I didn’t need to see his eyes to know that Adam wasn’t home. Adrenaline is the enemy of control for a werewolf, and Adam had had to build up adrenaline to fight the tranquilizer, even with the pack’s help. He’d changed without a moment to spare for gathering his thoughts, centering himself. If he had changed to his wolf, I would have been surprised if Adam had managed to hang on to control under the circumstances. But that would have been okay. I was the mate of Adam and his wolf; neither of them would ever hurt me.
I did not think I shared that link with the monster.
I shifted to coyote and lost the wrist and ankle cuffs, but my neck was pretty much the same size in either form. I shifted back and found that the monster was staring at me. The sound of the cuffs hitting the floor must have attracted his attention.
He inhaled, nostrils flaring. I didn’t know if he could smell my blood over the scent of gasoline. I met his eyes briefly—silver and bright like the moon—then quickly looked away and down.
He didn’t make any sound, but I felt him come over to me. His nose touched the top of my head and trailed to my neck. I raised my chin and tilted my head, giving him free access to the pulse that beat wildly there. I was breathing in shallow, openmouthed pants because I was so scared.
I could smell Adam on him—but I could not smell the wolf. Just a sour musk that smelled like rage and hatred and witchcraft. It had grown stronger since I’d last met it. I had made a mistake in not calling Bran sooner.
Something warm and wet hit the top of my shoulder. Drool.
He bit my neck. If I hadn’t been wearing that collar, I’d have been dead. I think there must have been silver in it because he yipped and then roared at me. I kept my eyes closed because I didn’t want my last sight to be this creature, born of witchcraft and self-hatred. But he retreated back to his meal.
He was so precise in his movements, the chair hadn’t even skidded on the floor. He’d bent the collar and it restricted my breathing now. The arm that had been shot wouldn’t obey me. But I raised my free arm and felt around the collar. I found the latch—and the lock.
With two good hands and a lockpick I could have opened that thing up in a few seconds. If wishes were horses …
I could feel the stirring in the pack bonds—the rise of alarm. They would come here soon, and they would be able to take this monster down—if they worked together. If they didn’t hesitate because it was Adam. But some people would die.
And I would be dead before they got here, because though he was eating again, his face was toward me, his eyes focusing on my exposed abdomen.
Blow up the bond, Bran had told me. And then refused to explain what he meant. And he’d given me that advice without a full explanation of the extent of the problem.
It wasn’t like I had a lot of options.
I closed my eyes again, because I couldn’t do this with the monster staring at me. Then I put myself in the place where I could see the bonds.
The pack bonds exploded into sound, as if I’d stepped into a firehouse in the middle of an all-hands three-alarm fire. I told them, “Not now—hush.” And the otherness quieted.
I stood ankle-deep in a creek so cold it made my feet ache; the bond I shared with Stefan was still wrapped around one ankle and I felt his attention on me even though it was daylight and he should be dead for the day. I could have called him to me, I thought. Stefan would not hesitate when faced with the monster my mate had become.
“No,” I told him. “Not now.”
The bond around my waist was grotesque and repulsive, the red skin cracked open in places and oozing green slime.
I opened my mouth and pulled out a diamond the size of a baseball. It had been faceted into a princess cut and was clear and flawless—and cold.
I pressed my lips against it to warm it. And I told it the same thing I had told the wolf when I fed him the amethyst.
“I love you,” I said.
This was a place where words were powerful things, and feelings even more so. What I imbued that diamond with was more than the words I spoke—it was the huge ball of emotion that those words invoked in me: all the memories, the laughter, the joy.
When I took my mouth away and looked at the gemstone again, it glowed with every color I could imagine. I cupped it in both of my hands and told it sternly, “I am going to feed you into my mating bond—and you are going to blow it wide open for me.”
The pearl had been a soft thing; the diamond was a more suitable weapon. I used the pointed end—which was sharper than any reputable gem cutter would have left—to widen one of the damaged places in the mating bond. When I had a hole big enough, I shoved the gemstone inside. The slick green slime acted as lubricant, making my job easier. When the gemstone was entirely covered, I rubbed the poor bond apologetically as the green slime hardened, sealing the wound.
“Not your fault,” I told it. “We’ll fix this.”
I waited for a long time, watching the bump that was the gemstone slide toward Adam’s side of our bond. When it felt like the right time, I said, “Now.”
And the world went white.
I EXPECTED TO WAKE UP BACK IN THE GARAGE, BUT that’s not what happened.
I woke up lying on a stone table in a small … What was the proper term for a building that had a floor and ceiling but no walls, just archways that held up the roof? It had the form of a temple—though there was no sense of worship here.
The floor and archways—and the stone table I occupied—were hewn from a tawny sandstone the color of a lion’s pelt. The whole building sparkled a little in the afternoon sun.
I sat up. I was wearing something that looked very much like the toga I may or may not have worn to a toga party in my dorm when I was a freshman in college. It was the same color as the sandstone right down to the sparkle.
I found that my hands and arms were bedecked with jewels. And there were gemstones on the sandals I wore, too. I stood up and walked over to the edge of the building, and a beautifully carved waist-high barrier appeared in front of me—as if it had always been there and I just hadn’t noticed it.
The air was sweet-smelling and the temperature perfect. In the corner of the room on a small table was food and drink. Music began to play, something catchy from the big band era that Adam was still secretly fond of.
“This is ridiculous, Adam,” I said.
Because I was in Adam’s otherness—on the far side of our bond. I had no real way to be sure of it—I hadn’t thought that anyone else even had this weird place they could go to. But my instincts had never steered me wrong, and in the otherness, instincts were strong enough to feel like a guide through the weirdness. I was in Adam’s space and, even here, he was trying to protect me.
Below the hill I was on, I could hear mortar fire. I’d never been on a battlefield—not an official battlefield—but I’d seen the movies. I knew what mortar fire sounded like.
I kicked off the shoes, hitched a hip on the barricade, and landed on the hill beyond. The big band music accompanied me as I walked for about a mile on a path that kept trying to take me back up to the top of the hill.
Finally, I stood still, put my hands on my hips, and said, “Adam, that’s enough.”
Then I stepped off the path and began wading through the dense foliage. About four paces into the woods, the music quieted and a path formed under my bare feet. This path took me down into a valley filled with dead bodies.