Page 21 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)
BISHOP
The woman, Audrey, heaved against Cyrus’s control even as I tried to get him to stop. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her expression filled with the terror and anguish of a panic attack, making my heart break for her. Then a glittering stream of golden magic caressed the back of her head and she passed out, put to sleep by Whil’s spell.
“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded, glaring at Cyrus and giving him one last mental shove with my power, drawing an oomph but doing little else. “You didn’t have to force her to tell us about the incomplete bond and you certainly didn’t have to force her to stay. I could have caught up to her outside, and I could have gotten her to tell us everything without terrorizing her.”
“And I needed to know she wasn’t a threat.” Cyrus snarled back.
“Well, she’s not.” And it had been obvious the moment I’d looked at her, broken and bleeding, in the river. She hadn’t deserved what had happened to her. No one had.
“And you,” I said, shooting my glare at Knox before picking her up and cradling her in my arms. “She just confessed she had an incomplete mating bond as part of what happened to her, which means those men who tried to kill her either murdered her mate before they could finish saying their vows or one of them made her fall in love with him then betrayed her.” And I wasn’t sure which made me angrier. Both were horrible.
I jerked my chin at Cyrus, telling him to get off the couch, so I could set Audrey on it.
I was trying to break the bond, Knox growled, a hint of regret whispering through our bond before he clamped down on it. Get her to refute it with me.
“Without telling her what you were doing?” I asked as Cyrus got out of my way. “She’s just had her heart broken and you told her you didn’t want her.”
I don’t.
“But you didn’t prepare her. All you did was flood her with rejection without warning while the bond is telling her you’re supposed to love her.” I laid her on the couch but didn’t want to let her go and couldn’t pull my attention away from her to keep glaring at my brothers… not that a hard look would change their minds. I was the flighty brother, the one who jumped from idea to idea, the flirt, the one who’d rather make a joke than an enemy and they both saw that as a weakness.
That only proves how weak she is. She didn’t even try to fight back, Knox snarled.
“We don’t know what her story is,” I insisted, more pieces of my heart breaking. “Someone tried to kill her and she just lost her mate.” And got an asshole in his place.
On top of that, her essence was weak. Depending on if her weakness was something she’d been born with or had for a long time — and with Whil’s comment about a curse that might be true — fighting back might have never been an option for her, so it might not be a first instinct for her.
“After that little demonstration of affection ,” I said to Knox, “I have no doubt she’ll be more than willing to try to break the mating bond with you.”
Cyrus turned to Whil. “Did anything she say explain how she bonded with him without either of them saying anything?”
“No, and this bond can’t be broken with just intention,” Whil said, sitting on the edge of the couch and laying a hand on Audrey’s forehead. “As much as I hoped it wasn’t, now that I’ve gotten a better look at it, I know it’s a real mating bond, not something else masquerading as one as I’d hoped. You might not have sealed it yet, but it already runs deep between you.”
I don’t care how strong it is. Find a way to break it. Knox’s lips curled back and he growled at Audrey. She’s not my mate. She never was and never will be. I won’t accept her. Ever.
He stormed from the cottage, a flicker of furious emotions rushing through me before he clamped down on our bond as well.
“So that’s it, then?” I asked. She was going to be stuck with my brother for the rest of her life when she’d thought she was going to spend it with the man she loved.
“Not necessarily,” Whil replied. “It didn’t form in the natural way so there’s still a chance there was something about what happened to her that might be a key to breaking it. But the odds aren’t good.”
“I don’t want to lose him because of some woman,” Cyrus said. “And I don’t want him stuck with someone we can’t trust.”
“She told the truth about what happened to her,” Whil said, brushing a lock of hair away from Audrey’s eyes. “And my intention spell confirmed that she told us everything she knew about how that monster, which I assume was Tzanagoth, was summoned.” She frowned. “Although I’m not entirely sure he was actually summoned.”
“Still,” Cyrus said, a small wave of power rolling off him like it did when he was worried and not paying attention to controlling himself. “She didn’t shift out her injuries. She’s clearly trying to manipulate us.”
Whil sighed and moved her hand from Audrey’s head to over her heart. “She didn’t shift out her injuries because she can’t. That’s the curse.”
Cyrus stared at Whil as if he couldn’t believe what she’d just said then groaned and rubbed his face, suddenly looking exhausted and a little guilty. “Of course she can’t. This just keeps getting better and better. Knox would rather stay in wolf form and now has a mate who doesn’t even have a wolf form. They don’t even have that in common.”
“Can you break the curse?” I sat on the floor beside the couch near Audrey’s head. How much suffering could one woman take? The person she loved was gone, her home was gone, and she couldn’t shift. I couldn’t imagine not having a connection with the wolf half of my soul and not being able to shift.
“There’s a way to unlock it, but the release mechanism is damaged… maybe blocked? I’m not sure.” Whil closed her eyes and raised her chin, a sign that she was using her magical senses to get a better look at the curse. “It’s woven into every cell in her body. Even if I were in Faerie, I wouldn’t have enough power to break it. A master sorcerer might, but I’m not a master sorcerer.”
