Free Alpha Curves (Paranormal BBW Shifter Romance): Wolf Clan Book 3 by Christa Wick Page B

raped you?" Iris asked.
    Esme shook her head as she analyzed the sudden tension that had taken possession of the she-wolf. The focused interest she displayed wasn't of a professional nature, but intensely personal. Something had happened, Esme intuited, but the wall around Iris was too thick for her to read the woman's past.
    "They did brutalize me," Esme said, carefully choosing her words, sanitizing and distancing them from the sharp blows and pain she had experienced. She didn't want to trigger a traumatic memory in Iris or cause Dana, still on the porch with his sharp ears tilted in their direction, any anguish. "They stripped me all but naked and gagged me, thinking I wouldn't be able to spell without voicing the words."
    The needle stilled in Iris's hands. "You mean you can? I thought that was impossible."
    Despite the remembered hurt and terror, a gentle smile shimmered across Esme's plump lips. "As a matter of self-preservation, witches aren't always honest about the extent of their powers. In fact, the more a witch boasts about her powers, the weaker they probably are. But there's no doubt that words help focus magic. And it may be that most witches cannot spell without somehow manipulating the environment around them."
    She ran one finger along the silver thread Iris held. "Like you're manipulating it right now, only without words. So binding and gagging most witches will keep them from charming their way out of danger."
    "But not for you?" Bringing the thread to her mouth, Iris snapped it with her teeth and proceeded to tie the end off on the small batch of witch's lace she had bound before repeating the incantation Esme had used earlier.
    "Not for me," Esme agreed. "And apparently not for my mother because she escaped while they were transporting her to the Witches Council for trial. One of the witches from West Virginia had come to bind her with magic--"
    "They didn't trust you to do it?" Iris asked.
    "Not everyone," Esme agreed. "The Virginia witch charmed silver handcuffs, a silk blindfold with silver threading through it. My mother might have had help, especially considering how the wolves were killed. It was clear they put up a fight and..."
    Esme's gaze blanked for a moment as her face pulled downward. An image flashed in Iris's mind. Two wolves, one no older than Jet, the other somewhere in his forties. Bodies that might have once been robust looked like the husks of dead insects, their insides torn out and a thick blood of pool around them.
    The scent of death filling her nostrils, Iris dropped the needle and witch's lace onto the coffee table. Esme blinked, snapping back from the memory and reaching toward Iris to offer and draw comfort.
    "I'm sorry," the witch whispered. "If you were wholly wolf, I don't think you would have seen that. I didn't mean to push it at you, either."
    Iris shook her head. "I'm not wolf at all."
    "You heal like a wolf," Esme gently argued.
    "That's the magic, you can self-heal--"
    The witch rolled her eyes at Iris. "You smell like a she-wolf in heat. And it doesn't take a shifter's nose. Any latent can smell it on you."
    Iris dismissed the argument with another shake of her head. "You said latents can bear cubs--"
    Grabbing both of Iris's hands, Esme pulled the woman closer. "You've disclaimed the idea that you are a latent and, anyway, we don't come into heat like a female shifter does. At least not that we know. What you're suggesting is only possible if there are latents and alpha latents, and we have no proof of that."
    Esme captured Iris's head before the she-wolf could respond with another shake. "We don't need to debate this right now. You just need to be open to how much things have changed since you left the clan. You probably were aware of how pregnancies were already decreasing when you left. But then, for ten years, not a single known conception among the clans."
    Iris pulled her head from Esme's light hold. Finding Oscar's file, she wrapped her fingers around it.