The Healing Souls

Warlock

(Wednesday)

[Mike Rosen]

My sister refused to tell me who the wolf that rejected her was. She gave enough information that I knew, though. He was a warrior who fought with us in the hunter battle back in May. His mate had a couple of pups.

Carmen didn’t want her to be shunned. She had a good heart. My sister was always thinking of how other people would feel. It was probably part of being blind.

It still pissed me off that he rejected her and that she never said anything when it happened. Carmen was sweet and gentle. She wanted to be useful and loved.

Though I didn’t agree with my parents’ decision, I understood why they were looking for a new mate for her. With luck, the Beta they invited to the pack would be the second chance Carmen was so sure she had.

I wanted my sister to be happy. I wanted her to be taken care of… but I didn’t want her in Alaska. Part of me was hoping he wasn’t her mate. Carmen would stay near me. I’d trade places with Ben and take the wolves who were going to the national conference. I wanted to be there when my sister found her mate.

“Earth to Mike,” Trent said, waving a hand in my face.

“Sorry, just thinking about Carmen and this guy my parents invited. Beta Roald. I don’t know much about him. The Alaska packs don’t really come down here except for the mate conferences,” I replied.

“He’s a good Beta and it’s a decent pack for being so secluded. They mostly deal with the other Alaskan packs. I talked with their neighbors. If your parents are right, then Carmen will be in good hands.”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t think they are and I don’t think they’re just making a guess and hoping he’s her mate. Some of the things the Gamma of his pack asked made me think it’s basically sealed for them that Beta Roald will come and retrieve Carmen.”

That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t letting her leave this pack with anyone but her fated mate. If she didn’t have one, we’d deal with it, but I wasn’t going to let some stranger take my baby sister away if he wasn’t her mate.

“We’ll deal with it when it happens, guys. We need to make a decision about something that came to light recently.” Trent sighed and flipped through a folder.

He turned it and set it down on his desk. We were looking at a picture of a man who was dressed like a pirate. I raised my eyebrows at my friend.

“This is a man called Rhett, no last name. The coven leader told me he’s a warlock and we might want to decide how we were going to deal with him in the territory.”

“What’s the difference between a warlock and a witch? I thought it was just another name male witches used,” Ben asked.

“That’s wizards,” I corrected. “Humans thought wizards were not in league with the devil. They were just male witches protecting their communities. If anyone thought something strange was going on, a male witch would ally himself with the lord of the region and let him know that the women in his coven were all helper wives of other wizards and had no magic.”

“Warlocks started their lives as humans. The books say that warlocks make deals with spirits in exchange for magic. Mrs. Layton, the coven leader, says that her grandfather noted when Rhett got romantically involved with Lila, the dark witch. He’s lived a very long time and was never affected by the curse. He stayed because the darkness in him liked it here,” Trent told us.

“Oh yes, he quite likes it here. Even now that the curse is done,” a man said from behind us.

We sprang to our feet, turning to the man who hadn’t been there previously. He was dressed similarly to how he was dressed in the photos. Rhett was about six feet tall with a lithe build, though broader shoulders. His hair was tied back with a leather cord; his clothing was mostly leather, the pants, the boots, and the long coat. He wore a button-down shirt that was open to halfway down his chest and he wore several intricate necklaces.

He pushed his small glasses up his nose and smirked. “Gentlemen, there’s no reason to be so jumpy. You were talking about what you wanted to do with me in this territory and I wanted to ensure you understood…” his smirk fell into a serious line. “I will not be removed from any place I choose to be.”

“We hadn’t had a chance to discuss you. Would you be interested in an alliance? Your safety for ours,” Trent offered.

Rhett laughed. “That would piss off Layton. She hates me and wants me out of the area. In fact, I heard your conversation with her. She didn’t seem to be too pleased with me staying and wanted you to use your pack to force me out.”

“You are obviously more powerful than she realizes. You will also remember that I told her I would do what was best for my pack first. This makes you a bigger threat than what she told me.”

“Witches do tend to underestimate the power and true threat of a warlock. They’re so obsessed with not going dark and staying away from darkness that they never think about how the dark can help and how there can be no light without darkness.”

“That’s true,” I said. “A weakness on the part of many witches is not seeing how light and dark can help each other. Werewolves are not prone to that weakness. We’ll do whatever we can to protect our people.”

