Rough fur and hard scales brushed his sides as his packmates joined in, but he snarled a warning.
This kill was his, and his alone.
“Wait.” Bishop shoved him aside without fear of his teeth or claws and plunged both his hands into the meaty pulp. A slash from his pocketknife, quick and cold, and he withdrew the heart. “Be right back.”
Midas shook his head to clear the roaring in his ears. He couldn’t have heard Bishop right.
Be right back.
Shadows swallowed him at the edge of the woods, the heart still beating in his hands.
He left her. Without hoping. He just…left. Without trying. Left. Without checking.
Midas eased back from the carcass, his sense of self returning, and allowed his packmates to feast.
“I don’t understand.” Smythe clutched a giant roach wing to his chest like a shield. “What happened?”
The temptation to rip out his throat for caring more about a bunch of mutant pests than Midas’s mate itched in his teeth, but he kept his jaw clenched against the urge to revisit his arena days as more than distant memories.
Time stretched, elastic where it bound Midas as he sat on his haunches and gazed at nothing.
“Give it a minute,” Bishop was saying to Ares. “It’s too hot out there for us to—”
Midas had no memory of how his jaws got wrapped around Bishop’s soft throat or how Bishop ended up on the ground with Midas standing over him. He tasted fae blood where his teeth punctured Bishop’s skin. Powerful blood. And it didn’t make a difference that he was outclassed magically. He could end this with one snap.
“Kill me,” Bishop rasped, “and she’ll never forgive you.”
He didn’t fight. He just laid there. He didn’t even have the decency to smell afraid.
“Hadley’s dead,” Ares snarled. “You killed her.”
“She’s not dead.” Bishop rolled his eyes. “Most likely.” He shrugged. “Odds are good she’s okay.”
The memory of finding her inside the safety of a circle in her apartment after the bomb went off shot to the forefront of Midas’s mind, and he spat out Bishop. Stumbling clear of him, he shifted onto two legs and ran for the pit.
“Hadley,” he screamed over the edge. “Hadley.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, drawn by the smoke or the explosion, he didn’t care. All that mattered was how hard it made it for him to hear if she called back.
“Use this.” Remy hit him in the side of the head with a thick rope. “It’s the best I could do.”
A burn kit smacked the dirt at her boots, a gallon jug of aloe with it.
“Wait.” Bishop shot to his feet. “Wait a godsdamned minute.” He raced to them. “The circle she’s in is the only thing keeping her from being parboiled.” He snatched the rope. “You’ve got to let it cool down in there, or you’re going to kill her.”
Midas forced himself to sit, to breathe, to gather his thoughts. “All right.”
“Who called the fire department?” Bishop rubbed his face. “This is going to be a headache to explain.”
“I did.” Remy plopped down several feet from Midas, her shoulders stiff. “I went for help as soon as that idiot bird started vomiting fire.”
For her to have monitored the situation, called for help, fetched the dirty rope from somewhere nearby, and purchased medical supplies, she must have sent her other selves scurrying all over the city.
Fae like her were a rarity in this world. For her to come out to Hadley was one thing. The show of trust in also sharing her talent with Hadley’s friends, he wouldn’t have expected from someone so guarded. But then, he had been guarded too. Before Hadley. She knocked down his walls with laughter and refused to take no for an answer. He had been a fool to walk away from her, even for a second, even for her own good.
Midas would never be the same person he was before Faerie broke him, but he could piece himself back together. For her. For Mom. For Lethe. For the pack. And, he was surprised to admit, for himself.
The days of living apart, of suffering alone, were over. He was ready to rejoin the world, and he couldn’t think of a better guide than the woman he had to believe was biding her time in the crater at his feet.
“I should have been faster.” Remy threw pebbles across the gap. “I saw that damn bird, and I panicked.”
Midas put in the effort since she had too. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Bishop says they’re anti-magic flamethrowers, that you can’t protect yourself from them through magical means.”
And the coven had unleashed the creature on Hadley.
“The roach wing put out the flames,” he murmured. “How can that be?”
“I, uh, have a theory.” Smythe joined them, but he made no bones about for whom he grieved. “The client who hired me to create the hybrids requested they be immune to a certain type of magic, one I had never encountered until then.” He gazed down with sorrowful eyes. “It’s not an uncommon request.” He wiped his eyes. “Clients often request built-in controls.”
This debacle had proven the coven had commissioned the creatures and then stolen them to put the finishing touches on themselves. A theft, of both Smythe’s notes and the creatures themselves, meant he would have had to refund their initial investment. The coven had gotten what they wanted at no cost, except to the citizens of Atlanta.
“You’re saying the roach wing worked because the coven requested immunity from the creatures, and it went both ways.”
“Yes.” He gestured with his hand. “There are, however, no such protections against mundane elements.”
The distraction was good while it lasted, but Midas couldn’t keep his focus from wandering back to Hadley. The pack was a solid wall of comfort at his back as they sat or paced, on four legs and two, waiting for her to emerge.
He hadn’t been sure if they would accept her, and then he hadn’t cared. She was his. Either they allowed her to
