Magic Bleeds

CHAPTER 24

TO CALL HURRICANE SAVANNAH, WHICH FLATTENED half of the East Coast some years back, “a gentle breeze” would be an understatement. To say that Ted Moynohan was pissed off would be an understatement of criminal proportions.

He stood in the middle of the hallway, surveying the smoking soggy ruin that was the Order’s office and radiating anger with dangerous intensity. After Andrea’s rage died down, she changed back. Shifting back and forth pretty much wiped her out. We dumped snow and water on the fire, and the result wasn’t pretty. Every window had been busted when the ward collapsed and icy wind howled through the building, juggling loose papers.

I’d laid out Erra’s identity in broad strokes and made my report—lucky for me I had a lot of practice lying through my teeth. Mauro had been knocked out solid for most of the fight. He now sat in the middle of the hallway, pressing a rag filled with snow to a bump on his head. He didn’t seem in a hurry to volunteer any information.

Ted said nothing. A dead silence claimed the office, the kind of silence that usually only struck at 2 a.m., when the city sank into deep sleep and even the monsters rested.

Flame-retardant carpet and metal furniture had done its job. The building had survived and the damage to the office was mostly cosmetic. The damage to the Order, however, was enormous. The knights were untouchable. You injure one and the rest would show up on your doorstep, throwing enough magic and steel to make you think the world had ended. Erra had come into the Chapter, into the Order’s house, and wrecked it. Ted had to hit back, fast and hard.

“The problem is, we don’t know where Erra will attack next,” I said. “We need to take the choice away from her. We killed three of her undead. She views it as an insult and she’s arrogant as hell. She will respond to a direct challenge. We pick a spot outside the city, nice and private.”

It was a simple plan, but simple plans sometimes worked best.

Behind us something thumped. A section of the wall crashed to the ground. Ted glared at it.

The phone rang in my office. I picked it up.

“Kate—”

“Help,” Brenna’s hoarse voice gasped. “Help us . . .”

A distant scream echoed through the phone, followed by a grunt. The disconnect signal wailed in my ear.

Oh no.

I dropped the phone and started to the door.

“Daniels!” Ted’s voice cracked like a whip.

“One of the Pack’s offices is under attack. I have to go.”

“No.”

I halted.

Ted gazed at me with glazed-over eyes. “You belong here. If you leave, then you don’t.”

“People are dying. They called me for help.”

“We’re people. They aren’t. I’m giving you a direct order to stay here.”

I looked at Andrea behind him. She stood still like a statue. Her face was bloodless.

Brenna’s hoarse voice echoed through my memory.

Everything I had worked for, everything I’d done and accomplished to keep Greg’s legacy alive—but none of it was worth a single life.

“Daniels, if you do this, we’re done. No second chances, no forgiveness. Done.”

My fingers found the cord around my neck. I tore it off with a brutal jerk, dropped my ID on the floor, and walked out.

THE SNOW-STREWN CITY FLEW BY ME. I’D GRABBED the first rider I saw, jerked him from his saddle, and stole his horse, telling him to bill the Order for it so I wouldn’t get shot in the back as we galloped away.

We rounded the corner at breakneck speed. The Wolf House swung into view. Dali’s Prowler waited in the middle of the street. She stood next to it, staring at the building, her small body rigid.

She heard me and turned to look at me. Her mouth opened.

A body burst through the second-floor window in a cascade of glass shards. It plummeted through the air, a grotesque shape, neither human nor animal, huge claws poised to rend. The shape landed on top of the car and smashed into Dali, knocking her off her feet with a guttural snarl.

I tore at the reins, trying to slow down my horse. The horse screamed.

Warped, twisted, covered with random patches of fur and exposed muscle, the beast pinned Dali to the ground, clawing at her with black talons. Dali threw her arms up, trying to shield her throat.

I jumped off my horse and hit the ground running.

Blood sprayed the snow, shockingly red against the white. Dali’s high voice screamed in a hysteric frenzy. “Stop, it’s me, it’s me!”