He nodded. “Practical. I like that. You are not the only ones who decide who can remain in the territory, though. You aren’t even the only wolves to decide that.”

The man was referring to the Eaten Heart Collective. The fae and the vampires should have already dealt with him, or would once the witches tried them. If we didn’t know about him, he must not have ever done anything against the pack. Our fathers would have made sure we were aware of him.

“Look, I’m a simple man with simple desires. I’m not ambitious like a dark witch. All I want is to live and enjoy life. My dark spirit wants the same. We’re completely happy with our life and how it worked out here. The alliance I can offer is you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. None of you are any match for me.” Rhett smiled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ben asked.

“Simply, I wasn’t just any human when I made the deal with my dark spirit. I know more about supernaturals than any other warlock about your lives, fighting skills, and how you die.”

“You were a hunter,” Trent whispered.

Rhett’s smile broadened. “See, werewolves are a lot smarter than we were taught. Don’t worry, though. I have no interest in my family’s profession. They’re not part of who I am anymore.”

A hunter with the magic of a dark spirit. Goddess only knew what he could actually do. Dark spirits were what powered vampires. What kind of magic did this thing give him? Obviously, he had a long life. How hard would he be to kill?

“What do you want? How do we keep our pack from getting on your bad side?” Trent asked.

“Leave me alone. Don’t try to kill me. Don’t try to fight me. Don’t try to stop me. I don’t care if you exist and I never have. If Saleh Layton wants to get rid of me, let her do it herself. It’s no business of yours.

“If you can agree to that, I will agree to do the same. I will leave you alone, alive, and unharmed. I didn’t stop when you fought those hunters earlier this year. You didn’t even know I existed until she brought it up. Same with the other people here.”

“That’s really all you want?” I asked.

“I could ask for the woman you are worrying about. If you want me to be truly nefarious, I could ask you to send me one woman per year to serve me in any way I please. This woman….” He put his hand to his head, and then pulled a paper from the air and read it. “Mm. Carmen. That’s a lovely name. Shall I be the kind of evil Saleh believes I am? She’s just bitter because I turned down her advances when she was young and dated her sister instead.”

“You leave my sister alone,” I growled.

“Don’t worry. I was trying to reassure you… and warn you. I can find your family and I will. If you follow the agreement, I will as well. I don’t need anything but your true and honest word. You leave me alone, I will leave you alone. That is all.”

“Can we have time to discuss it?” Trent asked.

“Would you like me to pretend to go away and hear nothing or may I browse your office while I listen? Either way, I’ll know.” Rhett shrugged.

“Let us pretend you have no idea. We would prefer true privacy, but this will have to do.”

“Certainly.”

Rhett disappeared instantly. It was almost like Echo’s ability to appear and disappear in places, but it was as if shadows swallowed him, where Echo just fazed out of existence in one place and into another. I shivered.

“Well, we don’t seem to have many choices here. We leave him alone, or he doesn’t leave us alone.”

There had to be another option, but I couldn’t think of it. He would be powerful as an ally and as an enemy. We needed to ensure he never sided against us.

“Is there something in between an alliance and this agreement?” I asked. “We might find we need him at some point. I don’t know what we could offer him to make him agree, though.”

“Other than your sister,” Ben joked.

I growled at him. “Maybe he’d like yours instead.”

“You try to give him my sister and I’ll kick your ass.”

“NO ONE is giving him their sisters. Stop this. You’re grown men. Quit acting like children!” Trent shouted.

We sat in our chairs, fully reprimanded. I didn’t like that the warlock honed in on my little sister. Carmen needed to be protected. She wasn’t able to protect herself. She couldn’t see anything.

“Sorry, Alpha,” we said.

Trent sat heavily and rubbed his eyes. “Goddess, what am I going to do? You have a point, Mike. We could just ask him if we could call on him if we need to. I don’t think warlocks have a formal sort of thing. They seem to be loners, from what I’ve read.”

I could understand Trent’s frustration. Until the coven leader pointed out the warlock, we never even knew he was here. We could have gone our entire lives without knowing he existed.

This whole year had been a lot of hard and heavy work for Trent. He went from being on the verge of banning people from leaving the pack lands at night, because of the vampire threat, to allying with them, his brother practically being mated to one, and a battle with hunters.

