Page 18 of Triumph of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #6)

Before we headed into the woods to search for Chad and the mob of people surveying the land and who knew what else, I grabbed my purse.

In case one or more of the drivers returned before we found the rest, I didn’t want anyone poking into the van and finding the magical case.

Maybe I should have left it in my apartment, but Abrams might have had people poking around there.

“So much poking,” I muttered.

Duncan looked at me. He hadn’t changed into a wolf or bipedfuris, but he led the way, striding into the trees with confidence. Since his senses were keener than mine, he probably could follow a trail by scent even in his human form.

“Just musing that it’s hard to know where to stash the case for safekeeping,” I said.

“Ah. It’ll be safe with us.”

“You’re not afraid of a pack of real estate developers?”

“Not in the least.”

My stomach, on the other hand, writhed with nerves, though that had to do with Chad’s presence in the area, not real estate developers. For someone whom I’d never wanted to see again, he was popping up a lot this week.

Another thought occurred to me. “Can you tell if my son is with them?”

“I’ve only met one of your sons. Austin. He’s not here.”

“No, I know. You probably didn’t notice last night, but as Chad was driving off, I saw Cameron in the passenger seat of the car.

” I waved back toward the Toyota, but we’d traveled far enough through the densely packed trees that the vehicles were no longer visible.

“He’s twenty with straight brown hair down to his jaw and an athletic build.

Leans toward snark, if you can imagine that from one of my kids. ”

“Strangely, I can. Is he more supportive of his father than of you?”

Was he asking if Cameron would be a problem if they were together?

“I’m not sure. He hasn’t talked to me much since he moved out, but I don’t know how close he is with Chad.

” I dearly wanted for Cameron not to be close to his father at all , but their showing up here together…

didn’t bode well for that. A dense tangle of emotions centered around distress joined my nerves in upsetting me.

“A son should always speak with his mother,” Duncan said. “That’s a rule, isn’t it?”

I smiled sadly. “It should be.”

I thought of my own mother, who, because of the subject she kept bringing up, I’d been hesitant to be around. I needed to visit her again too. Who knew how much time she had left?

“Not enough,” I murmured.

Duncan, nose in the air and leading the way between ferns, over moss-blanketed logs, and around the pond, didn’t look back at the words.

I crept after him, my shoes squishing in water- filled muddy footprints on the ground.

Even without a wolf’s keen senses, following these men wouldn’t have been difficult.

I was surprised how far from the road we traveled before we heard voices. Still in the lead, Duncan slowed down and stopped behind a thick cedar, resting his hand on its rough bark. We’d come up a rise that overlooked a gully.

The same one that ran some distance behind my mother’s cabin and led to the magical cave? Yes, a familiar stream gurgled roughly down the middle of the depression, ferns dense on either side of the waterway.

Was it possible these men knew about the cave? Was it the reason they wanted the land? Maybe their motivations had nothing to do with resorts and hot springs. But, unless some of them had the blood of paranormal beings, would they sense anything special about that cave?

Duncan raised a finger, directing my gaze to a draw perpendicular to the stream.

It had to be close to a mile from the cave, but the voices came from back in that direction.

Most were male, but at least one woman spoke intermittently.

From our perch, I couldn’t make out any of their words.

I didn’t think I heard Chad among the speakers but couldn’t be certain.

After holding a finger to his lips, Duncan indicated that he would move closer. Curious about everything, I crept after him.

We chose our route carefully, not wanting to step on branches or trip and make noise. Once we crossed the stream and advanced into the draw, the gurgling of the waterway faded, making it easier to hear the speakers.

“…not that impressive,” a woman was saying.

“What did you expect?” a man asked. “The Hollywood version of an Old West mine shaft?”

“Well, sort of.”

A third speaker said, “We can spruce these up. Add some wooden supports and make them look more like what people would expect. And we can bring in old rusty sluicing equipment from our resort in Alaska. We can give people the opportunity to pan for gold out here in the stream.”

“Come and get a massage, facial, and seaweed wrap, and then pan for gold?” the woman asked.

