“I have a soul mate,” I continue. “One who is legitimately terrible, but he’s…mine.” I laid claim to him in my mind earlier today, but the sentiment rings even truer now that I’ve spoken it out loud. “Long ago, I gave my life for a spell strong enough to be with him again. To be here, in this life, trying to figure it out with him, and I owe it to who I was to—”
I choke, the rest of the words falling away as sharp, burning pain blooms from my side.
“Selene?” Kane says, alarmed.
I grip my ribcage against the sizzling pain, grinding my teeth together to keep from screaming.
“What’s wrong?” the shifter says, reaching for me.
“My side,” I gasp out.
Kane gently pries my hands away and lifts my shirt. The skin beneath is smooth, unblemished. I neither sense nor see any malicious magic, but it hurts like someone has shoved a hot poker into it.
What in the seven hells is going on?
“There’s nothing there,” Kane says.
As he speaks, another wave of pain comes. My back arches, and I fall into the shifter.
“Selene!” Kane wraps his arms around me, a note of panic in his voice. “Tell me what’s wrong.” His voice deepens as his wolf enters it. “Is this a curse?”
Selene! Memnon bellows down our bond. Where are you?
The bond—the bond, of course. The pain isn’t my own; it’s coming from my bond.
Kane’s still talking to me, but I’m no longer listening.
Memnon! I shout. Memnon! What’s happening to him? The pain is unbearable, and I’m only feeling an echo of it.
What’s happening? Memnon demands, echoing my thoughts. Are you all right?
Am I all right? Why would Memnon be asking that if he’s the one hurt?
I suck in a sharp breath when I realize who I’m actually feeling.
“Nero.”
My familiar is being attacked.
CHAPTER 22
I slip down my connection with my panther and into his mind, right as he’s snarling.
He pounces on someone, the action making his side scream. The metallic tang of blood coats my mouth—his mouth—as he sinks his teeth into their neck, then rips out their throat.
Vaguely, I’m aware that my actual knees have buckled and Kane’s fully holding me up. I’m shocked by the violence, but I did recently give Nero permission to maim and kill anyone who tries to hurt him.
Even as his victim collapses beneath him, others close in. There’s one, two, three, four, five—
A curse strikes my flank, interrupting my count of the assailants, and I yowl at the blistering pain.
I snap back into my own head with a sharp inhale.
No, no, no.
I scramble out of Kane’s arms.
“Selene, what’s going on?”
“My familiar is being attacked.”
In one fluid movement, I hop over the wood railing, my magic seamlessly assisting me, and I dash toward the trees.
“Selene!” Kane calls after me. “Fuck.”
I hear the door to the cabin open behind me and Kane shouting to his pack mates, but it’s all background static as far as I’m concerned. Even the explosive pain that’s spreading across my torso isn’t enough to deter me.
Terror is eclipsing everything but my need to save Nero.
SELENE, WHAT IS WRONG? Memnon’s voice booms across our bond.
Nero, I sob. Supernaturals have cornered Nero, and they’re hurting him.
On the other end of the cord that links me to the sorcerer, I sense him go very quiet and very cold.
Where is he?
The Everwoods.
I’m coming. It’s a vow and a threat.
Even that, however, might not be enough.
By then, it might be too late. I might be too late.
Oh Goddess, oh Goddess.
I flood my connection to Nero with as much power as I possibly can. I don’t know that it will do anything for him like it would for me, but it’s the best solution my panic-laced mind can come up with.
“Find my panther,” I command my magic in Sarmatian.
A ribbon of it snakes out of me, weaving through the trees in the same direction my intuition has already been leading me. I run as fast as my legs can carry me, uncaring about my ragged breathing. Even my power is well-honed for once, fluidly catching me when I trip over a fallen branch and helping me right myself before I hit the earth.
Familiars are tied to their supernatural, the magical bond lengthening and strengthening their lives. But they can be killed. It’s been known to happen.
At that petrifying thought, I force more magic down my bond with Nero and force my legs faster, even as my lungs scream and my body feels like it’s incinerating itself from the inside out.
Far away, a chorus of howls fills up the night air. Unlike earlier, there’s no mistaking these sounds. They’re war cries.
I nearly lose my footing. The lycanthropes are coming to my aid. Despite turning Kane down, he summoned them. I sob a little as I run.
A sharp, slashing pain blooms in my stomach, this one much deeper than the others, and I nearly trip over my own feet at the onslaught of it.
I slip into Nero’s head for a split second, but it’s long enough to realize that he’s been mortally injured.
I choke on a scream.
No.
Before he was Nero, he was Ferox. Same soul, different bodies. When I found him in Rome, I made a vow to cherish and protect the panther for the rest of my life.
I intended to keep that promise. I will keep that promise.
Hold on, Nero, I tell him. I’ll be there soon.
My head is too panicked for a fancy spell. All I manage is a simple one—
Make me swift as the wind, I silently command my magic.
I’ve been sprinting, but now my pace picks up, straining my muscles and tendons to the brink of their capacity. I feel the wind at my back and on my face, and it feels as though I could melt into it, as though we are one. I blow past the boundary line marking the shifters’ territory from the witches, following the ribbon of my magic.
I must be getting close.
I peer through Nero’s eyes once more, trying to focus over the debilitating pain and the chill that’s filling my familiar’s body.
There are at least five supernaturals, witches if I had to guess. Two of them look vaguely familiar, but it’s hard to tell. Cat eyes see things differently, and the night cloaks so much. But I sense there are two others who are lying on the ground. The smell of their blood tinges the air.
A couple of the supernaturals are peering beyond Nero, looking for me.
“Any sign of the witch?”
“No, but she’s coming. You can see the line of her magic. She knows her familiar is hurt.”
“Fuck her, I’m hurt.”
As they squabble, I return to my own mind and funnel more power down my bond. They likely hurt my familiar to lure me out.
Wind is whipping through my hair, and tears are slipping out the corners of my eyes, but beneath my grief and fear, violence rises in me, ancient and eager. I can feel the edge of it staining my power as my magic gathers in my palms. Those witches are fucking marked.