I snapped a side kick, putting everything I had into it. My foot smashed into the beast’s side, knocking it back. The creature rolled and sprung to all fours.

If it was a shapeshifter in a warrior form, it was the worst one I had ever seen. Its left arm was too short, its pelvis tilted too far forward, its bottom jaw jutted to the side, overflowing with fangs. Above that awful jaw, its face was almost human. Green eyes glared at me. Every hair on my neck stood up. I’d seen that face yesterday, smiling at me.

“Brenna?”

A vicious growl spilled from Brenna’s deformed mouth. She shook. Gashes crisscrossed her body, oozing black pus and blood, as if her skin had randomly burst in places.

Dali scrambled back on her butt, leaving bloody tracks in the snow, until she bumped into the car with her head. “Brenna, it’s me! It’s me. We’re friends. Please don’t.”

Brenna snarled again.

“Brenna, don’t do this.” I stepped toward her.

Brenna’s eyes fixed on Dali with the unwavering focus of a predator about to charge.

“Please, please don’t.” Dali pressed tighter against the car. “Please!”

Brenna lunged.

Her mangled body flew above the snow, as if she had wings.

Brenna or Dali. No time to think.

I lunged forward and sliced at her back. Slayer cut through flesh, aborting Brenna’s charge in midleap. She twisted in the air and hit me. Huge jaws fastened on my leg, searing my thigh with pain.

“No!” Dali screamed.

I cut again, cleaving through her spine.

Brenna’s fangs let go. She crashed into the snow, jerking like a marionette on the strings of a mad puppeteer. Blood and spit flew from her terrible mouth. She growled and bit the air again and again, rending invisible enemies with her teeth. Behind me Dali sobbed uncontrollably.

I raised Slayer and brought it down. The saber pierced Brenna’s chest. I twisted the blade, ripping her heart to pieces. In my head, Brenna’s voice said, “Don’t worry, Kate, I won’t drop you.”

Brenna stopped thrashing. The glow in her eyes dimmed.

Dali whimpered small incoherent noises.

A tortured snarl echoed through the street. I jerked Slayer free and whirled to the building. A clawed arm scratched at the first-floor window next to the door. Thick fingers slid on the glass, leaving bloody streaks.

Bloody hell.

I grabbed Dali and pulled her to her feet. “Dali! Look at me.”

She stared, wild-eyed. “I knew, I knew something was wrong, I drove up, and it didn’t smell right—”

“Get into the car. Drive down two blocks, go into the bakery, and call the Keep. No matter what happens, don’t leave the store. Do you understand?”

“Don’t go in there!”

“I have to go. If they get out, they might kill somebody.”

“Then I’ll come with you.” She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “I’m a fucking tiger.”

A vegetarian, cross-eyed, half-blind tiger who got sick at the sight of blood. “No. I need you to get into the car and go call Curran. Please.”

She nodded.

I released her. “Go.”

A moment later the Prowler rolled down the street. I stepped over its tracks. The door of the house gaped open, like a black mouth.

I pushed the door open with my fingertips.

A body sprawled across the rug ten feet away. It lay in a tangle of shredded clothes, stained with black pus. A bitter odor filled the hallway, like the scent of chicken meat gone to rot.

I’d seen shapeshifters bleed gray before, when struck with silver. Silver killed Lyc-V, and the dead virus turned gray. To bleed black, Lyc-V had to be present in record numbers in the body. Only loups carried that much virus in them.

I stepped inside. The carpet muffled my footsteps. Above something thudded.

Slow and easy.

I reached the body. He lay on his stomach. Dark lesions striped his back, filled with viscous ichor, so dark it resembled tar. The odor of rot choked the air. I gagged and nudged the body with my foot. The head lolled. Unseeing milky eyes looked up at me from an unfamiliar face. Dead.

I kept moving through the long corridor.

Right room, clear.

Left, clear.

Right, clear.

Kitchen.

