Page 378 of Warlords, Witches & Wolves

Shocked, Tabitha’s mouth worked, but no sound came out.

“I’ve heard about how witches work. Last night you started with a simple warding spell, but that last bit… it was different. You pulled magic through me and my people when we fucked.”

She flinched at the word, and he told himself to ignore it. He needed to know what she’d done, and he didn’t need her feelings as a distraction.

“You didn’t ask, just took, and obviously you had something you wanted. Tell me.” He forced a sneer to his face, though it hurt to look at her like that. “What. Have. You. Done?”

It was only then he felt the anger flooding the bond. Tearing through him with the force of a tidal wave. Only then he acknowledged the depth of her hurt as she hurtled everything across the bond towards him. It sent him to his knees, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Tabitha’s blonde hair swirled around her in an invisible wind, sparks flying from her fingertips as though desperate to devour something. Anything. She stared at him with death in her eyes, even as his own heart was thumping in his chest. She kept her power leashed, but the threat of it hung in the air. Heavy and thick, her magic appeared fathomless.

He’d severely underestimated his mate.

“Selfish spell?”

Her voice echoed oddly in the room, deeper and more ominous than he’d heard from her before. Her feet no longer touched the floor.

“How witches work?”

Her heartache flooded him. As did her feelings of betrayal. They swamped his own, making him feel small, ashamed. Yet she was the one who’d used him. That thought steadied him. He steeled himself with his righteous anger, then sealed his own fate.

“Yes. I’ll ask again. What. Did. You. Do?”

Her only reply was an explosion of air that screamed through the kitchen into the lounge room, shattering anything breakable in its wake. Jarrad, though… Jarrad was left unharmed, encased in a bubble of ice.

Water.

The element of her heart.

Fuck. If she wasn’t his mate, Tabitha would have destroyed him with the strength of her emotions. Instead, she’d saved him from herself. Only now his mate slumped, exhausted, on the floor. And he was stuck inside this ice.

“Tabitha?” She didn’t acknowledge him as she struggled to sit. “Tabitha, Love, I’m so—”

“Bitty,” Ryan said cautiously as he and Luna inched into the room. “We going to be okay in here now?”

She nodded wearily at him, though she still didn’t acknowledge Jarrad. Could she even hear him through this cage? He slammed himself against the icy prison keeping him from his mate, but it was too solid.

Ryan sat down and wrapped an arm around her, while Luna crawled into her lap. Tabitha wrapped her arms around her daughter as Jarrad continued to slam into the ice, desperate to get to her. Ryan’s eyes flicked to him, then back to Tabitha. That just infuriated Jarrad. His wolf crawled under the surface of his skin, howling inside him. He knew they’d lost their mate with their own stupidity, just as Jarrad’s human side did.

And that witch was touching his mate while he couldn’t.

“I need to be alone.”

Tabitha’s voice was a leaf in the wind, so fragile he was terrified she’d broken.

“Mummy?”

The scent of Luna’s fear saturated the air, as did Ryan’s concern and anger. But from Tabitha… nothing. She was a blank slate. Nothing came to him through their link either. It was as though she’d ceased to exist. His skin rolled as his wolf beat frantically against his self-control.

Tabitha’s hand smoothed Luna’s hair from her forehead. “Mummy just needs a bit of alone time, sweetheart.”

Andthatwas his mate. The woman who spoke gently to soothe others, even when her heart broke. Jarrad’s own heart stuttered in his chest. She was shutting herself off from him.

“Want me to take care of her here while you go for a walk in the forest?”

Jarrad could almost hear her thoughts.Not the forest.

She hesitated. “Thanks, I won’t be too long.” Her eyes flicked towards her car keys on the table.

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