“I was hoping you’d come up tonight.” Axlam squeezed my forearm. “Especially since Sophia is a sensitive.”
A sensitive? “Is that why the elves won’t allow Ed or his family into The Great Hall?” I’d think a sensitive would be better protected behind the strongest of the elven magic.
“They didn’t tell you.” She did not at all look surprised. “The elves no longer favor sensitives. There were problems before you arrived. That’s what Gerard told me.” She tugged me toward the house. “There are new protocols. No interference at all because of fate or something. Never mind that we are well aware of who among the pack’s families are sensitives and could use a hand so they don’t end up in therapy because they think they’re crazy.”
Axlam didn’t seem any happier about the secrecy than I was.
“But she’s Akeyla’s friend. How is that not interfering?”
Axlam shrugged. “No interference also means allowing spontaneous relationships to develop.” She pointed at the house. “Haven’t you ever wondered why Arne tolerates Jax and Akeyla’s fated mate magic? Even a less powerful elf could a put magical stop to their relationship without so much as breaking a sweat.” She turned back toward the house. “It was spontaneous, thus protected by their no-interference protocols.”
And here I thought Arne was being a good grandfather. “Should we tell Ed and Isabella?” He’d been about to punch Arne at the Admin Building. “What if—”
“Uncle Frank!” Akeyla and Sophia—with Jax and Sif in tow—pushed open the gate from the back yard. “We set out water and food for Marcus Aurelius,” Akeyla called.
Jax looked lost, as if his big moment had been subsumed under Akeyla’s work to make sure my dog had provisions. The poor kid was totally at a loss as to what to do.
“Grandma showed me how to set a beacon spell. He’ll come home and we can ask him about a kitten.”
Sophia, standing next to Akeyla, looked over her shoulder and around Sif. “What?” she called, as if someone was standing behind the kids and the gate, out of my and Axlam’s sights.
Jax looked, too.
But neither Sif nor Akeyla looked. They had no idea Sophia or Jax were distracted.
“Jaxson!” Axlam called. “Who’s there?”
Akeyla took Sophia’s hand. “Grandma says it’s time to—”
I heard a woman’s voice. Sophia turned to Jaxson. “Listen,” she said, and yanked Akeyla close.
I saw the person they were talking to. I saw her step in front of the kids just as the wine bottles of my gate lit up one after another as if a firefly pixie had teleported inside of each, one after another.
Jax’s wolf magic burst out between the girls and the gate. Akeyla raised her arms in the distinctly elven way they do when they are about to cast a spell. And Sophia Martinez, the mundane nine-year-old friend of a little elf and a young alpha werewolf, braced as if she was about to get into a hand-to-hand fight with a monster.
“Kids!” I bellowed.
Axlam grabbed my arm. “Frank!”
The bottles shrieked.
Ellie and the children vanished.
Chapter 21
I spun Axlam to keep my body between her and the magical blast. Heat rolled around me—literal heat—and a crackling reverse electricity that danced as little pixies of static along Bloodyhood and onto the garage.
The magic turned everything into a negative exposure—the red of my truck turned green and the shadows behind the garage white. Even the static flickered as little black sparks and not the yellow-white of real electricity.
The heat and the magic were gone before I inhaled again.
Axlam wheezed and coughed. “Jaxson!” she shrieked. “I saw…” She rubbed her eyes as if confused. “Where is my son?”
The kids were gone, as was the woman who had to be Ellie Jones. All four had vanished into the thick air and the blizzard’s rising wind.
Sif doubled over. She retched and leaned against the house.
The front door slammed against the frame. A wave of brilliant elven power burst into the drive and around the vehicles. “Sif!” Dagrun yelled.
Sif forced herself away from the wall. “That…” She leaned forward again. “That felt like a reset.”
Dagrun roared. Whatever pain the blast caused Sif was also clearly affecting Dag, but Dag never showed weakness. Never.
“I will eviscerate you, St. Martin!” she yelled.
“He took the kids!” Axlam staggered to her feet.
“Wait, wait…” I was sure I saw Ellie, but I couldn’t tell them that. Not with the elves this close. Not with Axlam’s wolf magic manifesting.
“Frank!” Dag shouted. “That burst swept away my protections on the girls!” She pointed at the side of the house. “Mine!”
Had Ellie burst Dag’s spell? But….
I rubbed my eyes in confusion. If whatever hit had been powerful enough to disrupt Dagrun’s magic, we were in serious trouble.
A massive, bright sigil formed around Dagrun’s arms and chest. It slid and locked, and a burst of power not all that different from what we just experienced exploded outward from her body.
I squinted and shielded my eyes. Her magic washed by me without doing harm, and rippled into the trees around the house.
She roared at the sky again. “No one takes my granddaughter!” she yelled. “We were going to imprison you for the harm you have done our wolves, but now you have touched the royal blood of Alfheim!” she shouted into the trees.
St. Martin took the kids? Part of me said no. Part of me said that they might well be safer than we were.
But that made no sense.
Dagrun’s glamour ruptured. She didn’t drop or release it, as most of the elves do when they step outside of their mundane disguises. Dag’s pretenses literally parted as if her elven self had punched her way through her human chest.
“Frank.” Axlam’s voice had deepened and her eyes shimmered with her wolf. “I think that wave loosened her control. She’ll hurt you or any mundane within ten miles if she doesn’t calm down.” She stepped in front of me even though she, too, was feeling the