A pot boiled over on the stove. Two shapeshifters lay unmoving. One sprawled on top of the table, midway through the change, his body a mess of fur and skin. His deformed limbs clutched at the table, bones exposed, torn muscle oozing pus onto the green tablecloth. A chef’s knife protruded from his neck, pinning him to the table.

The other body lay under the table, on the floor littered with chunks of peeled potatoes. A huge gash split open his chest, long ragged tears—a claw strike. The same black pus spilled from his lips, staining his chin. Nausea squirmed through me.

The scene played in my head: the shapeshifter on the right lunging over the table, striking at the guy chopping potatoes. His target taking a hit to the chest, thrusting the knife into his attacker’s neck and falling . . .

I moved on to the stairwell. Upstairs or downstairs, to the basement?

I leaned to the side. Blood stained the green wallpaper on the landing above. Up.

The old stairs creaked under my feet. I ran up and pressed against the wall. Short hoarse grunts broke the silence in a steady rhythm, each grunt followed by the screeching of nails on glass. I checked the hallway.

Something crouched in the gloom, far to the right, on the clump of mangled bodies, digging in the flesh with bloody claws. The creature struck a corpse and wiped its deformed hand on the window. Claws scratched the glass. Screeech.

I stepped into the hallway.

Screech.

Screech.

The beast looked up at me. A girl. Barely older than Julie. She looked at me with pale dark eyes, the blood and black tarry pus falling from her mouth.

Her face was almost perfectly human. The rest of her was not. Her limbs protruded too far, ending in oversized hands. A hump bent her spine, sheathed in gray wolf fur. Her chest was concave and her ribs were piercing her skin.

“It hurts,” she said.

I kept walking.

“It hurts.” She dipped her hand into the blood pooling in the stomach of a woman next to her and wiped it on the glass. Screech.

“What happened?” I asked.

She leaped at me with a guttural snarl. I dodged left, and sliced across her side. She bounced off the wall, twisting, and lunged at me. I flipped the blade and sliced up through her stomach into the heart. Human teeth snapped an inch from my mouth. Her claws gripped my shoulder and she sagged on my blade, her life bleeding out.

I pushed the child off my saber gently and kept going.

Bodies lay strewn across the hallway, one after another, all facing to the end of the hallway, where the solid door to Jim’s office stood half-ajar. They must’ve run here and didn’t make it. I checked the faces as I walked, afraid I’d see someone I knew.

Whatever it was came through the front door. The first shapeshifter collapsed where he stood. The attacker hit the kitchen and headed upstairs. The shapeshifters on the first floor and in the basement must’ve heard the noise and chased after the intruder. Nine people dead, including Brenna and the child I’d murdered. Jim must’ve reinforced their numbers, expecting trouble. All of them went after the intruder. Nobody tried to get out until it was too late.

A muffled thud came from behind the door.

I pushed it open.

A naked man sat among the shambles of broken furniture and clumps of papers. A metal manacle clamped his ankle, attached to a spike in the floor by a chain as thick as my wrist. The loup chain—every Pack house had one.

A twisted mess of limbs and wounds lay in front of him. To the left a female shapeshifter hung on the wall, nailed by a sword to the boards.

The naked man looked up at me. An oily sheen slicked his skin, stretched tight over the lean body. His eyes were the dim yellow of old urine. The stench of rotting chicken swirled about him.

“My favorite niece,” Erra’s voice said. “Only you could make this better. Welcome to Venom’s party.”

The body in front of Venom moved.

“You again.” The undead stabbed the shapeshifter with a wooden shard and jerked it out for the second blow.

I grabbed the body by the legs and pulled it to me, out of his reach.

“Too late.” Erra snorted.

The shapeshifter’s body shuddered in my hands. Black ichor oozed. I knelt and saw bright red hair. Dingo, one of Jim’s men. Oh no.

A bloody hole gaped where Dingo’s left eye used to be. His right looked at me, stark against the mangled mess of his face. “Got him with the chain,” he whispered.

