Page 120 of Found in Obscurity

A loud rumble tickled at their backs, making the hairs on Kit’s neck stand up.

It crackled in the air, like a thunderstorm. Kit turned around, stumbling over his feet as he directed his gaze up. His eyes widened as he stared at the large purple pentagram drawn in flashing lights in the sky above them.

The pentagram in the sky pulsed, eclipsing all else, painting everything in its light and blocking out the sun. Kit held his breath at the sheer power woven through its corners. It descended, wild and uncontrollable, tightening more and more the closer it got to the ground.

It disappeared beneath the line of trees with a heavy crash and a burst of magic that exploded outward. The trees bowed, and all of them were knocked off their feet. He reached for Lorin and his family, fear eclipsing any injury to himself from registering until he knew they were fine.

Lorin found his hand first, interlocking their fingers and Kit spotted his family checking on one another.

The crackling finally subsided, the flames extinguished, until there was nothing left but deafening silence and the acrid coating of magic on all their skin.

“It worked,” Lorin whispered, voice awed. “They bound them.”

“It’s over?” Kit asked in disbelief.

Lorin nodded, gifting him a smile Kit knew would always be just for him. Just his. “It’s over,” he said.

Kit felt like the breath he took at those words was the first real one he had taken in years. The first one where he was truly free.

The first of many.

Epilogue

Kit

“Is that the lastof it?”

Kit watched Lorin as he grabbed a box from his sister’s hands, peeking into the large white van they’d rented to help them move to Oak’s Hollow.

“Yup,” Mara said, happily allowing Lorin to do her share of the work for her. Always one to slither away from any heavy lifting, Kit thought with a smile on his face. It felt good knowing the coven hadn’t taken everything from them.

Even through all the abuse and all the vile things his family and the other shifters had endured, Kit could see they’d still kept the core of who they always were.

His mom was still as caring and nurturing as she’d always been. His dad was still a stoic but somewhat scatterbrained man, willing to lay down his life for his family. His brothers were as opposite from each other as two people could get, and yet they were still almost permanently glued to each other, thick as thieves even as they bickered constantly.

And his sister, the baby of the family, still had them all wrapped around her little finger.

He’d found out that the coven had only had them for just under a year—a little longer than Kit had been with them. They’d strayed too close to the witches’ coven trying to search for Kit and that’s when they had been taken. Kit tried not to feel complete guilt over that and was still working through it day by day.

The only relief he could feel was that the coven hadn’t gotten through their ‘stock’ of shifters to reach them yet to try and forcibly bond them.

There were others they had rescued who weren’t so lucky, stuck in their shifts until a bond came along. The shifter pack that had formed to rescue them—Ellis’s pack, those that had been warning them off in the town and who had fought by the elders’ sides—were currently housing them. They were working with the elders to try and free all of them, and Ellis kept them updated.

Kit and his family had joined a handful of shifters who hadn’t been trapped in their shifted forms and were willing to talk about their experiences in order to make sure something like that never happened again.

It was painful, reliving it all in front of strangers, elders from most of the largest witch communities. Kit’s voice still soundedrougher than it used to, and every word served as a reminder of what he’d gone through. But having Lorin and his grandma there helped ease Kit’s mind.

Lorin’s grandma had looked exhausted and frail in the aftermath of the battle. The toll of magic was high, but her eyes were still sharp, and the staff she used to smack Kit over the head when he tried to help her get out of her car was just as intimidating as always.

She took the lead on filling the other elders in on everything they knew about the coven, and in the end, when everything was out in the open, it was agreed that their powers would stay bound forever. They were to be sent to a secure location where the spell placed upon them would be monitored and replenished if the need for it arose.

Lorin’s grandma smirked at that and rolled her eyes at Lorin and Kit.

“As if my spells ever wear off,” she had muttered to them, but she’d nodded sagely toward the other elders.

It still felt like a bad dream sometimes. Just because the coven was gone didn’t mean their scars had disappeared. Kit often woke from nightmares that felt too real. Sometimes a simple, innocuous sound could send him shifting and running.

It was almost worse now.