I crouched my body low to avoid a karate chop from Wei, dropped into a squat, swung out my leg, and caught him at the ankles.

He went down to his ass.

The first time I took him out.

I jumped up, throwing my arms up in the air, shouted, “Woo hoo!” and immediately was tackled in the back by Xun. I fell to my stomach with an “Oof!” and then was incapacitated with a knee between my shoulder blades and one arm twisted back, my wrist imprisoned in his fist.

It was two days after Aurora and her witch sisters had tried to help Abel locate his brother. Leah and I were out with the guys, learning self-defense (and then some).

Sonia was with the wolves since she was one and asked Callum if she could start to train with them so she had both human and wolf defense at her disposal.

Leah had sat everything out the last couple of days, but I’d talked her into starting up again because she needed to take her mind off things. She’d understandably been moping. Although two of her cousins had been rescued, one had been killed and another was still captive, still….she couldn’t mope forever. There was a world that needed to be saved.

The good news about this was that we’d had no word other concubines had been harmed. The bad news was that there were still tons of them whose whereabouts were unknown.

So now, at the compound, we were back to business as usual.

Xun let me go and I rolled to my back to see him extending a hand to me.

I took it as he said, “Don’t ever let your guard down.”

He pulled me to my feet and I grinned at him. “I still took Wei out.”

“You did.” Wei got close. “You’re learning fast.”

I turned my grin to him.

“Aside from the part where you were flat on your face with your arm twisted around your back, that was awesome,” Leah decreed, hitting our huddle with her hand up in high five position.

I didn’t leave her hanging.

“Incoming,” Wei muttered.

I looked to him to see his eyes aimed over his shoulder, so I looked in that direction and saw Moose lumbering toward us in an ungainly jog, something which put me on edge for two reasons. First, because Moose didn’t jog so his news had to be big. And second, because Moose didn’t jog and I didn’t want him to have a heart attack.

“Yo!” he called through a wheeze when he got close. “Poncho’s back.”

Thank God. It was good news.

I clapped my hands and shouted, “Yay!”

Moose halted when he got to us, took in a deep breath, and shared, “Got the bruja.”

“Say what?” Xun asked.

“He brought his aunt. The bruja. A witch,” Moose explained.