Page 94 of Nita's Redemption

For good measure, Nita decided she should toss Antoinette to Bakra so she could hold her in case she came back to life. “I can track them,” she told the others.

She gave Alana her skin, shifting to her wolf. The huge female lifted her head taking off through the woods. Nita was more than a little shocked that the two women would go into the darkness where they weren’t familiar with the terrain instead of heading toward their bus. Nita had seen it only a few blocks from the entrance to the woods.

Leaping over trees and sliding beneath branches, she followed their tracks on silent paws. Her ears perked up at the sound of the females singing. Wait, that wasn’t singing, that was chants. They were still trying to bring the dead dude back?

Up ahead, she could see flames like they’d built a fire. But how?

“Come on out, dear niece. We know you’re skulking about, and there’s no need for you to do that anymore.”

She dropped lower to the ground, knowing the females couldn’t see her. A sick feeling slammed into her. Perhaps they sensed her or were able to smell her. Inhaling, Nita shifted to the form of misty air. The female confirming they were her aunts made her claws itch to shred them.

“Shit, I lost her,” Cheryl muttered and stepped into the light too close to where Nita had been seconds ago.

Familiar howls echoed across the night air. Her heart galloped, knowing her males were coming, and then like a stone dropping, Nita refused to allow them to be ambushed by insane females. Shit, she didn’t know what the fuck these females were capable of doing.

She floated into the clearing where they’d obviously been previously. Similar to the other ceremonial circle, this one had a huge fire going with an altar. Nita flowed around the slick black surface, marveling at the shiny stone. This wasn’t something they’d picked up in town. Nope, her aunties had planned whatever they were doing for some time, if the set up was anything to go by. Shit, how the fuck had Antoinette not known?

There was a shift in the air, a familiar presence giving Nita courage to reform on the other side of the onyx altar. Bakra had come along with Menka and Ezra. Which meant she wasn’t alone to battle the crazies.

Chloe was the first to see her as she sat in the center of their slab. Nita kicked her feet back and forth, going for a relaxed pose. “Hiya, ladies, you two are something else, and I don’t mean that in a good way.”

“How did you get up there?” Cheryl spun in a circle, her eyes wide but not with fear.

“I was around for a while, listening. So let me see if I have this right. You two are the real baddies while Antoinette thought she was? And it was your idea to send my mama off to become the sacrificial lamb to a monster?” Nita tried to hide her disgust from her tone, not sure if she accomplished the feat.

Chloe shrugged her shoulders back, familiar eyes stared at her, cold and calculating. “We didn’t know he was a bad man when she went with him. He was insistent that she was his, and he’d take care of her. We already knew he wasn’t like us.”

Nita narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean not like you? Like he was white, and you were black?”

“Don’t be dense, child. You know as well as we do that Seamus was a shifter, just as you are. He wasn’t the first we’d come across,” Chloe said, venom in her every word.

“Wait, you’d met shifters before and you what, tried to get them to be with you but they hit it and quit it, so you wanted revenge?” Nita shook her head at their stupidity. Sure, a male shifter would fuck a female, and some took one as a chosen mate. She couldn’t imagine any of the males she knew to want the females in front of her for life.

Cheryl pointed her long finger at Nita. Her nails were painted a shiny red. So predictable. “They did not hit it and quit it as you put it. You know when a shifter finds his truemate they never allow them to leave, nor do they allow them to find happiness outside the mating.”

Nita didn’t miss the bitterness in the female’s words. Obviously they’d met another dickhead like her sperm donor. “Listen, I promise, not all males are like that or like Seamus. They were tainted or some shit.”

“Enough. We are not here to discuss what is done. You are family, and as such, we are willing to offer you a chance to join us. It is your birth right as it was your mama’s. We failed to protect her by not getting to her before she was taken from this world. As for that foolish female Antoinette, she was all about parlor tricks and planned to fuck her way to the top with Papa Legba. That’s not how our family has stayed in control of the Bayou all these years. Your mother didn’t fail us; we failed her. By the time we came to retrieve her, it was too late,” Chloe said, sadness dripping with each word. Sadness and a hint of betrayal.

Nita didn’t believe a word that came out of her lying mouth.

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