Page 89 of Bound to the Wolf
Briana took a step back and scratched at her arm one final time. He saw a piece of jewelry clatter to the ground. She looked at her raw, red wrist, then up at Delainey and Reece, her expression confused and eyes wide.
Her mouth opened and closed twice before she managed to squeak out a word. “What?—”
“You called us here,” Delainey said. “You said… you could break the tether.”
“Ah, yes, I’m sorry for the subterfuge.”
Reece smelled magic just as Briana gasped and slumped over, unconscious. She dropped like her strings had been cut.
“You should probably put that back on her,” the older woman said. She stepped out of the treeline at the far edge of the clearing, and behind her came four others.
The woman herself was tall and narrow-shouldered; her pale skin and sharp features were unmistakably Elise’s, the same bone structure, the same blue eyes, though hers were harder. She was a witch, that much was clear, as was the man at her side. He stood half a step behind the witch, his posture composed, hands clasped loosely in front of him, his expression showing enough teeth that he might have been a vampire in another life.
The three others all wore ceremonial robes. Reece didn’t recognize a single one of them, other than Emerson. Emerson stood apart from the other two robed figures—still absurdly clean, still looking like he’d wandered out of a faculty meeting and into a kidnapping.
“You’ll need to work on your spell work, Emerson,” the woman said. “She shouldn’t have been able to claw that off. That is a child’s error.”
Emerson scowled at the woman.
“Brenda?” Delainey asked. “Tim? What the hell?” she demanded.
The woman who must have been Brenda held up a hand. “I’m sorry for this inconvenience. Emerson here has not been completely honest with any of us, and now we’re here to clean up this mess before it gets out of hand. This is why you don’t trust lackeys.”
“I’m not a lackey!” he objected.
“These are Elise’s parents,” Delainey muttered to him. She took a step closer to Reece as if she could somehow protect him from them. Her shoulder pressed against his arm, the top of her head barely reaching his chin, and he felt the heat of her body through her jacket, the faintest tremor running through her that she was trying very hard to hide. “They’re from the Wallace Grove Coven.”
“Yeah, I figured that part out.” That explained where the money for the Rolls came from. “Are you the ones that kidnapped us?”
He hated that he had to ask, that he sounded so confused by it, but clearly something had been done to Briana. Clearly Emerson had something to do with all of it.
He had a feeling he and Delainey had been caught in the crossfire, though he didn’t know why.
“Again,” said Brenda, “the problem with hired help. You tell them to take the witch and the wolf, and they don’t grab the right ones.”
“What?” Delainey’s voice was shaky. “You wanted to do this to your own daughter?”
“Like any daughter of ours would consort with filth like that.” If Tim had any less decorum, he might have spat.
“Magic would be good any time now,” Reece muttered, and hoped Delainey heard.
“There are six of them.” She looked at him. “How powerful do you think I am?”
“No, magic won’t help you right now,” Brenda said. “It won’t be able to cross the barrier of the circle until we break it. You’re trapped. This is all unfortunate, but we can fix this mess and free you from it, Delainey.”
Beside him, Delainey stood stock-still.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
Since fucking when?He didn’t say that out loud, but his mind quickly supplied why this would be an issue. They hadn’t discovered a new way to break the spell between them, just the old one they had known about for weeks.
If one of them died, the other would be free.
“You wanted Nico to die,” Delainey said. “You wanted her to kill him, didn’t you? She’ll never forgive you for this.”
Brenda rolled her eyes. “Children are so dramatic. She’ll never know. They’re going to find you here with his body beside you, and they’re going to realize there was some great accident. You tried to sever the bond yourself, and an mishap occurred. It isn’t ideal, but you won’t remember a thing.”
“Then tell me why,” Delainey said. “Just for my own edification, because frankly, I’m fucking baffled.”
