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She collapsed around the blade, her body beginning to dissipate immediately. But I wasn’t done yet. I caught her, my hands on her shoulders, lowering her to the ground while I hissed into her ear.
“You owe me a boon.”
“Yes....” Her voice was a breath only. The scent, strangely, had sweetened, losing the rot it had held a moment earlier.
Ignoring the sweetness, I continued. “I want Butch’s true name left here when you return to the Otherworld. You’ll tell no one. Will forget it yourself.”
Marina’s body lightened in my grip with each breath she exhaled. Now, she seemed to weigh as little as Harper had when our mother died. There were mere seconds left to seal this bargain. Still, I kept talking, intent upon leaving no loophole.
“But do this only if you agree that it’s an equal trade for the gift I gave you. I want nothing left between us. Do you understand me?”
Marina nodded. “Ru—” she started.
I slapped my fingers over her mouth, not wanting the other fae to hear her. “Rune Pelletier,” she breathed against my fingers. “I release your true name.”
And then she was truly gone.
With the dissipation came a gust of wind so intense it knocked me forward. Tank’s blade only barely missed me as I was flung against his chest.
His sword and my bed slat clattered to the ground as his arms encircled me, cushioning me as we plummeted. The floor was hard beneath my back now. I could barely see curtains and papers and fae spinning around us, the roar of wind whipping everything toward the node.
Everything other than Tank...and me within his arms.
As we huddled there together, the wind’s roar grew distant. Not softer—air still slashed against every patch of exposed skin. Scarves and fae and feathers fluttered past us.
Instead, it was as if I’d driven up a mountain too quickly for my ears to equalize. The pressure grew unbearable, turning distant sound into a ringing awfulness.
Then, with a pop, the portal closed.
We lay there for a split second, regaining our breath. Me underneath, protected by Tank’s body. My face was tucked into the nook of his shoulder. Then...it wasn’t.
Cold air wedged between us as Tank was ripped upward. One moment he was my rock. The next, he was reeling backwards, something sharp menacing his throat....
Time seemed to freeze, the world coming back into total focus. Half of the final fae were gone, sucked back into the Otherworld along with Marina. But five had grabbed onto chairs and tables and draperies, resisting the pull.
Now, without the wind to contend with, four were retreating. Running for the open door Jasmine and her friends had left through moments earlier.
The fifth had chosen attack over retreat.
I couldn’t tell whether the being was a man or a woman. Maybe it was both, or neither. And that didn’t matter. Because its hands ended in claws as long as a grizzly bear’s. They raked at Tank’s exposed neck, barely missing. It wouldn’t miss a second time.
Rather than fighting back, Tank roared: “Athena! Don’t let them get away!”
As if I’d chase four fae who were currently harming no one and let this bear slay my partner.
The sword was too far away for me to reach. On the ground past the bear being. My bed slat was closer, but still four feet distant. No way I could scoop it up then rise fast enough to push the blade through the fae’s chest.
But my pockets were full of salt. The not-really weapon that had slowed Marina down for one split second. I grabbed a fistful and flung it....
The particles struck Tank as well as the fae. There’d been no time to warn him. He coughed out a curse as salt hit open wounds and uncovered eyes....
The bear being, though, was more hindered. It staggered backwards, clawed hands waving wildly. One struck Tank’s shoulder, sliding through his shirt. Blood blossomed....
But I was ready. I was on my knees, grabbing the bed slat. “Tank!”
He glanced down as the slender piece of metal flew upwards. Grabbed it out of the air as if he’d known it was coming. Thrust the metal through the bear being’s chest.
***
THE BEAR FAE COLLAPSED then disappeared, just like Marina had done. Only without the sucking wind, presumably because the node had already closed.
Which left four fae loose amid over a hundred werewolves. They could slide into the gap Marina had left in the power structure. Could turn the battle above us ten times worse.
Because the fighting hadn’t ended. I could hear it. Swords clanged above us. Screams of rage or pain or both erupted. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could have sworn I could even smell the blood.
Tank and I didn’t have to speak. We grabbed our weapons and we ran.
The floral scent in the fae’s wake was much weaker than Marina’s had been. As if these new fae hadn’t possessed sufficient time to marshal their energy. Which was a good thing...except for the fact it made them nearly impossible to track.
Not that we travelled far along their scent trail. Instead, when we pushed our way out of Rowan’s house, we were greeted by a wolf. She snarled once then shimmered upwards into humanity.
“My brother refuses to end this.” Jasmine sounded furious. From the sounds and smells behind her, I could understand why.
Rowan might have been in Marina’s pocket to some extent. But the instigating fae was gone and the McCallister alpha had turned no less belligerent. The fighting wasn’t over yet.
