Page 95 of Mated Exile

Another goes down to my claws.

I leap forward—and stumble as something attacks me from behind. Twisting around, I snap my jaws across a vampire throat, narrowly missing the death blow.

Something is happening to Delilah!Finn's voice is clear in my head, even as I sense his fear and pain at the battle he's losing with Bastian.We have to help her. Some kind of spell—

A sick feeling suddenly rolls through me. My legs buckle, and I feel a cold wave rush through the warm magic that connects all of us. Claws rip down my backside.

Roarke's anguished voice calls out,They're clawing inside her mind. I'm trying to get to her.

In the distance, I see him leap over the vampires standing between him and Delilah. He takes them apart with a brutal swipe of his claws. We both move towards her, attacking with claws and jaws. Kieran shoulders his way through the vamps, surging to my side and giving me aid.

Then the earth trembles, and a crack opens wide. I go down, hitting my chin on the ground. Rolling, I leap back to my feet and find Delilah in the chaos. There—and instead of Finn fighting Bastian beside her, there's a giant hole in the ground.

Almost there.Roarke takes down the last vampire between him and Delilah just as Kieran and I dispatch with two more. One swarms at me from behind, and I kick him off while Kieran leaps up ahead.

We're so close. Each of us close enough to almost taste the flesh of the vamp in our teeth. Nearly close enough to shake him off her and save her.

Which is when I feel the cold streak of dark magic in our connection grow, split it apart, and surge inside my mind.

It's an odd feeling. At first I feel as if I'm spacing out or meditating. My paws hit the ground, but I feel nothing. My lungs inhale, expanding my chest—nothing.

Then I'm standing right in front of the vampire named Demetri. My mind tells my body to tear him apart, but nothing happens. Kieran and Roarke don't do it either. We just... stand there.

The whole pack just stands there. Still and silent. One of the wolves gets taken down completely by a pack of hungry vampires, blood and fur flying. I feel a pang of anger and grief, even as I recognize the wolf as one of deLance's Stone Pack.

"Enough of that nonsense," says the female vamp, Ambrosia. She rises to her feet and wipes blood off her mouth—werewolf blood. "We have her now. Don't we, Demetri?"

"Yes." He slides his hand out of Delilah's stomach. I want to kill him for the blood, for her moan of pain, but my body won't obey me. "Now we'll be able to do what we've always wanted: build ourselves a home."

Grabbing Delilah, he jerks her to her feet. The wound on her stomach is wide-open and nowhere near healed, even with shifter abilities, so the pain on her face is immense. But he doesn't let her slouch or curve around the painful wound. He just points her towards the Mating Circle and pushes her forward.

"We want in there," he says, voice imperious. "The heart of your land. It's time for this place to get new ownership."

Hatred pulses through me, but all my body does is follow Demetri and the vamps. As my body is jerked forward, I test the limits of whatever has bent me to their cruel and indifferent will. While I can't seem to decide which way to walk, or attack them in any way, I can move my eyes and head a little.

Turning towards Kieran, I try to communicate with him as much as possible while in wolf form. He pins his ears back and curls up his lips; he's not happy with this either, but he also has movement. Roarke, who is further away, manages to twitch his tail in our direction.

I can only hope that Finn is still okay, and still alive. I can't sense him at all anymore.

But while my connection to the pack has been cutoffalmostcompletely, there's still someone in there, capable of communicating mind-to-mind. Rummaging around in my consciousness, I reach out, feeling mostly nothingness. No voice answers my questioning,Hello?

It takes me a while to realize that it must be Delilah. If the vampire is using her as some kind of conduit to control all of us, then he has to have kept her connection to the pack open wide. It's the web he's used to snare us all, including the six remaining members of the Stone Pack, who joined us in our fight only to falter. Even John, an alpha in his own right, is unable to fight the control.

Ahead of us, Delilah's physical body is being jerked forward through the woods. I can see the Mating Circle in the distance. It isn't far away, but the vamps don't seem to be in any hurry. Maybe their strange, cruel spell doesn't let them make us run, or maybe they're just showing how careless they can be with us now that they have control.

Between one step and the other, Delilah's foot falters. At first I think she's just succumbing to her wound, and my heart twists with rage and despair. Then her body twists. She looks over her shoulder, and her eyes catch mine.

I can see the fight in them.

A moment later, black, oozing magic twists up her skin. She shudders as the spell grabs hold again and turns her around. If it weren't for the bright, nearly-full moon overhead, I wouldn't even be able to see it. But it's clear that she's trying to get out from under the spell.

If she's fighting, I'm damn well not going to leave her alone in her fight.

So Ipushthrough the connection I feel to her in my head. There's still just emptiness. I can't seem to get anything from her. But at the borders of the nothingness, I sense others, and I crawl around in the darkness until I snag hold of one of them.

Delilah's not just in my head, of course—she's in everyone's head. The other presence I sense turns out to be Kieran. With my physical body, I twitch my ears towards him, and he twitches his back. Then we slog through the oozing, terrible magic, and grab hold to the thin thread of our wolves' psychic connections to each other.

We need to fight this,I tell him.Once that vampire has her in the Mating Circle and is able to pervert her connection to the flame, it's all over. We can't let it come to that.

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