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Sloth accepted his fate, folding his arms over his chest and sitting down on a tree stump. But I was never one to simply go along with everyone else.

She told me not to follow her with her eyes; eyes that cracked with fury she could barely contain. Wrath had been through fire, leaving her with magick and vengeance with an edge sharpened by grief and rage.

Wrath stalked toward the cabin with fire in her blood.

I gave her space but followed as she stalked up to the non-descript, run-down wooden cabin. There were no wards, guards, or...anything. Then again, if you were this far out in the middle of the woods, it was for a reason. Magick would probably act like a beacon in a place there wasn’t supposed to be any.

Moss and algae covered the north side of the cabin, a layer of dust and dead bugs in the windowsill. That was all I managed to take in before Wrath kicked in the front door like an avenging angel on a warpath.

There was a man inside—no, a werewolf! He barely got two words out before he shifted into a wolf, lunging at as with a roar.

Wrath didn’t even blink as she held her hand out, an invisible force slamming him back against the wall and holding him there.

He whined.

A werewolf makes no sense.Wrath had said they were human traffickers. Supernaturals wouldn’t traffick other supernaturals … would they?

My heart sank. I wasn’t stupid.

“You have five seconds,” Wrath demanded, stepping over the threshold, “to tell me where the others are.”

He growled, then bones snapped and tendons ripped as Wrath bared her teeth at him, her magick forcing him back into his human form. He slumped to the ground on all fours, shaking.

“W-what others?” he stammered.

“Wrong answer,” she snarled.

She raised her hand and the entire room ignited—not in flames, but in red light, thick and humming, curling around her wrist like a living thing. The werewolf screamed and fell off the chair, twitching and writhing in agony on the musty wooden floor.

She stepped over him and kept walking.

“HEY! What–”

“Stop her!”

“Call–”

Three traffickers total, all werewolves.

For a moment everyone froze in a standoff. Wrath frowned, head tilting to the side as if she recognized one of them.

“Kill her!” One of them uttered, but another tried to run. Wrath simply pointed—and the front door slammed shut so hard it cracked the frame. Another reached for a knife. She glanced at it, and the blade rusted to powder midair.

The third dropped to his knees. All of them found themselves unable to shift into their wolf forms.

“There’s a bunker,” he panted. “Please—please don’t kill me.”

“Then show me,” she said, voice quiet but absolute. “And don’t lie. I’ll know.”

I trailed behind, keeping to the shadows. This was her stage; I was just the stagehand in the back, ready if shit went sideways.

He led her to a trapdoor beneath the rug. Stupid cliché. I could already smell the enchantments below—wards meant to keep things in, not out. The rug shimmered, a powerful dampening charm on it that hid the magick of the bunker itself.

Odd. That was a high-level enchantment. Where had werewolves come across it?

Wrath tore through the enchantments and the door like wet paper.

A foul smell emanated from down below, wafting up to us. Below lay utter darkness. The man tried to edge away, but Igrabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him down at Wrath’s feet.