“And not what we should be worrying about,” Cyrus said, squaring his shoulders and putting on his “alpha of the pack” expression, the same one Mom used to wear when she needed to ignore her emotions for the good of the pack. “We need to break the mating bond without killing either of them and figure out if we’re in danger from Tzanagoth. I’m not willing to bet the safety of the pack thinking that the malicious god is now in Audrey’s realm.”
“I wouldn’t bet that, either,” Whil said. “The portals to the other realms were locked by powerful magic. Two shifters wouldn’t have enough power to break that lock, not even harnessing the magic within a mating bond, which is what sounds like happened.”
“So then what?” Cyrus asked. “The monster was her imagination and she really didn’t come from this other realm?”
“No. The spell could have opened a temporary crack or a rip between the realms. I’m not entirely sure how, but theoretically, with enough power and maybe the right spell, it’s possible. But something as powerful as a god probably wouldn’t have been able to pass through it. What attacked her alpha probably was a temporary manifestation of Tzanagoth.” Whil picked her way through the piles of books to a shelf partially hidden by a flowering vine. “What I don’t know is if summoning that temporary manifestation broke the sleeping spell on him or not.”
“If he’s still in our realm and now awake, wouldn’t we have felt his presence?” I asked. Everything I’d read about the gods said they radiated a powerful essence when conscious and if he was awake, I doubted he’d have stayed within Anakar’s ruins.
“We’ll know more when the hunting party returns,” Cyrus said. His gaze slid to Audrey and the muscles in his jaw flexed, and I could practically hear the wheels in his head turning as he tried to decide what to do with her and if it was worth the time to save our brother when our entire pack could be in danger.
And while I wanted to argue and tell him we couldn’t lose Knox, I also understood that the pack came first. Even before family.
“I won’t know what to look for regarding Tzanagoth until we hear from the hunting party,” Whil said before Cyrus could make the difficult decision to let Knox and Audrey suffer.
“You have until then,” he replied then turned his attention to me. “Take care of her. Everything will be easier if she’s not having a meltdown.”
“You should have thought of that before you made her submit,” I said.
“Don’t start,” he said, sending a wave of power washing over me. “You know I had to get the truth. We can’t be divided on this. Not if we’re going to keep Knox.”
And as much as I hated it, he was right. It didn’t matter what I thought of Audrey. She wasn’t family and she wasn’t at risk of going feral. Although from that panic attack it looked like there might be a chance she’d completely melt down and kill herself, a thought that had my wolf rising to the surface with the need to take over and protect her.
“If it comes down to it and we have to pick one or the other, we pick Knox.” Cyrus’s expression softened. “I don’t like it, but if we lose Knox, I could lose you, too. Your twin bond is almost as strong as a mating bond even though it shouldn’t be, and you were a mess the last time he went feral.”
I hated that those were our choices, but I couldn’t fight Cyrus on this. “Fine.”
“Bring her to dinner.” His gaze dropped to her and his expression softened even more. “We can introduce her to our betas and I can show her that I can be pleasant.”
He left and I turned my attention back to Audrey. She looked at peace, but her cheeks were still damp from her tears and her face was still bruised from her ordeal. She’d already gone through so much. I didn’t want to accept that our choices were her or Knox. There had to be a way to save both of them that didn’t involve forcing them to accept their bond.
The only way we knew how to break a bond was if one half of the bond died but what about transferring it? It was often easier to redirect something than stopping it completely.
“Can a bond be transferred?” I asked.
Whil froze her hand hovering over a book about to take it off the shelf. “What are you thinking?”
“That it might be easier to redirect a spell than break it.”
“And if it’s possible, who would you suggest we redirect the mating bond to?” she asked. “It would need to happen soon. She and Knox aren’t going to be able to resist the compulsion to seal the bond for long. There wouldn’t be a lot of time for her and her new mate to get to know each other.”
Yeah, and while I could ask someone to take the bond, that idea didn’t sit well with me. It made my chest tighten with a confusing mix of emotions. She was Knox’s mate and I could feel their connection. The desire from their bond seeped through our twin bond and while it was only a fraction of what Knox was fighting, it added to my wolf’s desire to protect her, hold her, love her?—
“I already have a connection with Knox. I can feel their bond,” I said. “It would probably be easier to move the mating bond to me.”
Whil looked at me and raised a sculpted eyebrow.
Yeah, I was coming up with another one of my ridiculous ideas.
Except it wasn’t ridiculous. The situation wasn’t Audrey’s fault or Knox’s and neither of them deserved to suffer. Knox didn’t have the social skills — and didn’t want them — to nurture an unexpected relationship, but I did, and from what I’d seen so far, Audrey seemed like a kind, genuine person who’d just gone through the worst day of her life. And my wolf wholeheartedly agreed with that assessment.
If she was willing, we could make it work, if, of course, it was possible to redirect Knox’s half of the mating bond.