Page 7 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

The scent of wet pine, singed ash, and something older hit first. Something wrong. It moved through the trees like smoke, curling around the cottage even before I saw him.

The third wolf.

It wasn’t running. It didn’t need to. The forest bent around it in a way I couldn’t explain as branches shifted just slightly and the earth trembled under each step. It wasn’t fast nor frantic, just certain. That was what frightened me most.

The moment stretched, taut and trembling. The last of my fiery vines still bound Malore near the crumbling hearth, his growls vibrating through the floorboards, though he’d stopped thrashing. Even he could feel it now. He knew a protector was here to help him.

Keegan stirred in my arms, human again, blood trailing down his arm from where Malore had sunk his teeth into his shoulder. His skin was ice against my wrist.

“Keegan,” I whispered, brushing the wet hair from his forehead.

He didn’t answer, but his eyes opened.

His gaze shifted toward the open wall where the forest had broken through, and his breath hitched.

Not from pain.

Not from me.

But from the thing that now stood at the edge of the path.

The wolf stepped out of the woods, slow and deliberate. Its coat was the silver of moonlight. The large, no, massive beast swayed as it walked. The newcomer was bigger than Malore by a breath, its limbs heavy with power, its eyes pale as bone, so light they almost glowed.

I moved to stand, but Keegan’s hand gripped mine, fingers tightening.

“Stay behind me,” he rasped.

“You can barely stand.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He coughed, then added, “It’s not you it wants.”

I looked over at it, then followed its gaze. The wolf hadn’t even glanced our way.

It was staring straight at Malore.

The growling in the cottage shifted, deepening. Malore rose slowly, vines falling from his shoulders like scorched ropes. His lips curled back, not in a snarl this time, but in recognition.

“Who…?” I breathed.

Keegan shook his head once, slowly. “It’s not here for us.”

Behind me, I heard the rustle of chalk on stone, the quiet incantations of Miora’s spells. She was kneeling at the foundation of the hearth, tracing glowing lines across the floor. She worked with speed but not panic. Whatever she was building, it mattered.

“The Stone Ward?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me with words, only with a single nod, her gaze never leaving the glowing pattern beneath her palms.

Magic thickened in the room like rising steam.

I turned back toward the silver wolf. It was moving closer, each step deliberate. I could hear the scrape of claws on the porch with the faint tremble in the walls that responded to its weight.

The wolf passed through the boundary line of the cottage like it wasn’t even there.

It was as if the Ward no longer knew what to do with it.

Malore growled, low and mean, with his lips peeled back over bloodied teeth. But he didn’t charge. He didn’t lunge. He stood frozen, tail low, hackles raised. For the first time tonight… he looked uncertain.

“What is it?” I whispered, more to myself than anyone else.

Keegan didn’t answer. His body tensed beneath me.

I stepped forward, slipping from Keegan’s side even though I felt his hand reach out as if to stop me. I held the wand steady, though my arm ached from the spellwork already spent. The floor creaked beneath my heel. Still, the wolf didn’t look at me.

It only stared at Malore.

And Malore… was backing up.

A beat passed. Then another.

And in that thin line of silence between them, I realized something I hadn’t dared let myself consider before.

This wasn’t just some rogue wolf or some nameless shadow creature summoned by a curse.

This was a reckoning.

The silver wolf let out a low rumble, just one sound, like a drumbeat dropped from the sky. Malore answered with a snarl, but it cracked at the end, breaking like a thread pulled too tight.

They weren’t speaking, not in any language I knew, but I could feel it…the way the air shifted, the way the walls of the cottage seemed to breathe with the tension.

This wasn’t a challenge.

This was a sentence being delivered.

Behind me, the chalk markings flared bright white. Miora gasped as the Stone Ward pulsed beneath her palms. The foundation groaned.

And then, as if summoned by that sound, the silver wolf lifted his head and howled in a low, rising note that pulled the air from the room.

It was the kind of howl I wouldn’t forget.

Malore’s eyes snapped to me, just for a second. He saw the spells dusting from Miora’s hands. He saw me, not just the Hedge witch who lived in the cottage, but the one who had bound him in roots and fire. He saw Keegan still bleeding.

And then he turned away from all of us and launched himself at the silver wolf.

The clash was thunder.

No more hesitation.

No more spells.

No more words.

Just fur and teeth and the storm outside roaring in time with the battle now tearing through the bones of my cottage.

I backed toward Keegan, who was already trying to pull himself up. Blood stained his side and shoulder, but he refused to stay down.

