Hey. No worries. We can do this together, I tell them, dropping back to stand beside Dare. We have your backs.
Archer nods, but I can sense the unease rolling off him.
Beside me, Sable shifts to her human form before any of us can make a sound. She keeps her movements slow and steady as she pulls a cotton dress from her backpack and slips it on over her head.
What is she doing? Ridge grunts inside my head, worry coloring his voice. She needs her teeth.
I’m sure she has her reasons, Archer argues, but he sounds just as concerned.
I nudge her with my nose, trying to ask her what the hell she was thinking without being able to say the words. She’s safest in wolf form, with access to her animal speed and sharp teeth, like Ridge said. Lucky for me, she’s so empathetic she knows immediately what I’m asking.
“If the lone witch is here, and she attacks us with magic, I need to have access to mine,” Sable says urgently, tightening the straps on her backpack so it’ll fit her current smaller frame, then throwing it over her shoulders once more. “It’s hard enough to control the witch when I’m in human form. It’s impossible when I’m a wolf.”
Archer whines, but I nod once, letting her know I get it. And none of us can argue the point—she’s totally right.
Let’s go, Ridge says, drawing in close to Archer. Trystan, take point. Dare, behind him.
His tendency to take the lead used to drive me crazy, until I figured out it’s just how Ridge operates. If he sees a path, he tells us to take it—not because he thinks he’s our alpha, but just because his brain works quickly on a strategic level. Since I have a tendency to leap before I look, I appreciate his quick-thinking.
I trot forward quickly and lead the group forward. Cliffs rise on all sides, boxing us in, though the small clearing ahead of us gives us a little bit of visibility. The valley is small and flat, filled with swaying wildflowers and a few medium-sized boulders. There aren’t many places for a potential attacker to hide, but I don’t like the way the cliffs hover over us. We’re vulnerable here.
Tension hangs heavy over us all.
I glance back to see that Dare’s hackles are raised, and Archer is panting, a physical manifestation of his anxiety. Sable walks between Ridge and Archer in her human form, her gaze darting around as if she’s trying to look everywhere at once.
But it doesn’t matter.
When the attack comes, none of us see it coming.
Out of the open, empty space ahead of us—out of thin fucking air—magic comes hurtling for us.
14
Sable
The space around us seems to crackle with power. I feel the magic coming before I see it, but I’m not fast enough to stop it. I’m still getting used to the feeling of magic in the air, to the way it calls to my own power and sets it humming beneath my skin.
So my reaction time is shoddy, to say the least.
Black smoke shoots past my line of sight like a whip cracking, and several spiky tendrils hit Trystan in the hip. He yips in pain, a sound that sends terror surging through my heart, and his back legs give out beneath him. He trips sideways and sinks onto his back haunches, whining and growling.
My heart drops into my stomach, and I leap forward, desperately rifling through the sigils I learned from Archer.
They’re really all I know, which unfortunately means I don’t know much. The ones I do know have been practiced relentlessly, over and over, until I could recall those sigils in my sleep. But faced with a very real threat, I freeze. Suddenly, I’m useless. Every sigil I ever studied, every sigil I ever drew on the floor or in the air during Archer’s training sessions—they’re all gone like I opened a window in my mind and set them free.
That is, until another black tendril strikes out at us. It misses, but not by much. The static of it in the air raises all the tiny hairs on my neck.
Determination to protect my mates surges inside me. Something in my mind snaps into place, drawing me out of my momentary stupor. I desperately work to recall a defensive spell Archer showed me. The strong, black strokes of the sigil are right there on the edges my mind, hazy and nearly unrecognizable.
For a split second, I’m not sure I can remember its exact shape. I’m terrified I’ll draw the wrong sigil and blow us all up because of my ineptitude. But I can’t consider that right now, as Archer ducks another smoky missile and the energy slams into the dirt, sending a cascade of debris into the air.
I duck and cover my head with my hands as dirt and rock rain down. Then I throw myself between the magic and my mates—or at least where I think the magic is coming from, up the side of a nearby hill—and etch out what I hope is the right sigil. If not, I guess I’m about to find out just how badly I can screw this all up.
Oh, thank fuck.
A dim, gauzy black barrier forms between me and the unseen attacker just in time for another spell to race across the plain. The witch’s magic slams into my shield and dissipates on contact as my barrier renders it useless. But my spell is so weak that my shield shatters beneath the force of the magic, leaving us open to attack once again.
Meanwhile, Trystan has had the time he needs to get to his feet, and he stands next to Ridge. I’m relieved to see him upright, even if he’s favoring his back legs. The two of them scent the air like they might be able to smell the witch, even
