"Hurry," Mother whispered to my thoughts.
Or was someone else still in control?
I tried to pull my hands away from the wolf, but it was too late. The power had latched onto him, draining him.
No. This was not the way I'd live my life.
I gathered my energy, willed it back inside, back into the dark pit from which it came. The touch of death clung to my fingertips, and I pulled with all my might.
And my hands came off the wolf.
The beast turned on me and charged, and I used what Derek had taught me, feigning one way while coming in for an attack below. I just hoped wolf boy parts hurt like real boy parts as I kicked between its back legs.
The wolf whined, fell back, then righted itself and lunged at me, pushing me to the ground and pinning me.
He looked ready to tear my throat out when my hood fell back, and he saw my face.
And I saw his eyes, and finally I remembered why they were so familiar.
This wolf had the same eyes as Derek, when he'd defended me from the men who'd attacked me.
The. Same. Eyes.
TWENTY EIGHT
Peril in Thine Eye
DEREK
Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Rose.
Rose.
Rose.
MY MIND REPEATED her name, as if I could make all of this horror disappear and we'd be back in the cabin, holding each other in front of the fire.
At first I thought the coven had captured her and used her to punish me. She was their prisoner.
But then I realized that she hadn't been restrained. And she'd been about to use some kind of power on me.
All of the blood lust drained from my body, and my heart cracked into shards.
As if from another dimension, I heard the leader call for the coven to capture me, but I couldn't move. Couldn't make this new reality where Rose was my enemy mesh with the reality I had lived where she was my love.
A magical net surrounded me, and still I didn't fight.
Her beautiful eyes were wide in fear, her pale face drained of even the slightest color. I could tell from the swelling around her eyes that she'd been crying a lot, and I didn't know which part of me should respond to that—the man who loved her, or the Druid who wanted her dead.
The nets tightened around me, pulling me off of her. My claws scraped against her chest, leaving raw, red lines. I didn't harm her on purpose. Would she know that? Did it matter?
The man I'd fought came back, bent over and out of breath. He said something about the power failing. He couldn't get the roses.
Perhaps my dad had been right. Perhaps fighting them hadn't been the best choice. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
As they pulled me along the icy forest floor to their cars, my eyes never left Rose's. She shuffled forward, Ocean at her side, and stared at me, tears running down her face as my wolf body gave out and my human body took over.
TWENTY NINE
What Must Be Shall Be
ROSE
What must be shall be.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
No.
No.
No.
NOT DEREK. IT couldn't be. But the eyes. And then he shifted, trapped in the magical threads of power from my coven, the wolf shifted into man, and my beloved Derek lay there naked, staring at me with so much hate and pain.
I knew every inch of him, had touched and loved all of him in the only ways I could, and now he had been reduced to a wounded animal.
Worse—the enemy.
Large purple bruises formed on his back from when Blake had thrown him against the tree, and the threads of magic dug into his skin, cutting him and leaving open wounds.
I clutched my chest where his claws had torn into my flesh as they pulled him off of me. "Stop!"
Mother leaned against Blake, who helped her to the car. The others looked at me, shock on their faces.
I pointed to Derek's battered body. "You're hurting him. He had nothing to do with the attacks on our property. He's innocent. Let him go, please."
Ocean held me upright as I pled for the life of this man I still loved, despite everything.
He hadn't even been in town until after the attacks had started. He'd come back for his brother, who'd been hurt.
Oh God. His brother. I had destroyed Derek's brother.
No.
No.
No.
This couldn't be happening. A week ago I had hope, a future with promise. Now, my world had turned to ash and everything I loved had been taken from me.
Blake shouted about making him pay for what he'd done to Mother, but all I could see was what we were doing to him. What I'd done to his brother.
I sobbed in Ocean's shoulders as the coven I'd been raised in once again ignored me to follow the misguided lead of Mother.