Witchmate (Skeleton Key) Read Free

exact revenge.
    Earlier, he and his guards had been in a conclave with five clan leaders, planning a coordinated attack on Sanlousis, the witches’ royal city.  The attacks from the witches had grown less and less over the past couple of years, but he feared they were biding time to mount a larger attack like the one they’d used to take down Surrock.
    On the way back, they’d been ambushed by a group of elemental witches. The surprise attack had cost him Mila and Niklas. He mourned their deaths even as he and his guard sought to escape the surge of deadly magic. He’d come across it before in battle, but only once, and the elementals who cast the spell depleted their magic, leaving them unable to defend themselves.
    There had been no peace for him or any wolf since.
    How had the witches known the path they would travel? Only the most trusted around him knew of the meeting. Besides, werewolves didn’t bargain with witches. That kind of treason meant instant death. He waited at the edge of the magic with the remaining survivors, Toland, Mika, Amile, and Thadeus. The twins, Toland and Thadeus, were his second and third in command. As such, they flanked Mika and Amile. Keir took the center, so he could, as it was his responsibility, lead the pack. He would make those witches pay for the deaths of his friends. They waited for the magic to ebb enough for them to track the witches without getting their fur singed.
    Out of the darkness, more than a dozen witches appeared, creating a semi-circle protected by green flames of magical fire. This could not be the same group that manifested the wave of death. He’d never had two factions hit them at once. Witches drew their energy from the natural world around them, which meant it wasn’t an endless source. Too many pulling on the same area meant they would run out of power fast. So, the fact that they were cooperating together alarmed Keir.
    “Battle up,” he snarled to his fighters.
    The witches dropped their fiery shield and took aim at the wolves, throwing fireballs and electric bolts.
    His second, Toland, dove and leaped and roared, all the while dodging the magic projectiles as he drew closer to a group of five off to the right. His brother Thadeus, Keir’s third, did the same moving to the left. After they both took out several witches with swift efficiency, the ones in front, the eight who focused on Keir, began to falter. Mika and Amile brought up the rear on his attack, and when he killed the lead witch, her pitch black hair crackling with energy, as he twisted her head until her neck broke, the others—magic depleted—took off toward the witchland borders.
    “Keir?” Mika asked, a question in her gravelly voice. Mila, one of their fallen, had been her cousin. He wouldn’t deny her vengeance.
    He nodded. Both she and Amile bellowed and took after the retreating enemy. None of them would live to see morning. None but one. Toland dragged a live male witch by the hair and dropped the villain in front of his alpha.
    “I figured you’d want to question him.” He grasped the man’s wrists and wrapped them with witchvine, a rare plant that prevented the gathering of magic. It was a powerful tool in the fight against their sworn enemy. Toland whacked the witch in the back of the head. Unconscious, he dropped to the ground. Tol shook his head. “They never learn.”
    “No, they don’t,” Keir agreed. Someone had told the witches about tonight’s meeting, and he wanted to know who. “Thadeus,” he said to his third. “Wait for Mika and Amile then get back to camp. Toland, you bring in the prisoner.”
    Toland raised a brow. “And the strange woman?”
    “I’ll haul her back myself.”
    “She’s not a wolfkind,” Thadeus said.
    “She’s not a witch either,” Keir replied.
    Toland followed Keir, dragging the witch behind him. “Impossible. She must have some kind of powerful magic camouflage.”
    Keir shook his head. Witches weren’t stupid, especially