Emotion, n. A prostrating disease caused by the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.
―Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
chapter three
The house was quaint in a ramshackle sort of way, charming if slightly neglected, with chipping grayish-white paint and meticulously painted blue shutters and creeping, knotted vines. It looked for all the world as if any second it would collapse back into the forest it had been carved out of, particularly that night under the eerie, surreal glow of the quarter moon. The first step up to the sagging porch gave an ominous creak when Dillion settled his foot on it, and Rory involuntarily clutched his shirt at the sound. She mumbled something apologetic as she loosened her fingers, before quickly brushing off her embarrassment with a derisive comment about the stairs' ability to support their combined weight. The werewolf laughed her concerns off heartily with the assurance that these particular stairs had outlasted three generations of O'Connells―something which did little to dispel her doubts.
Dillion took the last few steps two at a time, just for the novelty of jostling her nerves further, all the while humming to himself with all the pleasure of a child with a secret. He performed an unspeakably graceful and coordinated motion, opening the surprisingly unlocked front door without shifting the bundle of witch in his arms. He kicked the door shut behind him, and the tuneless ditty that had been hanging on his lips came to a triumphant close.
Rory's first impression was of ridiculously flame-red hair cascading over the arm of an old paisley-print sofa. It took her a moment to shake her eyes away from that brilliant mane to the girl draped across the living room couch, flipping absently through a magazine. The female O'Connell was practically petite next to her brother but at the same time exaggeratedly curved in the imitation of an hourglass, and her slightly slanted eyes and delicately long, pointed nose were more reminiscent of a fox than of a wolf. She must have heard their entrance, but she didn't look up, didn't pause in her perusal of the tabloid. "Watcha bag, big guy?"
"Um." Dillion's mouth quirked into its accustomed off-kilter smirk. It wasn't in his nature to overlook the humor in this situation, its inherent absurdity. "Actually, it was a pretty poor night overall. All I have to show for it is my soulmate."
Soulmate. And there it was, spelled out in infinitely simple terms. Simpler than any Rory could have dredged up out of the jumble of her senses. It was as if the word had been on the tip of her tongue all the while but she hadn't realized it until just now. She should have been elated, having at last fitted the final piece into the puzzle that had been unfolding since she first locked eyes with a wolf.
But Rory's mind was elsewhere at that moment. She was staring at the wolf's pretty younger sister―who was just now casting a startled stormy blue glance at Dillion―but at the same time she was staring at nothing at all. She was staring into a staggering emptiness within herself. She saw suspended in front of her in a dizzying collage the faces of her own family. Her family. Her mother, her father. Her grandmother. Her aunt and uncle, her younger cousin―the nearest thing she had to a sister. The people she loved, her anchor in this world, and she had left them all behind this night to an unknown fate in the hands of the enemy. That, that pain, was what her shell-shocked wits had been incapable of confronting, of drawing to the surface earlier in the woods.
Guilt―a luxury that she had been denied while she was fleeing from danger―now emerged in the security of the O'Connell home, where Dillion's family was untouched by the chaos that had erupted in town. The familiar emotion inundated her, all the worse for being held at bay for so long. She felt herself cracking, breaking up under the relentless pressure.
Distance and time bring a perspective that often abandons you in the heat of the moment, in the paralysis of fear. Clarity, when it came to Rory, was a lightning bolt of illumination, painfully obvious. It was effortlessly apparent now: the Council had discovered that the Dustin family had committed the unforgivable sin, intermarrying with humans not once but at least five times in its history. Most recently, Rory's great-grandfather, her grandmother's father, had been human, and Alma Dustin had expended a lifetime of energy trying to bury her bloodlines, marrying a respectable witch from out-of-state and raising two children in the strictest of environments. The greatest irony of the Alma's life was that her own son, her eldest, her most sensible offspring, had fallen helplessly for yet another human. Aurora Dustin was a living, breathing reminder of the shame that had haunted the family generation after generation, that inexplicable attraction they had for humans.
Rory thought in all probability that she had exposed her existence to the world when she had applied to college last fall. It was not so implausible to think that somewhere there was a Council member sitting on a college entrance board. Even less implausible in light of recent events because there had to be a reason why the Night World had suddenly unearthed a long-forgotten, minor branch of witches that had been secreted in an isolated area of Louisiana for nearly two centuries.
