Wolves don’t forget…Except her

CHAPTER 4: The Witch From The Lunar Tribunal

Kaelric's POV

I’d been walking for what felt like an eternity with each step a battle against the relentless and haunting image of her face wide fearful eyes with the calm acceptance of death.

“There! By the old oaks! It’s him! It’s the Alpha!”

A unit of riders on powerful horses burst through the tree line with their faces etched with worry that instantly melted into pure relief. At their head was Beta Rhevan and he practically fell off his horse in his rush to get to me.

“Alpha Kaelric! By the moon, we thought you were dead!” Rhevan grabbed my shoulders with his eyes scanning my body in utter disbelief. “The soldiers reported you took a poisoned blade.. they said you fell. We’ve been combing these woods for two days.”

One of the soldiers quickly offered me the reins of a spare horse and I took them.

“I did fall,” I said gravelly as I swung myself up into the saddle. “What of the battle?”

As we spurred our horses into a trot back toward Blackrift territory, Rhevan filled me in.

“The reinforcements arrived just in time and we pushed Drogan’s mongrels back across the river but it was a bloody victory, Alpha Kaelric.. a costly one.” Rhevan’s face darkened. “Their weapons… It’s not just silver.. It’s something else.. a poison we’ve never seen. It slows our healing and burns from the inside out. We lost too many good wolves to it.”

My jaw tightened because I knew that poison intimately. I had felt its fire in my veins.

Rhevan couldn’t hold his curiosity any longer. He gestured vaguely at my impeccably healthy and whole torso.

“Speaking of which… how are you… like that? You should be a feverish wreck if not buried under six feet of dirt. What happened out there?”

I was silent for a long moment with the only sound the pounding of hooves and the rustling of the forest. I could still smell her

“A witch,” I finally said, the word feeling like ash on my tongue.

Rhevan’s horse shied slightly as if spooked by the word itself and Rhevan stared at me, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“A what? Did you hit your head, My Friend? Witches don’t help our kind. They curse us. You more than anyone should know that.”

“I know what I know, Rhevan,” I growled, a flicker of the old familiar pain curse’s warning system twitching in my nerves at the mere mention of her. “I was dying but I woke up healed and she did it.”

“She?” Rhevan’s eyes went wide. “You’re serious. A witch saved you.” He said it slowly as if trying to fit two incompatible ideas together. “But your curse… the pain…”

“I felt it,” I admitted, my knuckles white on the reins. “The moment I woke up it was like a hot knife in my gut. It’s how I knew what she was.” I hesitated, the next confession feeling even more dangerous. “But… there was something else, too.”

“Oh, moon goddess, don’t say it,” Rhevan groaned, already looking horrified.

“An attraction,” I forced out, hating the words even as I said them. “A pull and I could have killed her.. I nearly did.. my claws were at her throat but I couldn’t do it.”

Rhevan looked like I’d just told him the sky was green.

“Alpha Kaelric, that’s not possible. That’s not you. You hunt them.. You can’t stand to be within a hundred yards of them! This… this has to be some kind of spell. A trick! She must have bewitched you!”

I didn’t answer. I just rode on with her beautiful terrified face swimming in my vision. Rhevan was right.. it was impossible but it had happened.

***

Back at the Blackrift Pack stronghold.. days bled into one another after the pack celebrated my miraculous return but I was a ghost among them. I performed my duties but my mind was miles away in a hidden cave with the one witch I couldn't kill.

I sat for hours in my study staring at the fire trying and failing to understand the war raging inside the cursed hatred versus the inexplicable magnetic pull.

“Alpha?” a young guard said, interrupting my brooding one afternoon. “The Council of Elders requests your presence please.”

Grumbling, I pushed myself up and made my way to the great stone council chamber. I pushed the heavy doors open and strode in and instantly, I doubled over.

A searing hot agony lanced through my core immediately. It was a pain I knew intimately, a pain that had been my constant companion and guide for years. My head snapped up with my wolf surging to the surface with a vicious snarl golden eyes blazing with fury.

“Witch!” I roared with my gaze zeroing in on the source of my torment.

A woman stood beside Rhevan. She was tall, elegant and unruffled, dressed in simple but fine grey robes. Her eyes were a piercing knowing blue and she didn’t flinch at my outburst.. she merely arched a thin eyebrow.

“Alpha Kaelric,” she said with her voice cool and melodic. “A pleasure to finally meet you. I am Serapha Crowvain.”

“I know who you are,” I spat, fighting to stay upright against the nausea. “The former witch who plays lapdog for the Luna Tribunal. What is this filth doing in my halls, Rhevan?”

Rhevan stepped forward with his expression grim but resolved.

“I summoned her, Alpha Kaelric. After what you told me… about the witch in the woods, about this ‘attraction’… I knew it wasn’t right and it’s not natural. It has to be an enchantment.. a compulsion she placed on you. The Council agrees.”

He gestured to the circle of stern-faced elders who all nodded their agreement. One of them spoke, “Your… obsession with this creature is a vulnerability, Alpha. One of our enemies could exploit and we must neutralize the threat.”

“You went behind my back? I told you that in confidence!”

“You told me you were bewitched!” Rhevan replied calmly, saying that he was doing the right thing. “I’m trying to protect you! Protect the whole pack! Serapha has the full authority of the Luna Tribunal to track this witch down and she’s the best there is.”

Serapha gave a small cold smile.

“My methods are my own, Alpha. But I always find my quarry. If this little witch has ensnared you with her charms, we will soon have her in custody to… dissect the problem.”

The thought of Serapha’s cold clinical hands on the woman who had saved me with her last ounce of strength sent a fresh wave of rage through me that almost overshadowed the pain.

“I forbid this!”

“The Council has voted, Alpha,” the head elder said not unkindly but firmly. “The hunt is sanctioned.”

Serapha’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“Consider it done.” She turned and swept from the room with the painful aura around her thankfully receding with her.

I could only stand there defeated not by a rival Alpha but by my own pack’s fear and my own confusing heart. I had to act fast…!

***

Ilyra's POV

I tossed a bundle of dried yarrow into my satchel with my hands trembling. I’d been packing for days with a deep unshakable dread sitting in my stomach ever since he had left.

I had to go now and today. I couldn’t wait any longer.

I muttered to myself, “Stupid, Ilyra. So stupid. Should have run the second he shifted. ‘Oh, but I’m a healer,’” I mocked myself in a whisper. “Now he’s going to come back with an army of werewolves to burn down your little herb garden.”

I cinched the bag shut and took one last sad look at my hidden home. It wasn’t much but it had been safe.

A sudden noise outside made me freeze. It wasn’t the normal chatter of the forest.. it was the rustle of undergrowth being purposefully pushed aside and it was close. Was it him? Had he come back already?

I crept to the cave entrance, peering out carefully through a veil of hanging ivy. It wasn’t Kaelric..

Moving through the trees below, their eyes scanning every inch of the forest was a group of figures. They moved with a grim official precision and at their head with her grey robes seeming to swallow the light, was a woman with silver hair…!