Wild Fire (Wilding Pack Wolves 5) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (8 page)

She was doing just what he asked—baring her soul and her secret to her family—but she was sending him out of the room again, closing herself off. He had to bite his lip hard to keep from saying something more. Instead, he retreated as gracefully as he could, leaving her to her work and trying to not mess up the progress he’d made.

Besides, what else was he hoping for? A kiss?

She’d made it pretty clear she wasn’t interested in him.

Somehow that didn’t stop his wolf from howling as he closed the door behind him.

“You’re a white wolf?” Daniel asked her, his horror making Zoe’s stomach knot.

It was late afternoon, and Zoe had kept her word to Troy—she was out in the field with the other white wolves ready for practice. Owen, Kaden, and Noah were all standing by Daniel with their mouths open. Skylar was grinning, but she didn’t know Zoe at all—or why being a white wolf in the Wilding family wasn’t something to be proud of.

Troy stood behind her. She felt his hand land at the small of her back. “It’s okay,” he said, encouraging her.

She stepped away from him just because that contact was thoroughly distracting. She was doing this because he was right… not because she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

She cleared her throat. “Yes, I am,” she called out to the others in the field. “And I’ve done a little magic before.”

Daniel threw his arms out dramatically. “Well,
fuck!
Why am I the only loser here with no magical powers?” He seemed so genuinely exasperated that a bubble of laughter loosened up the knot in Zoe’s stomach.

“Thanks, bro,” Troy called from behind her. “Good to know I’m in the loser category.”

Daniel dropped his arms. “Oh, hey, Troy, I didn’t mean—”

“I’m totally yanking your chain, man,” Troy said, laughing.

Skylar sashayed over to Daniel, coming up from behind him. “I’ll bring out your inner witch, hot stuff,” she purred.

Daniel about jumped out of his skin, then turned to her. Either Zoe was imagining things or something was going on with the two of them.

“Go ahead, Daniel,” Zoe said, glad to have the attention off her big reveal. “You go first.”

Skylar grinned and tugged Daniel around to face her. He looked like a deer caught in headlights, all slack-faced then googly-eyed. Zoe didn’t know her cousin that well, but he had a reputation for being a pretty straight arrow on most things. He’d never taken a mate, but she could see that—his family had a dark history of its own in the mating department. Not that Skylar-the-witch was the best of candidates for that, but then again… with the genetic history all of them shared in the Wilding family, mating with a witch wasn’t exactly out of bounds. Hell, Jaxson River had done it already, although his mate was only half witch.

Zoe turned to face Troy and dropped her voice. “There—I told him. Can we go now?” She was only partly serious.

He gave her a look like she was making trouble, but that little half-smirky grin was doing things to her lady parts. And not unpleasant things, either.

Dammit,
she needed to stop thinking about him like that.

“Show them the shield,” Troy said quietly. The rest of them were preoccupied with watching Daniel try to summon his magic. “I haven’t seen any of them do something like that. And you’ve got it locked down.”

The way he was looking at her, all expectant and excited, was hard to resist. “I don’t know.” This whole thing really was a terrifically bad idea. What was she going to do? Go out and battle the Wolf Hunter in a big witchy fireball showdown? “I’m not a fighter, Troy. I’m a little book-wormish researcher in a genetics lab. I don’t even know what I’m doing—”

He held up a finger to stop her and then slowly, slowly let it drift closer and tap her on the lips. His eyes focused on where he’d just touched her, which was on fire with the heat of his fingertip. He looked like he wanted to lean in and kiss her.

She was frozen, just blinking up at him. She was so out of her depth with this. There’d only been a handful of guys she had even
kissed,
much less gone further with. She’d always been so determined to stay far, far away from any man who might excite her wolf and bring out her beastly instincts for mating. Not that she didn’t find guys hot—she just couldn’t take the risk. And she’d been too busy running after her own personal salvation.

Men were almost as foreign a species to her as the viruses in her lab.

“I am so proud of you, right now,” Troy said, softly. “If we weren’t here in the middle of the field with half your family, I’d probably kiss you.”

“Does your approval always come with a bonus kiss attached?” She could feel the tremble in her voice, but she was glad it sounded pretty steady. Almost sassy.

He gave a soft chuckle. “Only for beautiful, sexy, powerful witch wolves. I only know a few of those.”

“A few?” It was getting hard to breathe.

“Only one,” he admitted. “And I’d really like to see what she can do.”

There was something deeply sexy and motivating about that tone in his voice—it wasn’t quite an alpha command, more like a really hot request.

Behind them, Owen and Noah were groaning their frustration as Daniel failed to do something Skylar had requested. Kaden was watching on with his arms crossed over his massive chest, humor etched into his face.

“Don’t let them bully you, Daniel,” Zoe called, stepping away from Troy and striding toward her cousin.

Skylar stepped back as Zoe raised her hand, palm out, facing Daniel.

He put up both hands in defense. “Hey, now, don’t start ganging up on me.”

Zoe smiled. “You’re right, I shouldn’t use you as a guinea pig.” Then she pivoted to point her open palm toward a tree stump. Whatever had happened to the tree—probably a huge blast of magical fire—had left it burned clean off about two feet up from the ground. Somewhere along the way, a pinecone had come to rest on top of the tree stump, sitting by itself.

When Zoe had first discovered her magic, she couldn’t help but be excited about it. She had been young—too young to understand the terrible power and what it really meant—so she had played with it, trying to master it, before she told anyone. Even back then, some part of her knew that this should be kept a secret. She hadn’t gotten far in her experimentation before realizing she needed to stop… or risk becoming like her grandfather. Powerful. And evil.