“You did,” I told him.

His voice was a hoarse, pain-laced groan. “Dying. Kill me.”

I raised my saber, brought it down, and then he hurt no more.

“Disgusting,” Erra said through Venom’s mouth.

Neither of us was laughing anymore. “These people were my friends. You made me kill them. You made me kill a child.” I could still hear Brenna’s voice in my head.

“Quit your sniveling. I have no patience for cowards.”

I got up and slid the cabinet door open. With tech and magic dancing back and forth, most people stuck to things that always worked for backup.

Papers, boxes, nothing of interest. I moved on to the smaller cabinet to the right. “I figured out why you don’t target women.”

“Women are the future. One man can sire a nation, but kill the women and you kill a people.”

“Nope, that’s not it. You were trained to demolish armies. Not many ancient armies were made of women.”

“You’d be surprised,” Erra said.

A glass gallon jug of kerosene, still three quarters full, sat in the corner. I pulled it out and twisted off the cap.

“Why don’t you gnaw off your leg and escape?” I asked.

“And miss out on your misery?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you’d be glad to miss it. If you lose your undead toy, you’ll have to look for another body to drain of blood. You didn’t escape, because making him chew off his foot would hurt you. And you don’t like pain.”

I strode to the undead.

Venom lunged at me. I sidestepped, catching his throat in my hand. My fingers touched his skin. I had already touched Erra’s mind once. It took me a fraction of a second to find it again. I grabbed it and dumped the kerosene over Venom’s head. Venom twisted, aiming a kick at my stomach. I let go and backed away, out of his reach, clinging to my aunt’s mind, chaining her to Venom’s body.

“Got a question for you.”

“And?” Erra snorted.

An awful pressure ground on my mind. I unclenched my teeth. “Can you outlast me?”

I pulled a lighter from my pocket, clicked it on, and threw it at Venom. Flames surged, licking his skin.

Erra screamed. Her mind grabbed mine and shook, the way a dog shakes a rat when it wants to kill it. I hung on with everything I had. Every ounce of fury I had to crush to get through this house. Every drop of guilt at watching Brenna’s blood splash the snow. I sank all of it into Erra’s mind, fastening her to Venom.

Burn, bitch. Burn.

The air stank of burning hair and charred fat. Venom flailed on his chain like a rabid dog.

“I’ll tear you limb from limb!”

“Does it hurt? Tell me it hurts.”

Heat and pain wound about my mind in white-hot ribbons, and squeezed. Tears swelled in my eyes. Venom burned like a human candle, and I clung to Erra’s mind.

The ribbons turned into blades and sliced into me, pulling me apart. I felt myself unraveling, as if my mind were disappearing thread by thread. An absurd vision of my veins being pulled from my body thrust itself before me. It hurt. Dear God, it hurt so much.

But the fire hurt her more.

Erra howled like a dog. “I’ll rip you apart and suck the marrow out of your bones. I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth. You can’t hide your blood, I’ll know it anywhere. I’ll track you down. I’ll murder everyone who knows you and make you watch them die. You’ll pay for this. You’ll pay!”

The pressure ground my mind into nothing. “Quit your sniveling.”

Venom crashed to the floor. A light exploded in my mind, like a razor-sharp star. I tasted my blood—my nose was bleeding.

Pushing the words out of my mouth took a long time and they came out slurred. “Death shock. That’s what happens to a Master of the Dead when a vampire she navigates dies before she can let go of its mind. Since you keep your undead so close to your heart that it hurts you when they’re battered . . .”

“Let me go!” my aunt screamed.

“This is how you die,” I told her. “Chained to this undead piece of meat.”

“You’ll die with me,” she snarled.

Pain crushed my skull. I slumped against the wall. Fragments of my thoughts dashed back and forth like frightened rabbits. “. . . worth it . . .”

A short shape dashed into the room. I focused. Dark clothes. Indigo veil. The old woman I’d saved from some low-lives on the way to the Order. What the hell?

