Chapter 20

A/N: Hi all, I just want to let you know I haven't forgotten about this story. My other story, *I'll Be Seeing You* is coming to an end so I've been pushing to get that out so I can focus more on this story. For now it'll be one chapter a week but as soon as the other book is done, I;ll looking to get three chapters a week out on this one. Thank you for reading and enjoy the latest chapter.

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Whether it was the tea, the mate-bond or the good night's sleep, Thalia did in fact feel better the next morning. Her body still ached in places like she had been in a fight but her bones had set and torn ligaments and muscles had stitched together. Even Maeve seemed to have perked up, her energy slowly returning.

She found fresh towels sat next to a pile of folded clothing. It wasn't anything like the garments that Dante and Ms Thorton liked to dress her in but oddly they were more comfortable. After a shower to wash away the dried blood, sweat and dirt, Thalia pulled on the simple white underwear, black leggings and large grey knitted jumper. The moment she pulled it over her head she caught the scent of pine needles, wood fire smoke and snow. It soothed her as she inhaled the faint but alluring scent. It didn't take a detective to work out the jumper belonged to her mate and she caught herself smiling despite herself.

The smell of food hit Thalia like a freight train when she opened the door to the tiny bedroom and her stomach growled greedily, reminding her she hadn't eaten in some time. She followed the scent down the narrow stairs until she found herself in the kitchen which was surprisingly larger than any other room in the house.

The old witch sat at a large wooden table with papers in front of her and a cup of tea steaming to one side. The sound of fat hissing and spitting filled the kitchen as sausages cooked in an iron pan while other ingredients were lined up on the counter to wait their turn to be cooked.

"Good morning," Dagmar spoke up, looking at the young she-wolf over the rim of her glasses. "You look a lot better. Are you hungry?"

"I am, yes." Thalia nodded, taking a seat where she had nearly the whole room in her view. It made her feel less on edge and meant she could see any possible threats. "I feel better as well. Thank you for helping me heal."

"The gods decided it wasn't your time that is all." Dagmar replied and got up to tend to the sausages and start on other parts of the meal she was making.

“Where is Kade?” Thalia couldn’t help but ask.

She had only seen him for a few minutes the previous evening and yet the bond was strengthening. She could feel it growing even without Kade being in the room. Finding her fated mate was an added complication to her situation but instincts were sometimes stronger than logic and the absence of her mate had her feeling the ache of longing. She barely knew the man and yet having him around was certainly more preferable to him not being there.

“I have no idea.” Dagmar answered gruffly. “He never tells me anything, not even when he was a boy and I’d give him a good hiding for running off.”

“You knew him as a child?” Thalia raised an eyebrow curiously. “Did you used to live with his pack?”

It wasn’t common anymore but it was known that sometimes witches would form a type of working agreement with the Alphas. In return for aiding with medicine and defences, witches were given a place to live and the protection of the pack in times of hardship or war. However, the unity between witches and werewolves had been destroyed a few hundred years ago resulting in a mass exodus of witches leaving the packs they had sworn to help protect and rebuilding the covens once again. This supposed betrayal hadn’t gone down well with the werewolves and there were stories of witches being hunted down and slaughtered in retaliation. But there had also been stories of witches turning on the werewolves they had once called family.

Eventually the tensions were brought under control and a sort of truce was created between the two species. It didn’t wash away the bad blood but it did mean no more killing each other or being involved in any way in plots against the other. Some witches even chose to work with the packs again even if the relationship was somewhat strained in comparison to what it once was.

“No.” Dagmar snorted indignantly. “I helped raise the boy and his sister. They lived here for a number of years after Kade’s mother dropped them off.”

“And their dad?”

“A waste of space.” Dagmar responded as she came back to the table, the salty smell of bacon mingling with the richness of the pork sausages. “He was a low-life drinker who thought he was a man because he beat his wife and scared his children. The bastard carried on with his life as if his children never existed.”

Thalia frowned at this. “That’s…”

“Life.” Dagmar finished for her. “Sometimes things happen for a reason and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes people are really just horrible.” Dagmar paused for a beat. “Now what about you. How did you end up in my kitchen with a belly full of demon babies?”

Thalia was slightly taken back by how crass this old woman could be. She had always thought witches were graceful and elegant but Dagmar had the hardness of a woman who had lived a hard life and had seen and done things that created a hardness in her. There was obviously something warm under the layers of slate and ice but was well hidden from everyone around her.

“I was taken from my pack when I was a child.” Thalia replied quietly. “My parents are the alpha and luna of the pack I’m from but even that didn’t stop the rogues from coming and taking me and other girls away. They sold the others but kept me until a few months back when they gave me to a man called Dante Connaught.”

“You mentioned him last night.” Dagmar growled. “Is he the demon?”

Thalia nodded softly. “Like I said to Kade, he had this way of tricking us into agreeing to be his surrogates and promised us he would help us get home to our families if had his children. But there was another man there, a doctor. He was human and he told me that Dante was double crossing us. He wasn’t going to let us go but keep us to breed more children. He said that Dante had other girls that he was doing the same thing to but I was the first shifter Dante had taken in.”

“So the other girls were human?”

Thalia nodded again.

This new information set Dagmar into quiet contemplation. Thalia could see the old witch’s mind working as if she was trying to figure out a puzzle without all the pieces being available. For Thalia, demons were a new concept, something from folklore or written in books but not actually real beings. Yet Dagmar seemed unsurprised by their existence as if she had known about demons for a long time. She appeared to be more concerned about what a demon was doing with so many girls and so many offspring. The young-she wolf wanted to ask but before she could, the old woman was on her feet, hobbling to the cooker once more to tend to the cooking meal.

“You need to eat to get your strength back up.” Dagmar announced, calling an end to the conversation.

Thalia kept quiet even though she had burning questions and Dagmar seemed to have the answers. She still was unsure of this woman or this place.

After a few more minutes, the old woman returned to the table with a plate full of food and a glass of orange juice, setting the plate and the glass in front of Thalia. The mountain of food was nothing like what Thalia was used to eating, even when at home with her parents and brothers. There were sausages, bacon, fried eggs, toast, mushrooms and something that looked like beans in a red sauce…

“Baked beans.” Dagmar explained when she saw the girl’s confused look. “A good source of fibre. Now, eat up.”

Thalia ate in silence while Dagmar went back to her papers. Thalia found the food surprisingly nice, the sausages were very different from what she was used to. The herbs were more earthy and the meat more delicate from the gamey tastes she grew up on. If she was human, she undoubtedly would have struggled with the amount of food on her plate but being a werewolf and a pregnant one at that, Thalia quickly devoured everything, even the baked beans which were slightly sweet from the tomato sauce but oddly comforting.

“That was very nice.” Thalia spoke up when she was finished with the meal and her drink.

“Well, us brits are good at a few things, full English breakfasts being one.” Dagmar replied as she collected the plate and glass. “Now child. When are you going to get rid of those babies in your belly?”

“What?”