The magic here was ancient. It was ugly and rotten, and I swore I felt it squirming against my skin. I ground my teeth and pushed against it, pushed with everything I had even though my hand was long gone and—
It pushed back.
And I knew it then.
Though I hadn’t felt it in years.
I knew it.
Magic, it—it has a signature. A fingerprint. Specific to a witch. But amongst family, it’ll be similar. Not the same, but familiar. If my father did this, if this is his magic breaking the tethers of the Omegas, his magic is in them.
And they’re recognizing him in me.
It was him.
Robert Livingstone.
The proof I needed.
And he was stronger than I was.
I couldn’t break through.
Oh, but how I screamed for the wolf. How I banged my hands against the wards until my bones splintered. How I tried everything to get to him.
He was up to his chest now. In the earth, those feral wolves pulling him down.
But nothing I did was enough.
Until—
Magic comes from the earth. From the ground. From the trees. The flowers and the soil. This place, it’s… old. Far older than you could possibly imagine. It’s like… a beacon. It calls to us. It thrums through our blood. The wolves hear it too, but not like us. It sings to them. They are… animals. We aren’t like them. We are more. They bond with the earth. The Alpha more so than anyone else. But we use it. We bend it to our whim. They are enslaved by it, by the moon overhead when it rises full and white. We control it. Don’t ever forget that.
My father had taught me that.
I stepped back from his poison.
I breathed in the scents of the territory around me.
It smelled of dirt and leaves and rain.
I sank to my knees and dug my fingers into the earth.
Once, the moon had loved the sun.
Once, there was a boy.
Once, there was a wolf.
He had sat with his back against a tree.
His bare feet were in the grass.
The boy leaned forward and kissed the wolf.
And knew then that nothing would ever be the same.
An unkindness of ravens swirled around me, feathers rustling.