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Kane rears back a little, but he doesn’t get off me. Instead, he searches my features. “You can’t, or you don’t want to?”

I open my mouth?—

“It doesn’t matter what my mate meant,” a deep voice answers. “She saidno. Now get the fuck off my fiancée.”

CHAPTER 17

Memnon loomslike a god behind me, his magic pressing at his back like a storm cloud as he glares down at the shifter.

“Fiancée?” Kane echoes, gazing down at me. I can’t see his features well, but from what I can make out, he looks both confused and heartbroken. “Mate?”

I swallow, glancing away.

I didn’t tell him everything about the night I was arrested, nor have I mentioned that Memnon and I are soul mates.

Memnon’s magic wraps around Kane’s body and rips the shifter off me, throwing him against a nearby tree. Kane hits it with a grunt. Before he can move away from the tree trunk, the sorcerer’s power pins him to it.

Memnon strides forward, murder in his eyes. He looks like he’s going to rip the shifter’s spine out through his chest. “If it’s not the lycanthrope who thought to touch what’s mine.”

Memnon, I am not a piece of meat to fight over.

Of course you’re not,he says smoothly down our bond.You are the reason for my existence. But Iwillfight over you.

“Do you remember what I told you when I saw you last?” Memnon says, stepping in close to the bound lycanthrope.

While he speaks, Memnon’s power brushes against me, wrapping around my midsection and slipping beneath my back. I think it’s supposed to be a reassuring caress, but the sensation of his magic against my overstimulated skin has me gasping.

Whoever made that brew should be arrested. This amount of arousal feels criminal.

Memnon continues, “I said that if you ever touched Selene again, I would cut off your dick and feed it to you. And what have I found here? You touching myunwillingfiancée.”

A low growl starts up in the shifter’s throat. “Unwilling?Youwant to talk about unwilling? You stalked Selene and broke into her room. You threatened to hurt me to get her to do your will. And now you’d have me believe she’sengagedto you?” He laughs in Memnon’s face. Kane’s eyes move to mine. “Tell me you willingly agreed tothat.”

I don’t know how Kane so easily sees through this farce of an engagement.

The sorcerer’s magic is gathering; I can see the agitated ends of it lashing around him like whips, and I know he’s about to do something awful.

“Memnon, don’t hurt him,” I gasp out.

My mate doesn’t so much as flinch at the order, but his magic rapidly descends back into his body until the night air is entirely clear of it. Knowing all that violent magic is now bottled up inside the sorcerer unnerves the shit out of me.

When Memnon glances over his shoulder at me, the corner of his mouth curving up, I can tell my order doesn’t matter. He has something else up his sleeve.

“I’m guessing Selene hasn’t told you about our past?” The sorcerer faces Kane again. “Our love stretches back two thousand years. My soul mate and I have endured horrors you cannot imagine to get to this moment. You wish to compete with that, wolf?”

“I think I have a helluva lot more chance than a tool like you,” Kane says.

Memnon steps in close, his form towering over the shifter’s. “Is that right? Because I thought I heard her sayfuck noto your offer—but maybe my ears are just ba?—”

Kane’s fist swings out, hitting Memnon square in the cheek, and the sorcerer’s head snaps to the side.

Aw fuck.

Memnon stays in that position for an extra moment. When he straightens, a little line of blood drips down from the corner of his mouth. The sorcerer smiles, the expression tugging on his scar and making him look malevolent.

“Foolish little pup. Thinking of stealing people’s mates.”

Kane hits him again.