The Wolf and the Witch (Witch Walker, #3)

by Charissa Weaks

“What’s unpleasant for one might be pleasant for another.” He turns and stalks toward the gloom hovering between the trees. “I rather like your bark, witch,” he calls. “Though I’m more interested in seeing if you have any bite.”

“I know you do. I’ve seen you hovering for the last eight years. You and the sorcerer as well. As though neither of you realizes that woman” —he stabs a finger toward me— “can fucking take care of herself.”

“I want to be the woman who wields a god against Thamaos. I want to be the woman who wields you.”

Fuck me. She doesn’t know it yet, but I fear she already is that woman.

“Are you ready for this, wolf?” She pinches my pendant tightly between her thumb and forefinger. I’ve no notion what to expect, but I have an answer. “I’ve been ready for three hundred years.”

I find him beautiful in a manner I’ve never felt toward Alexus or even Colden, the kind of beauty that makes my skin irritatingly febrile and my thoughts completely irrational.

Then he chuckles. “If my cock scares you that much now, witch, you should see it when I’m rowdy.”

In those brief seconds, even though he wears the body of a human, he seems more wolf than god but also more animal than man, ever the graceful predator.

“You might be careful what thoughts you conjure, Miss Bloodgood. I just might make them come true.”

This remnant links us. So when we’re apart, all you must do is touch this piece of my heart, call out to me, and I will come.”

When he finishes, he leans in, his nose grazing my neck. “I haven’t scented a woman in so long,” he whispers against my skin. “It’s so different absorbing your aroma like this, through godly senses, not the dulled senses of a man.” Another graze, another inhale, a hand at my waist. “You smell like bliss and ruin at the same time.”

“sealed off the Shadow World to keep the necromancers out. The magi simply kept the skill tightly contained, taught only to certain people once the gods were dead, and the aether had no one else to command it.”

Did Raina somehow tap into this????

Burying his face in her hair, he tightens his arms around her waist and picks her up, holding her as a cry of deepest pain rumbles from his chest and fills the room.

My heart is shattering

“We need to talk,” she says with a rasp. Her voice is battered and rough, yet somehow still smooth—gravel and silk. “I know where Raina is.”

“No. The woman I’m talking about was only with us for close to a year. And in that time, you grew to care for her so deeply that it changed the course of your life, and mine and Elias’s as well.”

I’m talking about the memories of that final year before Urdin killed my father. Memories that meant everything to you, because they were memories of a woman named Raina Bloodgood, who appeared at Min-Thuret late one summer night and fell under Un Drallag’s care.”

“She told me about the fire on Mount Ulra,” Fleurie says. “She told me I would come to her aid, and that the meeting of our powers would send her to the past—my portal reacting cataclysmically with her abyss.”

“But now,” Fleurie adds, “even that curse is gone. It’s as though the collision of mine and Raina’s power destroyed my father’s old magick.

Is this a possible way to defeat Thamoas?

He wanted to eradicate the silent witch his Seers warned him about. A woman he met at Min-Thuret, at a ball held in his famous Great Hall. A woman he eventually feared could prevent his return from the Shadow World should his life be lost.

“You’re telling me that you don’t know if she will return to me?”

THIS IS SO PAINFUL!!!!

“Hey now, little bird.” He brushes his fingertips across the tears at my temple. “Stay with me.”

Just like my subconscious recognized Raina.”

I think that happened because some centuries-old part of my mind remembered her face. Not the soft face of her as a girl, someone I never knew, but the stony, fearless face she acquired in these most recent years. As a woman.” He lets out a shaking breath. “I think I was remembering my Raina. My virago.”

“That vicious snarl would be much scarier if it didn’t remind me of a pup baring its teeth.”

Can you even imagine being the mother of his godling?”

This better not be foreshadowing

“Except he was bleeding profusely instead of healing quickly like gods were known to do.”

Did Neri’s powers transfer to Nephele?!

“I have crossed from the living realm to the realm of the dead,” he says, voice hard, words sharp as knives. “I have walked where only spirits trod. Now I know I did it for her. I was looking for her. I think I’ve always been looking for her, even if my mind didn’t understand. Even if it latched onto any other reason for my actions. Because my soul knew. It knew I would find her in the valley, and so I went there. It knew she would eventually be a witch in the vale, and so I took witches.

So how dare you tell me that I cannot find her. How dare you think that anything will keep me from her.”

“Three hundred years ago,” he goes on, “the love I felt for Raina, buried though it might have been, became my driving instinct. That part of me sought immortality, at whatever cost, a need masked by my guilt for Colden, so that not even death could become a boundary. So believe me when I tell you that time won’t stand in my way either. It hasn’t yet.”

“I smell what you want, Nephele. I’ve smelled it for weeks. It’s torture.”

“You are so fucking beautiful,”

“You are not making this easy. Three hundred years, and I have to fucking say no.”

“Good night, Nephele. You’ll thank me for this tomorrow.”

We love a man who like consent

Because sometimes darkness spawns monsters. Other times it breeds warriors. Like you. Your resilience is unparalleled in this world, and that is the kind of valor and steadfastness that can end a war. We should all look to your example for courage in the days ahead.”

Oof huge burn

Why suddenly, you think I need a hero. I’m my own fucking hero. Don’t forget it.”

“Blood.”

“Now stop lying through your teeth and kiss me, woman. And be convincing about it.”

“This is my first kiss in three hundred years,” he reminds me. “I don’t care what’s happening around us. I mean to enjoy it.”

“I don't want your fear, Nephele.” Eyes shadowed with lust, he folds his arms around me and gathers me into a lover's embrace. “I want your surrender.”

his face a brutal mask of cruel satisfaction. Because he’s dragging two bodies through the front gate.

“Fuck, Nephele. The things I’m going to do to you are absolutely depraved.”

Understand that, like it or not, once I give in and join with you, I’m going to take for as long as I can, which is more extensive than you realize.”

“I’m going to be around a lot. Get used to it. Besides, you had your chance today. You didn’t take it. So I hope that big hand of yours feels good because you’ll need it.”

“This is already my pussy.” An even firmer grasp. “You understand that, yes? Mine.”

Jesus Christ 🥵

I let go then. I let go and let her be the first to claim, to grant her that power over me, the God of the North who now worships at a witch’s feet.