Trisha and Kiera watched James take several enforcers with him toward the cabin behind the Rocking Horse Tavern, where she lived for close to a year. She didn’t know if this would work, but they needed some way to find this druid. In the beginning, Kiera had to agree with Trisha. She couldn’t believe that the druid was the person who stole and sold the blood on the black market. But when Dean agreed with James on almost everything, and the little information, Kiera knew from their father while he was alive. It soon wasn’t that big of a leap to believing she was in danger. No, they were all in danger from this unfeeling monster. From making new Lycans, to creating werewolves, and of course killing people with the blood, this became horrifying. Blood magic, for the most part, was banned and what they could practice was carefully regulated. But there always was someone that broke the rules. Now they waited with Dean to hear from James that he had everyo

“I knew I should have stopped you from drinking that night. It was all too much even for you, Kiera. Why did you drink that much in the first place?” Dean finally asked the one question he’d been struggling not to ask. “Really? You need to ask? I wasn’t sure if I should leave this area and if I did, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do once I was gone. Keep on living somewhere else, doing something else, or end it all.” That statement rang with a tone of stark truth, and everyone met her words with silence from everyone that heard it. A silence that telegraphed the horror, and guilt of those around as they realized how far everyone’s actions went and the effects, they had on this one person. “That’s over now. This isn’t your space anymore. Whatever hung from the ceiling isn’t here right now. Elder Evans can no longer campaign against you, and the pack knows the truth. I’m here, no magic to interfere with my feelings, and the fighting with James a

While Dean struggled to claw the vine from around his throat, Kiera, too, like everyone else, fought. At seeing Dean struggling, Kiera couldn’t stop her transformation into her Lycan form. She hated others seeing her in this form. The fear she felt around her while she was in her Lycan form felt almost painful to her. Kiera hated feeling the negative emotions of those around her. Over time, she’d almost blocked others’ emotions from her. Right now, the aggression from those around her, the fighting, the anger, and the violence all did something to her. All she wanted to do now was save Dean from suffocating to death. Kiera tore through the vine with her teeth. The vines tasted wrong. Almost meaty. That’s when she saw the skeletal face on the lower body. Horrified, she spit out what vine still hung from her jaws in disgust. She needed to get this thing slowed to a stop. Her thoughts within her Lycan form were complex but simplified by images rather t

“Kiera, the healers are here. Someone brought some chains for him that will prevent him from using his magic. It’s okay, you can shift back now. Come on, sweetheart. Don’t make me force you to shift back.” Dean didn’t know how long he’d been begging Kiera to shift back, but he was losing his patience. Lycan generally tended to have a painful transition from one form to the other. They resisted shifting forms as much as possible because of this. Her excuse was for not shifting was at an end and she was making everyone uncomfortable in her current form. One healer stood just outside the kitchen door and dangled a set of handcuffs from his hands to show Kiera they existed, which caught her attention. Kiera nodded and wordlessly grumbled as she went to all four feet. Her shift came on slowly, and several healers and enforcers came out to watch. Dean hated this. They were shifters and shifting should be a spectacle of any sort to them.

Walt stepped from the secured patient room. The Druid wouldn’t leave anytime soon. The fight and the magic took a lot out of him. The fool must have forgotten or ignored the fact that all magic like science got results and those results may be what they intended, and the rest were unintended or side-effects. There’s only so much of anything in this world. When it’s gone, it must latch onto something else. The druid cast a spell that fused his body with a creeper vine among the other plants. It made for a toxic combination for whoever he attacked if he’d been able to get in contact with his opponent for too long. The negative effects were something Walt feared he’d ignored, not expected, or disregarded. When Kiera lit him on fire, that fire first consumed the plants and then consumed him before he broke the spell and returned to his human or druidic form. The fool wouldn’t answer questions, but that didn’t matter. He was his mother’s son and a druid him