“Sure. Package deal. People eat that stuff up. And don’t forget the hot springs. You saw the tests on the water, right? It has all sorts of minerals that are good for the body. There were even traces of gold in some of the samples. Who wouldn’t want to soak in gold ?”

“Does that have health benefits?”

“Our brochures will promise it does.”

Duncan looked at me. I shrugged. Maybe these people were here because of the mines and hot springs, and it had nothing to do with the magical cave.

“The legends of werewolves in the area should add to its appeal too,” a new speaker said.

I froze. That was Chad.

“We’re not going to put that in the brochure, but we’ll have some seemingly unaffiliated social-media accounts mention it. People eat that stuff up too. If you find any old werewolf relics, like you said you could, we can put them in glass cases in the lodge.”

“Decorations for a resort,” Chad said. “The ideal use for priceless magical artifacts.”

The guy he was speaking to snorted. “If you can prove there’s anything out here that’s magical , we can talk about what uses it might have. I’m just building the resort. Assuming we can get the werewolf infestation out of the area.”

“Two weeks ago, you didn’t believe werewolves existed,” the woman said.

“That was before Tommy got chased out of the area by a pack of them wrenching pieces off his truck.”

“So he claims.”

“I saw the tooth marks in the frame. And the missing fender. He had some footage he took with his phone out the back window as he was ripping out of there. Biggest fucking wolves you’ve ever seen.”

“The biggest wolves are less interested in fucking than you’d think,” Chad said.

My cheeks heated at the suggestion that he meant me.

“Just figure out how to get the land from them. I don’t care if there are werewolves in the area—like I said, that should add mystique and draw in clientele who wouldn’t come for seaweed wraps and gold panning—but we need to legally own the land before we can break ground.”

“Isn’t the parcel you got enough?” Chad asked. “There are hot springs and mines right here.”

“I think we’re on the woman’s land at this point.”

The woman’s? Mom’s? It had to be.

“We’ve picked up a couple of smaller parcels,” another speaker said, “but this stream and all the way up that gully are hers. Another chunk belongs to what looks like a sibling. That whole family has been squatting out here for generations.”

“It’s not squatting when they’re the rightful owners.”

“ Normal families sell land when civilization grows out to it and the property increases a ton in value.”

The woman laughed shortly. “You’re not offering what the value is.”

“No, this wouldn’t pencil out if we had to pay a fortune for each acre. We need a deal.” Voice grim and determined, the male speaker added, “And we’re going to get a deal.”

The hell they were. I clenched my jaw.

“Someone might need to scare these blokes into changing their plans,” Duncan murmured.

“Are you offering to go furry and toss a few of them around?” Maybe I shouldn’t have found the idea appealing.

Other than scheming, the developers hadn’t, as far as I knew, done anything terribly evil.

Not like Radomir, who’d repeatedly sent men with rifles loaded with silver bullets after my mom and the family.

“I’d be happy to go furry. I—” A twig snapped, and Duncan looked in the direction of the speakers.

Movement stirred branches, and we eased off the trail the group had trampled on their way to the mine shaft. Foliage rustled, and people muttered, heading in this direction. We moved farther off the trail, ducking behind evergreen trees and bushes.

No fewer than ten men and a couple of women passed by, some pausing to take photos with their phones. The gurgling stream meandering through trees and around mossy boulders was picturesque, but I gritted my teeth at the thought of it ending up on a brochure for a resort built by sketchy means.

Chad wasn’t with the group. Had he stayed behind to look for werewolf relics ? I doubted he wanted to soak in a muddy hole, no matter how appealing the mineral content of the water.

Duncan pointed after the group and arched his eyebrows. Asking if he should do something to scare them?

I bit my lip, debating. I also wondered if Cameron was with Chad.

By now, Cameron had heard all about my werewolf heritage, but the idea of changing and doing something savage in front of him made me wince.

It had been one thing when I’d been saving Austin from kidnappers.

But this would be… bullying, essentially.

