Page 10 of Enslaved

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KEANE

Agrowl rumbles up my throat, breaking the tranquil silence deep in the Madden Grove Wood.

A witch was here.

Near the graves of my pack. Near their last resting place.

A.

Witch.

Was.

Here.

The need to shift, to rend, to kill… to destroy, eats at me. I fight it back as I pace, my growls growing louder. Can’t shift. Not now. Not until I know what thefucka witch was doing here.

She will die later. But first, was she casting a spell? Desecrating their graves?

What?

It takes time to strangle the violent need to shift. But bit by bit, I beat back the animal that lives to eat, hunt, and fuck.

My fingers unclench, and I slow my pacing as I turn my focus away from the herbal scent that can only come from a witch to the empty patch where white flowers once grew.

White asphodel. A witch’s name, and one I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t watched the first flower grow in front of me, mere hours after I’d buried the remains of my pack.

On my knees, my face wet with tears and body dusted with earth, I was staring right at the fresh soil. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have believed what I was seeing, or that such a thing was even possible. One after another, they sprang up right in front of me.

As they grew, the air, already cold, turned so bitter that even I felt it. Since we shifters run hotter than witches and regular humans, I knew that what I was feeling, what I was seeing, wasn’t normal.

That’s when I realized a witch was responsible.

I killed five of them before I learned the name of the flower. It was then that Amos Wolfe, alpha of the Wolfe pack, came to stop me before I turned my one-man witch hunt into an outright war between witches and wolves.

Well, back then, I didn’t have as much control over my wolf or myself as I do now. And too late, I realized I should’ve gone after the most powerful witches in town instead of the first ones that crossed my path. With the looming threat of Amos’ pack coming after me, I had no other option but to leave.

But this time I won’t be leaving. Not until I get answers. Not until I get revenge.

“This witch must be responsible,” I mutter beneath my breath as I retrace her steps. Her scent, that disgusting lemon and herb witchy smell, is everywhere. Like she was rolling all over the graves of my family, tainting my pack’s gathering place where we played and ate and laughed.

Where they all died.

The pain in my hand makes me glance down, and again I force my fists to unclench.

I prowl a little closer to the place where the flowers should have been. She came and stole the flowers. For what spell, I have no fucking clue, but she must’ve known I was back in Madden Grove. Was there a clue here that would finally reveal who killed my pack?

Maybe it was her.

Fangs explode in my mouth, slicing my tongue and filling it with blood.

Scowling, I turn to spit out the blood, and that’s when I see it. A black velvet pouch.

Bending, I scoop up the thing. The taint of magic has mostly faded, but there’s a small tingle, a… feeling of something unnatural that would tell me a witch made this before I even touched it. I peek inside. A silver necklace.

I don’t need this to track her. But it will be something I throw in her face when I find her. And Iwillfind her.

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