by Lisa Edmonds
I hated myself so much in that moment that I was sure Charles sensed it.
I tried to remember how Sean and I had talked about a mate bond only yesterday. He’d said he thought we might have such a bond someday, but not yet. Though his wolf wanted me as a mate, Sean knew we’d only been dating a few months and neither of us were ready for that level of commitment.
And then there was my grandfather, who had quickly gone from distant danger to imminent threat. It was one thing if I told Sean the truth about Moses and he chose to accept that risk, but putting the cuff on meant Sean had no say in whether he would become a target.
Even knowing that, we were talking about life and death. If I found the other cuff—and that was a mighty big if—I’d have to choose whether to put it on and save Sean’s life, or refuse and watch him die. I knew couldn’t watch him die, but I didn’t think I could put the cuff on.
The debate was academic unless we found the second cuff. Sean’s current condition was much more critical.
I swallowed hard and turned to Charles. “Please call Jack and tell him what we know. When you’re done, I would like to speak to him.”
“I do not believe he will allow you to see the wolf,” he told me gently. “I cannot ask him to grant you access. It is a pack matter and the Court has no authority.”
“I have to get in to see Sean.” I paced, limping from one side of the sitting area to the other. “I have to tell him that I’m trying to find the other cuff. I have to tell him…something important. And if I can get into the cage, touch the cuff, and sense the magic, I might be able to use the trace to locate the second cuff.”
“That magic could have killed you the first time,” he reminded me. “It may kill you outright if you touch it now that the spellwork has degraded further. You cannot risk it.”
“I have to. I have no choice.” I took a shaky breath. “Please call Jack, Charles. Before it’s too late.”
Left hook, right hook. Left hook, right hook. Jab, cross, jab. Left hook, right hook. Left hook again. Bam bam bam. My gloved fists pounded the bag. I reset my feet and started again. Left hook, right hook. Jab, cross, jab.
Malcolm hovered in the hallway outside the spare bedroom, his worry a faint buzz on the edges of my senses. “Alice, you’ve got to stop this. You just got shot twice, for Pete’s sake. Why aren’t you resting?”
“You think I can rest right now?” I delivered three quick punches to the bag and wiped sweat off my face. My arms and shoulders were screaming. “Do you really believe I could go lie down and sleep while Sean is locked in a cage dying and Jack Hastings won’t let me see him?”
“Okay, maybe you can’t sleep, but you sure as hell don’t have to be in here running yourself into the ground. I thought you were past doing this sort of bullshit.”
Left hook, right hook. Jab, cross, jab. “What bullshit am I doing, Malcolm?”
“Damn it, you know exactly what I mean. You’re punishing yourself because you think this is your fault. It’s four o’clock in the morning and you’ve been punching that bag since you got home and healed your arm and side. What would Sean say if he were here?”
I turned on him, my gloves raised. “He’s not here, Malcolm. That’s the point!” I turned and punched the bag three more times, my eyes stinging.
Malcolm floated over next to me. “Alice, stop,” he pleaded.
One second, I was pulling my arm back to deliver another set of punches, and the next I was sitting on the floor, dazed.
Malcolm floated above me, looking furious. “I said stop!” he yelled.
I blinked up at him. My butt hurt from landing on the floor but I had no memory of going down. My chest felt kind of tingly. “Did you just zap me?” I asked in confusion.
He crossed his arms, still angry. “Did you just spend the last forty-five minutes doing the closest thing to beating the crap out of yourself and ignoring me when I told you to stop?”
“What do you want me to do?” I rested my gloved hands in my lap as sweat trickled down my face. “You said I couldn’t go out to Jack’s house and cut my way through the pack to get to Sean.”
“I’m pretty sure Charles told you that too,” he pointed out. “I’m equally sure you know you can’t do that, not if you want any kind of future with Sean. I know your usual solution to a situation like this is to go in with magic blazing, but that’s not going to work this time. You have to go a different route.”
