Page 26 of Her Wolf Protector

"Maybe there's a basement. We should try that next," Tate suggested.

Arwen nodded, and followed him into the lift. Sure enough, there was a button for B, a rarity for Glasgow. Everything was built upon coal mines and water, and basements were as likely to collapse into a centuries-old mine below as to flood. Usually both.

This basement was a lab, too, but it had been kept as one, instead of converting it to a grow room, like the rest. A room with some sort of control system sat on one side, lights blinking and winking in their own private dance. No magic, there, just technology. No, wait, batteries. This was the missing Hea Sanctuary power plant!

The other side had vacuum packs of mushrooms, as far as the eye could see. These were the source of the magic. It was impossible to tell which ones had formed the ring and which were just ripped from the ground simply for being in the same place as the gateway to the fae realm. But the magic here was fading fast. Like once the mushrooms were picked, or left the dell, the magic seeped out of them, until there was none left.

The gate to the fae realm was gone. Smashed by a mushroom thief. But Arwen would still purify this place, to make sure none of the bad magic remained. She closed her eyes and reached out.

Only when the building felt clean again, did she dare open her eyes.

Tate was reading some handwritten notes on a desk in the corner.

"Does it say who stole the mushrooms, or why?" Arwen asked. Unless the thief turned up and had a penchant for monologuing, she feared she might never know.

"It says here the spores are some sort of fertility booster. In the initial test cases, people who couldn't conceive and struggled even with IVF were conceiving naturally after a single, tiny dose. When both partners took it, there were multiple births, every time. It looks like the drug is made from the spores from the mushrooms in the dell. But the ones grown here had no effect. The last notes here get more and more frantic. It's all neat and detailed until these last few pages, where they've written soil, water, bacteria, inoculant, all in big capitals with even bigger question marks. They didn't know what made the dell special, so they took everything."

Arwen glanced at the notebook. The final page had only one word:

WHY?????

It must have been the magic from the fae ring that did it, and now the ring was destroyed...so was the magic, and their miracle drug. Served them right for killing their golden goose. Mushroom. Whatever.

Arwen blinked. She recognised that handwriting.

"I know who our thief is. And where they live. We won't find them here," she said. "Let's go back to the car."

Outside, the sky was crisp and clear. There'd be ice on the ground come morning, if it wasn't frozen already. Only the stars above stood witness as a black Mercedes drove into the car park and stopped in front of the entrance.

"You. I thought that heart looked too healthy. It didn't look damaged at all. Not like your father's. I didn't even need to poison him. I just replaced his heart medication with some small, blue pills, and they did the job for me. You, on the other hand, are an absolute cockroach. Any normal girl lost in the woods on a Scottish winter's night would have lay down and died, even without your father's medication in your system. But your luck has run out now. This is my company, not yours. I've worked too hard to see it given to some girl who got cut out of the right cunt. You'll die just like your mother did." Ravenna got out of the car, raised her hand, and sliced it open with a knife

Blood magic. Ravenna was a witch, and whatever spell she was casting must be a nasty one, to need to so much blood.

But Arwen wasn't powerless any more. She summoned the oceans of energy within her from the water purification, and added it to the fading magic she'd cleansed from the mushrooms in the basement.

She looked Ravenna in the eye. "Now we see your true form." And she unleashed it all.

Ravenna crumpled, her knife clinking to the pavement. No, her clothes crumpled, because she'd shrunk into something so small, it was lost in her clothes, as they puddled on top of her shoes.

Arwen half expected a cockroach to emerge, but instead, a whiskered nose sniffed the air, followed by the rest of a small, white rat.

A rat that turned and ran for its life.

But not fast enough. Another white streak came from nowhere, silent wings unheard over the scrabble of tiny, panicked claws. One frantic squeak as talons wrapped around it, and the owl soared up, up, into the sky.

"Well, what do we do now?" Tate asked.

The owl swooped down onto a light post, the rat drooping from one claw. Then it opened its beak and swallowed Ravenna whole.

"I think we assume fate has a sense of humour, and a strong sense of justice. I might just cast a blessing on the owl, and leave it at that," Arwen said. "Vale, Ravenna. Good riddance."

"And go to the fae realm now?" Tate asked hopefully.

Arwen shook her head. "The gate's broken, and I don't know when it will grow back. Maybe in the spring. Maybe never. I guess now we go home, wherever that is." But her heart knew. Arwen only had to follow it. She closed her eyes, and turned slowly on the spot. Power sloshed within her. Power to kill, to heal, to transform, to grow. And to love. She opened her eyes, and she met Tate's darkened gaze. Perhaps she'd been wrong about her Da's final words. Instead of claiming her fae heritage, she'd claimed her fated mate. Perhaps that's what he'd meant all along. "Wherever you are. That's home for me."

Tate grinned. "Then I want to take you to the pack house, at least for tonight, and get your heart checked over by the pack shaman."

TWENTY-SIX