“Kill your mate.”
The snarl echoed through the staircase. It sent the human hurrying farther away and made Ray’s stomach turn. He stabbed his claws into the wall at his back, let it hold him.
The quick beats of the human’s terrified heart didn’t stop his mouth. “Oh right. That’s not the phrase, is it?”
Penn would hear Ray. She’d be alarmed. But Ray couldn’t make himself be quiet. The human kept talking, pushing the words out into the world.
“Kill your mate, Callalily Parker.”
The human skittered back farther than before. Ray barely noticed, his eyes closed, his head splitting. The plaster tore from the wall behind him, some crumbling in his hands and falling to the floor, the rest sticking to his palms. Ray was bleeding. He’d forgotten.
He shoved a hand against his side. The pain was sharp, good. Weres had a different relationship with pain than humans imagined. They were often rough with each other as children, as adults. Things hurt, but things healed.
Ray didn’t take more than one step forward.
He’d expected those words. He hadn’t ever wanted to hear them.
He stopped to pant, to breathe as Calvin had told him to. “You used… the wrong words… in Guerrero’s.” An animal was speaking, but Ray couldn’t change that.
“They thought it had been fumbled the first time. Suggested a few prompts to figure out what the fuck-up was.” The human trying to make Ray do something profane was closer to the elevator now andafraid. Ray would smell his fear above even the rot of this building if his throat hadn’t been full of bile. “I told them I’d said it exactly as they told it to me.Kill your mate, Callalily Parker.Nice and direct, isn’t it? They said the best magic is. I hold something, I think some things, I say that. Simple.Boom.”
But it still hadn’t worked. Ray had heard those words and fallen to the ground. Been sick. Woken up to no memory of a ma…
Ray put a shaking hand over his face, inhaling plaster dust and blood.
No mate. That’s what he’d done. What the magic had done. Because Ray would have found Cal and he would have done it, exactly as the spell commanded.
But he couldn’t kill a mate he didn’t have.
He had sent Cal’s mother flying, andthatwas nearly too much to bear, and all Lis had done was remind Ray of a childhood memory, ice cream and Sarah, a teenage crush and a bad movie.
Klaatu barada nikto, Ray remembered, the right words, spoken precisely or there would be consequences.
He flinched from the idea of hurting Cal. The barely known Callalily, who was everything. The only choice, Ray had told him, and meant it.
But that wasn’t enough. True love was how spells were broken in fairy tales. This was no fairy tale.
“Did you hear me, Detective?” The human called out. “How about it? Finish it so we can both rest. Go kill your mate, Callalily Parker.”
Ray put his claws into his leg. The growl rose up.
The human would keep saying it and Ray couldn’t fight forever. No one had even expected him to hold off this long and he was sotired.
Ray focused on the wall in front of him. Weres were not like humans. Not in this. Cal thought Ray was strong and would never hurt him. Ray didn’t have that faith. All he had was the knowledge that he had promised to protect Cal from anyone, and magic, or so Benny claimed.
The spell had been created using words. The human had said so. Words had to counter it.
Magic words. Therightwords, no matter how much they hurt.
Things hurt, Ray reminded himself, were enough to remember that. He had promised out loud and he would fulfill that promise the same way.
He closed his eyes and put his head down. Then he said it, quiet, barely more than a whisper.
“I don’t have a mate.”
Speaking things made them more real. Cassandra… someone… had told him that.
Cal would be so angry. He would cry.
