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Olivia glanced in the rearview mirror, and her heart stopped.
He’d found her.
She brought the car she’d stolen to a sliding, spinning stop in the rain. She wasn’t sure if the catastrophic downpour was responding to her magic or happening because she’d already drained her magic in the fight.
When it became clear that his latest demands would mean they could no longer keep their home, she’d had nothing left to lose and gone to confront him. The fight had been pathetic. All the magic she could summon had been just enough to keep her alive; she’d barely touched him.
She staggered out of the car, clutching her right arm against her body. She couldn’t really move a couple of fingers and was fairly sure it was broken, but that was the least of her problems right now.
Her magic had lasted long enough to escape with her life and get her forty-five minutes out of town when a black SUV tried to run her off the road. She’d taken the first exit to she didn’t even know where and snaked through the streets trying to lose them. But all of that was done.
“You knew what would happen,” a voice shouted behind her, and she twisted.
A trio of young men stood at the entrance to the alley she’d dashed into. They were still in human form, but she knew that could change in a heartbeat. One held a club, so shifting probably wasn’t their plan. They wouldn’t even give her the respect of fighting as wolves.
“He protects us all. The least you could’ve done was be grateful,” the skinny one offered.
“Protecting us from himself isn’t protection. It’s extortion,” she shouted. She tried to summon her magic, normally so powerful when storms were raging, but it was like lighting a match in a hurricane. Nothing happened.
The men stepped forward, and she scrambled around for a weapon. She spotted a busted rocking chair beside a dumpster and ran for it. She had enough time to break off one of the dowels before they crowded her further down the alley.
“You could have been so much more to him,” the biggest one offered.
Nausea roiled her stomach, followed swiftly by guilt. When he’d made a move a few months ago, she could have flattered him even as she told him it was impossible. Instead, she hadn’t hidden her horror and revulsion at the idea.
The one with a club spit. “You think you’re too good for a wolf?”
Witches and shifters had been enemies for centuries. Olivia had been taught from a young age to fear the wolves. They could steal her magic and destroy a coven.
In reality, the evil of werewolves was much more prosaic.
She’d been dealing with one particular wolf for five years now, since the moment he’d glimpsed her on the streets of Baltimore and decided she was his.
First, he wanted her magic, but when it became clear there wasn’t any way for him to get it, he wanted her. When she told him that was impossible, he exploited her family in a scam as old as humanity.
And now there was almost nothing left.
The “almost” in that sentence was causing her real headaches. She had truly been willing to die rather than submit, but now that she hadn’t, she found she kind of wanted to keep going. Why should he take her life along with everything else? How was that fair? How was that justice?
Plus, if she lived through this, she would have another chance to end his reign of terror against everyone vulnerable in the magical world.
“You had your chance,” the big one said, stepping forward.
She gripped the chunk of wood in her hand and vowed that she would get another chance, no matter what. She scanned the ally one more time, looking for a way out, but there was none. In keeping with the luck of the night, she’d run straight into a dead end.
So she took a deep breath and ran toward the thugs.
She managed to get a swipe at the big one before he grabbed her arm. When the skinny one got too close, she jabbed the jagged wood into his abdomen and almost threw up when she felt it pierce his skin.
“Why the hell did you do that?” the kid asked, sounding ten years younger than he was. The beast didn’t have a real pack; he collected desperate strays like her. Some took to the job better than others.
The skinny one swung out wildly and the side of his hand connected with her eye. Pain exploded through her socket. She poured everything she had into not flinching and braced for another blow.
“He can never have me,” she said.
The guy with the club swung.
The last thing she saw was approaching wood and then the dumpster growing larger in her vision as her head and the rest of her flew toward it five feet away.
Seconds, minutes, days later she opened an eye. She had to have hit something. She was now on the ground but didn’t remember the impact.
She clung to consciousness, trying to remember why she needed to get up and run. Distantly, she heard a male voice insist that they were not supposed to kill her or damage her more.
“He still wants her.”
She shuddered at the idea of “he,” though she couldn’t bring a name or a face to mind.
“Then we just leave her here. Pretend we never saw her.”
Their retreating footsteps were the last thing she heard as reality slipped away.
