the restraints around my wrists, getting nowhere. These women masquerade as the righteous. They play pretend as the ones who have a just cause, and I wonder, if dealing with the pack is so bad, why did they get involved with the wolves in the first place?

They never told me what they got out of the deal besides blanket “protection.”

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