Page 108 of The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate
“Who are you?” Fiona demands. Her tone is not polite. The easy wariness from the start of this is gone. Defensive distrust has taken its place.
Lillian doesn’t flinch. “You have witch blood.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have witch blood,” Lillian repeats, gently but plainly. “I can feel it in you. You must have an idea.”
Fiona is silent for a moment before her eyes slowly move across each of us—assessing, deciding whether we are something to run from.
“I’ve met your kind once,” she says quietly. “Twenty years ago. The day my Aunt Meera disappeared.” She doesn’t elaborate. “I have no reason to trust you.”
Nobody responds to her right away. I move forward. Half a step, no more. I don’t reach for her; I simply put myself in her sightline, keeping my voice level.
“Fiona, we are looking for witches to help us with an important task. We don’t mean anyone any ill will. We don’t know what happened the day your aunt went missing, and I am sorry if it was our kind that took her. But we are not them.”
She studies me. Her eyes drop, briefly, to the high collar of my blouse, and I wonder what she’s reading there.
“What do you want with witches?”
“Help,” I repeat. “With something very important. Was your aunt a witch? Could you show us where she lived?”
“Why do you want to see her cottage?”
“To look for clues as to her whereabouts. And she may have known other witches.” I look her deep in the eyes, willing her to believe me. “We are in sort of a time crunch.”
Darius speaks from the doorway. “If you don’t want to take us there,” he says evenly, “we’ll find it ourselves. We are asking out of respect. We do not need permission.”
Fiona’s head whips toward him. “Fine,” she snaps.
She walks out from behind the counter, past Lucas, past Darius. The bolt slides back with a quick, angry motion. She pulls the door open.
“I’ll take you,” she says, looking back at us over her shoulder. “But I’m telling my neighbor where I’m going with you first. I do not trust any of you.”
“That’s fair,” Lillian says quietly.
We follow her out into the high street. The place next door is a small grocer’s; a light is still on inside. Fiona enters without knocking. The shopkeeper looks up from a ledger, then at the cluster of strangers waiting on his stoop, and his eyebrows climb.
I cannot hear what Fiona says to him. She speaks low, fast, her hand on his counter. He listens. His eyes flick past her to us once. He nods. Whatever he says back to her, it’s too quiet, but I see his hand drop below the counter. It comes back up with an object folded in cloth that she tucks into the pocket of her apron without looking.
Then, she comes back out. She does not look at any of us as she pulls the door shut behind her.
“This way,” she says.
The walk to the cottage takes us through the woods at the edge of the village as the light is going pink. Fiona walks a few paces ahead, not among us—deliberately not a part of our group. Lillian walks behind her at a respectful distance. Lucas falls in behind me, with Darius and Violet at his shoulders.
The cottage sits at the end of the track. The roof has held. The windows have weathered open. A wild rose bush has climbed the front porch and spread across the door.
Fiona stops at the threshold.
She takes a key from the leather cord from around her neck. Her hand is steady when she fits it into the lock. The door swings open on hinges that protest.
We step inside.
The front room has a smell of dust and old herbs, faint but persistent. Lillian moves through it slowly, her palm extended, and stops near the hearth.
“Strong residue here,” she murmurs. “Old. But real. I haven’t felt a working this strong in years.”
Fiona is already in the next room. I can see her with her hand on the kitchen table, fingers spread on the wood. She drifts to a doorframe and rests her forehead against it.
