Read Online The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) by Jennifer Blackstream - Free Book Online Page B

The person he’s bringing now is human, so your fellow wolf will herd them here instead of escorting them, and a man running in panic from a wolf doesn’t need to find another one waiting in the sheriff’s cottage.” Mac fumbled with the contraption on his hand, unfastening the buckles in a hurry.
    A low growl outside the doorway was followed with the sharp snap of jaws and a muffled grunt. Mac frowned, lifting his attention from the “glove” as a tall figure appeared in the doorway. It was a man with a flowing grey beard and skin as pinched as a walnut shell. The long, rune-carved staff he held in one hand marked him as a wizard, but Mac would have known him even without it. Stormy grey eyes shone with anger as he grunted at something behind him and half-fell into the room.
    The wolf behind his new guest was as large as the silver one, but its fur was dark brown melding with pale amber. White fur coated its snout but for a brown stripe from its black nose to its forehead, and around its eyes was an even paler brown mask. Like the silver wolf, its fur was long and covered a body that was muscled, but obviously well fed. It bared its teeth at the old man, not so subtly herding him into the room.
    Damn your eyes, a wizard is other, not human! The signal should have been a bark followed by a howl, it is not difficult .
    “Casan, so kind of you to join me.” Burying his irritation with the wolf, Mac gestured to the chair beside the fireplace so recently vacated by the far darrig . “Please, won’t you sit down?”
    “I will not.” The old wizard curled his lip at the plain wooden chair, his gaze lingering only a moment before sharing its disdain with the rest of the room. His nose wrinkled at the plain limestone walls, studying the stretch of rock between the unadorned trim and the leak-proof but weathered thrush roof. “Animal,” he muttered under his breath.
    “Excuse me?” Mac held his fingers over the claw contraption, reconsidering his decision to put it away. “Did you say something? A comment on my humble abode perhaps?”
    “I say animal and you think that I speak of your hovel?” The wizard flung out his arms and made a great show of straightening his thick velvet green robe with its golden trim and delicate embroidery. The gold caught the firelight, making it appear that flames had been woven into the rich fabric. “A wiser man might have assumed I was speaking of his habit of keeping the company of wolves. Or being a wolf, as might be your case.”
    Every muscle in Mac’s body grew taut, pulling his face so tight it could hold no expression. “What did you say?”
    The wizard waved a hand in the air, somehow managing to take in both Mac and the wolf hovering like a specter of death behind him. “I am a wizard, my dear boy. I know a curse when I feel one, and your little lupine companion here is most certainly cursed. I can only assume that your ease with the beast indicates familiarity with said curse, which would seem strange if you did not share it in some way. And then there’s the little toy in your hand. Missing your time under the pelt, are you?”
    Mac’s lip rose, baring teeth too blunt to do him any real good. The room blurred as he dove forward, outstretched fingers reaching for the old fool’s throat, already feeling that withered skin against his palm.
    Casan hunched over, eyes shining like a fox’s gaze caught in a lantern’s beam. He waved his staff and screamed “ Athraithe !”
    Energy rippled over him and smooth brown fur erupted from his skin, flowing down his face and hands, his arms thinning under his billowy cloak. Horns rose from his skull, the beginnings of the rack of a great stag, Casan’s favorite form. His face bulged out, molding itself into a cervine snout.
    Pale wolf jaws closed around his arm, already the slim leg of a deer. A scream flew from the wizard’s throat, garbled by the change wrenching his body into a new shape. He jerked at his arm, his body