“Hello, Delilah,” Aric said when the first woman reached us.

The woman nodded briefly before using her glove-clad hands to remove her helmet. She ran her fingers through her short white curls with her smile firmly in place. “Sorry we missed all the action, Aric,” she said in a thick Southern accent. “But we were already down at the ten-mile mark when we heard your call.” Her light blue eyes danced from one shape-shifter to the other. “Damn. Hadn’t met up with a shifter since ’86. Would’ve loved a little payback. Almost lost three of my girls to one, don’t you know?”

Aric nodded. “I remember Dad telling me about that fight.” He laughed. “He said no one could curse like that Delilah Swan.”

She grinned at the compliment. “And no one still can, y’all.”

I didn’t know Delilah, but I liked her right away. She smiled widely as she held out her hand. “You must be Aric’s mate, Celia. So, you’re the tiny little thing telling all the bad guys what fer.”

I adjusted the blanket around me again before extending my hand. Although most present remained naked, they were weres and had spent most of their lives au naturel. I was only comfortable being bare-skinned around Aric. I shook her hand, slightly embarrassed. “Nice to meet you, Delilah.”

“Celia’s also my fiancée.” His smile widened as he stroked my back. “She just agreed to marry me.”

Delilah’s gaze swept over the devastation. “After all this? Hell, darlin’, it must be love.” She waved to the other witch who had followed her. “Betty Sue, come here, sweet thang.” The tall African American woman glanced up in the middle of drawing a ring of salt around the shifters. She passed her container to a were and joined us. “This here’s probably the best tracking witch any coven’s ever seen. Tell the young’uns what you did.”

Betty Sue grinned. “The eagle shifter passed over us while we were on our way,” she said. “I hit him with a tracking spell. I’ll be able to trace him within a two-thousand-mile radius. But more important, I’ll be able to warn you any time he reenters the state.”

Hearing I would at least have advanced warning felt like music to my ears. My shoulders slumped with relief. While I didn’t trust most of the broom humpers, some weren’t so bad after all.

“Thank you, Betty Sue,” I said.

“And I thank you on behalf of the Pack,” Aric said.

Which was wolf for “I owe you.”

“Consider it a wedding gift,” Betty Sue said with a laugh.

Delilah pointed a finger at Aric. “And while you’re at it, tell that diva, Genevieve, that if another shifter wanders back here, he’s ours. We’re no spring chickens, but we still have a fight left in our peckers.”

Aric chuckled. “I’ll be sure to tell her just that.”

Betty Sue finished circling the shifters’ corpses with salt. The rest of the coven joined them now that their camouflaging spell was in full swing. They nodded to the weres, then formed a ring around the shifters and joined hands.

Tahoe’s magic stirred as they called it forth. They chanted something I couldn’t quite make out, but each word pricked at my skin with its strength. My sisters and I had been wary of witches since our smackdown with them when we first moved to the area, but it wasn’t their presence that bothered me then.

Shape-shifters carried the power of hell within them. While they were technically dead, I could still sense their evil surrounding us. “Don’t worry,” Aric murmured in my ear. “The purity of Tahoe’s magic will cleanse whatever remains in the air after the coven purges the ground.”

My eyes widened. “No one purged the ground after we killed the other shifter. Were we supposed to do that?” I was picturing the last nutcase shape-shifter I killed rising from the ground. It wasn’t the prettiest of images.

“It’s not necessary to us, but it is to the witches. Nature’s sacred to them, and because of the lake’s power, anything directly around it is considered hallowed ground. Their strong beliefs won’t permit them to simply walk away.” He rubbed at his sternum again. It was the second time I noticed him do that.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Why?”

“You keep rubbing your chest.”

Aric stared down at his hand as if noticing it for the first time before letting it fall. “It’s fine. Just sore from the fight.”

As an Alpha and pureblood Leader, Aric couldn’t show weakness. I shut my mouth, realizing I shouldn’t have announced his vulnerability, especially in the presence of those outside our trusted circle.

Delilah pointed to the bodies. “Hey, Aric. What do you want us to do with them, set ’em on fire? Datonna’s got some good flame.”

A witch in pink spandex wiggled her flaming fingers at us to prove her point. Aric glanced at me. “Can you bury them? Shape-shifter burning carries a wretched stink. Even with Tahoe’s power, it may take some time for it to leave the air.”

“Ah. Sure.”

He cocked his head. “You don’t have to, sweetness.”

He’d sensed my hesitation, but he clearly didn’t understand the reason for it. I didn’t want to admit how I hated touching them, especially since it seemed like such a wimpy thing to say. “No. I’ll do it.”

The coven watched me as I marched forward to shift the remains of the bodies deep into the sand. I jerked my hand back when I buried the female first. Though she was dead, I could sense her evil. Filthy. That was the best way I could describe her. And that filth seemed to try to dig its way into my skin and infect me with its poison.

Aric wrapped his arm around my shoulders as I stared at my fingertips. “What is it?”

I shook out my hand, well aware that everyone had stopped speaking and was watching me closely. “Is it—” I took a breath. “Is it possible for a shifter to contaminate you with its power?”

The members of the coven exchanged glances, but it was Betty Sue who spoke. “No. It shouldn’t be. Shifters hoard their power; it makes them stronger. And nothing can pass on power once it’s dead, child.”

I so needed to hear that just then. “Good to know. Thank you, Betty Sue.” I shook out my hand again and reached for the shifter Tura who had attacked us as the tiger, expecting to feel that horrible sensation again. I frowned when I touched him. I felt…nothing. Not one damn trickle of power.