Page 16 of The Wolf and His Forbidden Witch
“No,” Kane declared.
“No?” she repeated.
“We’re not interested in their money.”
She pursed her lips before exhaling with a slow breath to stay steady. “What are you interested in?”
“We told you yesterday.”
Aurora visualized telling them that Damon and Sophie were long gone, so fat chance of that happening. “That’s not going to happen. That’s why I’m here with the counteroffer.”
Kane and Lars exchanged a look. “We will give you one other option to settle this dispute,” Lars said.
“What’s that?” She fought to keep the exasperation out of her voice. This gig was clearly wearing on her. She had to reconsider whether she wanted to continue with the Salem Supernatural Network in the future if she was growing testy listening to one of the parties, when she should have been able to distance herself as a neutral third party.
“They give us Franconia Mountain.”
She blinked. “The mountain?”
“Yes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Surely, you don’t mean the entire mountain?”
“We do.”
“That’s not just land,” she pointed out. “There’s an entire operation that runs there, houses families, and that provides for them.”
“Yes,” Kane noted with impatience.
“That doesn’t seem to fit with what you’d mentioned about your pack’s more natural lifestyle.”
Kane snorted. “It does when we shut the operations down and get the humans out of there.”
Aurora spent several minutes trying to get them to scale back from less drastic demands, but they didn’t relent.
“It’s their choice—his head or the mountain,” Kane declared.
Lars added, “We have given them two options.”
“That will be all,” Kane dismissed her with an arrogant wave.
Aurora turned with a scowl and then once again, she tromped through the snow in her fur-lined boots back to Franconia territory. She huffed, frustrated about her lack of progress.
She pictured Grayson’s deep eyes as he implored her to help him save Damon’s life. What could she say? That she made zero headway with the Saccos? Worse, they suggested another horrifying option—that they give up their land and their livelihood?
The idea of disappointing him stung her, perhaps more than it should. After all, he was just a client. Sure, she wanted to make them all happy, but there was something about Grayson that affected her on a much deeper level.
Agitation stirred her emotions, pulsing out of her with small bursts of energy. Her magic funneled through the air, stirring up wispy snow drifts swirling around her like a miniature tornado.
Her pulse shot up and she gasped, staring at the swirling white funnel.
Stop. You can’t let anyone witness this.
Right, if any humans witnessed her manipulating the weather, it would lead to difficult questions, which wouldn’t be good for Grayson. She had to calm herself. Her affinity was with the air, and when her emotions grew intense, her magic grew stronger, and not always in a predictable way.
Like now.
Although she could call on the air to aid in her magic, she’d never seen it respond with such force. What was it about this situation that made things different? She’d felt that strange, restless stirring on the way up to the mountains, and since then, she’d met Grayson, having such an unexpected response to a wolf shifter. She never—never—thought she’d find one of the furry beasts attractive, and yet that was something she couldn’t deny.
