Season of the Witch (Claws Clause 2)

His wolf kept its mouth open, tongue lolling as he sampled the scents, processing them. It belonged to a Nightwalker, one who was long gone and unfamiliar to him. But… that wasn’t the only scent he caught as he got closer.

Human. That was a human female scent wafting toward him, nearly covered up by the copious amounts of blood.

He spurred his wolf to go faster.

There wasn’t supposed to be a human around for miles.

Sometimes Ants approached a Bumptown on a dare. When they did, they almost always avoided the Zoo—the area of the settlement populated by a mix of solitary shifters and smaller, segregated packs—because of its reputation.

Okay, Colt allowed. The reputation of predatory shifters like him. If you wouldn’t want to square off against a true wolf, cougar, or bear in the wild, that went double for dangerous shifters.

In the Zoo, the ordinances outlined in the Claws Clause were more like… guidelines, rather than laws.

If they had any brains in their heads at all, they stayed away from Little Transylvania, too. The name was cutesy; the Nightwalkers that guarded their immediate territory were definitely not.

The Dayborns were pretty safe. Natural-born vampires who thought they were more civilized than their turned counterparts, they could almost pass for humans if they hid their fangs.

Well, unless you had a shifter's nose.

Colt prided himself on his nose. He could scent a threat to his territory from more than a mile away, more if the wind was blowing toward his home. He could separate trails, pick out one particular scent out of countless others, even decipher emotions and intentions by the way it smelled.

Like how a lie had a curdled taint to it, and sharp fear was bitter and acrid.

The female scent seemed human. Nowadays, though, that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Colt started to jog toward it, once again dwelling on his witch as he went.

He didn’t know Shea’s innate scent, the one that belonged to her and her alone. In the beginning, before he knew she was a witch, he wondered if she used a scent-reducer to hide it. Fucking witches were making a killing on that charm, creating soaps and shower gels and perfumes to cover up a person’s scent. It was anti-Para as hell but, then again, most things were.

Bumptowns.

The Cage.

The ridiculous Claws Clause.

He hated it, but even Colt had to admit they had a point. In the case of shifters, all it took was one sniff and they knew their one true mate. Vamps, too, supposedly, though humans were more worried that they smelled like lunch to the bloodsuckers.

Not that Shea’s missing scent meant shit. Colt already had a troubling suspicion from the first time he heard her voice and his wolf gentled for the first time in ages. Then he saw her at her shop and his heart nearly stopped.

And when she accidentally brushed his arm, a totally different part of him came to life in a rush of pleasure and lust.

His body was sure she was his mate, his wolf was certain of it, and he still didn’t know what her true scent was. A woodsy hint here, a pleasant earthy aroma drifted to him when he least expected it, only to be caught off guard—and brutally reminded that she was a witch—when his nose got hit with a hint of the telltale stink of baby powder.

She wasn’t hiding it, though. Not on purpose. It had everything to do with protecting herself. Shea claimed she wasn’t a witch—at least, not a practicing one. She was a healer, though, as well as an empath, and she kept herself locked up behind an almost impenetrable set of shields that kept the whole world out unless she invited them in.

Colt didn’t want a mate. He also didn’t want her to suffer due to her gifts.

So the shields? He was torn. His wolf wanted nothing more than to break through them. At the same time, it absolutely hated the idea of causing her any further pain.

Colt’s repeated rejection was bad enough. He couldn’t get a read on her emotions or tell through her scent, thanks to her shields, but the bond… he could feel her sadness every time he pushed her away.

Still, he kept on doing it.

He had to.

Shea deserved better than him. She deserved better than a broken shifter who didn’t know what the fuck he wanted.

The wind blew past him, the scents so strong he had to shut his nose off before it triggered his wolf’s hunting instincts. As he loped over the invisible line that separated the edge of the Bumptown from the next town over, his fur ruffled as his wolf’s eyes spied a b