Page 336 of Warlords, Witches & Wolves

Chapter 14

Mia

For what seemed like hours, I searched the house looking for something, anything to prove my family were hunters, descendants of witches. The conversation with Noah played on repeat in my mind.

How didn’t I know about shifters? Or that I was part of some ancient cursed family, destined to become a hunter? How did that knowledge just skip me? If Joan hadn’t died, would she have eventually told me? Did that mean I was also part witch?

“Ugh!” I crawled out of the nook underneath the stairs, banging the back of my head. “Ouch.”

I found nothing to suggest that Joan was a sick hunter hellbent on drinking wolf blood for immortality. I gagged at the thought.

But I kept coming back to one question. Why would Noah lie? He had nothing to gain from lying to me. As he said, he had everything to lose.

Which brought me back to the whole mate thing. So many unanswered questions.

In the kitchen, I grabbed a mug to make herbal tea…nope, screw that. I abandoned the tea in favor of bourbon, pouring a generous amount and taking it outside to sit on the back step. The cool night air would do me some good, clear my head and help figure out what to do next.

This late, the forest was eerie. Shadowy branches swayed in the breeze, leaves rustling along the forest floor. Somewhere over to the right, a creature scurried between the trees.

I sipped the bourbon, briefly closing my eyes as the burn traveled down my throat, warming my chest.

The Whitcomes are hunters…

I never saw anything to suggest my mother knew about the shifter world or was a hunter. People who hunted the blood of wolves to become near immortal. My mother wasn’t…

“Oh, no.”

Every time I saw my mother, which wasn’t often, she’d barely aged. Growing up, she constantly dumped me with people so she could go on work trips around the country. Was she…hunting?

Bile rose in my throat.

Had my mother hidden this life from me the entire time? After the argument she had with Joan when I first came here, Mom never brought me back. Was it because she discovered Joan’s secret? Did my mother want me to become a hunter?

Was that why she treated me like such a failure?

I tried to think about everything Joan said to me the summer I spent here. But it was too long ago, I couldn’t possibly remember. The only rule Joan had was to stay out of the tool shed. She never warned me about the wolves or hunters. In fact, she often saw me with Noah’s wolf. I remember one time, the anguish on her face as she sat on the back porch watching me sketch Thor. I thought she felt sad for hardly seeing her granddaughter. But…

She knew the wolf was a shifter. The wolf knew Joan was a hunter.

The final pieces fell into place.

I lifted the mug to my lips and took a longer sip. It did nothing to calm my fluttering heart, or ease the pain spreading through my chest. My mind wouldn’t stop repeating Noah’s words. I needed to know for sure. But I’d looked everywhere…

The shed.

Since coming back, I hadn’t bothered to look in there, unsure why. Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to know what Joan hid from me. Why was it so important that I not go in there?

I lowered the mug to the floor and stood, peering toward the shed. This late at night, I needed a flashlight. I darted back inside, grabbed one, and returned to the porch, shining the light along the trees until it fell on the tool shed at the far end of the yard.

I hesitated.

The weird sensations swirling in my stomach intensified. I should just take my bourbon and go back inside. Did I really want to know what was in the shed? If I ignored it, I could pretend this world didn’t exist and that I wasn’t a part of it.

But…that wouldn’t work. I needed answers.

Before I wimped out, I jogged down the stairs and across the lawn guided by the flashlight. The door handle of the shed warmed under my touch. Thank goodness it wasn’t locked.

Hang on. Why wasn’t it locked?

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