Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Hidden Valley Wolves
Also by Ellie Pond
About the Author
Acknowledgments
1
The puff of smoke blew back in her face. Charred bits of paper swirled around the room, and the soot settled on her shoulder. She had focused too hard and held her papers too close, and they caught fire, flames trailing upward in a round circle of ash. Not enough to cause harm, but enough to possibly set off the alarm.
Emma waved her hand, and two windows flew open. A third groaned, its complaint vibrating up when it hit the top position. It sagged in the corner with an anthropomorphic middle finger to the witch. Smoke circled the ceiling of the room in a hurricane motion.
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare set off the smoke detector. Not again.” She jumped up, frantically waving her arms around the smoke. She needed to save her powers if she had any hope of pulling a vision out of the meditation well today, but she also needed a spell to suck the smoke out of the room.
The decision was taken away by her indecisiveness. The smoke alarm roared to life. It blared loud enough to be heard two counties over.
Heck, they could probably hear it in Pittsburgh. Emma stumbled out of her new empty white room—“her magical corner office,” she jokingly called it to her mother.
Shoot. Her socks slid on the newly waxed hallway floor. The meditation well sat in one of two rooms in the old school remodeled for the new business. A very secret business. Her pulse hammered in time with the blaring alarm. Her boss had told her they had two minutes before the system called the fire department. Aka the building next door. It was Saturday afternoon, and none of the people who normally helped her turn it off were around. The last four times she’d set the smoke alarm off, Carter, her boss, had come running and done something with the circuit breaker box in the hall, silencing it before Emma even untangled her limbs from sitting crisscross on the floor next to the meditation well. This time, it was up to her. Because the good people of Hundsburg didn’t need to know what was going on inside their old school building.
The gray panel dominated the dingy concrete blocks of the corridor. She flipped open the panel and stared at the breakers. “I’ve got this—I’ve got this.”
There were a lot of switches, none labeled with anything she could understand, like hallway, office, or classroom. Nope, nothing. Carter said once they had things up and running, he’d invest more capital into the building. Until then, they got what they got.
The alarm wailed at her, taunted her. She flipped the first breaker. Nothing. The racket continued. She flipped the second. The lights went out in the room behind her, but the detector still screamed, so she flipped it back on. Nothing. Third one? Nothing. Fourth, nothing. The breakers had numbers but no names. All fifty-five of them. Goddess. She’d gotten to the twentieth when the whine of a fire truck siren pulled into the parking lot, its screaming alarm competing with the smoke detector. She held her thumbs and forefingers together to form a rectangle and did a quick glance down the long hallway. Crap on a cracker, she’d forgotten to reset the wards after she’d come into work today.
Panic pulsed through her. She needed the alarm off. And off now. She flipped faster, no longer waiting the half minute between flips to see if they did anything. Number thirty-two shut the alarm off at the same time the door at the end of the hall flew open—a door she had never seen open—and a firefighter stepped through.
The male silhouette in the doorway filled the frame. “Where’s the fire?” He had a radio in his hand. And when he turned to the side, she could see several more men behind him.
“Oh, no, oh, no. No. No.” She had taken her shoes off to focus. Because only crazy people could focus with shoes on. One step, two. She darted for the door, waving her hands over her head. “It’s fine. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong. No fire, no fire. It’s all fine.” Don’t let them in.
The glare from the recent snowfall outside shone down the narrow hallway like a flashlight, the doors to the former classrooms closed and empty. Panic rose in her throat. Carter’s direct order was “no one is to come into the building.” No one. And the firefighters were coming in. A lot of them. A lot of super, super tall, fully equipped firefighters. And the first was scowling at her from under his large yellow hat with the fancy badge on the front.
“Sorry.” Emma skidded down the hall. Her right sock hit a polished spot on the floor while her left did not, and she turned to see what was happening. Time slowed, and not magically. Regular humiliation slowed time—it grabbed her by her big girl pants and gave her a hearty shake as she launched into the air.
The second firefighter’s colossal frame took up most of the door. Emma had already slid by the first one. She’d tried to stop, really, she had. The air churned. And she rapidly rejected multiple ways of using magic to stop, but not fast enough for her to change her sliding feet. If her arms hadn’t been windmilling around, the second firefighter would have caught her. But nope. His hands grasped at air as she flashed by him.
The third khaki-coated, yellow-hat-wearing firefighter wasn’t as lucky. Not at all. Nope.
Her elbows locked her arms straight out in front of her, and her hands landed on the chest of the third, extraordinarily unfortunate soul. And he flew backwards. They flew backwards. Her magic engaged, and blue flames flickered up her arms. Her power reached for release, a conduit to escape her frantic pulse. She reminded herself over and over to not let the good steaming hot firefighters of Hundsburg in on the secret of her witchness. But not soon enough.
Emma and the male flew backwards. His hands surrounded her waist, and her head landed under his chin. He bounced once on the pavement, and they landed in a dirty snowbank on the edge of the unshoveled sidewalk.
“Fudge rockets,” she muttered.
His brown eyes locked with hers, and Emma lost the ability to rub two thoughts together. She wanted to rub other things together. Preferably with a lot less clothing on. Thoughts of the two of them doing the horizontal tango bombarded her. What the heck? Her magical energy wasn’t bouncing off of him like it did all humans and shifters. Nope. It was sinking in. Into his scruffy face, with his irresistible square jawline.
“You okay?” The rumble of his voice vibrated through her, and her thoughts were returning to . . .
“Larsen. Ask her where the smoke is coming from, or at least ask her if she’s okay,” a commanding voice from the side of the building growled at them. “Then get off your ass and help.”
Right. Emma had gotten distracted from, well, everything. Noise clattered behind her. She tried to turn, but his hands gripped onto her waist.
“I’m assessing, Beck,” he growled. “Are you okay?” He removed his hands, giving her the unfortunate ability to get up.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m really sorry.” She tried to wiggle off him, but her knee slipped and landed in his groin. Her socks landed in a pile of slush next to his boot. The cold water splashed up her jeans.
He grunted, his eyes instantly watering.
“Oh Goddess. I’m sorry.” She looked at him and back at the door of the building. There was a lot she couldn’t let him see. “I’m so sorry.” She rushed to the door, leaving the brown-eyed Adonis hunched over the side of the snowbank.
Her mistakes weren’t going to lead her to the hunk of her dreams. She didn’t need men in her life. Other than her friends’ mates and their kids. Nope. Her heart skidded up her throat as she ran into the building without glancing back at him. There were at least three firefighters in the building.
“Hey. . .” She waved her hand to the open door. “There’s no fire. You don’t need to go in there. Everything is fine.” She chased after them. They’d opened the first two classroom doors.
Emma ducked her head into the first door. They hadn’t done anything to them yet. It was going to be a reception room when they got it set up. Boxes lined the wall, but there wasn’t anyone in the room.
“Hey,” she hollered down the hallway. “Hey. Where did you go?” She needed to keep them out of the room with her meditation well. How could she explain a pristine white room with only a yellow dot in the middle of the floor? She ran faster than her legs knew how to go, past another open door. But the others had seemingly vanished.