She leapt over the bodies and landed by me.

Erra screamed in agony.

The old woman jerked her hand up. A short spear glinted with the light of the flames. Her black eyes glared at me. “I end this. Let go now.”

I had no strength to fight her. I’d sunk all of myself into keeping Erra put. “Don’t.”

The spear spun in the woman’s hand. She flipped it and rammed the butt into my solar plexus. Pain exploded under my diaphragm, dropping me to my knees. I clawed on to the mind link but it slipped from me. The pressure vanished. My aunt broke free.

Venom jerked one last time and died.

Not again.

I surged to my feet and lunged at her. She made no move to counter. I slammed her into the wall. “Why?”

A red sheen rolled over her eyes. Diamond-shaped pupils stared back me. “I must protect you. It’s my job.”

The wall exploded. A seven-foot monster broke into the room, her fur dark, eyes glowing with green from a nightmarish meld of human face and wolf muzzle. Smaller shapes streamed into the room.

“Protect the mate!” the werewolf snarled in Jennifer’s voice. “Secure the room!”

Claws clamped me and threw me out of the room into the waiting hands of another shapeshifter.

I SAT ON THE STEPS AND WATCHED THE SHAPESHIFTERS carry bodies out of the house. Jennifer sat next to me.

I felt hollow and tired. If it wasn’t for the wall propping me up, I’d collapse. If I concentrated hard enough, I could wiggle my fingers. Concentrating hurt.

Kate Daniels, deadly swordmaster. Fear my twitching pinkie.

A young female shapeshifter carried a misshapen body out of the house. She looked a little like Brenna with lighter hair, except she was alive and Brenna was dead, because I killed her.

“I killed a little girl,” I said.

The werewolf-Jennifer stirred next to me. “She was my sister.”

I was so numb, her words took a minute to register.

“I wouldn’t let them leave.” Jennifer’s voice unnaturally calm. “I delayed evacuation. Because it was our house. We’re the wolves. We can’t be run out of our own den. Now Naomi is dead.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Jennifer turned to me. “Did she hurt when you burned him?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not enough.” Jennifer looked at the bodies laid out on the snow.

“No. I wanted to kill her, but she stopped me.”

We both looked at the woman. She sat cross-legged in the snow, her spear on her lap. Four werewolves watched her.

“Naomi was twelve,” Jennifer said.

A year younger than Julie.

The alpha female turned to me. Her eyes were wet. “I hate you for killing her.”

Welcome to the club.

A caravan of Pack Jeeps entered the parking lot.

“It hurts and you want to hurt someone, and you don’t care who,” I said. “Because hurting will make you feel better.”

“Yes.”

“It won’t. I killed dozens of fomorians after Bran died. It didn’t help.”

“I’m not you,” she said.

“We’re all human,” I told her.

An arm wrapped around me. My heart tried to leap out of my chest. Curran pulled me to him and kissed my forehead.

“I’m going to put a bell on you,” I told him. “That way I’ll have some warning.”

He peered at my face. “Are you okay?”

“I killed Brenna and Jennifer’s little sister. And the Dingo. Other than that, I’m great. Everything is lovely.”

“Right.” He looked at Jennifer.

She sat frozen.

“The cars are here. Load your people up. Daniel is waiting for you at the Keep.” He turned to me. “Can you walk or should I carry you?”

I’d be damned if I let him carry me anywhere. I pushed to my feet. My legs wobbled a bit but held. We walked side by side to the Pack Jeep. He opened the passenger door and I got in. He gave some final instructions and we were off.

THE KEEP WAS MADE OF STAIRS. AND MORE STAIRS. And then more stairs. Just keep climbing. One foot after the other. Brenna’s bite on my thigh burned. My lungs had shriveled up to the size of golf balls.

I would not collapse on the damn stairs. The higher we climbed, the more people stopped and looked at us, and I would not faint while half of the damn Keep watched.

“One more floor,” Curran murmured.

I clenched my teeth.

