Ravensong (Green Creek 2)

—and I knew the moment it hit him, the moment he remembered, because he responded in the voice of an overgrown boy who was about to find out that monsters were real, that magic was real, that the world was a dark and frightening place because it was all real and—

shiny arms you have shiny arms gordo you’re a wizard harry

—I choked on a laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m a wizard, Ox.”

His tongue lolled out of his mouth, and I heard Joe huff behind me.

“Yeah, Yeah. We’re going.”

THEY WERE waiting for us, as they’d been before. As if they knew we were coming. They probably did. They just didn’t know what was coming for them.

The wooden bridge loomed behind them. The dirt road was covered with snow that crunched beneath our feet. The same people waited for us. Three men. One woman. All witches.

Dale was absent.

I wasn’t surprised.

He’d probably left Green Creek right after we’d met.

He wouldn’t have thought we’d come to this point.

If we survived this day, I’d show him just how wrong he was.

The witches looked nervous as we approached, though they tried hard to cover it. Problem was, they weren’t very good at it.

The wards felt sticky and hot, the magic foreign.

Maybe they’d been telling the truth before. That my father had nothing to do with this. That Michelle wasn’t working with him.

It didn’t matter now.

They were the same to me.

They weren’t with us. Which meant they were against us. That much was clear.

Ox shifted, just as he’d said he would. He stood nude in the snow, the shadows crawling along his skin. The others remained as they were.

“Alpha Matheson,” the woman said, voice defiant. “We didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Have you given further consideration to what Alpha Hughes has—”

“I stood here once,” Ox said, and a chill went down my spine. “When I was human. And right where you are were Omegas who had come to take what belonged to me. They had a member of my pack, though we didn’t know that she was then. She was scared, but she was strong. So much stronger than they expected. They tried to use her as leverage against me.”

The witches glanced warily at each other. The woman said, “I don’t see what a history lesson has to do with—”

Ox didn’t let her finish. “They thought because we’d been broken, because we were hurting and scared, we would just… fold. That I would let them take away everything I had left without a fight. I asked a question that night. One question that I wanted answered. Many things could have ended differently if they had just told me what I wanted to know. I want you to remember that, because I’m going to give you the same courtesy. I am going to ask you one question.”

“We won’t be intimidated like feral dogs,” one of the men spat. “You have nothing that can—”

And Oxnard Matheson asked, “What are your names?”

The witches were startled. They hadn’t been expecting that.

Ox waited.

The wolves stood stock-still.

In the trees, I heard the crunch of snow as a timber wolf prowled.