But that left her with only a little magical knowledge. It’d been more than five years since she’d summoned her witchy powers intentionally. The fire in the lab didn’t count—raising that shield had obviously been instinctual. Luckily, she’d been able to control it, once Troy asked her to.

Like he was now.

She focused on tapping into the energy deep inside her, where her wolf lived and all her magic resided. She extended it out, picturing it as a beam emanating from her palm and drawing a straight line to the pinecone. A blue ball of fire shot out from her hand, but it wasn’t the destructive kind—instead it wrapped itself around the pinecone, encasing it in a blue shield, a shimmering bubble of energy like the one that protected her and Troy from the fire. Still focused on it, she turned her palm to the sky and lifted. The pinecone raised off the stump with the motion of her hand. She held it there, then flicked a look to Troy behind her. His eyes were blazing at her with an unmistakable look that, if they were alone, would’ve sucked her right into a kiss. She looked away, back to the others, before too much heat could rise to her face with that thought.

“Holy shit.”
Daniel had the same look of awe that danced across the rest of their faces. Even Skylar seemed entranced. She skittered across the half-burned grass to Zoe.

“What else can you do, girl?” Her big green eyes peered up at Zoe—the witch was just tiny, even next to Zoe. “Witching is such an inherently feminine power. I’ll bet you’ve got all kinds of things going on under that cute new haircut.”

Zoe laughed a little. “I’m really not doing anything special. Just manipulating the field a little bit.”

Skylar looked impressed, then twisted around to nod at the men who were still gaping. “You see? Just manipulating the field a little bit.” She turned back to Zoe. “These burly masculine men are hotter than sin, but they’re more wolf than witch. Even with those white wolf powers expressing like crazy, it’s hard for them to harness their witchy side. Tough for them, but you…
you,
my girl, could do amazing things.”

Zoe had heard this idea before—that witches and wolves had a common ancestor and that somewhere in the distant past, they had separated out into two species, one that was predominantly female, the witches, and one that was predominantly male, the wolves.

“So you’re saying that because I’m a
female
white wolf that I have more access to my witchy side?” That fascinated Zoe as a scientist, but she was more than a little concerned about what that really meant in a practical sense. She had never explored the limits of her power—not even close. She had shut it down fast as soon as she realized what it meant for her life.

“Absolutely!” Skylar beckoned her with two fingers, urging her out further into the field. “It’s a fact that we—witches and wolves—used to be much more intimately entwined.” She threw a quick smirk to Daniel, whose face, astonishingly, actually turned red.

Witches were often hot for wolves—and when the witches were less than honorable, which was most of the time, that could end up being a very scary fate for the male wolves trapped in their beds. And there were more than enough flat-out evil witches who hunted wolves for their magical body parts—blood and heart and more. There was distrust between the species for a reason. But the flirtatious looks Skylar was throwing Daniel’s way, and his response to them… that looked a whole lot more like the normal kind of sexual tension.

The kind Zoe felt heating her up every time Troy came near.

Skylar turned back to Zoe after tormenting Daniel with a sly licking of her lips. “It may be ancient history to you wolves, but several of my sisters are long-lived enough to remember when stories about the ancient unification of wolves and witches were not stories at all. But the white wolf you guys are expressing is the closest I’ve seen in modern times to combining both sides. My sisters and my coven are all jealous of me—not only do I get to spend my time with some hunkalicious men, but the white wolf could be the start of something special for wolves and witches both. Something we haven’t seen for hundreds of years.”

“What do you mean?” Troy asked from behind her. He had edged up to get a better look at what they were doing.

“I mean,” Skylar said with another glance at Daniel, “that the reunification of our species could be a possibility.”

Zoe couldn’t tell if she meant
unification
as in
getting it on with a hot male shifter body
or an actual unification of the two species as a whole.

Perhaps both.

“Right now,” Zoe said, “I’m really just interested in knowing how to blast a certain Wolf Hunter to hell if he happens to come to my lab again.”

Skylar sobered a little. “That’s something I would like to see as well.” She narrowed her eyes at Zoe. “Show me what you’ve really got, sister.”

That challenge sparked something inside Zoe—that plus the anger she felt about the Wolf Hunter. He had slowed down her research by blowing up her lab. He had been hunting her family. It would be more than satisfying to be the one to send a blue blast of magical energy searing through his body and putting an end to all his nasty plans. And with him out of the way, she might have a chance to actually get back to work and solve her own personal problems. Maybe someday, she could have a man hold her the way she wanted Troy to wrap his big, muscular, fire-fighting arms around her. She hadn’t been able to get that image out of her head ever since he’d told her he wanted to know
all
her secrets.

Someday, she’d have a normal life. And right now, the Wolf Hunter was standing very much in the way of that.

Zoe closed her eyes and tapped deep inside herself… to where her white wolf lay. She commanded it to come out with all the force that it had and show her what she was capable of. If there was a time to unleash her wolf, while she still had it… now was it.

She held out both hands, peeking to make sure they were directed at the tree stump. She could feel the power inside her, rumbling like an earthquake up from the depths of her soul. It seemed to literally shake her body with its power. She squeezed her eyes tight, focusing on channeling that energy up from the depths and out through her hands. The sudden rushing happened almost like she had uncorked something—she had no control as it flooded out of her. A loud cracking sound forced her to pop open her eyes—the stump was gone.

Obliterated.

She quickly looked around in horror.

Wisps of blue magic were still darting around the field, jumping from tree to tree, and then to the ground, and back to another tree—as if it were lightning looking for a place to land. A line of burnt destruction at about a three-foot level ran straight across the entire clearing, leveling dozens of trees.