The Witchling Seer
Book Three
The Skinwalkers’ Witchling Trilogy
By
B. Kristin McMichael
The Witchling Seer
Book Three of The Skinwalkers’ Witchling Trilogy
Copyright © 2016 by B. Kristin McMichael
All rights reserved.
August 30, 2016 Edition
Lexia Press, LLC
P.O. Box 982
Worthington, OH 43085
ISBN-10: 1-941745-80-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-941745-80-9
Cover design: Jessica Allain
Editor: Kathie Middlemiss of Kat’s Eye Editing, Melissa of There for You Editing
Proofing: Ashton M. Brammer
This book is licensed for your personal use only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means without written permission of the author. All names, characters, and places are fiction and any resemblance to real, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Summary: Cassie’s life is anything but boring, no matter what she tries. Maybe once the dust settles she can have a normal life, if she figures out who she truly is in time to survive the coming battles.
Table Of Contents
Other Books By this Author
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
Carnelian: Chapter One
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Books By this Author
The Night Human World
The Blue Eyes Trilogy (Series One)
o The Legend of the Blue Eyes
o Becoming a Legend
o Winning the Legend
The Day Human Trilogy (Series Two)
o The Day Human Prince
o The Day Human King
o The Day Human Way
The Skinwalkers Witchling Trilogy (Series Three)
o The Witchling Apprentice
o The Wendigo Witchling
o The Witchling Seer
The Chalcedony Chronicles
o Carnelian
o Chrysoprase
o Aventurine
o Chrysocolla
Standalone Books
o To Stand Beside Her
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CHAPTER 1
Cassandra Booth snuggled deep into her covers. It had been days … nope, weeks since she had slept so well. Basically, she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since she took her witchling exam and was finally brought into the real world in her small town, which included people who turned into monsters at nighttime and liked to drink blood—especially witch blood. Now that she was one of the witches, or would be soon, that didn’t exactly bode too well for her. She had brokered, or rather forced an unstable peace on the two rival clans, but she wasn’t about to worry about that. She was looking forward to things moving back closer to normal. Tomorrow was Monday, which meant she had school to go to, and Cassie actually was looking forward to something as incredibly boring and normal as class.
The smell of breakfast wafted upstairs. Yes, Cassie was thrilled to be home. Uncle John, while extremely moody, was an excellent cook, and she could smell bacon. Sighing, she snuggled a bit deeper in her blankets, happy to be home.
Pots clanked down in the kitchen, and Cassie heard voices, including a familiar female one. Aunt Maria was back. It was almost like old times. Well, like old times if you forgot to mention the whole ‘coven tried to strip your powers, alpha tried to force you to mate to his son, and please come rescue us’ activity of the past week.
The smell of pancakes and breakfast overwhelmed Cassie. She needed to get up and get some of that good food, but she had to take a shower first. Cassie couldn’t even remember the last time she had washed herself.
Hurrying over to her small bathroom, she quickly turned on the hot water, peeled off her pajamas, and hopped under the warm stream pouring out of the showerhead. It felt great to wash all the dirt and grime off. There were a few stray leaves and branches in her hair. The water washing off her was murky and kind of looked red in color. She was pretty certain she had bloodstains on her feet from the night before.
Cassie let the hot water warm and massage her as she thought. It had been quite the whirlwind week for Cassie. She had started the week by running away and trying to get rid of her mate. She hated that term at first, but it was growing on her. Well, it had to grow on her, because it turned out that you couldn’t break a mate bond after all. After running away, getting caught, and now remembering that her past had been altered, she ended the weekend with two mates. She considered skipping breakfast and climbing back in bed. Maybe if she hid under the covers, she could make time stand still. She didn’t need more mates. Two were two more than she wanted.
To top it off, Nate and Jared were too different. She could now remember their shared childhood, but that didn’t make anything clearer. Nate and Jared had always been different, even as kids. It was nice to see that although they had spent the last eight years apart, at least some things were still the same. But it would have been nicer if she wasn’t bonded to them. They had stayed out of her head overnight and the long morning while she slept, but she could feel them both waiting. Her least favorite part of the bond was the constant access they had to her thoughts.
Cassie turned off the water as her stomach grumbled. Food would help her figure it all out, and maybe Aunt Maria would have a solution. She’d always been able to fix things for Cassie in the past.
Her bedroom was warmed from the steam in the shower, but she still hurried back into a clean pair of pajamas before she got cold. It was totally a pajama day. She had absolutely no ambition to do anything for the rest of the weekend.
