Page 220 of Warlords, Witches & Wolves

Paul gritted his jaw until he thought his teeth might break. ‘Then let me die with her now. I can’t live without her.’

Iris’ eyes flared with anger and determination. ‘That is never going to happen.’ She tore her wrist out of his grip as Abby put a hand on Paul’s chest and one on Ivy’s head at the same time that Iris laid her hand on his head and one over Ivy’s chest. He tried to move, to slap their hands away, but the moment Iris touched him, it was like the world around him thickened.

‘No. No. What are you doing? I don’t want this,’ he managed to say before his jaw locked and he could do nothing more than shout in his mind.

Iris’s stern gaze met Abby’s over the two prone bodies. ‘Now.’

There was a sharp buzz in the air over him and then a terrible sting at the point Ivy’s hand clung to his arm. The stinging turned to a burn, then a flame that raced through him. He cried out in his mind, could hear Ivy screaming in hers.

Iris and Abby—they were somehow inside him, inside Ivy, taking the filaments of broken bond and binding them together with filaments of something silvery and gold and glowing.

The soul-bond. The reason his try at changing fate and breaking the mating bond hadn’t worked. He and Ivy were soul-bonded. A bond that stretched beyond life, beyond death. One that made them mates for all time. It was rare. So rare he’d never considered the possibility it could ever be his.

But if they used the soul-bond to rebuild the mating bond, wouldn’t that tie their souls into this life?

And what happened in this life would be repeated through the soul-bond down through the ages.

Ivy would die over and over because she mated with him.

No. No! He couldn’t let them do it. But he had no ability to stop them as they bound his and Ivy’s souls into the mating bond ofthislife. He had no healing powers, nothing offensive with which to stop them, to shove them away. ‘Goddess, Arianrhod,’ he called in his mind. ‘Please, help me now.’

A gaping void of sound was his answer.

He tried calling out again. Still nothing. Why didn’t she come? She’d always come when he’d called in the past. Now, there was nothing. Arianrhod was gone and he was on his own. Another consequence of his actions?

It didn’t matter. The beat of Ivy’s heart next to his was getting stronger—a song in his heart—but he knew, if he allowed this, one day soon it would stop for good.

He wrapped all the power he still had inside him, knowing what he must do. The pack would find a way to survive without him. They still had Iris. Shecouldbond other witches and warlocks to the pack. She’d find a way to make other covens and their packs agree.

She had to.

Ivy had to survive.

He folded space, sliced an opening into the void, and tore himself away.

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