She must have known, subconsciously, the moment she was ensnared by a panther's gray eyes. She must have known, deep down, in the typically unobtrusive way of her premonitions that the Council had sent its troops to exterminate the Dustin line for its transgressions. And she, Aurora, had unthinkingly brought this on all of them. And she had been the one of all the family to freeze in their moment of most dire need.
Why had she been born a coward? From childhood, she had always been the most cautious, the last to climb the tallest branches of a tree or accept a dare, the last to break the rules or start a fight, the last to speak her mind, the first to turn and run, the most thoughtful, the quietest, the most shy―In short, the least likely person to do anything that might surprise you. True enough, she didn't have the raw ability for any sort of heroics. Rory had long since come to accept that she had simply been born with restrictions on her powers; not every part-witch suffered the kind of diminishment in talent that Rory did―as proven by any number of lost witches―but Rory was also the product of an exceptional number of mixings between human and witch blood. Her birthright was a tenuous balance, a blurring of the distinction between human and inhuman, some witch, mostly human, too powerful to be mistaken for completely mortal and too weak for all but the simplest of spells―a witch, but without that wellspring of energy and talent, like a tree with no roots to tap the soil. But more importantly, her lineage had resulted in her intrinsic lack of confidence; she was always unsure of her own identity, since neither human nor witch could truly be applied to her. And she couldn't help sensing that her failing to conform to either label proved that she was weaker than both species, a frail and feeble hybrid.
Rationally or not, she now shouldered the responsibility all by herself. That failing of hers, the shame contained in her very blood, had caused her to abandon those she cared about at the most pivotal moment, and the renewed and redoubled weight of guilt was overwhelming her. Tears welled in her eyes, inevitable and unstoppable, as impossible to turn back as a tidal wave or an avalanche or any other force of nature. She cried because she was sure of the worst, that they were all dead and she was alone in the world and there was no one to blame but herself that she was the only one left alive. Not so long ago, her survival instincts had spurred her impulsively into flight, intent on living to see the next dawn. But now that her higher brain was functioning again, she had only regret that she had not died earlier that night, standing beside her family.
Casey was off the couch and several steps across the room faster than any human teenager could have managed. "What did you do to her?" she hissed at her brother, stirred by the sight of the older girl's tears. She moved closer, throwing her arms around the upper torso of the forlorn witch, as if she were trying to shelter Rory from Dillion, and murmuring comforting words to her fellow female. "Hey, hey, it's alright. Don't worry. He's a pretty decent guy, I swear," Casey said, just as incapable of understanding as Rory was of speaking.
Dillion was stunned. He didn't even have the presence of mind to protest that he hadn't done anything. He simply looked powerlessly between the furious redhead and his weeping soulmate―and if he hadn't been supporting Rory he might have thrown up his arms in despair.
°°°
Alma, the Dustin family matriarch, sat stiff and regal as a queen holding court in her straight-backed cherry wood chair, her white hair swept back from her brow in a severe bun, her chin parallel with the floor, her indigo eyes revealing not weakness but an unquenchable fire. She possessed all the dignity of a witch who lived with the knowledge that she had done the nearly impossible, that she had produced two healthy male witches in a species dominated by females. Her sons, or the 'boyos' as she affectionately referred to them, flanked her on either side like an honor guard. Silas, the silvery-blond that had pulled Galen aside earlier, was positioned on her right, and Forrest, who had the chocolate curls of his dear departed father and the furrowed brow of man with troubles on his mind, on her left. Forrest had linked his hand with that of his wife Heather, a witch who had come to the family from Shreveport, and they were both looking with concern at their twelve-year-old daughter. Arabella―or Bella as she was affectionately dubbed by the family―was a self-assured young woman and a budding beauty with waves of thick, dark hair and overlarge doe brown eyes, but just now she had very little composure to speak of. Her small, pointed chin was trembling with the strain of controlled emotion.
The last member of the Dustin family had her arm draped around her niece to offer what comfort she could, but she had turned her face away from the rest of the family to conceal the fact that she was the most undone occupant of the room. Tears ran a soundless course down Samantha Dustin's face as she held herself absolutely still; Sam always made an effort to go quietly unnoticed. It was not that her mother-in-law had ever expressed in word or deed any disapproval of her―in fact, Alma showed no prejudice at all, for Rory was not-so-secretly the apple of her grandmother's eye―but as Silas's human wife Sam was excruciatingly aware that she was a disappointment, and she struggled privately to hold herself to Alma's invisible standards.
