Page 12 of Wolf Tamer

ChapterFive

Reid

Don’t move.

Standing in the trees at the edge of the property, I only watch while a pack of witches in their black coven robes drag a very unwilling and worse-for-wear Tasha out from the basement entrance of one of their houses.

Who knows which one; all witches smell the same to me.

Keeping to the shadows and willing them to close around me, I wait. I’ve got to be careful. Tactful. Waiting for theprimemoment and gathering my strength until then.

I made it in time, and that’s the important part.

I somehow managed to follow Tasha’s scent from the mountain mansion I call home to this shithole just outside the outskirts of town, where the witches have free reign to do whatever the fuck they want, including ritual burnings.

Tasha will not quit. There are six witches around her, hustling her toward the pyre, and still, she fights like a little wildcat, calling them every name under the sun and even some I’ve never heard before, curses that would make the most hardened man turn red.

My girl.

And I’m not going to let anything happen to her.

“You stand accused of breaking trust with the Buson Coven and failing to complete the contract for which you’ve been hired.” The gray-haired witch reads from a sheath of paper, but from the way she looks at Tasha instead, her Cornish face wrinkled in a smug smile, I want to rip out her throat.

She has my woman trapped, and she’s planning to do unthinkable things for a reason I’ve yet to figure out.

Fucking witches.

They’re a bear to deal with on the best days, and on their worst… they’re murderers.

Gleeful murderers, if the looks on their faces are anything for me to go by. This will all be over soon, of that I’m sure, just not the way they imagined it ending.

“You stand accused of cavorting with the bloody alpha of the Redcliff wolf pack,” the woman continues, her voice taunting.

Well…cavorting is one way to say it.

I stand there partially hidden behind an oak trunk, bloodied and battered and attempting to catch my breath from the long run to get here. I know I don’t have much time to get Tasha out of here. I don’t have much strength, either, but luck and a few miracles brought me to this place just in time, and I’m going to keep rolling with it.

What other choice do I have?

I shift the wrong way and flinch, hissing out a breath as pain shoots through my leg. The long gash there, the skin torn from Crane’s claws, will heal with time. And yet time is the one thing I don’t have right now.

“You’re a sympathizer,” the old woman continues. Her eyes gleam with the possibility of violence.

And these witches callmebloodthirsty.

The title might have fit my father during his reign, but as for me… I can’t hold a candle to these women. They’re not only openly pushing for this punishment that will end someone else’s life but they’re waiting for it eagerly, crowding closer and closer to the pyre with each word like a pack of vultures waiting for the car to pass so they can have their taste of carrion.

I need them. I readily admit to needing the power the coven offers, but if it were up to me, I’d kill them all.

Yeah right, I think with a scoff.Like I have the ability to do that.

“You have allied yourself with the Redcliff Pack instead of your own people, and for that, Tasha Ward, you will greet the sun.”

They finish tying her to the old-fashioned stake, and those who are closest grasp stones from a pile on the ground.

Wind shakes the dead and dying leaves of the trees around us like a rattle, a silent dirge for what the witches want to happen today.

She’s tied to a pole, just like the old-school witch trial days.

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