Funny how his name, Blaze, was so linked to her power. Almost as if the universe had known his mate would be a fire witch. She should have told him she loved him. What a silly thing to think while her skin was burning.
Astra didn’t know what the fire was going to do, but she kept pleading not to hurt Blaze, she just wanted to protect him from the witch hunters.
It was no use. The fire had decided.
The ground below her began to rumble. It was violent and it made her teeth chatter. She was cold, a frozen ball of fire making the ground shake with impossibly violent tremors.
Her chest expanded and Astra had to get away from herself. She crawled out from under the table. She was vaguely aware that the witch hunters were backing away from her in terror. Astra reached out to them, hoping they would run before she would incinerate them.
And then it happened.
Astra exploded into a fire as bright as sun at noon.
It didn’t hurt, and she wasn’t sure where she was anymore. All she could think about was Blaze. She could only hope that she could live another day. Live to have a full life with Blaze.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Blaze
Blaze was almost at the back of the bar. His plan of leading the witch hunter into the freezer was almost completed. He would be able to walk out of here with his mate. Everything would be okay.
When he heard the others coming into the bar, Blaze the man felt completely dejected and hopeless. The wolf, however, growled, completely unfazed by the poor odds of succeeding. He had beat four of them with Astra’s help, but they were both injured.
Where the fuck was Carson? Had he been killed by the Order of Salem? How many of these witch hunters existed? Blaze, like Axel, had been convinced there couldn’t be all that many who would want to go out to hunt witches.
They’d been wrong.
Blaze snapped and growled until his captive was in the freezer, and then he rushed back to the main room where Astra was leaning under a table. The three witch hunters were surrounding her with guns drawn.
It struck him as odd that they would just stand there, weapons pointed toward her. He slowly made his way to them, hoping to sneak in on them and attack before they shot at his mate.
Under his paws, the ground began to rumble and shake. It was the most violent earthquake Blaze had ever felt. But it wasn’t an earthquake. It was something else. It smelled different, and it made his wolf senses nervous. Something inexplainable was happening.
And then, just like that, the world shook and a heated blast made him fall back.
Confused and terrified there had actually been a bazooka shot, he got back to his feet to see that his bar was on fire. The flames were dying, but there was smoke everywhere, making his wolf eyes water and sting.
Blaze blinked as he tried to understand what he was seeing. Panicked, he ran toward Astra, to help her, to do something.
When he was a few feet away from her, he realized that Astra wasn’t on fire.
Astra was the fire.
Yup. It wasn’t the bar that was on fire. It was his mate. Astra was a ball of fire, standing in the middle of his bar. Stunned and unable to do anything, he stood there and watched as the flames abated. The process was made easier because the bar’s sprinkler system was raining water down on them.
All around Astra, the charred bodies of the members of Order of Salem were simmering as droplets of water rained down on them.
Blaze shifted back into his human form and took a few steps toward her.
“What the hell was that?” he asked her, running his hands everywhere on her body to make sure she was out. That the fire she was had been put out.
“I honestly don’t know what happened. One second, I was calling my magic and the next, I was made of fire. And I had no control over it.”
Astra was swaying, as if her legs were about to give out. Blaze kept his arms around her so he could catch her if she did fall.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She was too pale, and her breath was labored. “I think I’m going to pass out.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“No, I’ve got you. What do you need?”
She shook her head and Blaze could swear that the small gesture had made her even paler.
“You need to stay with me, Astra. I think you might have drained all of your energy and magic when you did that fire spell. I’m going to take you in my arms, okay? I’ll take you to the apartment.”
“What if more come?” she asked, her eyes going in and out of focus.
“I’ll deal with them,” he answered.
Where the fuck was Carson? How had the damned wolf not shown up with backup? There was no explanation for it, unless Carson had run into his own problems with the witch hunters. That didn’t bode well. How many of these fuckers could come at them?
“You’re hurt,” Astra pointed out as he tucked her into his arms.
He knew he had been shot, but thankfully, his shifter's healing powers had already spit out the bullet and the few pellets. The wound would close soon enough, and he would be okay. He was more concerned for Astra who also had been shot. Though he couldn’t tell where even though his mate was as naked as him. Her clothes had been burned off when she had done her magic.
Thankfully, Blaze had installed a very expensive state-of-the-art sprinkler system. It would help reduce some of the damage to his bar. That was what insurance was for, but he just didn’t know how he would explain to them that his mate had spontaneously combusted. It wasn’t exactly like he could blame Astra for it either. She had done magic to protect them. This was just the kind of shit that happened around shifters and—he could only guess—witches.
He wasn’t too worried about the bar, and he knew his apartment would be a safe place. He cradled Astra against him as he climbed the stairs then keyed in the code. She was awake, but her eyes were halfway closed.
“Do you think I can set you down in a hot shower?”
“Bath,” she argued in a whisper.
“No, love. I’m not letting you go into a tub filled with water. You could drown. I’ll help you shower off the soot.”
“Okay,” she answered with none of the strength he knew her to have.
He knew it could only be the severely intense use of magic that had left her so incapacitated. Maybe there was a bit of stress in it from being shot, but he still couldn’t see the wound through the soot marring her entire body.
Blaze turned the water to a comfortably hot setting and he set Astra on the shower floor. He softly rubbed her arms, her legs, and her back, removing any trace of the fire and the blood.
“Astra,” he gasped when he noticed the small puckered skin on her shoulder. “You were shot.”
“Hmm,” was her disinterested response.
“But it’s healed already.”
“Not possible,” she mumbled.
She sat up, shaking her head. She turned her face toward the water and let it stream down her for a long moment. She pulled away from the spray of hot water and inspected her shoulder.
“Oh, shit. Did the fire heal me?” she asked, turning to look at him. She looked terrified by the realization.
“Is that not something witches can do?”
“No, absolutely not. I mean, I don’t think so anyway. The kind of magic I did back there? I shouldn’t have been able to do to that. That’s entirely too much magic.”