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“I had to get you out here somehow.”
“You asshole,” I cry. To have lost time, to not know how you ended up somewhere or what happened when you were out of it, it’s like he shaved off a piece of me.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re always sorry. What in the fuck are you doing? Who is that?” I plead as the woman steps between us. I struggle against my restraints once more, but nothing happens. I curse myself inside my head. If I hadn’t drank so much—
No, Sean had this all planned. He put something in my drink. It wouldn’t have mattered how much I had. This would still be happening.
“She’s going to fix this,” he says.
“Fix what?”
“This stupid mate bond!”
The force of his voice is so strong that I cower away from him. Sean has never raised his voice to me. He’s never lifted a hand. He was always just indifferent.
“I’m so sick of fucking feeling things for you. I don’t want them. I hate the way my heart is not my own. I hate that my wolf will barely speak to me now. I can’t even shift. This bond fucked me over.”
I blink at him. It could be the effects of the drug he gave me, but I have no idea what he thinks he can do about it. It’s fate. It’s something that just is.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It won’t hurt.” He glares at the woman who’s swishing our hair and his blood together.
She bends down, slicing my thigh, and I cry out. She holds the lip of the glass and collects some of my blood.
“I said don’t hurt her,” he protests, sitting up a little.
“I had to get her blood since you failed to do that part.”
Sean moves his gaze to me, and I swear if he apologizes, I’m going to shift and rip his throat out.
I close my eyes as the woman starts to chant. The wind picks up, whipping my hair in front of my face. There have always been stories about those who can work with magic. I believed them because shifters are also the stuff of legend, so why couldn’t magic users be real?
My skin starts to buzz, and I slow my breathing, searching for the one thing inside me that might be able to help. I hope whatever drugs Sean gave me haven’t made her sleepy, too. Falling deeper within myself, I search for that one area where she always is. I’m practically banging on her door as panic sets in. The woman’s chants grow louder.
I gasp as lightning streaks the sky. Her hands reach toward the clouds, the glass bottle glinting in the moonlight.
“Stop!” I yell. “Don’t!”
“It’s better this way,” Sean says.
“For you, you asshole. Fate put us together. The elders aren’t going to take your word that the bond is gone now. I’ll be Feral anyway.”
“Yeah, but at least I won’t feel bad about it.”
A growl rips through my body, and my fingers curl in on each other. On the heels of my outburst comes another as a dark wolf leaps over me, catching the goddess-like creature in the shoulder and ramming her to the ground.
Sean gets to his feet, hands outstretched. Hope surges through me when I see Nathan’s blue eyes staring back at me. He found me.
“Who the fuck are you?” Sean growls.
Nathan matches his anger and increases it. He pounces, nipping at Sean’s heels. My so-called mate leaps in the air and takes off. Nathan chases him all the way to the edge of the clearing as he runs like the coward he is.
He thought he could magic away our mate bond? He’s delusional. And desperate.
Limbs snap in the distance. Sean’s still telegraphing his retreat through the woods when Nathan runs up to me. He nuzzles my head, and I try to reach out with my bound hands but don’t get very far. A low, menacing growl emanates from his chest as he shifts back into his human form, ending in a crouch next to me. “Are you okay?”
My eyes heat. I nod as the woman behind Nathan gets to her feet. He peers over his shoulder and stalks toward her. She falls back and scrambles away. With his bare feet, Nathan stomps on the glass bottle, cracking it.