Well?” I asked once we were out of earshot.

Alan frowned. “Do you even have to ask?”

My stomach dropped. The dragon roared loud enough that I could hardly hear anything around me. Even the ever-present buzzing of the generator and the lights faded into nothingness when compared to the strength of his rage.

“You don’t mean what I think you mean.”

Alan’s jaw was clenched tight. “What other choice do I have? She has to die.”

“You can’t do that.”

His eyes narrowed. “What gives you the idea that you can tell me what it is and isn’t in my power to do? Have you forgotten who was unanimously accepted as the leader of the clan in Gavin’s place?”

“Gavin wouldn’t have killed her.”

Owen sighed. “What do you think he would’ve done, Tamhas? She’s a Blood Moon Priestess. She bears the mark.”

My thoughts raced as I scrambled for a way to defend her. There had to be something I could say that would get through to them. “Tell me: didn’t the coven go extinct once the rift occurred? That was what we always believed. Is it not?”

“Aye,” Alan acknowledged with a slight nod. “And now, it’s clear that we were wrong.”

“What if we weren’t wrong?”

“Oh, come now.” He looked at Owen and Dallas, who both snickered.

“I mean it,” I pressed. “What if they went extinct? Simply stopped practicing their magic?”

“What difference does it make?” Dallas challenged. “She’s still a witch.”

“Aye, what if she doesn’t know she is one.” I believed this to be true.

“Would you please stop making up excuses for her when you know not whether they are the truth?” Alan sounded defeated, exhausted. “If you hadn’t been foolish enough to bring her into your life, we wouldn’t be having this argument. Somewhere along the line, you forgot how dangerous the outside world can be. I suppose we all did. I can’t blame you for things which occurred prior to the kidnapping.”

“What?” Dallas spat, glaring at Alan in disbelief.

“I said what I said,” he maintained, returning Dallas’s stare with quiet confidence.

Dallas backed down, but looked resentful when he did.

Alan continued, “We were all lax in our way. Perhaps we were foolhardy, believing that so many centuries passing without incident meant we were untouchable. I know I was guilty of this. Gavin was, as well. He didn’t find it necessary to lock our security down as tightly as it could’ve been.”

“Yes, and look what happened as a result,” Owen muttered. “No one should’ve been able to find us. No one. Even if Tamhas had carried on an email correspondence with the lass, she shouldn’t have been able to trace us as she did.”

“She didn’t trace us,” I reminded him. “Her friend did.”

“A friend who might very well be a Blood Moon Priestess, as she is,” Alan murmured half to himself, as though he were just coming up with this on his own.

“You don’t know that,” I argued.

“No. I don’t.” His stare was cold. “And neither do you.”

“You’re really planning on going through with this?” I asked, dreading the answer. Knowing the answer. I didn’t want to hear it, but I had to. I needed to know for certain what he was going to do.

“Aye,” he nodded. “We have to put her to death.”

“Over my dead body, you will.”

“Don’t do this,” Owen warned in a quiet voice.

I ignored him.

Alan’s gaze was sharp as he took me in. “You would turn your back on your clan in order to protect an enemy?”

“For the love of all that’s holy, Alan, you don’t know that she’s an enemy. You know nothing about her. Even if she is who you say she is, it doesn’t mean she came here with any ill intentions!”

“No, but that would mean she was lying, wouldn’t it? Because she swears she’s never heard of her kin. How could she not know she’s a witch? How would it even be possible? Can you imagine not knowing you were a dragon? Because the two situations aren’t that dissimilar.”

“I’d think I would know I was a dragon the first time I shifted,” I said. “Your analogy falls flat.”

“You know as well as I do that a witch isn’t like humans. They have has special gifts.”

“And whatever she sets her mind to, she excels at far beyond the performance of a mere human,” Dallas reminded me. “I can attest to that, trust me. So, can Ainsley and Isla.”

“Another reason to believe she’s a witch,” Alan added with a smug expression.

“If no one ever told her of her powers, she might simply believe herself to be special—but not a witch. Humans don’t jump to such conclusions, because they don’t believe in the presence of anything bigger or more powerful than themselves. It’s a great weakness of theirs.”

The three of them nodded—they didn’t want to agree, but there was no other choice. We all knew of the foibles of humans. We’d been watching them long enough, after all, traveling into the village which over time became a town, then a city, in order to purchase supplies.

And as time had passed and the old ways had faded into nothing more than memories, they’d forgotten the tales of magic and turned to mysticism. They’d rather worship an unseen deity in a church and pin their superstitions to it, than to believe what their ancestors had witnessed with their own eyes.

The dawn of technology hadn’t made things better in that respect. They worshipped their devices—phones, computers and the like. They believed what they could hold in their hands. I understood this to a degree.

Something passed over Alan’s face. Perhaps his dragon reminded him of the task at hand, how he could not afford to weaken in his resolve.

“Nonetheless,” he insisted, “she’s seen us. She knows who we are, where we are. What if she were to reach out to this friend of hers and call in assistance? What if she were to run off and tell the authorities about us? We cannot allow for such a breach. You know this is true as well as I do, Tamhas.”

I opened my mouth to argue—the dragon egged me on, pushed me forward, thrashed and threatened—but there was nothing to say. I came up empty. Alan was right, at least from his perspective and from the perspective of the clan. She was a threat as long as she breathed. We couldn’t allow her to bring the outside world into our world.

Even so, there was no way I could let her die. Not when she was mine to protect.

Instead of informing my clan of this, I said, “I’m very tired. I believe we all are. Let’s at least give it the night, think it through. The last thing we want at this time is to behave rashly.”

“It won’t change anything,” Dallas growled.

“No, but we’ll at least rest easy in the knowledge that we didn’t end a woman’s life without a second thought,” I fired back. My patience was thinner than it had ever been, and he insisted on stretching it even thinner. The dragon could only abide by so much of that.

“Tamhas is right,” Alan decided to my great surprise. “We ought to take a step away, get a little sleep, decide how best to go through with this. If she is a witch, it won’t be as simple to kill her as it would if she were an ordinary human.”

“Aye, and her death might set off the awareness of the rest of the coven,” I suggested.

Was it so? I had no idea. But just the suggestion was enough to plant the seed of doubt in Alan’s mind. I could see it in his eyes that I’d accomplished this. He’d question himself from this point on.

Good.

I needed every ounce of help I could get.