Free The Witch by Calle J. Brookes Page A

I think.”
    “Whatever. Eighty, one hundred eighty, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I love you and I will always do whatever I have to in order to protect my baby girl. And if you think that means me staying behind, then dammit, that’s exactly what I’ll do. I won’t like it. And I’ll be right here waiting until you do need me. I’m your mom, it’s in the job description.”
    Loren just hugged her, clung to her like she had when she was a little bitty girl and the nightmares would come. When she’d wake from the night and it would hit her that her father was never coming home, that she and her mother were alone.
    And probably always would be. “I’m so scared.”
    “Baby, everything worthwhile is terrifying at times. You trust in your Fates, or whatever you call those divinities you are always talking about, and just like your father always did. I’ll trust in my God to protect and keep you safe. To help you do the right thing. Am I terrified something will happen to you. That is my only nightmare, sweetie. And to know that you are capable of jumping between worlds, of standing shoulder to shoulder with vampires and demons and werewolves, scares me out of every last bit of wits I have. But if this is what you are meant to do, don’t I have to support you in that? I’m your mom, part of the job is helping you do the things you are supposed to. No matter how much that hurts me.”
    And Loren knew that it would hurt. They’d both be hurting before it was all said and done.
    She just hoped she’d be alive when it was all over.
    Yeah, she’d definitely be talking to Becca and Jade before she left Thrun for the next part of her journey.
     

Chapter Twenty-One
     
    The girl had a pack on her back, and the women surrounding her were all wet-eyed and sad. Jushua immediately filled with the urge to throw up his hands and back away. He so did not want to deal with weepy females. He couldn’t think of a damned thing worse than crying women.
    What had the witchie done now? The healer’s female had a stoic look on her face—she really was an exceptionally beautiful female for a former human woman—but she stood strong at her friend’s side.
    It took him a moment to realize something had most likely had happened.
    Or was about to.
    A large hand landed on his shoulder and Nalik was there. “She leaves soon.”
    Jushua frowned. “Where is it she goes? She just arrived in Thrun yesterday.” He wasn’t sure he trusted the girl, and to give her free reign throughout the realms…it did not sit well with him, not at all.
    He wasn’t even entirely certain who she was, or what she was. And with her being able to do things no ordinary girl should—like stepping through worlds without a key—there was too much they didn’t know of her.
    “She claims she’ll know when she opens the barriers between worlds. And that this is what the Fates have in store for her. She is apparently a big believer.”
    Nalik’s tone told Jushua what he needed to know about that idea. His reborned brother felt just as negatively about the Four Fates as Jushua did.
    Fates had screwed with him for five thousand years. And nothing they’d done yet had convinced him they knew what they were about. “Who goes with her?”
    “I do not know. You volunteering?”
    Sometimes the reborned retained some of the original soul’s characteristics. Nalik’s smirk was exactly like his brother Kilan’s had been. Jushua had found it just as irritating then as he did now.
    “Depends. If duty calls, then I shall meet it.” Jushua walked across the courtyard to where the girl was. His mother was near, he could sense her presence now, something he had started to do within the last millennia. Had his mother and the witch spoken?
    He knew his mother had strong feelings for the girl this Loren had been, but would those feelings of affection and guilt transfer to this new day and time? He knew his mother was gathering the reborned around her, and