The Thing About Weres

come equipped with a silver flask filled with Fae juice. The unbearable heat in my gut was completely gone.

In its place … this wondrous sense of well-being.

“You lie, Robson Trowbridge,” snarled Bowler-hat. “Her skin does not carry your scent.”

Shut the hell up.

Trowbridge’s arms tensed. “She is part Fae, she has no scent.”

“No friends in the pack, either, it would seem,” the killjoy continued. “One of your kind plunged a knife into her belly, while the others left her to die. A true Alpha would never leave his mate in such mortal danger.”

“Stay out of my business,” rumbled Trowbridge. “Close the fucking portal, right now.”

“Give her to me,” said the Fae. “I will take her to safety.”

At that, I uttered a mewl of distress, and felt perverse comfort when Trowbridge’s grip tightened almost painfully. Could there be anything better? His chest against my cheek. The smell of him—a heaven-sent musk cloud around me?

“You won’t travel an inch in my territory without my permission,” my mate said. “And if you don’t shut those gates right now, I’m going to—”

“Your ‘territory’?” mocked the Fae. “Your wolves have not come out to greet their Alpha. They tremble in the woods.”

“They can wait,” grated Trowbridge.

“For what? For a sweet reconciliation with your mate? You are no longer of this world, Son of Lukynae. Tender words will not change you back to what you once were. The moon is demanding that you transform, and transform you will. Then you shall become the beast and she will know you for the animal that you are. Perhaps she’ll be frightened, sickened by—”

“You better hope I can meet their challenge or have you forgotten what you will lose?” Trowbridge asked.

A pause.

Then the Fae said in a hard voice, “You need to display—”

“I know what I need to do!” Trowbridge snarled.

“Then do it. I have risked much to come here,” the Fae hissed. “I will not have everything lost because you are too stubborn to yield to the moon. A challenge has been issued. You must meet it.”

“When I’m sure she’s healed,” he said, in a low, fierce voice. A prickle of nails as Trowbridge slid his hand across my ribs.

“Don’t,” I whined, curling against his chest. But my mate persisted, tenderly pushing away the leg I’d brought up to protect my belly. “Shh, sweetheart,” he murmured as his fingers examined the place where once a knife had bobbed.

I summoned up the effort to dislodge Grumpy, Dopey, and Sleepy, and failed. Whined a bit instead, high through my nose, as my own paw tried to feebly swat his away.

“That’s it, Hedi,” said Trowbridge. “That’s more like you. Fight me.”

I don’t want to fight you. I want you to hold me and promise me that you’ll never let me go.

“We have no time for this. Give her another mouthful of the sun potion,” said the Fae. “She cannot lie like prey on the ground.”

The silver flask was offered once more, and I accepted, possibly a little too enthusiastically, because the good stuff was jerked away before I could suckle more than a tablespoon of it.

“Open your eyes, Tink,” said my mate.

I did and found myself looking upward into Trowbridge’s face. Don’t worry, I’m fine, I wanted to tell him. Even if you’re not. I knew my emotions were dulled, and blunted—contentment was grudgingly slow to make room for dismay—but I recognized that. He wasn’t fine. Black whiskers crawled up his gaunt cheeks. Beneath his tired eyes, purple shadows darkened the skin.

Goddess, he’s suffering or he has suffered.

Under the cool light offered by the moon, I could see again.

But I didn’t want to. Not like this. Not with the clamor of unwanted emotions and sudden terrifying perceptions overwhelming that blank peacefulness. I searched for that pink comfort I’d felt just seconds before, and felt a petulant peevishness that it was gone. Shamed, my eyes slanted away. Don’t think about those bruises beneath his eyes. I essayed speech and came up with a croak. “Trowbridge?”

Firm lips pressed against my brow. I lifted my hand to draw his head closer to mine—kisses are a very good thing—but my fingers got entangled in the rope curtain of his dreads. The sound of their dry rasp filled me with a strange foreboding.

My hand fell.

“The first taste is lightning in a bottle,” mused the Fae. “She’ll never find that joy again.”

“There will be no other time.” Trowbridge’s breath warmed my ear.

“A wolf believes himself qualified to make choices for a Fae?”

“Not only can a Were make the right choices, but he can command,” retorted Trowbridge. “For the last time, close the portal.”

Good luck with that. I rolled my head to watch.

Bowler-hat shrugged and made a chopping motion. And just like that—with one indolent wave— my magic parted from the tree to which it had been tethered. I thought it would fly back to me—even lifted a weak paw to welcome it home—but it flew over to the fog-shrouded portal; there it floated, an unsecured strand of fairy seaweed, no ocean bed for its roots.

Seriously, never piss off your magic.

The Fae eyed it with something akin to boredom. He tapped two fingers downward in that same annoyingly lazy fashion. And then the whole damned writhing, searching cable of magic exploded. Exactly like last night, when I’d told my magic to go to hell. Myriad bits of green fluorescence glittered above the smoky floor.

Not so fun to feel all discombobulated and directionless, is it, magic-mine?

“Sy’ehella,” the Fae said.

Bells chimed as the Gates to Merenwyn closed.

My magic glittered in the evening, a hive of fairy bees. I opened my mouth, thought to say something, and decided against it. It seemed to me I’d said enough.

However, magic-mine took my open mouth as an invitation.

She dove past my tonsils, slid down my gullet in a choking ball of pressure, and then—thump! She filled that damn near empty magic space inside my gut with some Fae vim and vigor, claiming her spot near the tail of my spine without so much as a murmur of apology.

My inner-bitch wagged her tail in greeting, then hunkered down again.

I could feel them inside me once more.

The Fae alive. My Were beside her, ears pricked forward.

We were whole again.

There was supposed to be a long, tender moment there.

I didn’t get it.

Trowbridge’s embrace—so solid, so welcoming, so right—turned inexplicably stiff.

He hadn’t seen my magic return to me, had he? That wasn’t part of the mate thing, was it? That might have looked a tad ugly.

I tested my mouth and discovered that I could speak, and so I filled in the awkward moment with what seemed to me a reasonable request. “Get me out of here, Trowbridge. Before those wolves come back.”

Uh-huh, in hindsight, I might have chosen my words more carefully.

If he’d felt stiff before that statement, he became rigid after it. Thoughtfully, I wiped a droplet of Trowbridge’s sweat off my cheek—hey, my fingers are working again—and rolled my head toward my One True Thing’s chin.

Aw hell.

Dreads and beards can make any man dangerous looking. Moonlight might amplify that perceived threat. But