Fucking hell, I would give anything for her to take these teeth and press them to the skin of my neck, biting just so…
“Kieran? Are you listening to me?” Aurora is scowling at me in a way that suggests I missed more than just a little of what she’s been saying. “I want to know what Waylon told you about the curse. I figured it was better that you interview himyesterday, instead of me, since you two know each other and… well…”
“It’s his father who died,” I fill in. “He wasn’t exactly chatty about that part, although from what I gather it was fairly bloody. Monroe did it with an audience. Waylon included.”
“Fuck. That’s grisly.” She frowns, staring down at a notebook laid out in front of her that she’s scribbling notes into. “I need to call Gran later today and see if she has any insight. From what I can tell, this is a basic lovestruck bargain, but… I’ve never heard of one this bloody. Maybe she just left that part out of her cautionary tales.”
My wolf paces back and forth, inhaling her scent, whining at me. He pushes up against my skin, demanding to be let out.
“A lovestruck bargain?” I adjust my weight back and forth, trying force my wolf to heel. “You’re going to have to catch me up on some of this stuff. We didn’t all take Carrie’s fae lore classes.”
“That’s what she called it when someone went to the fae wanting to fix unrequited love.” Aurora leans back in her chair, which makes her nipples press against the T-shirt’s cotton, and I look very intently into her eyes and nowhere else. “From what I’ve been able to gather, Monroe was in love with a female shifter. He thought that the fae would make her fall in love with him, probably by making him alpha. They gave him what he wanted, just not in the way he expected.”
I consider her words, trying to remember everything I learned yesterday. “Waylon said that when Monroe killed Alpha Tylin, it was like he was possessed with a strength they’d never seen before, like he was stronger than the strongest alpha. And it was a bitch to take him out afterwards—Waylon had to have the local coven help him trap Monroe and shoot him full of silver bullets.”
Shuddering, Aurora chews on her full bottom lip. I stare at the wall behind her, since there’s nowhere else left to look. “I’mnot sure the exact words of his bargain. I didn’t get the chance to ask Gage, and he may not even remember, despite being there. But I’m guessing they made him berserk, essentially… and the madness spread from him to others somehow.”
“How would something like that spread?” I ask her, phrasing my words carefully, hyper aware of the territory we’re walking into, given her past. “How would it spread into, say…”
“An entire pack?” Her expression is bitter and sad in a way that makes my wolf whine. “Maybe through the water supply. I’m still figuring that part out, but it’s the best guess I’ve got for now. Fae magic works through consent, although it tends to be weaker the further away it travels from the target.”
“So the madness will go away on its own,” I surmise.
She shrugs. “For the most part, I think so. At least if it’s stopped early. The shifters who were mad, besides Monroe and Gage, seemed to recover.”
“Then we’ll have to keep stopping it before it can spread out of control,” I tell her. “And the sooner we find out how it’s spreading, the better. We can’t afford to lose an entire pack.”
We do more research once we meet up with Waylon and the rest of the pack. The first thing I want to do is follow the fae trail that Farroh and Yvette found, so I suggest to Aurora that we split up.
“You can interview Gage and more of the pack members today to figure out what happened,” I tell her, “and I’ll use my nose to find any fae trails. Plus I’ll let you know if I see those mushroom thingies.”
“Faerie rings,” she corrects me, “and you likely won’t see another, especially now that they’ve made a bargain here andhave a foothold in this realm. But if you find anything near the portal where the fae vanished, let me know.”
Yvette offers up, “We’ll tell you if the fae left their hot pink briefs on the ground—right Kieran?”
I scowl at her, not appreciating the reference to something that happened when I was a teenager, staying with her family. “They weren’t hot pink before you did the laundry and my clothes were all mysteriously treated with dye.”
“C’mon, it was fun.” Yvette elbows me in the side, a grin stretched across her face, dimpling her cheeks. “I’ll never forget the howl of rage you made when you found all your sports jerseys were rooting for Team Barbie.”
It was one of the more annoying things the sisters did when I stayed with their father, and I got in deep shit with my dad after he saw the credit card bill I ran up buying new clothes, but Yvette needs some joy in her life right now. So I give her a smile and say agreeably, “It did make that summer more fun.”
Something churns in my chest, and my attention is drawn to Aurora. Hurt flashes across her face as she looks between me and Yvette, disappearing an instant later. My wolf snarls at what he sees, angry at me for hurting her, even more angry that I continue to deny him his mate.
I open up my mouth to clarify—Yvette was only ever a friend, like a younger sister more than anything—but realize there’s nothing I can say to her.
It’s supposed to be like this, after all. I rejected her for a reason. Several reasons, in fact, none of which have changed.
So I close my mouth and turn away from her, ignoring the stab of pain in my chest from the bond and the frustration my wolf feels at having her so near yet so far away.
Yvette, Farroh and I set off toward the trail they followed of the fae. We stop at the edge of the woods to shift. As I strip myshirt and pants off, then clip my pack across my chest again, I reach for my wolf.
He growls at me and resentfully turns his back.
Farroh and Yvette have already shifted. They yip to me up ahead. Earlier today my wolf was pressing up against my skin, desperate to get out. Now he resists me.
It takes several tries to shift into my wolf form, and he’s unruly today. We’re supposed to be following Yvette and Farroh, two light gray shapes up ahead, but he tries to veer off the path more than once. I pretend like I’ve smelled something, “investigating” the scents, before I join them again.
It’s humiliating. My father would be thrilled if he could see.
