Page 29 of Winter Lost

Unworried by my brother’s stance, Tad grabbed the table and righted it. He didn’t put it back where it had been, though. He hauled it out of the way. Jesse grabbed a broom and dustpan. She was a little more circumspect—staying back from Gary and Honey. But she cleared the mess from the floor. If anyone started a fight, at least they wouldn’t end up rolling in glass.

“I can’t see into this magic without touching him,” Zee said to me. “I can hold him still, with your permission, as he is not in a state to give it.”

If Zee needed permission, it meant he felt that however he needed to hold my brother, it would not be something he’d normally do to an ally. Magic, of some sort, I was sure. Physically restraining Gary, if that was a real option—I gave my brother an assessing look, as I was still unnerved by the ease at which he’d moved Honey—would not have required permission.

“No,” said Honey.

“No,” I agreed with her.

“I can hold him,” Adam offered.

“Wait,” I said.

I considered the interactions I’d had with Gary over the past hour. His vision and hearing were screwed up. I looked at the grip he had on Honey and thought if his sense of touch was really okay, he wouldn’t have had to hold on to her so hard. But he seemed to be getting good information through his nose. That’s how he’d known me, and that’s how he’d known Honey.

If scent was all that we had to communicate with, we’d have to use that. What kinds of things could I figure out from scent?

Werewolves all carry a whiff of pack. It grows to something more easily detected when we’re acting in concert with each other—a hunt, a battle, even a baseball game. I pushed power through the pack bonds, but it wasn’t enough to trigger any kind of scent flare.

Before I asked him, Adam did it for me. He lit up our bonds—and only the ones of the people in our house, so we wouldn’t end up with the whole pack converging here. I’d noticed that he could do a lot of things I had never known were possible. I’d have put it down to me not being a werewolf, but I knew that he surprised some of the older wolves, too. I’d heard Zack, one of the three oldest wolves in our pack, call Adam “the Maestro” because of his command of pack magic.

As the bonds flared to life—Honey’s to Adam, Adam’s to me, Adam’s to Jesse (that last one was a different kind of pack bond, but still a claiming, father to daughter)—I could see Gary feel it and heard his sigh of relief. I stared at him. Gary’s secrets were coming to light today. Because he hadn’t scented our bonds, he’d felt them.

It was wrong. I was taking advantage of him when he was defenseless. I—we had no right to this knowledge. But none of us had any choice, not even Gary.

Only Tad and Zee were outside of the pack bonds.

My brother closed his eyes and inhaled, breathing deeply now that he scented the bonds. He kept his eyes closed and tapped his free hand on Honey’s, then nodded at Adam, at Jesse, and finally at me.

But we needed him to accept Zee’s touch—and Zee wasn’t pack.

I turned to Zee. “I need to give you my scent, so he knows that you”—I almost said “are mine” but thought it might be unacceptable, because the ties between Zee and me were mostly unspoken and worked best that way for us both—“are here at my invitation.”

Zee frowned at me. “How are you going to do that?”

He didn’t sound offended. But I didn’t know exactly how to answer. Lovers smell like each other, but a casual touch wasn’t going to transfer my scent to him. Maybe if I put a shirt I’d worn on him—

“Zee’s hands smell like a mechanic’s,” Adam suggested. “Just like yours do. Might be enough to have Zee run the inside of his wrist along the side of your neck.”

Adam took his own wrist and ran it under the line of my jaw to show what he meant. He sniffed his wrist, then shrugged with a hint of humor.

He always carried my scent.

“I can do that,” Zee agreed. “With your permission, Mercy?”

I tipped my head to allow him access, and his wrist slid across the soft skin of my neck with a slight rasp of warmth that was cooler than Adam’s wrist had been.

Adam raised an inquiring eyebrow, and Zee lifted his wrist in invitation. Adam sniffed.

“Almost,” he said. “Try one more time.”

It took three times—a number that gave Zee obvious satisfaction. The number three had magical significance to the fae.

I stood between Zee and my brother and put my own wrist to Gary’s nose. After a second, I backed away and Zee put his wrist near my brother’s face and held it there.

Gary tipped his head, put his nose closer to Zee, and nodded.

Zee put Gary’s free hand under his own and carried both up to the side of Gary’s neck, just over his pulse point. Gary bent his head and hissed, the muscles of his body tightening, and he broke out in a light sweat. But he didn’t fight.

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