Galen and Keller had been invited up to Alma's apartment over the diner to join the family's vigil, but once there they had little idea what was expected of them. They sat a little too close together on the couch, taking comfort from each other's nearness in the face of their uneasiness. Keller was made all the more uncomfortable by Bella's presence in the room. There is nothing in the world quite like the odor of a pubescent witch, and it had set her stomach to roiling. As a witch approaches biological maturity, its scent has the tendency to shift in erratic patterns, being at once child-like while hinting at the power of the adult it will become, the two identities superimposed over each other in a disquieting mixture. It's a subtle thing, like catching sight of something in the corner of your eye and turning your head to find it disappeared, and just as infuriating. The smell is uncanny, to say the least, and confusing to a born predator. Keller's natural instincts were urging her to get as far away as possible from this strange creature, but she could do little but clench her jaw in frustration.
The eight occupants of the sitting room were organized in an impromptu circle, as if holding a séance or forming a protective perimeter for one of the more complicated spells, but the only enchantment that held the room was silence. And it seemed that no living voice would break the hex that lay on them; instead it was an electronic one that dissipated the dead air―the demanding ring of Galen's mobile phone shrieking in the quiet. The shapeshifter glanced quickly at the caller-id before handing the phone wordlessly to Keller. The gray-eyed teenager flipped the cell open and waited without offering any form of salutation.
"Hey, Boss," Winnie's grainy voice came weakly over the line. "That name you asked me to pull up research on―"
"Dustin," Keller interrupted brusquely without hearing the rest. "Dustin―it means 'Dusk-Keeper'. Aurora Dusk-Keeper."
Winfrith Arlin easily read the tense note in her team leader's tone, and she was wise enough to know better than to cut short Keller when her temper was on such a tight leash, but when Winnie spoke up again an undertone of urgency had crept into her soft voice. "No, no, that's not the problem. The thing is―well, are you sure that's the girl's real name?"
"Real name?" Keller echoed expressionlessly, one eyebrow rising. "It's the only name we have."
"You don't understand," Winnie protested with gentle insistence. "The Dustins are part of witch history―and by that I mean they are history. They're extinct. The Dustins were wiped out during the witch trials in Germany in the middle of the seventeen hundreds."
"There has to be some sort of mistake." Keller unconsciously dug claws she didn't have in her human form into the material of the couch. "You're sure that every one of them was destroyed? Not even one survived?"
"None of them. I'm positive. Witches are pretty meticulous about keeping records of these things." Winnie's voice dropped to become even more inaudible, as if she were suspicious of eavesdroppers. "I'd be careful, if I were you. Whoever these people are, they're not the Dustins. It's impossible."
"Impossible, eh?" Keller glanced surreptitiously at Silas, her gaze running thoughtfully over his thin face with its hawkish nose and brown eyes brimming with sorrow. Something suspiciously like pity moved in her chest, and in that moment she recognized that she was in over her head. She was already too deeply involved to be skeptical of this grieving parent. "Well, Mr. Dustin is sitting right here. Perhaps you'd like to tell him about the statistical improbability of his existence."
There was a ripple of static along the connection as Winnie chuckled. Thankfully, her own peculiar sense of humor prevented her from being insulted by Keller's frequently scathing sarcasm. "No thanks, Boss. It'll be much more―interesting―if you handle that yourself." The witch paused before murmuring a sincere, "Take care," and the line went dead.
Keller deposited the cell phone back into Galen's lap, the motion covering her frantic mental scramble for some sort of strategy, before looking up to find that Alma's bright, extraordinary gaze was fixed on her. "You shouldn't be so hard on your friend." Alma's voice was a gale whipping through the trees, strong and firm and some thirty years younger than her body. "She's right, of course. Technically, all the Dustins are long dead."
Whatever half-formed plans Keller had in mind crumbled. "How did you…" she trailed off as a thought struck her. She hurriedly reviewed her half of the phone conversation―the only half that should have to been audible to the rest of the room, with the exception of Galen and his cat-sharp ears―for any betraying statements, and found them. Her eyes narrowed. "Who are you, then?"
Alma shrugged her slight shoulders. "That's a difficult question to answer directly."
Keller crossed her arms. She was acutely aware of just how exposed she and Galen were in this stranger's home, and that there would be no quick exit. "We'll settle for the indirect explanation."