“Your pack would stop if their alpha told them to.” Tank’s rejoinder was a non-answer...or at least I thought so at first.
Then I saw what he saw. Jasmine, facing him down. Staring directly into his eyes the way Ryder had done. The same Jasmine who’d known how to activate the harem girls, who’d been able to command them. She wasn’t acting like a wilting wallflower, shrieking at the sight of Tank’s grotesqueness. Instead, she resembled just what she was—an alpha werewolf.
The breeze shifted and the reek of blood was replaced by a hint of honeysuckle. The fae weren’t entirely gone yet. It was time to divide and conquer.
“I can handle this,” I promised Tank. And he didn’t argue. Merely nodded and turned toward the honeysuckle. Sniffed once, then broke into a run.
“This is the thanks I get for helping you?” Jasmine demanded when I turned back to face her. “You send away our only support?”
“No, this is the help you get,” I countered. Then, raising my voice, I called to the alphas who had obeyed me in the ride-share van. “Alphas! Gather! It’s time to make a treaty with the true leader of this pack.”
***
IT TURNED OUT THAT the McCallisters were willing to follow a woman if she came with powerful allies. Especially since the battle had been trending against them. Several of his own underlings leapt upon Rowan, taking him down in a pile of werewolves. Soon, every sword was dropped.
There would be growing pains, of course. One of those pains being Rowan himself, who Jasmine was intent upon rehabilitating. Another being the harem girls, who gathered dropped weapons and seemed keen to use them against their own pack mates. The new McCallister alpha had a lot on her plate.
Still, that was a problem for later. For now, pack bonds sizzled through the night as McCallister shifter after McCallister shifter bowed to their former leader’s sister. The connections flared bright for one split second. And in that moment, I learned how a pack leader was born.
The exhilaration faded in the face of Tank’s lack of success though. I sent Ryder and Lupe after him as soon as swords returned to scabbards, but they found only one of the four runners. The other three were gone, scattered to the winds where they could slowly gather their strength and power over the course of the upcoming year.
“I’ll hunt them,” Lupe assured us as a McCallister healer triaged the grievously wounded from both sides of the battle. In my opinion, Butch was among the dangerously injured, his legs barely holding him upright. But he’d waved away Ryder’s efforts to bring him over to the medical station. He wanted to be part of this conversation.
And his experience made that effort worthwhile. “It takes newly arrived fae weeks or months to start causing trouble,” Butch assured us. “We have time to hunt for them.”
“I have time.” Lupe’s correction of Butch’s pronoun struck me in the stomach. Her continuation turned that pain into ice. “You’ve all served well and I’ll commend you to your alphas. Thank you for being a Samhain Shifter. Your job is complete.”
To no one’s surprise, Ryder was the one who reacted. “Oh, hell no,” he growled. “They’re still out there. We’re not finished.”
And as if that was all it took to formalize our connections, light sparked between us just like it had between the McCallisters and Jasmine. Pack bonds kindled. My stomach warmed for one split second then chilled back down as Lupe slapped us with a cold dose of reality.
“If you want to hunt fae, you can’t do this.” She waved her hand at the tendrils of light dancing in the air between us. “Pack bonds are a liability.”
As we’d seen with Rowan. Marina had found a way into his pack and used his harem’s bonds against them. She’d used me as a locational beacon and would have done much worse if I’d had pack bonds to feed off....
I shivered, but none of the glowing tendrils winked out. Not even mine.
“How long will it take for the bonds to regress?” Tank asked. He sounded like the lawyer he was, seeking loopholes.
Lupe shook her head, shrugging uncertainty. “A month? Two months?”
“Then we’ll hunt solo for the rest of the year,” Tank decided. “Keep contact to a minimum. Then reconvene once you consider it safe.”
But his voice trailed off as if he’d just now remembered that my experience with pack was rocky and tortured. He cocked his head at me, clearly prepared to backpedal if I bowed out of the upcoming venture.
And I could, I realized with a jolt. While I still needed to dig up sufficient cash to fund Harper’s schooling, the territory issue was no longer pressing. I had a feeling Jasmine wouldn’t threaten us the way her brother had. After all, I’d helped her become alpha. She was a better person than Rowan on his best day and her worst.
So, no, I had no real reason to stick to this hunt. I had no pack to be endangered by the fae. No personal stake at all in this struggle.
And yet....
When we’d first met, I thought every one of these Samhain Shifters was a threat to me. Now, the bigger threat felt like it came from letting them go.
So I let my wolf speak through me. “I’m in,” we said together. “Let’s find those fae.”