The Sacrifice

I couldn't do it alone.

I scrolled through my contacts to make a call to Ace as I started running back, but the woods were shit for reception, so I gave up, pushing my legs harder, ignoring the burn in my lungs as I called out for Minos as I got closer toward the property.

He appeared out of the tree-line almost at the same time, just as rundown, half-Changed, and eyes wild.

"What is it?" he asked, following me inside as I called for Ace.

"What?" Ace asked, mostly Changed back, but his eyes were still red, and there were small points of his horns in his forehead. "What is it?"

"They have her," I gasped out, trying to catch my breath enough to get more words out.

"Who?" Ace demanded. "Who has her?"

"I saw tracks," I added, taking a slow, deep breath.

"Fucking tell me who has her, Lycus," Ace snapped.

"The shifters," I told him, shaking my head, seeing the dread cross his face as it had crossed my heart and mind back in the woods. "The shifters have her."Chapter ElevenLenoreThere were a dozen of them in all once they all came in, all different colors from black and brown, to brindle, to sandy, to pure white. All their eyes were different colors as well, practically glowing in the dark.

Their thick coats reeked of wet dog as they filed in, forming a semi-circle around me, noses in the air, taking deep sniffs, but not making moves toward me as I pulled my knees into my chest, wrapped my arms around my legs protectively in case of an attack.

There was next to no movement from them for a long while, save for the sniffing and the occasional whining noise.

Then the white one moved toward the center of the circle, head tipping to the side as it looked at me, then slowly inched its way closer. Almost, if it was possible for a predator to do so, carefully, as if not to spook me.

It walked up, sticking its big wet nose in my face, my hair, over my injured hand, then foot, then turned away, letting out a huffing sound, and moving to sit in the center of the semi-circle.

This was some unspoken wolf-conversation because, one by one, the other wolves did the exact same thing, each inspecting me, seeming to be looking for something about me, but none appeared to find what they were looking for, giving up to go lie down back in their places in the semi-circle.

After the last wolf moved away, the massive white one in the center, letting out his own huff, rolled his head around, much the way a person would to remove a crick.

Then, as it leapt to a kneel, it seemed to explode into the air, replaced instead with the form of a man, tall, incredibly muscular, sweaty, blond-haired, blue-eyed, with a massive scar down the side of his face.

And stark freaking naked.

I didn't want to look, but from my position, when I glanced up, there it all was, hanging out. Big and commanding but not, it seemed, interested in me.

Small miracles, I guess.

I probably should have been shocked. To see a wolf turn into a man. But there had been tales of shifters in even the most ancient of our holy texts. True, over time, we had mostly relegated them to the same sort of thing as fairy tales, but to have those old stories proven true wasn't as shocking as coming upon an actual shifter with no prior knowledge of them would have been.

The transition itself was magnificent, made all my powers seem small in comparison, but I wasn't sitting there disbelieving my eyes.

If anything, I was racking my brain to try to remember what the stories said about shifters, their loyalties, and their feelings toward my kind.

But, in the moment, I was coming up all blank.

"It has been a long time since I've seen a witch," the white wolf declared, voice sounding rough. Whether that was his natural voice, or his throat was raw from the earlier howling, was anyone's guess. "I was starting to think you'd all died out." I couldn't seem to force my mouth to say anything to that. Part of me was scared to reveal that there were still covens around, not knowing the intentions of these shifters. The other part was too scared, too tired, too hurt, to think of anything else. "You're lucky we found you. There are all kinds of bad things in these parts," he said in a way that made me think that, while he didn't know about witches, he did know about demons. And that he had some opinions about them. None of them good. "What were you doing in the woods?"

"I, ah, I was taking a walk," I told him, it being mostly the truth. "And I got lost." That was also true. He didn't need to know the motivations for the walk.