“Drew? What are you doing here?”
Drew woke reluctantly, dragged from the deepest midst of sleep by an incredulous voice and a hand shaking his shoulder. Blinking blearily, he became aware of his situation by degrees: that was Lindsay’s voice in his ear, Lindsay’s hand on him. Drew was in Lindsay’s bed and he was—
—happy?
“Drew!”
He felt an almost physical nudge at his name—was that Lindsay’s will asserting itself?—and his eyes snapped open in surprise, only to screw closed again at the sunshine streaming directly into his face through the window. “Mmmpf,” he managed. “What time is it?”
He was back in his human form.
“Not quite eight,” Lindsay informed him. “More to the point, why are you here?”
Drew struggled up on to his elbows, blinking. He could only have been asleep a handful of hours and he felt very far from rested. He dragged his mind back to the night before, when he’d first brought Lindsay home.
“I thought you wanted me to stay with you,” Drew said, voice raspy with sleep. He watched as Lindsay got out of bed and shouldered into his crimson satin banyan. He looked like a poppy. Gorgeous and vivid and fragile all at once—though a little less fragile this morning, Drew was glad to see. There was a tiny bit of colour in his cheeks and Drew had felt that slight familiar surge of will from him when he woke. A trace of the maker bond.
The wolf’s ability to heal was a powerful thing.
Drew smiled, sitting up properly, but Lindsay did not smile back.
“Whatever my wishes may have been when we first got back,” Lindsay said, frowning, “I distinctly recall that you left and I wasn’t expecting to wake up to you this morning. Yet here you are.”
“I had to return to the ball for a while,” Drew said. “But after, Marguerite and I shifted and ran—it was full moon last night. And my wolf”—he paused briefly—“led me back here.”
He’d hoped that confession might lessen Lindsay’s hostility. But if anything Lindsay appeared even unhappier. His eyes narrowed and he said baldly, “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Drew said defensively, “My wolf and I do not exactly see eye to eye on everything as you well know.”
Lindsay turned away, muttering “Jesus Christ,” in an exasperated tone.
“What?” Drew demanded.
Lindsay threw his hands into the air in plain frustration. “Oh, I don’t know! You’ve spent the last three decades begging me to leave you alone, and the moment I do as you ask, here you are. Coming to my bed two nights in a row. Telling me your wolf brought you. I just—I can’t fathom it!”
Drew flushed and set his jaw, but he said nothing to defend himself. What could he say? Lindsay was right, but he could offer no explanation for his contradictory behaviour. And what he said was true: his wolf had brought him here. Was that his fault?
Lindsay gave a sigh of frustration. “You’ve always insisted you didn’t want the bond. I admit it took me a long time to believe you, Drew, but I believe you now. And I can honestly say since that last time in Venice, I’ve done everything I can to try to break this bond I forced on you.” He paused. “You’re free now, Drew, just like you always wanted.”
Drew stared at him, his chest heavy and aching. He felt angry and lost and as though he was grieving something, all at the same time.
What he didn’t feel was free. Not remotely.
“Can’t you see why I find it difficult to have you coming here like this?” Lindsay went on, exasperation and misery bleeding into his voice. “That it’s hard for me to have you showing concern towards me?”
The realisation that Lindsay didn’t want Drew here was curiously hurtful and he found himself hitting back bitterly.
“Why should it matter if I come?” he bit back. “If you’re right and there’s nothing between us anymore?”
“For Christ’s sake, Drew!” Lindsay cried. “Stop being wilfully blind! There is not and there will never be nothing between us! Perhaps on your side—I accept that. But my feelings are unchanged. They began before I bit you, and I feel them still.” He rubbed his hand against his chest, as though trying to ease a pain there.
Drew’s wolf scrabbled and whined desperately inside him. His heart was heavy and painful in his chest, and a hot, messy ball of grief was lodged in his throat.
“You say I’m free,” he said thickly, “but I felt your will just a few minutes ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“That push I feel from you sometimes. It’s your will exerting itself. When your wolf tries to compel me.”
“Compel you?”—Lindsay stared at Drew in frustrated disbelief—“I have never compelled you! Not once.”
Drew rose from the bed and approached Lindsay, careless of his nakedness.
“Do you think I don’t know how it feels to have you forcing your will on me?” he said, watching Lindsay.
Lindsay gave a bark of incredulous laughter. “I know you don’t! You haven’t the faintest idea, because I’ve never done it.”
Drew frowned. “Yes you have,” he said. “Maybe you didn’t intend to—maybe you didn’t even know it was happening—but I can assure you, I have felt it.”
Lindsay laughed, an ugly scoffing sound. “No, my love. You have not felt what it is to be compelled. If it had happened, we would both know. It is unmistakable.”
“Do it then,” Drew said, squaring his shoulders. “Show me what’s so unmistakable.”
Lindsay’s gaze slid away. “I can’t. I told you, the bond’s almost gone.”
“Try,” Drew challenged. “I think your wolf managed to heal you a little overnight. Like I said, I felt something from you, just a few minutes ago.”
Lindsay shook his head unhappily. “I promised I would never compel you.”
“But I’m asking you to do it,” Drew replied.
