Page 6 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

Her arms raised, casting spells as the papers spiraled like confetti, and she did everything to strengthen the Stone Ward.

“Off him! Circle!” Karvey commanded, his voice like boulders colliding. They re-formed overhead, wings beating turbulence that snuffed emergent flames.

Malore’s eyes locked onto me, molten gold and furious. His gaze slid past me to the book clutched at my ribs.

And in that heartbeat, I understood. He didn’t tear into my cottage for me. Not this time. Not yet. He came for the words. For whatever truth Elira, his wife, had hidden in ink that he didn’t want us to see.

“Come and take it, then,” I whispered, rising with a wand in one hand, a book in the other.

He lunged. A stone guardian dove to block, but Malore shifted sideways with impossible speed, using the gargoyle’s momentum to fling the statue through the nearest wall.

The wall exploded, leaving the gaping night beyond. Summer rain gusted inside in cold sheets. The storm Malore carried with him had arrived.

I planted my feet as my body willed the earth below. Twisting it, I aimed the charm at living flesh, willing roots of nettle and hawthorn to burst from floorboards and snare the wolf.

Green limbs erupted, lashing around Malore’s hindquarters. For a breath, he slowed, muscles bunching against thorn and vine. Karvey dropped again, stone fangs aimed for the wolf’s throat.

Malore roared, a sound that cracked timber rafters. Power rippled off him in a dark ring, shredding the plants to pulp.

Karvey hit an invisible wall, bounced back, wings splintering but remaining attached. He crashed beside me, leaving spiderweb fractures across his torso. Chips rained like gravel. My heart fell as I watched him nearly in pieces.

Miora cast protection runes along the remaining walls.

“Not enough,” he rasped, forcing himself upright. “Stronger spells, Maeve!”

“Working on it.” My heartbeat pounded.

The storm outside deepened with clouds bruised from the darkness as thunder grumbled low. Lightning strobed beyond the shattered wall, turning everything into frantic negatives.

Wolf vs. Stone vs. Hedge witch.

I raised my wand, feeling the charge begin at my toes and roiling through my body as the light shot from my wand.

“Meanis contentis lablur.” My voice crashed with the thunder.

Malore rounded on me, hackles bristling. His lips peeled from glistening canines as saliva hissed like acid as it struck rune-carved floorboards from Miora.

I backed toward the kitchen, mind racing. If he wanted the book, I couldn’t give an inch, but there was no spell in my small arsenal to stop a creature this steeped in darkness.

A bright flash in the sky warned us of what was to come. Thunder followed with a single cannon blast that rattled the remaining windows.

Malore’s gaze shot to the doorway beyond me, ears flattening. A second crash, wood splintering this time, came from the porch.

I risked a glance over my shoulder, and my heart twisted in confusion and hope.

Keegan strode through the opening of the front door, eyes burning amber to replace the gentle hazel. Rain streamed down his hair and along the defined lines on his forearms. He carried no weapon but his own shifting power, which pulsed beneath his skin like coiled lightning eager to strike.

“Step aside, Maeve.” His voice was rough like stone dragged across slate.

Fear iced my veins.

I’d seen him shift before, spectacular and devastating, but it had come at a cost that left him weak for days. And after the curse had seeded in him since Moonbeam, I didn’t know how much he had left.

Malore snarled at Keegan, the sound heavy with something older than hatred.

Recognition.

Keegan answered with a low growl, as the pupils of his eyes narrowed to vertical slits. His body rippled as limbs bent and bones popped. Rain hissed on the floorboards where his heat hit the cool air.

“Keegan, don’t!” I reached for him, but Karvey’s unbroken wing swept me backward.

“This is between alphas,” the gargoyle grated. “Your magic guards the line. Let him guard you. Do what you do best.”

I pressed my palms flat against the wall, but all I could see were speeding shadows.

Growls tore through the cottage like thunder cracking bone, and the floors shook under their rage. Keegan and Malore were two beasts in battle, but I couldn’t tell who was winning.

Or losing.

The hearth in the family room flickered, frantic and uncertain.

I wasn’t supposed to interfere.

I wasn’t trained. Not enough. Not yet.

But the ground called to me anyway.

Something deep beneath the cottage floorboards, beneath my feet, answered with a pull that bent time. I felt it rise, slow and steady, like roots waking in spring, curling up through the soles of my sandals and into my legs.

My breath caught.

A warmth spiraled through my chest and out through my fingertips. It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t ice. It was… knowing.

Magic surged through the stones and walls like it remembered me as if it had been waiting.

I didn’t whisper an incantation.

But the Ward ignited.

Miora hustled between the dining room and kitchen.

Light bled from the walls, soft and golden-green, like dusk weaving through pine needles. It splintered across the cottage ceiling and out the cracks of the windows, wrapping the cottage in a pulse that felt like my heartbeat, terrified but defiant and resisting the thunderous storm outside.

I could feel Keegan on the other side of the wall, his rage, his pain, his strength, and I didn’t know if the spell was shielding the cottage or him.

