Page 74 of The Wolfing Hour

All the humor in him drained away. “She’s alive. He could feel her heartbeat. There’s some kind of barrier between us, something keeping me from feeling her through the pack bonds, but she’s my sister, so our wolves have a bond outside the pack.” He took the stool beside mine. “One we’ve grown in the short time we’ve been in each other’s lives.”

“Do you have a similar one with Floyd?”

“Unfortunately, yes. But, as with Rory, there’s a barrier between us. Probably from Floyd booting me from the pack. I don’t know.”

“He was able to take down Mason and tamper with cameras. We should probably assume he’s using something or someone paranormal.” I put my hand atop his. “I’ll ask Margaux if she has any ideas what sort of magic he might have access to.”

“What about Bronwyn? Will you ask her?”

“No.”

“We may need her help,” he said. “This is going to get ugly.”

“I know.” Desperate for a subject change, I asked, “How did you make Miles’s wolves your zombies?”

“Zombies? Like the brain-eating monsters in the Romero movies?”

“Probably more like those fast ones in28 Days Later. They’re wolf shifters, after all.”

He cleared his throat. Stood. Walked around the breakfast bar and grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge. Set one in front of me and rolled the other between his hands without opening it.

“Honest answer? I don’t know how I do it. It just happens sometimes.”

I picked at the bottle label with my fingernail. “It just happens?”

“Yeah.”

“You chose your lover well,” I said and handed him my beer.

“Why’s that?”

“Let’s face it. I’m probably one of the few people on this earth who can directly relate to you having a power you have no idea how to control.”

He opened my bottle with an absent twist of his hand and handed it back. “I can control the ability most of the time, but when I open myself to the wolf bond, I have to release my hold and, well, things like that tend to happen.”

“Things like that? You’re able to zombify other wolves. That’s no small thing.”

He gave me a half-shrug.

“Isit a small thing? For you, I mean?”

Again with the shrug. “No and yes.”

“Explain.”

“Well, I don’t consider robbing another being of their autonomy for even a few moments something small. It’s serious, and I’m aware of how it could be abused.”

“Okay. That’s the no part answered, but you also said yes.”

“It’s small in effort for me. It’s one of those abilities I don’t have to expend energy to use. The effort is in restraining it.”

“You’re like Ida. Her necromancer power is always on, she just keeps it under control.”

He nodded.

“Ronan, exactly how much of your power are you holding back at any given moment?”

He didn’t shrug again, but I sensed he wanted to. Instead, he brought his gaze to mine and said, “Hard to quantify.”