Alpha Queen (Claimed by Wolves #4) - Callie Rose Page 0,43

in my witch and let the magic stop pouring from my hands. The black marks on my skin where my scars turn dark with the energy fade away, and I watch them disappear, marveling vaguely at how strange my life has become.

Several of the shifters turn toward the woods, noses in the air and gazes roaming the dim trees. I can’t hear their conversation while I’m in human form, but I imagine they’re looking to see if anyone else is coming. But several long moments pass and no one else comes out of the woods. The coppery scent of blood hangs on the air; it’s the only out-of-place scent I can smell. If any other witches were coming, their scents would hang on the air for all of us to pick up.

While they’re watching the woods, I glance down at the place where Lawson fell. He’s shifted back to human form, and he lies on his side in a patch of soft grass, his back to me.

I rush to his side, panic rising. I don’t know what kind of spell took Lawson down, but coupled with the numerous cuts, bruises, and possible broken bones, he looks far, far beyond my ability to help.

I try anyway, tracing the few healing sigils I’ve recently learned over his body. Black smoke drifts over his skin, and some of his superficial wounds slow their bleeding.

But it’s not enough.

“Ridge!” I call as I drop to my knees beside Lawson. The man’s eyes flutter at the sound of my voice, and he glances up at me blearily before they close again. His face sinks further into the grass. I gently take hold of his head and ease him onto my lap so he isn’t nearly face-planted in the ground.

Ridge appears, the magic of his shift fading as he gazes down at his brother with pain in his honey-colored eyes. He turns to Trystan and says, “Help me get him up. He needs the healer. Archer, can you lead us there?”

I assumed that the shifters who came to help were Ridge’s, and while two of them are faces I recognize from the guard we took back to North Pack lands with us, the other three are a mix of West and East Pack men. I’m heartened by the obvious show of support from the other packs. Maybe this merger really will work.

Dare places a hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to stay with the others and help them clean up the mess.”

I grimace. We’ve had so many bloody messes on our hands this week. I hate it. “Okay. Be careful.”

Trystan and Ridge carry Lawson between them as Archer leads us through the village. We go to the same healer who treated Dare the day he returned to us half-dead from a witch attack. He was crazy enough to go charging into witch territory, ready to destroy them all with his bare hands—or teeth, I guess—and returned to us in such bad shape that it made my heart stop to look at him. So I know the East Pack healer, Camilla, is one of the best, since she fixed the damage that had been done to him.

She lives in a cabin on the outskirts of town, set back off the road on a tiny plot of land that she clearly tends to with all the love in her heart. A small bed of herbs sits out front, and a side garden boasts plump red tomatoes and vines of beans, peppers, and squash. Camilla opens the front door before Archer can even knock.

“I smelled the blood,” she says by ways of greeting, then her gaze slides past him to where Lawson dangles limply between Trystan and Ridge. “Bring him in.”

Camilla’s wild gray hair is somewhat tamed today by a hair tie, and she’s dressed nicely in clean blue jeans and a pressed shirt—likely because she was at the meeting before Lawson showed up. She nods at me as I step into the cabin, her eyes folding into deep lines as she smiles, revealing slightly crooked front teeth.

I get a wicked sense of deja vu as Ridge and Trystan carry Lawson into the same room where Dare was treated. It’s crazy to me that it wasn’t that long ago, when it feels like a lifetime has passed since that day.

Camilla shoos both men away and bends over the wounded shifter, her hands moving quickly. She lifts his arms and legs, feels around his neck, and pokes at his torso with