Step, and step, and step. The landing before his private hallway. Made it.

The door barring access to Curran’s quarters swung open. Derek held it ajar from the inside.

Curran turned to the small group of shapeshifters that had trailed us. “Leave.”

I blinked and the stairs were deserted. Our escort had vanished at a record speed.

Curran picked me up.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Nobody is going to see you. Your reputation is intact. It’s just you and me.”

I looked at Derek.

“He didn’t see anything,” Curran said, carrying me through the door.

“I saw nothing,” Derek confirmed and bolted the door shut.

I put my arms around Curran’s neck and let him carry me past his gym and bimbo room up another staircase all the way to his rooms.

“Where to?” he asked.

On the left a living room waited with a large gray sectional sofa. Up ahead was the door to the bedroom. On the right was another door.

“Bathroom,” I said.

He carried me through the door on the right. An enormous bathtub took up most of the room.

Hot water. Heaven.

“Do you mind if I take a bath?”

He lowered me to the floor gently. “Can I get you anything?”

I shook my head and began to strip. He waited to make sure I made it into the tub and left.

I sat and ran the water so hot it was near boiling. Even with the water up to my collarbone, the tub still had a foot and a half of space left.

Sometime later Curran walked in, carrying a glass of water with ice. He sat by the bathtub and put his hand on my forehead.

“You have a fever.”

I shook my head. “Brenna bit me.”

Venom’s poison must’ve been very potent. The Lyc-V virus would’ve multiplied in record numbers trying to counteract it, making the shapeshifters go from zero to complete loup. Loups were contagious as hell and I’d got a walloping dose of Lyc-V from Brenna’s saliva.

“It’s nothing major. My body will burn through it in an hour or two.”

Curran nodded.

I probably shouldn’t have said that.

I took the water and sipped. “Why is everything so large?”

“The tub is sized for my beast form.”

I smiled. “Do you take baths as a lion?”

“Sometimes. The wolves found one of their own in the basement of the Wolf House. He attacked them on sight. Did Jennifer tell you that?”

He was trying to help me with my guilt. “She was a bit busy. I’d killed her little sister and she was trying to hold it together.”

I did what I had to do. I had no choice. We both knew it. Even Jennifer knew it. But knowing that didn’t make any of us feel better.

“Do you need to be somewhere?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I scooted over to the side. He stripped his clothes off and slid into the tub with me. I leaned against his chest, with his arm around me, and we sank into the hot water.

“Where is the old lady?” I asked.

“In a loup cage downstairs. Any idea who she is?”

“Nope.”

I closed my eyes. I’d dumped some foaming stuff into the tub from one of the bottles I found sitting on the edge and now it smelled clean and soapy, like Irish Spring. For all I knew, he used this stuff for his mane and I had just exhausted a month’s worth of his shampoo.

Of course, with my luck, we were sitting in a tub full of his flea dip.

Curran’s skin was warm under my cheek. I could sit like that forever.

“It won’t last.” The words escaped before I had a chance to think about it.

“What won’t last?”

“You and me. Us. Even if we win this time, something else will come along and ruin our lives. Eventually I’ll lose a fight or you will, and it will be over.”

He pulled me closer to him. “Something else will come along. When it does, we’ll kill it. Later, something else will show up. We’ll kill it, too, and then we’ll go home.”

I grimaced. “And climb a million stairs trying not to collapse.”

“I don’t do collapsing.”

“Of course not. What was I thinking . . .”

His voice was rock-steady. “We don’t live in a safe world. I can’t give you the white picket fence, and if I did, you’d set it on fire.”

True. “Only if I ran out of kindling.”

“Or needed some hardened wooden shards to drive into someone’s eye.”

I stretched my legs. “You don’t actually burn wood to harden it. You turn it over the fire, so it soaks up the heat but doesn’t char.”

He growled low in his throat. “Thank you for that little nugget of wisdom.”

“You’re welcome.”

His arm stroked my back. “There are only two things that can screw this up for us: you and me.”