“I wish I knew what route to take. Jack won’t even talk to me, much less let me see Sean, even when Charles said I might be able to trace the second cuff if I could touch the one Sean’s wearing. He just said they’ll find the other cuff and it’s no longer any business of the Court’s, or mine.”
“What good will it do them if they find the other cuff?” Malcolm asked. “You’re Sean’s mate. They’ll have to let you put it on if they find it, right?”
When I frowned at him, he looked surprised, then thoughtful. “Oh.”
“What do you mean, ‘oh’?” I demanded.
“You’re not sure if you want to put it on.” When I started to protest, he shook his head. “No, I get it. You’re not Sean’s mate, not yet. You’ve only been dating a couple of months. But you have to put the cuff on, or Sean dies.” He grimaced. “Crap, Alice, that’s tough.”
“This is all speculative anyway, probably. I don’t see any way we could find the other cuff, especially if Jack won’t let me use the trace.”
“That magic would probably kill you if you touched it anyway. It’s undoubtedly warded against doing exactly what you want to do: use the trace to find the other cuff. Everything about it is designed not to let anyone mess with the spellwork or the cuffs themselves. We’re both lucky we’re not dead from it already.” He made a face. “Well, in my case, deader.”
I suddenly felt every ounce of the exhaustion I’d been trying to ignore. I pulled off my gloves and started unwrapping my hands. Malcolm watched me, floating back and forth.
When my hands were free, I left the gloves and the hand-wraps on the floor and got to my feet. I started toward the door, then paused and turned back. “I’m a bad person, aren’t I?”
He stared at me, nonplussed. “Of course you aren’t. Why would you think that?”
My eyes burned. “Because Sean will die if I don’t find that cuff and put it on, and I’m not sure I can put it on, not even to save his life.”
He floated over to me. “Alice, you are absolutely, positively not a bad person. I may not know anything about what happened to you before you moved here, but I am one hundred percent certain that you are a good person and that you will save Sean’s life, whether that means putting on the cuff or figuring out some other way.”
“There is no other way, apparently,” I said wearily. “Find and put on the other cuff, or Sean dies. The cuff only comes off if Sean dies.”
“Well, so says Kim Dade,” Malcolm pointed out. “Maybe you need to get a second opinion. Is there anyone else you can ask?”
“Maybe.” I told him about Ella Potter, the shifter magic expert from Portland who seemed to know a bit about magic cuffs.
“Send her an e-mail right now, then go to bed,” Malcolm told me. “You can try to catch a little bit of rest until you hear from her. Take something to help you sleep if you have to. You got almost no sleep last night and if you don’t get at least a couple of hours tonight, you’ll be useless if you’ve got to swing into action later.”
I couldn’t argue with that, though I found it highly unlikely I’d be able to fall asleep anytime soon.
I went downstairs and fetched my laptop, then took a shower because I was sweaty and gross. I put on my sheep pajamas—the ones Sean liked, because wolves thought sheep were tasty—and sat on the bed with the computer in my lap. Malcolm had gone downstairs to give me some space.
I found Ella Potter’s e-mail address on the MOP website and wrote a detailed message explaining the situation. I attached a photo of the cuff, explained what another
researcher had uncovered, and asked if she knew anything more that might help us. Though I knew it was a very long shot, I also asked if she had any idea where the second cuff might be or how else it might be traced if I didn’t have access to the magic on the one Sean was wearing.
I read back over my message to make sure it was clear that my inquiry was urgent but didn’t sound like I was begging for help. I decided it was reasonably professional and hit Send.
With that done, I closed the laptop and turned off my lamp. I slid down under the covers and curled into a ball. I couldn’t remember my room ever feeling so empty and silent.
After a few minutes, I rolled over to the other side of the bed, the side closer to the bathroom where Sean usually slept. The forest scent was much stronger on that side of the bed. I buried my nose in the pillow and inhaled.
