The girl went limp in my arms, her broken sobs heart-wrenching, but I didn’t loosen my grip. I didn’t trust the calculation in her eyes. Or the fact that, despite all the noise she was making, her cheeks remained free of tears. Her sniffles were dry, forced, and touching her made my skin crawl.
A quick swipe from my modified pen bound Krista’s wrists behind her back with a sigil, and I checked her twice before pivoting toward Midas. Scarcely breathing, he watched the scene unfold. The blank slate in his crimson eyes had me tasting cold fear in back of my throat.
Five
The last few seconds flashed through Midas’s mind, as brilliant as lightning, and he glued his paws to the asphalt while his brain chewed over how those few seconds had changed his life. Forever.
The seismic shift in his chest, in his perception of the world, happened so fast it gave him whiplash.
“Midas?”
Krista seeks comfort from him, from pack, her fingers digging in his fur.
“Did she get you?”
Hadley tackles her, binds her hands behind her back, sets her aside and away from him.
“Midas.”
Krista sits on the pavement as the wrongness wells in her and sobs as if her world is ending.
And then his shifted on its axis with a groan that reverberated through the marrow in his bones.
The urge to bristle at Krista’s rough treatment had stung the length of his spine, that he recalled clearly.
This is Hadley, he had reminded himself. My mate wouldn’t hurt my people.
His…mate.
Hadley was his mate.
“Midas?” Hadley knelt beside him, her eyes wide and dark. “Did she get you?”
The weight of his revelation made him dizzy, and his stomach lurched until he tasted bile, but at least time had snapped taut again.
“Shift for me.” She cupped his chin. “I can’t see a frakking thing through all this fur.”
Magic spilled out of his pores and splashed onto her hand where she touched him, but she didn’t flinch.
“Where did she pop you?” She reached for the hem of his tee and yanked it over his head without ceremony. “There’s no mark.” She smoothed her trembling hands over his bare torso. “Where is the mark?”
“Hadley.” He captured her wrists and restrained her before she stripped him naked in the alley. “She didn’t inject me.”
“Thank the goddess.” Her eyes slid closed for a long moment. “I thought I didn’t see it in time. I thought I was too late. I thought…”
“I’m okay.” He drew her against him. “Thank you.”
With his realization ringing in his ears, he had let his guard down, and it almost cost him dearly.
“I can’t breathe.” Her nails dug into his shoulder blades. “My chest hurts too much.”
“Sorry.” He relaxed his grip. “Am I holding you too tight?”
“No.” She hauled him back, nestled her face into his chest. “It’s not that.”
“Adrenaline,” he murmured, tightening his arms around her until the shakes quit. “It will pass.”
“Not adrenaline either.” Voice muffled by his chest, she braced as wild laughter punched through her. “Terror.” She tipped back her head. “Unmitigated terror.”
Holding Hadley was no hardship, but they had to figure out what Krista had done, where the other teens had gone. He just couldn’t find it in him to let Hadley go. He might have held her all night, marveling at what he had discovered, if she hadn’t rallied the strength to release him.
“All right.” Her tears left his skin damp. “I’m good now.”
They rose together, neither of them steady, and faced the girl who had folded her legs under her, lotus style.
“Where did I go wrong?” She leaned forward, invested in the answer. “The dry eyes, right? I’ve never been good at crying on demand.”
Hadley’s voice rang clear. “Who are you?”
“I’m Krista.” Rolling her eyes, she channeled her best teenage rebellion voice. “Who else?”
Midas’s gut tensed with the possibilities, and he sank power into the question. “Who are you?”
“I am…embarrassed to have been caught, that’s who.” Her jaw set. “I’ll have to do better next time.”
The girl shimmered, warped, and a muscular black horse sprouted where she had been sitting.
The magical restraints had either broken or had been bound to Krista’s skin. Either way, they were gone.
“A púca,” Midas growled and jerked Hadley aside. “Get back.”
“I thought those were fluffy bunnies.” She punched her hand into the night and withdrew a sword. “That is not a fluffy bunny.”
The mare rose on its hind legs and pawed the air, walking forward to force them back, then broke into a punishing gallop that smashed the addled partygoers under its hooves.
“I have to shift.” He let the magic sting his skin. “It’s the only way to take it down.”
“She’s coven,” Hadley said, the request for permission clear.
Seven hearts. That’s what they owed Natisha. This might be the first.
“We honor the bargain,” Midas bit out, then surrendered himself with a throat-rattling song of mourning for the girl the witchborn fae coven had killed for the use of her body.
The clopping noises gave away the púca’s direction. Hadley would have had no issue tracking it alone.
Anger scorched his tongue, and he snarled his hatred for Krista’s killer with every exhalation. Saliva pooled in his mouth, and he wanted nothing more than to rip out the creature’s heart for what it had done to a child of the pack.
An equine scream reverberated between the buildings where the púca had fled, and Midas shot ahead of Hadley.
“This belong to you?” Bishop stood with his hand fisted in the horse’s flowing mane. “You don’t see too many of these on this side of Faerie, thank the old gods and the new.”
“She’s coven,” Hadley confirmed from behind him. “She was wearing a pack member. A teen girl.”
“That so.” With a pulse of blistering magic, he unraveled the horse, its shape twisting and writhing until it shrank into a snarling man. “You killed a girl for her skin?”
“I’ve killed lots of girls for their skins,” he spat. “What’s one more?”
“Your job was to lure