Arguably for a good cause, and Duncan was volunteering to handle it, but still.

I wanted to be noble and a good mom for my son, damn it.

“Let me talk to Chad first,” I whispered, assuming he was still back there.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“And throw him over a car again?”

“It would take quite a throw to do that from here, but I’m game to try.”

“That’s all right. I can handle him if he gets violent.” I grimaced. “Or handsy.”

Duncan’s eyes closed to slits. “I fully acknowledge that you can handle him, but if he does either of those things, I won’t be able to keep myself from intervening.”

Since my own savage instincts could take over my rational mind when the werewolf magic came upon me, I neither doubted him nor would I blame him if that happened.

I understood all too well. But I also didn’t want to put Chad in a position where Duncan might kill him.

He was a sleaze, and I didn’t want him in my life, but I didn’t hate him enough to want him dead.

And I definitely didn’t want him to be killed in front of our son.

Nor did I want Cameron to be in any danger.

The thought that he might be, if Duncan lost himself and turned savage, sent an icy chill down my spine.

“Maybe you should keep an eye on those guys then.” I pointed in the direction the rest of the group was disappearing. “They might be less excited about their resort plans if their fenders were all ripped off.”

Duncan hesitated but then nodded. “All right.”

He stepped back enough to bow toward me, then headed across the stream and leaped lightly over it without making a sound.

A part of me wanted to call him back, second-guessing my decision to confront Chad on my own, but for all the reasons I’d just been thinking about I didn’t. Instead, I crept in the direction his voice had come from.

The first person to come into view was Cameron, not Chad.

With a fur-lined parka on, he sat perched on a boulder and tapping at his phone.

As I well knew, there wasn’t much reception out here, but maybe he was playing a game that didn’t require it.

I peered about, expecting Chad nearby, but didn’t see him.

I did see a hole in the rocky side of the draw, branches dangling down and half obscuring it.

The old mine shaft that had interested the group?

There were also a couple of pools of water between boulders, steam wafting from them.

They didn’t look as muddy and unappealing as Jasmine had implied, but they wouldn’t have made me promptly think resort if I’d stumbled across them while on a hike.

It hardly seemed worth dealing with werewolves over, but I supposed that was why the developers were trying to buy up all the land, in the hope that the werewolves would move away without a confrontation.

I considered stopping to speak with Cameron, but he’d been in Seattle for however long and hadn’t reached out to me. I also worried about what he thought after seeing me deck Chad the night before. And he’d seen Duncan hurl Chad over a car. He might not want anything to do with me ever again.

Trying not to feel like a coward, I skirted Cameron. Leaving him to his game, I continued up the draw. Chad wouldn’t have wandered that far, would he? Unless… Could he know about the cave and have gone in that direction?

No, a rustling sounded up ahead. I crept closer until I spotted Chad’s back between the trees. My senses picked up on something magical. Chad was hunched over whatever it was.

I moved forward and to the side, debating whether to call out or not. I wanted to confront him about scheming with the real estate developers, but I didn’t know what I would say. Was he even doing anything illegal? Besides trespassing?

The arm holding the magical device was in a sling, making me feel guilty that he’d been hurt the night before. At least, if he was using it somewhat, the bone shouldn’t be broken. He might only have sprained his wrist.

Soft beeping came from Chad’s device. I blinked.

It reminded me of Duncan’s magic detector, and when I stepped to the side enough so that I could see it, it looked a lot like it too, a box-shaped device with a couple of divining-rod-like antennae sticking out of it.

They quivered slightly to accompany the beeping.

“Huh.” Chad bent forward and plucked up a mushroom. “You can’t be what it’s excited about.”

To my human eyes, the mushroom didn’t glow, but it might have if I’d been in my wolf form. Unusual purple speckles on its blue cap reminded me of one of the specimens at Radomir’s mushroom farm.

“I’m looking for werewolf artifacts,” Chad told the machine and tossed the mushroom into the bushes.

“Why do you obsessively seek them out?” I asked, stepping forward. “I’ve never understood that.”