The witches were the only nocturnes that shared the same sense of family as them, the wolves, and he sort of admired them for it, although he had never met a witch that was willing to talk. Most of what he knew was from folklore, and he had never really faced one in battle before.
He was stronger now. He didn't need to use a fraction of his power to make this whole thing go away. As a matter of fact, he didn't need to use any bit of his power at all.
He watched with awe as her entire expression changed, standing upright as she stepped towards him.
"Witch!" he heard more than one person echo in unison as fangs came unsheathed, claws coming out from different corners of the room.
Growls erupted from various sections of the room as they took defensive stances.
"I said let go of me, did I not?!" she said, this time in a different voice.
She did not sound like the near-complaint woman that he had just heard speak. She sounded more ferocious, fierce. Heck, he would think twice before approaching her, but he did not have the time to think. He was the alpha, and that meant he had to diffuse the situation.
"Hey, Hey." He said, skulking behind her in a swift motion as he placed his hands on hers, gently urging her restraint.
It was so swift and smooth that if she had blinked once, she would have missed it. She swung her head, but she was unable to follow the swishy motion that he appeared behind her with.
Before she knew it, he was behind her, but she did not sense any malice from him.
He gently reached out for her arm, sliding his under her elbow as he let his hand slowly.
She gasped as she felt his hand on hers. She could not at all feel any intent to harm. Just a warm, understanding feeling that flooded through her veins.
'Wait,' she told herself. Was this the werewolf lure that she had heard of? Even if that was it, she somehow did not mind at all, she told herself. She had always wondered what it felt like, but it was weird to see it now.
The lure was an ability that wolves possessed. It was this innate ability to calm their prey before the kill. But didn't they have to be in direct contact with each other's eyes for that to happen, though? She wondered inwardly as she continued to fixate her grip on this idiot who thought he could suddenly play a fast one on her because she looked weak.
Maybe it wasn't the lure, but what was this calming feeling that she felt as he spoke so close to her ear? She could feel the hair on the back of her neck stand on edge as well as where his warm breath seemed to fall on.
She could feel his warm hands trailing all over her body in a soft and gentle manner that instinctively made her soften her grip on the man she was holding.
"We wouldn't wanna hurt poor Joe there now, would we?" he said in a dream-like voice that made the spit in the back of her throat go dry.
She swallowed hard, but that did nothing to ease the dryness at the back of her throat.
"Uhm…" she managed to say as he gently trailed his hands from her shoulder blades, gently down her forearm.
"Right?" he said in a deep sultry voice that threatened to be her undoing.
"R…Right." She managed to say.
"Now, can you please let him go?" He said in a persuasive tone. "Please? Hakuna his tatas." He told her.
It was a mixture of a plea and the fact that he knew exactly why she had done it.
"Okay." She said with barely concealed reluctance as she let him drop from the witch grip she had placed on him.
Growls echoed throughout the room as they gnashed their teeth at her. She had almost forgotten about them when he slipped his whole self right beside her.
"Pay no mind to them." He told her as he took a stance before her. "They can't hurt you. They were just looking out for Joe even though he was a total jerkoff who should get his nuts crushed." He said, enunciating the last few parts out loud so that the whole bar could hear him.
"I'm sorry about him." He told her as he stood in front of her. "Martha would kill me if anything happened to Joe. Even though he deserves it."
"Martha?" Selene said quizzically.
She felt so lost. She had come up with a plan originally, but she was not feeling so confident about pitching it anymore. She just could not. They all hated her before she could say a word.
Even if their feelings on the matter didn't really matter, she wished she didn't see them secretly letting whispers rip. She could hear them calling her a slut witch from different corners of the room.
She was used to it, though. The names; she had grown up in a really tough neighborhood, and the fact that her family ran the herbal shop in town did not help with the bullying. They called her a voodoo priestess at school. She had no friends because everyone was afraid of her. Afraid that she would curse them with some terrifying hex. So she was used to it, she thought with a mild sigh.
"His wife." He said as he gave her a brief and curt nod. "As you all were." He added, letting his deep voice become even deeper as he boomed it across the loud room that was being rented by whispers.
And just like that, the atmosphere was back in place. It was like she was never there. Like she had not tried to squeeze the life out of that man barely a few minutes ago.
"What are you called?" he asked her, pointing towards a bar stool that was behind him.
"My name is Selene." She told him. "Selene Bennett." She iterated.
"Ah," he began with a pleasant smile. "The Bennett witches. How wonderful. I've only heard tales of your family." He told her as he winked at a burly man at the bar.
"None good, I would imagine." She inferred before she could help it.