“They’ll tear each other apart,” I said, voice shaking.

Keegan didn’t take his eyes off the wolves. “Good.”

I knelt beside him, pressing a palm to his ribs. “Let me protect you.”

“You already are,” he said.

Behind me, the Ward cracked again, another ring of light flaring out across the floor.

The house held. The spellwork held. Keegan was alive.

But the night had shifted.

And I had no idea which wolf would walk away when it was over.

The clash of wolves was primal with no magic, no strategy. Just muscle, teeth, rage. The silver one met Malore with a force that shook the very air, and in a blink, they tumbled past the smoldering hearth, cracking beams and gouging the floor with claw and fang.

The sounds…snarls, the crunch of wood, the sickening scrape of bone…made something deep inside me seize. It was as if I were watching Keegan’s first battle with Malore not so long ago. The same quickness and brutality before…

I swallowed down my sadness and stared at the two wolves.

And then, as quickly as it started, they were gone. Thrusting themselves through the broken wall and into the storm-lashed garden, a tangle of fur and fury. Lightning seared across the sky, casting both beasts in stark relief before the dark swallowed them again.

I dropped to my knees beside Keegan.

“Let me see,” I said, breathless, reaching for the bloodied tear across his shoulder.

His hand caught mine. “No.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“So are you.” He nodded to my arm.

I hadn’t noticed the long slice along my bicep, probably from glass or stone, but I didn’t care. Not when his blood soaked through the floorboards.

But there was something else in his expression. His eyes burned brighter now. They were no longer just hazel, but glinting like cracked amber, something alive and watching behind them. Magic curled around him like smoke.

“Something’s changed,” I whispered.

Keegan winced as he sat straighter, pressing a hand to his side.

“I feel everything,” he rasped. “More than I used to. Too much.”

The rain outside roared louder with another thunderclap that split the sky.

I braced my hands on his shoulders, ignoring the pain flaring in my own. “Tell me.”

“The curse,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s not dormant anymore. Not just a tether in the background. It’s… reacting. To Malore.”

To blood. To power.

To legacy.

Miora had moved to the doorway, her glowing runes dimming now that the immediate danger had shifted outside. Her gaze shot to Keegan, then to the jagged hole in the wall where rain streaked sideways into the cottage.

“I need to finish the seal,” she said quietly. “Before they bring the whole structure down.”

“Go,” I told her. “We’ve got this.”

She nodded once and disappeared again, chalk sparking beneath her fingers.

I turned back to Keegan, cradling his face between my hands. “Can you shift again?”

“Not yet,” he breathed. “It’s like fire in my bones. Everything’s awake, but I can’t control what’s mine and what’s not.”

My breath caught. “The curse is trying to take over.”

“No.” His eyes found mine. “It’s not trying. It’s learning. From me. From you. It’s not just a shifter’s curse anymore, Maeve.”

Outside, one of the wolves yelped, high and sharp, and I didn’t know which one. I didn’t want to know.

I pressed my forehead to Keegan’s for a heartbeat, drawing strength from the heat in him, the thrum of power that felt tangled with mine now in ways I couldn’t understand. Pulling away, I reached for the fresh poultice bundle still hanging near the kitchen.

An instinctive charm, one of Ardetia’s blends with lavender and golden yarrow wrapped in cloth and wax thread.

“This is going to sting,” I warned, pressing it to his shoulder.

“Do your worst.”

“You say that like I haven’t.”

He hissed but held still.

“You’re glowing,” he murmured after a pause.

“What?”

He reached up, brushing two fingers against the side of my face. “Your magic. It’s coming off you like... dusk and wind. It’s beautiful. And terrifying.”

“I feel terrifying,” I muttered, pulling another poultice from the shelf and binding his ribs as fast as I could. “And not in the good, fierce kind of way. More like I’m one scream away from unraveling.”

He coughed a dry laugh as we stayed huddled. “Same.”

The ground shuddered.

Outside, a tree cracked. Bark split with a wet snap. Another roar, deeper this time, like Malore had found something vulnerable and was trying to rip through it.

My stomach twisted.

“I have to go out there.”

“No,” Keegan said, trying to sit up again. “You’ll get caught in it.”

I helped ease him down gently. “I don’t plan to fight him with tooth and claw. But I can use the land.”

He grabbed my wrist again. His fingers trembled, but his grip was iron.

“Maeve, if he kills that wolf, we’re next. But if that wolf kills him…” His eyes flicked toward the ruins of the garden.