Cassie tossed her dirty clothes in the clothing chute next to her bedroom door before making her way downstairs. People were talking, but the voices grew quieter as she began her descent. That was normally the indication of company and Cassie’s cue to turn around and run, but then again the bacon smelled too good to pass up. Cassie paused before turning the corner into the kitchen. She had on her old snuggly penguin sweatshirt and her favorite, very worn pair of pink sweats. Pancakes and bacon, Uncle John was going all out. She would have normally cared how she looked, especially with company, but right now she didn’t. She was too hungry to care, and her stomach growled louder as she contemplated going back up to change. She heard a few chuckles from the kitchen as she decided to go in anyway, and regretted it immediately. She recognized the laughter, but turned the corner too late to run away without being seen.
Aunt Maria was sitting at the table while John was at the stove cooking. Seated on either side of Maria were Cassie’s new mates—blue-eyed, popular Nate and her best childhood friend Jared.
Cassie groaned and tried to backtrack back upstairs. Bacon or not, she didn’t want to deal with the two of them after her first good night’s sleep in forever.
Maria sprouted a grin, hopped up from the table, and ran over to grab Cassie’s hand. She pulled her to the table, forcing her to sit between the two guys.
“Your friends here were just telling me ab
out last night,” Maria explained.
Cassie grumbled more. Maria hadn’t been there, but Cassie was pretty sure John gave her the details. Maria didn’t need to be sitting there chit chatting with Nate and Jared for details.
“I’m going back to bed. Save me some of that for later,” Cassie said to John as she tried to stand. Jared’s hand reached out and grabbed her left one while Nate grabbed her right. Cassie sighed inwardly to herself.
‘We need to talk,’ Nate said at the same time as Jared.
‘Can I get a moment alone with you?’
Maria smiled at Cassie from across the table. John came closer with a plate of food for Cassie, the spatula still in his hand. Both boys immediately dropped their hold on her with the glare John was giving them. Cassie smiled back over her shoulder at her uncle. He had once told her she wasn’t allowed to date until she was thirty-two. She now completely agreed with him and was grateful for his protective nature. He nodded to her.
“I believe my niece needs to eat something. She’s had a few trying days,” John told the guys.
Understatement of the week, but effective. Both pulled out of her head as they got the hint that John was basically instructing them to leave Cassie alone. Again, she was going to have to thank him.
“Try weeks,” Cassie replied, grabbing for the syrup. Once her pancakes were covered, she reached for her milk first.
“Jared was just telling me that he and some of his friends decided they want to enroll in school in town,” Maria said, starting the conversation up again.
Cassie almost spit out the milk she was drinking. That wasn't a good plan for anyone. The wendigo and the skinwalkers didn’t get along for even a moment. Jared and Nate only tolerated each other because they had to. They were linked together through Cassie. If that wasn’t there, she was pretty sure they wouldn’t be sitting together at the same table.
Jared shrugged. “I was pulled from school eight years ago and want to give it another try. I think my grade level matches up with you. Maybe we’ll be in the same classes.”
Nate’s level of annoyance with Jared was slowly rising.
“Aren’t you a senior like me?” Nate asked.
Jared shrugged again. “I’ve missed a bit of schooling over the past few years. I figure it would be best to go back a grade and make sure I didn’t skip over anything important.”
That wasn’t the answer Nate was looking for. His eyes flashed the sparkly blue of his tiger animal form.
Glancing across the table at Maria, she mouthed the words ‘help me’ to her aunt. There was way too much testosterone in the room for Cassie to deal with. She planned to finish her food and march straight back to bed. She would stay there until the guys went away. It was her day off, and Cassie wanted peace and quiet.
The back door flung open, and Cassie was relieved to see Whitney standing there. Rising, Cassie ran over to hug her friend, but stopped in her tracks when she took a good look at Whitney. Her friend’s tear-streaked face was distraught.
“What’s wrong?” Cassie asked.
Whitney started to cry. Maria jumped up and helped Cassie usher Whitney to the chair she had just been sitting in. Cassie stood by her friend, worried. Something had to be majorly wrong. Whitney barely ever cried. Unless it had something to do with Sam, her little brother.
“What happened to Sam?” Cassie asked.
She hadn’t thought they would allow someone that young to fight the night before, but she didn’t know how the clan worked. Whitney had explained that Sam had already changed twice into his totem. If you were old enough to marry at sixteen, maybe you were old enough to fight at twelve.
“They’re still missing,” Whitney sobbed.
“Who’s still missing?” Cassie asked.
John and Maria had freed all the witches the night before. Everyone should have been home tucked in their own beds if they slept like Cassie, or already beginning their day like John and Maria.
“Everyone. My dad. My brother. Six of the witches are still missing. My mother never came home.” Whitney began to cry again.
‘We didn’t touch them the whole time we had them,’ Jared quickly told Cassie even though her thoughts hadn’t drifted there yet.