Alma spread her hands, palms open, as if to assure Keller that she meant no harm. "Please, there's no need to be rude, dear. Let an old woman move at her own pace. I was just about to tell you about Ursula Dustin. When she was a young woman―about your own age―she was disowned by her family for eloping with a human, Johannes Mehler, and her existence was erased from all the family histories for that disgrace. She surely would have been killed under Night World law, but she and Johannes had already escaped to England. Half a dozen years after that, a minor drought hit Germany and the local villagers blamed the Dustins; the entire family was killed in one night. But that's an unpleasantness I'd rather not delve into. The point is that Ursula severed all ties to the Night World when she married Johannes, but she never gave up witchcraft. Ursula's granddaughter Elsa was the one to immigrate to the United States, and eventually here, to Louisiana." The elderly witch smiled, and her smile was an invitation to ease the tensions smoldering in the room. "We are Ursula's descendants, so the name Dustin does not really belong to us. We could just as easily have chosen to be called Mehler, or any other surname, but Dustin seemed the best way to honor our forbearers. We did not think the dead would begrudge us that."
Keller was undoubtedly relieved by the disclosure, and she attempted to make her tone as non-confrontational as possible, but she couldn't erase the frown tugging at her lips. "I'm sorry for accusing you, but you understand how delicate a situation we're in. Anything else like that―maybe we should both try to share information more freely. If we're going to protect Aurora, that is." Her forefinger endeavored to iron out the wrinkle between her eyebrows. "And that's going to be more difficult now, if she's not in the official records. It makes the reason the Council targeted her all that more obscure."
Galen leaned forward, catching everyone's attention in his subtle way. "Mrs. Dustin, your story makes me wonder…if your family doesn't officially exist in any Night World census, how did Circle Daybreak recommend us to come to you?"
Alma turned a true smile on the young man, her indigo eyes sparkling; if Keller put people on edge, Galen always managed to strip away their defenses. "Why, I had a premonition, child. I called the Nashville headquarters myself and offered my services in the event two shapeshifters should be stranded in this area. And I honestly believe that I made the right choice because the two of you coming here have saved my granddaughter's life. I'm sure of it. If the family hadn't assembled to greet you at the diner, Rory would have been working her shift there alone tonight. As it was, she was late to our meeting because I sent her out to buy new linens for the guest room." Alma's laugh was a crackle, booming like the unexpected crash of thunder. "Can't have our heroes sleeping on a bare mattress, now can we?"
°°°
Aurora was sure that her face would never lose its reddish glow; there was no mortification worse than this. Not only was this the worst night of her life, but here she was, spending it with strangers who had just witnessed her complete and utter emotional breakdown. She sat ramrod-straight, sandwiched between Dillion and Casey on the couch, valiantly concentrating on holding her shoulders steady against the aftershocks of her disintegration, each sniffle threatening to shake her self-control. On one side, Casey squeezed her hand periodically. On the other, Dillion's arm had fallen naturally around her, and his fingers traced small, neat, soothing circles across her back. Rory didn't have the heart to inform him that the tingles this action caused in her spine were seriously threatening her state of mind.
"It's my fault. It has to be." Rory felt obligated to clarify her insensible ramblings of a few minutes before, to prove to these people that she wasn't quite as crazy as she appeared to be. "They must have found out about me. The Council can't suffer a half-breed like me to live, and they came to eliminate the entire family."
"First of all," Casey's voice cut firmly and curtly through the last syllables of Rory's rationalization, "it is not your fault. You were born as you are. End of story. And second of all…that's ridiculous."
"Casey," Dillion reprimanded his sister in his most stern big-brotherly tone. "Have some sensitivity." He softened his features to cast a contrite and almost bashful look at Rory under long, charcoal eyelashes. "You'll have to forgive our people skills. We don't have much contact with anyone outside of the pack. And Casey's more prone than most to speak her mind."
"Sorry," the redhead gritted with near-sincerity, "but I'm just trying to tell her the truth. Really, what does the Council care about a mixed-blood witch in the middle of nowhere? We're not living in the Dark Ages anymore; the Night World doesn't go around massacring entire villages to keep its secret these days―it would get too much coverage on the national news. And besides, the Council has bigger fish to fry, what with the end of the world and all."
