Page 3 of The Alpha's Warlock
Fury shot through me, fierce and bright enough to halfway counteract the draining effects of the curse for a second. I sat upright, fists balled in the blankets. “Fuck you, Ian. Like you've never been ambushed by a vamp because you were too busy going down on a biker chick in a back alley. Oh right,you have.”
He turned bright red and actually snarled at me, teeth bared. “What the fuck do you know about —”
“Just what Jared told me,” I snarled right back. Not as impressively, since, you know, no giant canines sprouting out of my gums, but I gave it my best.
That shut him up. He froze, every one of his muscles going rigid at once.
Matthew wrapped his hand around Ian's bicep, squeezing hard enough to break the arm of a normal human. “Out, Ian.”
“I'm not leaving you alone with this son-of-a —”
“Now,” Matthew said, low and quiet. It was more effective than shouting would have been. I wasn't a were, and I wasn't Matthew's subordinate, but even I felt the pack leader's power behind that one syllable.
Matthew stared Ian down until he stalked out, muttering. He slammed the door, and then there was silence. It was pretty clear he was standing right outside and not going anywhere. Matthew shrugged, sighed, and crossed the room to drag the chair over to the side of the bed.
Without Ian there to put up a front for, I sagged back against the pillows, my head swimming in circles. Matthew would give me a fair hearing, and he already knew how weak I was. There wasn't much point in trying to hide it.
“All right, Nate,” he said, sitting down and resting his chin in one propped hand. “How about you focus less on pissing Ian off and more on telling me what the fuck is actually going on here.”
“But he's so easy to piss off.”
Matthew gave me a long look I couldn't interpret. “Not usually.”
Right, I believed that. I'd never seen Ian with less than a scowl on his face. “Whatever.”
“Whatever works for me. What happened last night?”
“Can I get a glass of water first?” My throat was already dry as a desert, which didn't seem fair, considering how much rainwater I'd absorbed that morning. “And maybe a bathroom?”
Matthew was actually grinding his teeth together by the time he'd helped me to the en-suite bathroom, waited for me to take a wobbly piss and fill a glass from the tap a few times, and then helped me get back to bed, but finally I was settled again.
I took a deep breath. “I was at the Morning Star last night...”
It wasn't a very inspiring story, since it started — just like Ian thought, damn him — with me getting bent over in a bathroom stall. I glossed over that part as much as I could, and Matthew only rolled his eyes a little, because he was awesome like that. It took a while, what with me having to pause to pant for air, but I managed to get the main points laid out: kidnapped, chained, one shaman and several werewolves gathered in the warehouse, and a ritual that was meant to create a bond between me and one of the weres.
Matthew listened impassively, but when I got to what I'd overheard between the two werewolves, Matthew leaned forward, brow furrowed and attention completely engaged. “Describe them, the ones who were talking. Especially the one you were supposed to be bound to.”
“He was older, maybe fifty? He wasn't the pack leader, though. I've seen Sam Kimball. It wasn't him. I don’t think he was there.”
Matthew waved an impatient hand. “You said it seemed like they were doing a ritual that would create a bond? A mating bond?”
I hesitated. I'd been fudging the truth a little bit, because admitting how long, and how badly, my father had used me wasn't something I liked to do. I was ashamed of how much power he'd had over me, horrified by what he'd done with the magical strength he drained from me. So instead of telling Matthew I'd known what the ritual would probably do because my father had done something like it to me, over and over, for years, I'd said it was like a spell meant to create a mate bond.
But. If Matthew knew something I didn't, the distinction might be important.
“I didn't see all of it,” I hedged. “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it would have created a connection. Maybe even a conduit. Something meant to share the magic of the two parties back and forth, only with one in control and the other subordinate.”
“But is it something you could do if one of the two people involved already had a mate bond?” Matthew pressed. “Because one of Kimball's brothers isn't mated, and neither is one of his seconds. Either of them could fit the description you've given. If a mated werewolf could do this, then that puts Kimball's other brothers and his uncle into play. Kimball wasn't there. That means he either didn't authorize this, or he didn't want to be directly involved. If one of his inner circle is betraying him, or working against his orders? I want to know which one. Especially since the pack's shaman is working with whoever it is.”
“I don't think it would work if he already had a mate bond,” I said, after considering it for a minute. I was being honest about that, at least, which salved my conscience. “The two bonds would conflict. Cancel each other out, or blow up, or something.”
“That's helpful,” Matthew said dryly. “Really. Good to see your magical expertise is so detailed.”
“Bite me,” I muttered, and then quickly added, “Figuratively! Figuratively, Matthew.”
He laughed a little, but he sobered at once. “Let's skip the biting for now and get to the part where you were in the middle of being bonded and ended up crawling through my territory at dawn.”
That wasn't actually hard to explain. I'd been under the influence of the witchbane when the ritual started, but burning through it faster than they would have expected. After all, I was pretty strong. More than pretty strong. What I lacked was control, because I'd been denied most of the training I should have had as an adolescent. Yeah, I could do the basics — warding, minor illusions, transforming simple physical objects — in my sleep, but I couldn't do a lot of the showier magic that powerful warlocks liked to flash around to impress the masses. Everyone underestimated me as a result, to the point where the money I pulled in for my freelance magic jobs barely kept me in a crappy studio apartment and a few pairs of outlet-store jeans.
