Page 53 of The Soulless Witch

I had never been easily frightened, not after my pack was murdered, but this situation made me feel like I was that little boy again who could do nothing, save no one. It terrified me because I had no problem with dying while fighting an enemy, but how could I do that when I didn’t know who my enemy was?

I was almost at my house, a small group of children trailing behind me and egging each other to ask me something when I spotted Allison sitting on the steps leading to her home. I wouldn’t have thought much about it if it wasn’t for the serious expression on her face. She pushed herself up, so I turned around to face the children with a smile.

“What is it?” I asked, and they all looked away in embarrassment. “Come on, I won’t be mad. Tell me.”

“We wanted…” a little girl with her hair in low ponytails started, her hands clasped together. “We wanted to ask—”

“We wanted to ask if you caught the evil witch!” the boy next to her shouted, meeting my eyes in a surge of confidence. I did my best to keep my smile on. “She won’t steal us while we sleep and eat us, right, Alpha?”

Licking my lips, I crouched next to them, ruffling the boy’s hair.

“I won’t let any witch get to you, so you can sleep easy,” I said, watching as relief swept away their worries. They believed me so easily that I felt even more determined to make sure those words were the absolute truth. “Now run along and don’t go too far. Until I say so, we are all going to stay close to home, yes?”

“Yes, Alpha!” They chorused before running off to continue with their games.

I pushed myself up, watching them disappear into one of the houses, when I sensed a movement behind me. Allison stopped by my side, looking after the children with a strange smile on her face.

“You are so adorable with them.” Despite her taunting smile, her compliment sounded sincere. “Have you thought about having one? Or you know, ten?”

“I’m not bringing a child into this fucked up world.” I grimaced, turning away from her. “Besides, you need two for that and I don’t have, nor need, a mate. You, on the other side, can have a whole litter, and once I’m too old to lead, one of them could take my place.”

I looked back at her just as she was making a disgruntled face. I knew for a fact that her mate had been hinting about wanting a child for a few years now, but she was using her position as my Beta, and my ‘inability’ to do anything without her, as an excuse to delay that moment. I wasn’t sure if she even wanted a pup, or maybe if she was scared of the idea. Neither of us had a particularly happy childhood.

“Anyway.” She cleared her throat, striding back to her house. “I have something for you. Let’s go inside.” She climbed the steps without checking if I followed, leaving the front door open. I listened for any sign of Eddie while she stomped into their bedroom, but then the smell of fresh coffee drew me to the kitchen. She returned a minute later with a handful of papers.

“Where’s Eddie?” I asked, looking around the neat room. Their home was spotless in comparison to mine, so tidy and color-coordinated, that I felt like I had just walked into a magazine.

“Shopping,” she replied, taking the cup from my hand right as I was preparing to take a sip. She ignored my glare as she made her way to the kitchen table, so I sighed in resignation and poured myself another one. Some days, I really wondered who was the Alpha of this pack.

Taking the chair beside her, I glanced at the pictures she still held between her fingers. Once she put her coffee aside, she spread them out on the table. I recognized one of the faces—the young human girl with short hair I saw with Celeste, sitting on a bench with a group of other humans, unaware that she was being watched. There was another one of her in front of a nice suburban house, and another with two older people and the little boy I saw with her that day.

“Those are the humans the witch claimed,” Allison said while I examined each picture, trying to recognize the places. The old building behind the girl and her friends was definitely a university uptown and the way her house looked suggested she lived in the outskirts of the city. “We found their names and their residence, and I put people to watch them, but there are magical wards around the house, so we can’t get any closer without triggering them. All four humans have the mark.”

I picked a photo of the house, committing every detail to memory, even the strange black cat that perched on the mailbox, staring directly at whoever had taken the picture.

“I still don’t get it.” Allison shook her head. “Why would she claim humans? I thought she hated them because the Order had been hunting her for centuries. I thought she hated everyone. To claim someone…it requires trust and a deep connection. Why else would you want to protect someone? This spell is like the mate bond, right? It can’t be broken.”

Nodding, I put the picture down. It wasn’texactlylike the mate bond, since sometimes we didn’t have a choice about who our mate was, but it was close. The witches’ bonds weren’t as primal as ours, but the rest was similar. Every species had its own form of ultimate commitment and, for some reason, that hateful, evil, soulless witch had decided to bind herself to a bunch of humans. It made no sense.

I opened my mouth to ask what else she found about them when my phone started buzzing in my pocket. Frowning, I took it out and stared at the unfamiliar number. Allison gave me a curious glance, but then she leaned back in her seat, waiting for me to take the call.

“Hello?” I said as I brought the device to my ear. The only people who had this number were the members of my pack and the other Alphas I was in communication with. Nobody else. So who…?

“Hello, Isaac.”

That voice…I knew that arrogant timbre that made me want to punch things.

“Roman,” I snarled, rising to my feet so fast that I almost knocked the chair down. “How did you get this number?”

“I see your manners over the phone are no better than they are in person.” Roman sighed, ignoring my question. “You should be nicer to yourfriends, wolf.”

I snorted before I could stop myself.

“Friends? Me and you? Did you have some drunkard for breakfast?”

“I’m very particular about what I put in my mouth, thank you very much,” Roman replied with his infuriatingly calm tone. “And are we not friends if we help each other when in need?”

I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or curse him, so I did both. There was a long pause on the other side, then the sound of him moving made me tense. Just what was it with his sudden talks of friendship? And why on the goddamn earth would he callme? My head was spinning from all the questions.

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