This morning, in the minutes before we fell asleep together, I’d laid in his arms thinking about the story he’d revealed to me while we were staking out John Doe’s motel room. It was the most painful and personal story a werewolf could tell: how he’d become a shifter. It was proof of his trust in me. He was waiting for me to tell him my story, but in the meantime, he offered me his. He’d put his cards on the table, hoping I might do the same.
For the first time I thought I might be able to tell him my story someday soon. When, I wasn’t sure, but soon, assuming I figured out a way to save him.
With my nose filled with the scent of a forest in spring, I could almost feel his arm around my middle and his nose against the back of my neck. I wrapped my arms around myself and slept.
I dreamed of the wolf.
He lay on his side in a glass cage in the middle of an empty, dark room, his golden eyes full of pain and hurt. Need mate, he said in my head.
I pounded my fists against the glass walls. I’m trying to get to you, I told him.
He summoned up enough strength to bite at the cuff on his front leg, but it held fast. He lay his head back down and showed his teeth. Bad magic.
I know. There’s another cuff that matches that one. If I can find it, I can save you. You’ve got to hang on. Please don’t give up.
A clawed hand grabbed me by the shoulder, spun me around, and slammed me up against the glass wall of the cage. Jack’s face was half-wolf, half-human, with an oversize jaw and huge teeth. His eyes were bright gold with fury. “I told you to stay away,” he snarled in my face. His breath was hot.
The wolf growled and snapped his teeth. Protect mate, not hurt, he commanded.
Jack ignored the wolf and grabbed me by the throat. I pushed my blood magic out through my fingertips and slashed his face, opening four long, bloody gashes.
With a snarl, he flung me down and towered over me, his face twisted with rage. Blood dripped down the front of his shirt. “You are not welcome in our pack,” he growled.
My pack, the wolf snarled. He struggled to his feet and moved stiffly to the glass wall. My mate, my pack.
Jack turned on him with a growl. I slashed at his legs with my blood magic and he came at me, teeth bared. The last thing I felt was the pain as he sank his canines deep into the soft flesh of my throat.
I woke with a short scream, my hands on my throat as I shook uncontrollably. The dream had seemed so real that it took several seconds to process that I was in my own bedroom and not the eerie, empty room with Jack and Sean’s wolf.
Strangely, my shoulder hurt where Jack had grabbed it in the dream, and my neck was sore. I must have been sleeping in an uncomfortable position, I reasoned. There was obviously no way I had actually been interacting with either the wolf or Jack in a dream.
With my blackout curtains closed I couldn’t tell what time it was, but I sensed that it was late morning and my bedside clock confirmed it. The message light was blinking on my phone, indicating I had two voicemails from my office line.
The first message was from Aaron Riddell, inquiring on the status of my search for the cuff. He asked me to give him a call at his office. With everything that had happened, I hadn’t even given any thought to what I would tell him or Esther about the cuff. If I was able to somehow get it off Sean, I had no idea if I would be able to return it to my client, or if the pack would want to keep it in case the second cuff turned up. I wasn’t even going to consider the possibility that it would fall off on its own. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Sean.
When I played the second message, I got a surprise. “Alice, this is Karen Williams from Sean’s pack.” Her voice was tense and angry. “I didn’t have your cell, so I’m trying your office number. Jack ordered us not to contact you, but you deserve to know what’s happening.”
My stomach knotted.
“Sean is…in really bad shape,” she continued, her voice breaking. “He can barely eat or drink and he isn’t moving around very much. I know you’re trying to find the second cuff. Please hurry. I don’t know how much longer he can hang on. We’ve tried to talk Jack into letting you come see him, but he won’t even consider it.”
She took a deep breath. “You need to know what Jack’s trying to do. A year or so ago, he and Delia set Sean up on a date with Lily Anderson, a female shifter from another pack. They dated for a while but Sean wasn’t all that taken with her. She fell in love with him, though, and their alpha has kept in touch with Jack, hoping they might get back together even though Sean has said he’s not interested. Well, Jack is looking for that other cuff too, and if he finds it he’s going to have Lily put it on and make her Sean’s mate.”