Dillion twisted his lips into a slight grimace as he narrowed his eyes at his younger sibling. "As much as a disapprove of her manners, Casey's got a point. The Council wouldn't expend so many resources solely on a couple of harmless witches." His hand traveled up to ruffle the ends of Rory's hair and his expression relaxed. "And regardless of their motivation, I doubt they were expecting to meet so much opposition tonight. Between your family, the vampires, and the Witch Child's companions, I'm almost positive a strike team like that would have retreated after a few minutes. They're not trained for sustained fighting like that, and if they couldn't foresee an easy victory―well, the Council can't risk losing loyal flesh the way it used to. It's entirely possible that no one was hurt."
Rory glanced once at each of the two werewolves. She wasn't trembling any longer. "This is all very nice to hear. It's all very logical and reassuring―but…" her hand moved to hover over the tight spot in her chest, "I can't shake this feeling that―"
"No," Dillion interrupted with a swing of his head. "I won't allow you to blame yourself. Whatever is going on around here, it's big, bigger than any single one of us."
"What is going on around here?"
Three heads snapped around to stare at the doorway that separated the living room from the kitchen. Two men had swelled up to fill the opening, and Rory's pulse jumped at the sight. It took a long moment for her panic-stricken brain to find the proper connections for that voice and the face she was now presented with. When the answer came back to her, she wondered how they ever could have ignored the presence of Liam O'Connell long enough for him to steal up behind them unnoticed. Liam had the same larger-than-life quality of his son, except that Liam was possessed with every attribute that Dillion was not. Liam was calm and unmovable and indecipherable, and he held himself with a quiet dignity that demanded attention and respect. The O'Connell alpha measured a respectable six feet even, but the poise he carried himself with added an invisible inch or two to that total. He had a full, thick head of wavy silver hair that had once been a color to rival Dillion's and dark, bottomless, inscrutable blue eyes.
Beside Liam anyone would have looked awkward―even the tall, lanky redhead that stood at his shoulder. Liam's younger son was a handsome, serious-looking teenager, and if his limbs appeared a little too long and ungainly now, there was the promise that within a year or two he would grow nicely into them. The boy shifted his weight forward, leaning over his father's shoulder to get a better view, and as he did the overhead light shot his red hair through with shining streaks of gold and swept away the shadows covering his face to reveal eyes the color of ripe blueberries. Eyes to match his father's and his sister's.
A family of blue-eyed wolves, the stray thought slipped nearly unnoticed across the surface of Rory's mind.
Dillion's lone dimple made a stunning reappearance. "Hey, Papa."
Liam took a handful of steps forward and his subtle, imposing presence swelled to fill the room. He folded his arms across his chest, but there was nothing reproachful in the gesture. "Here Ulf and I thought you'd gone stark raving mad and run off into the woods on us, Dillion, and we come back to find you safe and sound at home. Not only that, but we also find this young lady on our couch who looks suspiciously like she's been crying." Not once through all this did Liam's tone change in surprise or anger or any other emotion, remaining unruffled and pensive, as if all this was something he had expected to happen all along.
Liam's eldest child chuckled in his open, effortless way. "Yeah, sorry about abandoning you in the middle of a hunt. I got sort of…distracted."
"I can see how," Liam observed levelly. He navigated around the edge of the couch and came to stand directly in front of Rory. "Aurora Dustin." He smiled thinly at her, and if it wasn't a blindly radiant smile, it was a genuine one filled with inexpressible kindness. "It's a shame we've never been properly introduced before this." And then the werewolf did the completely unexpected, extending a hand to the witch.
Rory was so stunned by Liam's reaction to her, she automatically began to stand out of politeness to accept the handshake. Dillion reacted immediately, a gentle but firm hand on her collarbone pressing her back into the cushions. Liam cast an inquisitive glance at his son, but he waited on an explanation with infinite patience.
"Her ankle. It's probably just bruised, but it's best if she keeps off it."
Liam nodded gravely and opened his mouth to comment, but Casey was incapable of restraining herself any longer. "You're not angry with Dillion, are you Papa? For bringing Rory here?" She reached up to place a pleading hand on her father's arm. "Because he did the right thing, what with everything that's happened in town and her ankle being injured―and she is his soulmate, after all."
There was nearly imperceptible widening around the corners of Liam's eyes, the sole sign that he was a bit overwhelmed by all this information. He placed a comforting hand over his daughter's and offered another one of his slight smiles. "Your brother's not in trouble, sweetheart. But I do think we need to all sit down and sort through what's happening here."