“Then we’re doomed for sure.”

I had to tell him about my aunt. I just couldn’t get myself together to do it.

“My father was the best fighter I ever knew,” Curran said. “Even now, I’m not sure I could take him.”

“We have that in common,” I murmured.

“We lived on the edge of the Smoky National Park, in the mountains. I don’t know if it was North Carolina or Tennessee. Just mountains and the four of us. My dad, my mom, my younger sister, and me. My parents didn’t want to deal with any shapeshifter politics. We’re older than most shapeshifters. Different.”

Worry crawled up my spine. The First were there first, Erra said in my head. “What happened?”

“Loups,” Curran said. His voice was devoid of any emotion. “Eight of them. They caught my sister first. She was seven and she liked to climb trees. One day she was late for lunch. I went looking for her. Found her up in a maple about a mile from the house. I thought she fell asleep and called out. She didn’t answer, so I climbed up, right into their trap. They strung a silver wire and it caught my throat, like a noose.”

He leaned back, exposing his neck, and I saw a pale hair-thin line across his throat.

“As I flailed, trying to keep from suffocating, they wrapped me in silver mesh. I remember hanging off the tree, burning up from silver poisoning my skin, and I could finally see Alice. They had eaten her stomach and her eyes and her face, all the soft parts, and leaned what was left on the branch to snare us.”

Oh, God. “How old were you?”

“Twelve. My dad was next. He’d tracked me down by scent and he came into the clearing roaring.”

The loups were stronger and faster than People of the Code. Eight against one, even Curran would have no chance.

“My father killed three,” he said. “I watched the rest tear him apart. I learned then that you can’t survive on your own. You need numbers. After they ate, they went after my mother. The wire on which I hung cut through the branch and I fell. By the time I got free, she’d stopped screaming.”

I shifted closer to him. “And then?”

“I ran. They chased me, but I knew the mountains and they didn’t. I lost them. They set up camp at our house. For about four months I lived on my own in the woods, trying to get stronger, while they tried to catch me. I’d come up the crags to watch their camp, waiting for an opportunity to pick them off one by one. Never got it. They were always together.

“In the fall, Mahon found me. His cousin made money guiding hunting parties into the mountains. The loups found one. Left nobody alive. Mahon took it personally and brought twenty shapeshifters with him, most family, some from other clans who owed him a favor. I watched them comb the woods for four days before I let them see me. Mahon offered me a deal. If he gave me a shot at the loups, I’d come with him out of the woods. I agreed.”

“Did you get your shot?” I asked.

He nodded. “I got one of them. Bit his neck in half. It was my first battle kill.”

Mine was at ten. Voron had paid a street tough half a grand to kill me. I killed him instead and I was sick after, and then he brought out the second guy.

Curran’s eyes looked into the distance. “People think I built the Pack, because I’m the guy who has the welfare of all shapeshifters in mind. They’re wrong. Everything I built, I did so that when I mate and have children, nobody can touch my family.”

“That’s why you stabilized the clans. No infighting.”

He nodded. “That why I built the damn castle. I fight for them, I deal with their petty politics, I make them play nice with the Order and PAD and every other asshole with a badge. I do it all so my children won’t have to see their sister’s half-eaten corpse.”

My heart squeezed itself into a tiny painful ball. “And here I thought you were only pretending to be insane.”

Curran shook his head. “No, I’m the real thing. Paranoid, violent, not happy unless things are my way. Right now I’m back in that damn tree watching loups feed on my father. I promised myself I’d never feel it again, but there it is, right there. I built all this so I can protect you. I need to know that you want it. I need to know if you will stay.”

I sat up straighter. “There are some papers in the pocket of my jeans.”

He reached for the jeans and fished out several torn book pages, folded into a small square. I’d ripped them from a ruined book after Erra trashed my place.

Curran unfolded the pages.

