“There were witches who held power that you didn’t burn or drown. You didn’t get them all. None of the ones who’d survived held the power of those your kind swept from the earth, and they have been using the powers they have left to hide for centuries. But that isn’t it. The important thing the vampires missed is that you didn’t destroy the implements.”

Fuck.

“The athame,” he murmured.

She nodded. “I know who has it. I know who used it on the hybrid. I didn’t know he was a hybrid, but the story went viral after she’d messed it up. She’s a little, well…out of it because she didn’t succeed in her mission and they were pissed and didn’t hide they were pissed. They went loco and didn’t care who knew it. But they have it. They actually have several blessed instruments that it isn’t real great they have. They sent her on that mission. They’re a coven. A powerful one. You’re fast and strong, but they have protections no way you’ll get through. You could bring a hundred vampires and you’d all burn.”

He drew in breath through his nose as he stood.

While he contemplated this new dilemma, she pushed to her feet and he noted what he hadn’t had the opportunity to note before: she was petite. She couldn’t be taller than five foot three. As he was six-one, he towered over her.

Another contradiction for he usually preferred statuesque women who met his height, or close to it, in heels. However, there was something immensely attractive about her stature and he was beginning to understand the escalation in the already-rabid protection that was his nature that Callum had toward Sonia. Sonia was small for a wolf, shorter, and when Callum met her, slimmer (though, Callum had seen to the last without delay, filling out his sister’s curves as was wolf).

Yuri had never felt protective of a female in his entire life, but regardless of the fact that he’d just been choking her, right then, he couldn’t deny he felt it with this witch.

He also couldn’t deny that he enjoyed the feeling.

He kept her pinned close to the wall simply by not moving as he buried these feelings that, at that time, he didn’t have the luxury to explore.

“You wanna save the world?” she asked softly, and he focused on her.

“I’m not hunting witches for the fuck of it in the middle of a global crisis,” he returned.

She nodded, then asked another question. “It was really the hybrid?”

Yuri scowled at her for he’d already given her that information.

She studied him and she took her time doing it.