For a moment, I couldn’t get a breath. A bubble of rage filled my chest and threatened to burst through my skin. How dare Jack even think about binding Sean to someone for life without his consent, whether or not it would save his life to do so? The thought made me sick to my stomach.
Karen went on. “Jack says that if they’re bound together, whether it was Sean’s choice or not, he’ll have to accept Lily or risk war with her pack. He’s probably right. Sean won’t have any choice. I’m so sorry about this, Alice. I know you care about Sean very much and he cares about you. That’s why I’m calling to warn you. Please, please find that cuff before Jack does. It will break our hearts if he does this to Sean and to you. I know this probably isn’t how you envisioned your relationship would go, but I believe that you’ll find the cuff and save Sean. Just hurry, Alice. Please hurry.” Beep.
I put the phone on the bed and sat with my legs dangling over the side, too stunned to move at first. I’d never even considered that Jack might give the cuff to another woman if he found it. He had to know how angry Sean would be if he was bound to this other woman. I couldn’t imagine Sean not killing him over it.
I remembered Jack’s size and felt a sudden rush of fear. Sean was weakened tremendously by the cuff. What if Sean challenged Jack and lost? In fact, what if Jack was counting on Sean to fight him in a weakened condition so he could kill Sean and become the new alpha?
I rubbed my face. Was Jack that ruthless and disloyal? He just might be. I’d been wondering how he thought he was going to get away with everything he’d done since the cuff got onto Sean’s arm. Maybe he was well aware of how angry Sean would be and he was planning to use that anger to his advantage.
My search for the cuff had just taken on additional urgency. I grabbed my laptop, hoping to find an e-mail reply from Ella Potter, the shifter magic expert.
I opened my e-mail and found three messages in my inbox. One of them was from Ella, sent about twenty minutes ago. My heart in my throat, I opened the message.
Hi, Alice. Thanks so much for contacting me! I’m so sorry to hear about what the cuff is doing to your friend.
First, the bad news: I don’t have any information about where the other cuff might be. I’ve seen cuffs like this before, but not this particular set. I can confirm what your researcher has told you about their purpose and that the cuff’s magic will keep it affixed to the alpha’s arm until either he or his mate dies, in which case both cuffs fall off so they can go to the new alpha
pair. The spellwork is potentially deadly to anyone who attempts to remove the cuff, either physically or by interfering with the magic. It sounds like you know that already from personal experience.
I do have some potentially good news for you, however. Since you can’t touch the magic on the cuff you have, I do know of a spell that might work to help you find the cuff you need. I’ve attached a copy of the spell and the instructions for using it. I’m hoping you have enough of your friend’s shifter magic that it will work. I don’t know if you are a mid or high-level mage, but obviously the more powerful you are, the more likely you’ll be able to get it to work.
Just so you know, I was contacted via e-mail this morning by a shifter named Jack Hastings, who told me essentially the same story you did, except his version wasn’t very complimentary toward you. I told him that as far as I knew his information about the cuff was correct and that I didn’t know where the other cuff might be. I didn’t tell him that you had also contacted me, or about the spell. I didn’t much like the way he spoke about you.
I sincerely hope you can find the other cuff. I will ask around and see if anyone I know has any information that might be helpful, either about the cuff or ways of locating the other one. In the meantime, good luck with the spell and let me know if I can do anything else to help. Peace and best wishes, Ella.
I opened the attached image and studied the spellwork. Most of the runes were new to me, but the basic structure was familiar and based on air magic, as most tracking spells were. The accompanying instructions stated that the probability of the spell working increased based on the power of the mage using it, the amount of shifter magic they could draw upon, and how much—if any—of the trace from the known cuff was available.
I was a high-level air mage, so that would help. Sean and I blended our magic on a regular basis, as Malcolm had recently—and so awkwardly—pointed out, so I had that going for me. I did have the box the cuff had been stored in, and if anything would have some of the cuff’s trace, it would be that box.