The first showed a tall man in a cloak marching down the road to the city. Tendrils of smoke, made with short ink strokes, stretched from the man outward, like a foul miasma. Before him animals galloped through the fields, cattle, sheep, oxen, horses, dogs, all caught in a terrifying stampede. The caption below it said, Erra the Plaguebringer.

Curran looked at it for a long breath, wet stains spreading through the paper from his fingers, and dropped it on the floor of the bathroom.

Second page. The same cloaked figure walking through the street as people fell before it, their faces disfigured by boils. He discarded it, too.

The same figure with seven others crouching in the fog before him.

The fourth page, Erra again, depicted as a man, laughing, his arms held wide, as a temple burned behind him.

“Erra,” I said. “Drawn as a man, but really a woman. Over six thousand years old. Roland’s older sister.”

Curran was looking at me.

I swallowed. Breaking twenty-five years of conditioning was a lot harder than I thought.

I pointed to the page. “What do you see?”

“An enemy.”

Thank you for making it that much harder, Your Majesty.

I had to say it. He put his cards on the table and he had a right to know what he was getting into. You can’t smelt happiness out of a lie. The world doesn’t work that way.

I unclenched my teeth. “I see my aunt.”

It took him a moment. Understanding flared in his gray eyes. Yep, he got it.

“She won’t stop until she or I are dead,” I said. “There is no place I can hide, and even if there was, I’m not running. You saw what she does. If I don’t fight, she’ll go after everyone I’ve ever known. She’s my family and my responsibility. It’s to the death now.”

My throat was so dry, my tongue turned into a dry leaf in my mouth.

“If I lose, I die. If I win, Roland will want to know who nuked his sister. Either way I’m screwed. There are consequences to being with me. This is one of them. By my presence, I’ll endanger you and your people. I know I said things before about wanting warmth and a family, but the truth is that I’m alone for a reason. Once we’re together, you and everyone you know will become a target.”

I couldn’t read his face. I wished I knew what he was thinking.

“I’ll never sit demurely by your side. I’ll tell you exactly what I think and you won’t always like it. I won’t be your princess all snug and safe in the tower you built. That’s just not me. And even if it was, no army in this world could make me safe. If I choose to have children, they may never be safe. That’s the kind of mate I’d make.”

He said nothing. I was rambling. This was important and I was mangling it all to hell.

My fingers had gone cold. All this hot water and I was freezing. My voice came out flat. “Being without you makes me very unhappy. I don’t have enough willpower to walk away. I’ve tried. So, if you want to break it off, I need you to use whatever it is that made you Beast Lord and leave. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, unless you really mean it. No hard feelings. Climb out of this tub, get Derek to find me a separate room, and I’ll never bring it up again.”

I looked at Curran. He still wore his Beast Lord face: flat and about as expressive as a stone statue. I was a hair from punching him in the jaw just to see some emotion. Any reaction would do at this point.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“No.”

Curran shrugged and pulled me back to him. “You don’t pick the family you’re born into. You pick the one you make. I already chose my mate and glued her ass to the chair to make sure she knew it.”

He didn’t care. The stupid, stupid idiot.

“This gluing thing won’t keep me put,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll chain you to it next time.”

“Is that werelion humor?”

“Something like that.”

I kissed him. He tasted like Curran and it made me absurdly happy. Everything took a step back: Erra, the dead, the guilt, the fear, the pain. I shoved it all aside. If one of us died tomorrow, at least we would have these few hours. We would make the best of them, and no force on earth, not even my bitch of an aunt, would interfere.

I brushed my hand through his blond hair. “You’re a fool, Your Furriness.”

Tiny gold sparks flared in his irises. “You’re in my rooms in my bathtub naked and you’re still mouthing off.”

Did he expect something different? “Hey, I didn’t kick you or punch you in the throat. I consider this progress. And you haven’t choked me again, which is some sort of record for you . . .”

He grabbed me with a growl. “That’s it. You’re in for it.”

“Very scary. I’m shaking in my—”

He locked his mouth on mine and I decided it was a good incentive to shut up.