Page 43 of Witches Be Damned

I came to a stop in front of my leader, and Loco did too. “What you’re saying is we’re fucked if we do and fucked if we don’t arrest the fugitives.”

Her lips thinned and gave me my answer.

I scraped the back of my neck. “I’ll do whatever is necessary to get out of the Guardians. I can’t speak for Tor, Pascal, or Astra, but I’m certain they will agree. That means we must beat these traitorous assholes at their own game.”

Since they came clean with me, perhaps it was time I shared with them the investigation we conducted behind their back. I grabbed them by the shoulders and dragged them into a huddle, spilling all the details on our deal with Mads, the USB, the last conversation I had with Vartros, and the information he supplied on a separate USB.

I finished with, “We don’t tell Vancor what we know, and we play along with his game, catch a fugitive here or there, but what’s our main objective?” That decision I left to Serena out of respect for her leadership.

She glanced from me to Loco. “We get Cole this information you obtained, and he’ll pass it on to Vartros. He was working on this case with us, but instead of locking him up, they transferred him to the Guardians to take up the warden position, and that was just as much a prison sentence.”

Fuck. Poor Vartros.

Fire ignited in Serena’s eyes. “Then we trust that Cole gets the evidence to just officials who won’t protect our enemies from prosecution, and who will arrest them and sentence them to the Guardians.”

A sound plan. Piece of cake, right? We were only dealing with a bunch of psychopaths who protected their own and wanted us dead.

CHAPTER 15 - ASTRA

The time to leave neared. It burned in my veins like poison aiming for my heart. Five days with Raze was nowhere near enough time to make up for our lost month. My heart warred over the decision to stay or go. I missed my other three men and wouldn’t be complete without my entire harem.

For how long could I realistically pull off thissecond kidnapping act? Another week? Two? A month? What timeframe would convince the warden? How long until he sent his hunters after his missing asset? Styx was dead and the remaining soldiers would fight it out for top spot. And on that note, I needed to come up with a believable excuse for my escape.

Water splashed my jeans and hands, snapping me out of my dark thoughts and dropping me into the present. Slippery pebbles crunched beneath my rubber boots, and I almost tripped. The scent of wet rocks, muddy banks, vegetation, and the crispness of the river I waded in. Ripples in the water broke up the sky’s reflection. A fish darted past me, seeking the shelter of larger rocks and shadows to conceal itself from the hunter in its midst.

Raze lifted his homemade spear from the water, proudly showing me the fish flapping on the end, which he caught when demonstrating the spearfishing technique for me. “This one’s for my mate.”

Cute. He collected all sorts of knickknacks and gifted them to me. Rocks, leaves, and bark. All his way to show affection in his culture. Items I wouldn’t be able to take back with me to the prison, and my chest ached at having to leave them behind with my wolf.

The day before last, we spent an hour collecting various clays to mix into paints and Raze taught me how to use them to decorate different canvases with my fingers, twigs, and feathers for different techniques. Getting lost in the patterns of dots brought me relaxation and fulfillment I never felt before. And in typical Astra Nomical romance fiend fashion, we ended that activity by painting each other’s bodies, making love all evening, and washing it off.

Yesterday afternoon, we went searching for hollow trees to cut down and fashioned didgeridoos out of them. Shaving and crafting one took my wolf half a day to complete. Time with Raze was never boring and full of learning. My wolf got me all giddy and broody when he confessed how excited he was to teach our children about his culture.

Once he finished his work with Luna and her men, he intended to do a workshop to teach the kids in the sanctuary how to make and play the indigenous instrument. In the meantime, he’d take his to tonight’s campfire and introduce the sanctuary to his culture’s music, liven it up, get the kids dancing, even let them have fun and blow into it.

I bounced with excitement for the evening’s entertainment and toasting marshmallows because I hadn’t done that since my dad took my family camping. And damn, I got a little enthusiastic to introduce my wolf to my father, even though he wouldn’t be happy that I was dating yet another male.

This morning, Raze put the finishing touches on his personal instrument, painting various animals on it to match his tattoos and his life story. A possum carrying young on his back as an honor to his mother for raising him. Then a protective, fiery goanna to represent me. A Galah for Knoxe to characterize him as a warrior and leader, a kangaroo for Tor, who carried around and protected his family in his pouch, and a shy platypus for Pascal, to embody his uniqueness and his tendency for solitude. All the members of his pack, former and current. He shed a tear when he finished his mother, and I held him for a long time, soothing him, knowing how much he missed and longed to see her.

“Are you making me do all the work here so you can perv on my butt?” Raze teased, carrying the now still fish over to the cooler on the river’s banks, storing the five he caught to feed shifters in the sanctuary.

I laughed and stabbed at the fish taunting me, the one I stalked for the better part of five minutes, while it darted beneath a rock, forcing me to wait him out, or poke around to nudge him into the light.

The other three males living on site were out hunting mountain goat, which Raze normally joined them for, but stayed with me since I couldn’t shift. That, and he hadn’t left my side since our arrival.

Aaliyah, the healing avatar, restored his nervous system to normal levels, but she didn’t remove his memories of our ordeal, which he said she did for me, and it made him extra cautious and protective of me. Apprehension at leaving him mounted in the back of my mind like a tension headache. What would he do? Would he go feral again? Fret and refuse to eat without his mate? His reaction made it harder to go.

Today’s fishing expedition aimed to establish a sense of normalcy after a stressful period and to teach me to fish. I smiled at him and went back to poking the water with my stick, honoring the way his former tribe hunted for food.

Raze wandered back to me, all flexing muscles in his trunks and short-sleeved shirt. “You haven’t caught anything yet, Little Wolf.”

There wasn’t much to the technique—aim and let the spear loose. Easy for anyone with a good arm. Coordination and I weren’t the best of friends, and I had to practice something hundreds of times to perfect it.

Everyone at the Academy thought I was a natural. Book nerd, yes. Magical practitioner, so so… unless I had to lob spells around to hit a target. Weapons aficionado, not so much. They didn’t see me late at night, out in the courtyard, practicing until my fingers were cold and blue, my eyelids barely able to stay open, body aching and exhausted. Not even Luna knew that.

“I need a little more practice,” I told him.

He swept me into his arms for a heart-melting kiss. “You’ll get it, I know you will. You don’t stop until you nail a task.”

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