If the wendigo didn’t do anything, and John had freed them, then where did they end up? Cassie looked up at her uncle, and the spatula was nothing more than a ball of metal in his hand. She turned to Nate, who seemed as confused as Jared did. Why were there six witches missing?
‘I’m sure there was no one left behind,’ Jared told her mentally. ‘I went into the cave myself to make sure my father hadn’t kept anyone. We found the circle and have no clue how they got out. I’ll show you everything.’
Jared switched to images to mentally show her his explanation. The bond was useful for some things, but not enough for Cassie to want to keep it.
Cassie could see inside the cave. Torches had been lit and were still glowing around where there was a circle of magic cast. The circle wasn't disrupted, and Jared stood there next to his brother as his father paced around it.
‘How is this possible? You told me that they couldn’t get out!’ Ben was fuming.
Jared was guessing that Cassie’s double bond making Nate now not a target was making his father mad, but more than that was that he had been looking forward to feasting on the witches he hated so much.
‘I assure you that they couldn’t get out. Jack placed them in there himself,’ a man told Ben.
Cassie could immediately see the resemblance between the man and her uncle. She didn’t need Jared to tell her that it was Uncle Michael.
‘Well obviously someone got in or out,’ Ben complained, still circling the area where the witches had been contained. ‘What about your sister?’
‘Can’t be her,’ Michael added. ‘Jack is the only one in the family that can space jump with his magic. He set the spell from the inside. My sister wouldn’t have been able to get to them.’
‘Then you didn’t drain all the witches,’ Ben commented, staring at the ground like he was searching for clues.
Jared watched his father’s eyes and looked at the ground. Not a single pair of footsteps went anywhere but toward the mouth of the cave.
‘I assure you they were drained. I made sure of it myself. I’ve no idea how they got out,’ Michael almost looked like he was pleading with Ben to forgive him.
Jared understood that. Everyone pleaded with his father. Ben was well-known for being the harshest alpha the wendigo had had in a long time. He’d rather kill them than let someone in the clan live that had made a mistake. There were no second chances with Ben. Jared watched his father’s eyes as he stopped looking at the floor and turned to Cassie’s uncle. Michael cowered down and bowed his head. Luckily for Michael, he was still needed by Ben. When Jack finally came into his own powers fully, Michael wouldn’t be able to make any mistakes.
‘I promise I’ll find out what happened.’ Michael backed away slowly, never turning his back to Ben.
When Michael was finally far enough away, Ben looked up at Jared and Ryder.
‘Do you want us to search the caves?’ Ryder suggested, always trying to stay on his father’s good side.
‘No need,’ Ben replied. ‘They all left. There’s nothing down here to eat or I would know.’
Cassie pulled back out of the memory.
“The wendigo don’t have them,” Cassie defended Jared.
John took that as a final answer and nodded to her.
“You can’t just believe him because he said so,” Nate complained. “He was planning to eat them with everyone else.”
Glancing at Nate, she shook her head. Even he didn’t think that was going to happen. He had his full memories back of their childhood, and he knew as well as Cassie—and her aunt and uncle—Jared wasn’t like that. Nate just didn’t have an answer for the missing people himself and wanted to be able to blame Jared.
“Can you find them?” Whitney asked hopefully, turning to
Nate.
Nate shrugged. “I can’t find everyone unless I’m in my tiger form.”
“So go change and tell us what you find,” Whitney ordered him. As the only female skinwalker in the clan, she could get away with ordering the future alpha around.
Nate turned to Cassie. “I can’t change without the full moon or without your permission.”
Cassie rolled her eyes. She really didn’t care when he changed into a tiger. That was his choice, not hers.
“I need a verbal response this time,” he replied.
“I don’t get why you need my permission. You seemed to be able to change whenever you wanted before,” Cassie replied.
Nate stood up abruptly and held out his hand for Cassie. He didn’t say a word, and that made her curious. Cassie took his outstretched hand, and he pulled her to the living room, away from everyone else. She found it amusing that he hadn’t tried ordering her to the living room. That wouldn’t have worked anyway. He might be learning after all.
“Okay, you have my permission,” Cassie told him and turned to go back to the kitchen. “You may change into a tiger whenever you want.”
“Cassie,” Nate reached out and caught her hand as she had just dropped his, “I know we didn’t do this the right way. I never took you on a date. I never tried to win you over. I was a complete jerk about all of it. I just assumed you’d be happy to be my mate like everyone else in the school. I didn’t think about it. I’ve always known that you are different. You’re not like everyone else, and I shouldn’t have treated you that way. I’m sorry.”
Cassie tried to hide her shock. Pulling her close, he wrapped his other arm around her waist to hold her to him. Cassie’s heart beat wildly in her chest. She wasn’t expecting that from him either. He was full of surprises.