"Of course, Papa," Dillion agreed readily, trying to mask the fact that he was relieved not to be reprimanded for his actions, and failing completely. He turned his head to call out to his brother, "Don't hover, Ulf. Come on in and say hello to Rory."
The youngest O'Connell turned a brilliant ruby to match the hue of his hair, dutifully came to stand a foot away from the couch, and mumbled something inaudible as his gaze focused somewhere over Rory's right shoulder.
Dillion grinned good-naturedly and gave his younger sibling a teasing poke in the ribs. "What was that you said?"
Ulf scowled at his brother. "I said, 'Hello'."
Dillion twisted to offer Rory a conspiratorial wink. "You'll have to forgive Ulf. He doesn't meet many girls."
Ulf made a strangled noise in the back of his throat and took a wild swing at the dark-haired boy. Dillion easily ducked and returned in kind with another blow to Ulf's ribcage. A few more swipes were exchanged between the two, and in a matter of moments they were in engaged in a full-fledged brawl on the hardwood floor.
Casey leaned over to place a sympathetic hand on Rory's shoulder. "Don't let them bother you. I've lived with the two of them all my life, and I still haven't figured out this bizarre greeting ritual of theirs."
Liam's face was fixed in an oddly bemused expression, the corners of his lips twitching as if he wanted desperately to laugh, but was afraid doing so would condone the activity.
Under any other circumstances, Rory most likely would have joined in their amusement at the boys' behavior. But just now she was transfixed by the violence that came so naturally to this family; not that there was anything remotely malicious about the O'Connells, but there was plainly a hint of aggression and of controlled power that unconsciously underlay all their actions. It was in the boys' mock wrestling match, it was in the hint of a snarl in Casey's voice, it was even in Liam's stillness, the stillness of a predator patiently stalking its prey. The wolf was an inseparable force in every motion. And for a witch that had been raised in a race that honored the peaceful balance of nature, this was a completely alien concept. It was an unmistakable reminder of why the werewolves and witches had remained so wary of each other over the years, of how little they truly understood about each other.
The scuffle came to its natural conclusion, Dillion hauling his brother to his feet and affectionately ruffling his hair. "It gets harder to beat you every time," he conceded with a note of praise.
Ulf brushed off Dillion's hand and beamed in spite of himself, all his shyness forgotten. Dillion had an underhanded method for putting just about anyone at ease in any situation. "I was being generous. It didn't seem right to thrash you in front of your new girlfriend."
Liam's virtually nonexistent smirk widened by a fraction, but his voice betrayed none of his silent approval. "If we have reached a ceasefire, boys, perhaps we can all sit down and have a serious discussion."
"Yes, Papa,"his sonschorused. A brief struggle ensued as the two werewolves scrambled for prime real estate on the couch, with Dillion getting the upper hand and reclaiming his position next to Rory. Ulf was relegated to a precarious perch on the arm of the sofa.
Liam pulled up an arm chair, taking his time in settling into it, crossing his legs at the knee and steepling his fingers. "Now, if someone would explain, I'd be much obliged."
Dillion glanced at Rory, who looked back at him. There were no words necessary. Rory wouldn't have been able to hold her composure through a second telling, so Dillion recounted everything she had told him to Liam. All except for a few details about that night that only the two of them would ever share.
Liam accepted all Dillion had to say with the same unchanging expression, and when the son was finished his father sat in contemplative silence long enough to cause a nervous flutter in Rory's abdomen. "I think," he said at long last, "that Dillion's correct. A task team like the one that attacked the diner would have withdrawn after a few minutes. And I have the utmost confidence that our witch friends could have held their own that long." Liam paused, and the whole room hung on his breath. "But I also think that it's rather late. We should all get some sleep and return to town when the sun's up. If that doesn't bother you, Aurora, I'd feel best if I knew you were safe in our home tonight. Dillion and I will drive you into town first thing in the morning." His dark eyes fell in all their intensity on her face, and she recognized in that gesture that this was a man who had spent a lifetime protecting his family, and he was now extending that protection to her―not out of any sense of duty to the neighboring group of witches, but because he was a father, and a good man.
She nodded mutely, and a sense of resolution and calm washed over her, allowing her to once again feel her own exhaustion, a bone-deep ache. She unconsciously sagged against Dillion's shoulder, and he brought up an arm to support her. She might have no shortage of enemies these days, but neither did she lack for allies.