Page 39 of The Witch’s Shifter (Season of the Witch #3)

Rowan

MORNING CAN’T COME QUICKLY ENOUGH the next day. I awake before the sun, but when I reach for Aurora’s side of the bed, I find it cold and empty. Which means she’s still gone and didn’t magically return in the middle of the night like I’d hoped. The realization makes me feel ill.

After padding downstairs, I peek into the parlor. Alden is asleep on the couch, breathing heavily, the fire having burned out in the night. The air is cold, and so are the wooden planks beneath my bare feet.

While stoking the kitchen fire to life and fetching water for tea, I keep glancing into the tree line, waiting for Aurora to appear.

I wonder, is this how she felt when she was waiting for me to return from my journey to find Faolan?

Did she pace before this same window, looking for me?

And why do we all seem to go missing in the woods now that he’s come into Aurora’s life?

“Shifters,” I grumble while wiping my hands on a kitchen towel. “Always causing trouble.”

The water will be ready shortly, and I decide to busy myself with feeding the hens and letting them out of the coop. When I swing the gate open, Lucy is the first to come strutting out. She pecks my bare toes, making me laugh, then lets me stoop down and pet her.

Though we have three hens now, Lucy remains my favorite.

I still find her in the house sometimes, plucking around the kitchen looking for goodies or sleeping perched upon the couch or rocking chair in the parlor.

If she keeps it up, Marigold and Whisper are going to start using Harrison’s cat door too, and then the whole house will be full of feathers and four-toed footprints.

Not that I’d complain. And I’m quite sure no one else would either.

I scatter food for the hens, stare into the forest line for a few minutes, then finally relent and head back into the house. When I step into the kitchen, Alden is there, yawning and pouring two cups of tea.

“Morning,” he says, holding out a steaming cup.

“Morning.”

I look him up and down. Despite his rumpled hair and sleepy eyes, he looks no worse for wear, though he was so exhausted when we got back to the cottage last night that he fell onto the couch still fully dressed, excluding his boots.

Aurora likes tidy floors, and boot prints are a surefire way to be on the receiving end of a scowl and a quick rebuke.

I’ll admit, sometimes I wear my boots inside just to see her face turn red and watch the furrow form between her brows. It’s just too cute.

“No Aurora yet?” he asks.

“No.” My gaze slides toward the kitchen window. The sun is finally rising, and with it, some of the chill will leave the air, though each day grows colder as we march onward toward winter.

Alden’s hand falls upon my shoulder. “She’ll be fine,” he assures me.

One of my brows arches. “How do you know?”

“Because...” With a sigh, he drops into one of the kitchen chairs.

At his back, the fire crackles. “Faolan cares for her, just like we do. Might have a funny way of showing it, butI suppose that’s just who he is.

” He shrugs and scratches his scruffy beard.

Then his dark eyes home in on me. “Why does it bother you so much? Aurora being with him?”

My chest squeezes. I want to tell him that he’s wrong, that it doesn’t bother me, but I’d just look like a fool; he can see clearly how Aurora’s absence—and Faolan’s presence—upsets me.

I lean back against the kitchen counter and take a sip of tea. It’s surprisingly good—Alden’s herb mixing has improved considerably since our first awkward tea together in this tiny kitchen.

“At first, I thought it was just because he’s a shifter,” I say, not meeting Alden’s eyes.

“And that’s part of it, certainly. I’ve seen too many conflicts with shifters to not be wary of them.

But I think it’s that... that she’s pregnant with my child.

I’m terrified they’ll both be hurt, that something will happen and I won’t be there to interfere. That it’ll all be my fault...”

In my mind, I see Lucy slipping through the ice when it fractured beneath her tiny feet, hear the splash and then the deafening silence that followed. If I hadn’t taken her out on the ice that day, she’d probably still be here, and my entire life would be different.

It’s hard not to blame myself, even all these years later. And I don’t know how I’d survive if I let another loved one slip through my fingers the way Lucy did out on the pond that day.

Alden lets out a thoughtful sound while I stare into the flickering fire.

After a moment, he says, “Makes sense. I feel similarly, even though the child isn’t mine.

But just like we had to trust her when it came to the three of us, we have to trust her with him too.

I don’t think she’d have kept him around if he were a danger to any of us—especially to that child.

Aurora sees people in a way many of us don’t. ”

While Alden sips his tea and yawns again, I study him. He seems so confident, so sure that everything is going to be okay. And it eases my worries, if only a bit.

It he trusts the shifter, perhaps I can come to as well.

Gripping my mug, I remember Niamh’s words. “Strength doesn’t mean you’ve never failed, have never fallen,” she said. “It’s in how you rise and continue on afterward.”

Maybe that’s what I need to do. I need to rise, to pick myself up and dust myself off. And then I need to put one foot in front of the other, continuing onward, choosing not to become trapped in a past I can do nothing to change. Don’t I owe Aurora that? Don’t I owe myself that?

A pattering of paws announces Harrison’s presence before he trots into the kitchen. He was still asleep at the foot of the bed when I got up.

“Good morning,” Alden and I say in unison.

Harrison looks up at us, arches his back in a big stretch, and then slips out the cat door and into the sunlight only now starting to shine over the tall green pines. When I turn to glance over my shoulder and out the kitchen window, my heart squeezes.

Because there, stepping from the shadowed tree line, is Aurora, a naked Faolan beside her.