All of that piled on even more work for us as we rushed to secure alliances while everything was still friendly between all of the supernatural factions. Trent was doing all of this while also keeping up his duties as Alpha. We took as much off his plate as we could.

“I think I have it figured out. How do we call him back? We talked about him earlier and he just appeared,” Trent said.

“Is it like Beetlejuice, where we say Rhett three times?” Ben joked.

“That is amusing.” Rhett laughed.

We turned to see him sitting on the couch casually with one leg resting on the other. He smiled and waved. I really didn’t like it and my wolf liked it even less.

“You know, I was just joking when I talked about this 'Carmen' woman, but she is intriguing. I decided to leave you to your discussion and find out more about her. As soon as I pulled her name from the air, I started hearing it everywhere. Your sister is quite famous, wolf.”

“My name is Mike. What do you mean about my sister being famous?”

“The whole pack is talking about her in hushed whispers.”

I knew that. Carmen’s rejection had made it out to the pack and all of them were talking about it. I knew she wasn’t oblivious to it, though.

“The trolls in the fae lands are talking about her. The wife of the master vampire is talking to her wolf mate about her. And she’s chatting with her friends. Interesting things…. I swear… I was wasting so much time listening to the lives of witches and humans. I had no idea such drama was here among the werewolves.” He laughed again.

“We would like to talk to you about an arrangement. Would you be open to a soft alliance with us? If we need something from you or you need something from us, we can talk about it and help each other. Otherwise, we don’t need to bother each other. You live your life and we live ours,” Trent offered.

Rhett looked thoughtful. He leaned his head from side to side as if he was weighing his options. With a slight frown, he shook his head.

“That won’t work. My dark spirit and I are now intrigued by Carmen and the other wolves. Give me the freedom to come and go in the pack lands and I’ll agree. We will not harm any werewolf who isn’t trying to harm us. We will defend ourselves if need be, otherwise, I see no reason why this shouldn’t work out,” Rhett countered.

“Why are you so interested in us now? Just because of Carmen?” I asked.

“Yes. A blind werewolf is rare. People in the pack lands speak of her as if she were a child. The trolls speak of her as if she is a toy. Her friends and the little half-vampire are the only ones who are speaking of her as if she has her own, fully-functioning mind. From what I’ve heard from her, she doesn’t seem mentally impaired. I begin to wonder what other species are hiding from the world.”

“My sister isn’t some oddity for you to get amusement from! Leave her alone. Isn’t her life already hard enough?”

“Is it? It seems like the most difficult things in her life are yet to come. All she’s suffered from people here is a complete misunderstanding of her condition and abilities.” He shrugged. “I guess you wouldn’t realize that since you are one of the people coddling her. None of you even thought of asking her if she needs help, you just assume she does. Like this man her parents are bringing to be her mate.”

“If Carmen needs help, she’ll ask,” I told him.

Rhett clicked his tongue disapprovingly and shook his head. “Not if she has been taught that asking for help will result in someone taking over and not letting her make decisions for herself. This is all beside the point. Do you accept my terms, Alpha?”

Trent looked from Rhett to me. I knew he would always do what was best for the pack. It wasn’t like him to worry about individuals when it came to the well-being of the whole.

“I agree. Please don’t interfere in Carmen’s life, though. She has enough people interfering in it.”

“That is for sure. So many people think they know what’s best for her. None of them even think to ask her what she wants.” There was a haunted look in his eye. “I understand completely what she feels. If she asks for my help, I will help her above helping your pack. My alliance with you is only for her sake.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“The pack is entertaining, but I will do everything in my power to ensure that Carmen has the life she wants. She isn’t entertainment to me. Don’t tell her about this agreement, though. She’ll never trust you, or me, if she finds out.”

I didn’t like that. Glancing over at Trent, he raised his eyebrows at me. He wanted me to accept this. I didn’t like this man. I didn’t like his interest in my sister and I didn’t like his offer.

“Fine, but if you hurt my sister, I’ll find out how to hurt you back,” I warned.

“I’m more afraid of her mate than of you.” Rhett laughed. “It is sealed. I will assist when you need me and may visit whenever I like. Thank you, gentlemen.”

With that, he disappeared again. What did he mean he was more afraid of Carmen’s mate than me? Did he know who her second chance was? What could make a warlock afraid?