Page 4 of The Wolf and the Chimera
The wolf inside me wasn’t exactly logical when it came to Elle.
Then again, neither was I.
“The sorceress has been bound once more,” Gloria, the Elder Freya was closest to, said. “The chimera should wake in a few hours as herself but without access to the sorceress’s power.”
Gloria’s full figure was hidden by the customary purple robes of the Elders, which I’d always found to be a little too cultish for comfort, and her gray eyes pierced me like they always had when she’d caught Frey and I sneaking around.
Behind her, Lyra stood with her arms crossed, but her dark-eyed glare was fixed on the warlock behind me.She tossed her long, white hair over her misleadingly frail shoulders and stormed toward him. The other four Elders, Gloria and ones whose names I didn’t know, followed her on silent feet.
“Where is she?” Lyra clipped.
As my wolf settled and my panic over Elle finally eased, I registered Cadence’s sobs and Walker’s stark silence. Though I had already slung a towel around my hips, I grabbed another one from the nearby rack and laid it over Elle’s bare form. By necessity, shifters were comfortable with nudity, but dread pooled in my stomach, and I didn’t want to face its source naked.
Arion bellowed, part whinny and part roar, and the Elders murmured their confusion, but it wasn’t their reactions that fed the fear slowly sinking into my chest. It was the absence of Freya’s voice. Swallowing, I forced myself to face them and nearly sank to my knees.
Freya was missing.
“No,” I whispered and cleared my throat. “No.She was right there—I saw her! She wasright there.”
My words brought Walker back to life. As he raised his freaky, electric blue gaze to mine, his power crackled in the air. He pushed himself to his feet.
“She’s here,” he said. “I know it. She was there…she’s gotta be here somewhere.”
“What happened?” Lyra demanded. Freya’s distant cousin among the Elders took a step forward and looked around the room.
Walker searched the basement, as if Freya had hidden behind one of the many deadly weapons it contained. As he walked around the sparring ring, he tossed knives and throwing stars aside, but it only made his sister cry harder. One look at Cady’s tear-stained face, and my breath caught.
“Walker,” Gloria said firmly. “She’s not here.”
I cleared my throat. “Did she not make it through the ripple?”
“The rest of you made it,” one of the Elders I didn’t know said. She tucked her brown, short hair behind her ear. It was a gesture that made her appear younger than she was. “Freya isn’t one to fall behind.”
“If she had made it to the ripple,” Lyra agreed, “she would’ve made it here.”
Gloria clutched Lyra’s hand and squeezed it. It was the first time I ever saw tears well in the witch’s eyes.
When Lyra fell silent, Gloria crouched in front of Cadence.
“Can you tell us what happened?” the old witch asked gently.
“I—,” Cady said and took a deep breath. “The High Witch was trying to entomb Elle, but she needed—she needed Freya’s and Walker’s Anchor bond to fuel the spell—”
“Anchor bond?” a blonde Elder mused.
Gloria waved her off. “Continue, child,” she instructed Cady.
“There was only one way to stop the entombment,” Cady said, “and Freya did it. She said the sorceress’s name.”
Lyra and the other three Elders gasped.
“The risk of it,” the dark-haired one murmured.
To speak the sorceress’s name was to summon her, but it had been the only way to awaken Elle from the High Witch’s spell. I growled, and the Elders fell silent.
“It was brave,” Cady corrected with steadiness a kid shouldn’t possess. She focused on Gloria once more, who patiently waited for the twelve-year-old to continue. “Elle turned into…well, you saw what she turned into. All hell broke loose.”
Cady paused and glanced at her brother. He was too busy checking every square inch of the basement to correct his sister’s foul language like he normally did.