He wanted it now. Wanted to feel that familiar, unsettling push. Wanted to know that the troublesome emotions coursing through him had an explanation.
Wanted to believe that when the bond was severed, those emotions would disappear.
“You don’t know what you’re playing with,” Lindsay warned in a low voice.
“Just do it,” Drew insisted. “Show me what it was like when you were compelled by Duncan.”
Lindsay was shaking now, but he gave a sharp nod. “Fine,” he said. Then he took a deep breath and said in an entirely different tone of voice, “Kneel.”
Drew didn’t have time to parse the meaning of the order before he was falling. His knees hit the floor so suddenly and so hard he gasped in surprise and pain. It was as though someone had swept his legs out from under him, his body reacting before his mind had even absorbed the command.
“Now, crawl.” Lindsay added in that same flat, commanding tone. “To me.” Drew wanted to protest the order, but he was too busy grappling with the fact that he was already falling forward, his open hands slapping against the wooden floorboards as he assumed an all-fours position. And then he was shuffling forward, abject and low, without having consciously decided to move.
It was a truly horrible sensation, his body moving without his own mind directing it. He could not, simply could not disobey.
“Lindsay—” he croaked, a note of protest in his voice.
Before he could say anything else, Lindsay gave him another order. “Do not speak. Not another word.”
Immediately, the words he was about to utter seemed to dry up in his throat, and he was mute.
Drew tried to talk, but only a gargle came out of his mouth, an awful, panicked animalistic sound. And still his obedient body inched forward in satisfaction of the order that he crawl to Lindsay.
Moments later, he was at Lindsay’s feet.
“Stop.”
Drew stopped crawling. His heart was crashing in his chest and an awful clamouring fear filled him. This abject slavery was nothing like the subtle press of Lindsay’s true desires making themselves known to him, persuasive and influential. Drew lifted his head to gaze at his tormentor, trying to plead with his eyes for release.
Lindsay stared down at him, his expression bleak. “At this point, Duncan might have done any one of ten thousand things to me,” he said softly. “He may have commanded me to suck his cock. Or he may have given me a knife and ordered me to cut myself for his entertainment, or perhaps stick my hand in the burning embers of the fire for the same reason. He may have fucked me or had one of his men fuck me—or all of them. Or he may have just beaten me or tormented me for a while with thoughts of what he might do next—he always liked to build the anticipation.”
Drew watched him miserably, still on his hands and knees. He felt sick but could not respond. Not with Lindsay’s command to be quiet still between them
“It went on for hour upon hour. Sometimes day upon day,” Lindsay said, almost dreamily. “When he grew bored, he would throw me in the dungeon again to rot, until the next time he wanted to be entertained. Sometimes he left the silver collar on me so I couldn’t shift to heal.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to set my own broken bones in the dark.”
Drew felt physically sick. Not that he hadn’t already known that Lindsay had suffered terribly, but experiencing what compulsion really felt like gave him a new and horribly vivid perspective.
Suddenly Lindsay seemed exhausted. Waving a hand in Drew’s direction, he said faintly, “I release you.”
The sudden absence of that clamouring feeling was an intense relief. Drew felt as though he’d broken the surface of a pool after being underwater. Gasping, he took some stuttering breaths, before climbing slowly to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” Lindsay said then, and he sounded genuinely regretful. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Drew didn’t know what to say. He’d just been given a glimpse into a part of the universe he hadn’t truly understood until this moment, and he wasn’t sure whether to thank Lindsay or curse him.
Even as weak as he was, with the merest trace of the bond’s power in his grasp, Lindsay had been able to compel Drew with a terrifying ease.
Now, finally, Drew knew that Lindsay had been speaking the truth when he said he’d never compelled Drew before. The old familiar sense of a strong will nudging against his own desires was something entirely different, and very much less frightening, than what he’d just experienced.
Perhaps those subtle nudges were something Lindsay had no conscious control over.
Lindsay rubbed his hands wearily over his face, then met Drew’s gaze.
“You should go,” he said. “If I can compel you like that after just two nights without the poultice, I need to dress my arm without delay. I can’t leave the Wolfsbane off any longer. If I am to be able to defy Duncan when he comes, the bond must be destroyed.”
“Lindsay, please don’t—”
“I have to,” Lindsay interrupted harshly. He turned away and crossed to the dressing table, pulling out the chair and sitting down. “I should never have allowed you to persuade me to leave it off in the first place. I was so very close to severing the bond. Once it is done, it will be done for good but these last two nights have set me back. I should probably increase the dose…”
Drew’s wolf was howling inside him, inconsolable. But there was nothing—nothing—he could say to contradict Lindsay. After all, had he not spent the last few decades saying that this was what he wanted?
Lindsay reached for the blue glass bottle that held the Wolfsbane. It was indeed the one Drew had thought it was last night. He didn’t open it, though. Just sat there, holding it.
After a moment he said quietly, without looking at Drew, “It’s probably best if you stay away from now on. I realise it’s difficult to stop your wolf when it gets an idea in its head, but the full moon has passed now and you shouldn’t need to shift again for a while.”
Drew swallowed against the lump in his throat. “If that’s what you want,” he said hoarsely.
“Yes,” Lindsay said bleakly. “That’s what I want.”