Maybe both.

The energy crackled in my skin as I stepped back. The wind howled outside, but none of it touched the cottage. No claws broke the stone. No fangs found the wood.

The cottage held.

I held.

And for one aching moment, the lines blurred between the past and now, between magic and instinct, between what I feared I was and who I might become.

A sound ripped through the air, something between a scream and a snarl, and I dropped to my knees, bracing against the floor as the power surged again, brighter this time, sharper.

The light bent. Time slipped.

The book rested next to me.

I saw the woman I was, curled on the bathroom floor after signing the divorce papers.

And I saw the woman I was now…hands trembling but planted like an oak.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered.

But the cottage did.

And so did the Ward.

And Miora floated over and helped me to my feet when I saw it.

Keegan staggered. The transformation stuttered, pain dragging claws up his spine. Malore prowled a semi-circle, corralling Keegan away from me. Books squelched under the wolf’s paws with wet paper tearing into shreds. He barked once, savage and brief, as if laughing at the half-shifted challenger.

I handed Miora the book, and she knew what to do, vanishing into the dark as if she’d never been here.

Keegan’s head snapped up, fangs lengthening once more. The shudder passed, fur cascaded over muscle, until a tawny wolf nearly Malore’s size shook rain from its mane. Though powerful, he was leaner, still bearing the silver scars of moments before.

A growl rumbled between them, Malore’s thunder to Keegan’s rolling drum. They circled, nails gouging floorboards, tails rigid as flagpoles. Keegan had regained his strength.

Another lightning flash speared the clouds outside, lighting the cottage.

In that searing moment, Malore lunged, jaws wide.

Keegan met him mid-leap in a collision of fur, stone, and splintering wood.

They crashed into the dining table. The wood cracked like twigs.

The room filled with snarls, the scent of blood, whose, I couldn’t tell.

Keegan yelped a short, sharp sound, and my heart stopped.

Malore had him by the shoulder, teeth sinking deep.

I screamed his name. The gargoyles dove, but Malore swung Keegan like a battering ram, hurling him into their path.

Stone and fur tumbled. A wing snapped completely off another guardian.

It was Flanky. The statue howled with the sound of avalanching rock.

I thrust my wand toward the fire.

“By spark and sap, rise!”

Flames whirled into a column, then burst outward in a lattice of burning vines that speared toward Malore’s flank. He twisted, dropping Keegan, snarling as fire clung to his coat. Fur crisped, but he shook it off, embers scattering across rugs.

Keegan struggled upright, limping. His blood spattered the wreckage. Our eyes met, amber to hazel. I saw pain, but also something fierce. A resolve harder than Malore’s bite rising once more.

But he was losing. I needed to harness the power of hearth and Hedge, even if only a little, as heat curled through my veins.

Karvey rose behind Malore, claws poised for a killing stroke. The wolf sensed it, pivoted, and met stone with iron jaws. Teeth cracked granite.

Karvey roared, staggering. Squatty seized Malore’s hind leg, dragging him down. Wood splintered when they hit the floor, but Malore rolled, flinging the statue aside like rubble.

Malore reared, jaws closing on Keegan’s neck. I flung the combined power of Hedge and flame.

Life answered beneath the floor, surging up as tendrils of living wood kissed by firelight. They looped around my waist to my outstretched wand, channeling heat and sap until the air shimmered. The spell trembled, on the edge of breaking me.

Roots scorched white-hot, lashed across the room, ensnaring Malore’s torso. They tightened with the creak of bowstrings, burning into his pelt. He howled a sound that curdled time and released Keegan.

Smoke poured where vine and fur met. The cottage shook with his thrashing, but the binding held as my mind raced with the now and then of what was to come.

Keegan staggered clear, blood matting his shoulder. He limped toward me but faltered, dropping to one knee. His wolf form bled back to human muscle with every gasping breath. I ran to him, pressing my palm over the worst wound. Heat pulsed under my hand, while his heartbeat ran too fast.

Behind us, Malore tore against the burning vines. Bark blackened, but new shoots sprouted, fed by the hearth’s embers and my will. His fury battered the cottage like a storm surge, yet still the vines held.

“Maeve,” Keegan rasped. “It won’t last.”

“I know.”

My magic frayed as sap drained and embers slowed.

Outside, thunder cracked again, closer as lightning illuminated the yard, and in that white flash, I glimpsed a third wolf at the tree line, lean and silver-eyed.

Its gaze fell from Malore’s struggling form to me, lips curling into a predator’s smile.

I felt the vine-spell falter. Malore bunched his haunches, muscles bulging. One fiery root snapped. Sparks hissed out.

Keegan gripped my wrist.

“Get ready,” he whispered.

Another root broke, flinging ash like black snow.

Malore surged, golden eyes blazing, and roared, shattering every remaining pane of glass.

The protection spell crumbled.

The strange wolf from the trees advanced, lightning licking its fur, as the storm outside split the sky until night itself seemed to bleed.