How the heck did you activate it? Add batteries? Pull out the plastic tab? Dial an 800 number?
“You’re telling me we have a wonky bond?”
Finding a soul mate was like hitting the lottery when you were a warg. Gwyllgi hybrids like Midas, with their half-warg and half-gwyllgi lineage, didn’t often experience the same bone-deep connection to their partner. They had too much fae in them, and fae were much, um, freer in their affections.
“I haven’t brought it up,” he admitted, “because we have so much else on our plates right now.”
Aside from the real danger we might pose to one another if we didn’t hash out how much influence we each wielded over the other, I couldn’t blame him for shelving it for later. Until this extra stress hit, it could have waited. Now, not so much. We needed to talk it out at the very least to make sure it wasn’t another type of bomb about to explode.
“Do you think it’s okay?” I placed a hand over my heart. “Will it break?”
“I don’t think so.” A deep groove bisected his forehead. “We’ll figure it out.”
“It doesn’t bother you?” I rubbed my chest. “That we’re in mating limbo?”
Midas stopped in his tracks and used our joined hands to haul me against his hard chest.
“I’m not in limbo.” He lowered his head, his warm breath skating across my mouth before his lips touched mine. “I’m right here, with you, where I’ll always be.”
“I didn’t mean to derail us.” I tightened my grip on him. “It just hit me, when you mentioned how we can each probably exert control over the other.”
We hadn’t tested his theory on my end, but it was on the to-do list now, and I had a hunch about the outcome.
“I’m happy to answer any questions you have to the best of my ability.” He kissed me again, quick and soft. “I want you to know that I don’t need the bond to tell me you’re—”
“—my own person?”
“Mine.” He smiled against my lips when he stole another kiss. “All mine.”
Spluttering laughter, I let him get away with it. “Am I going to wake up with a tattoo branding me one day?”
Heat flashed in his eyes, and he slid his gaze down my body. “How many do you have, anyway?”
“It’s a surprise.”
The fact we could laugh together and tease one another meant the world to me on a good day. That we could talk about our future, uncertain as it might be, without missing a beat… Yeah. It meant everything.
Our reprieve lasted long enough for me to remember how to breathe again, but then we were at Choco-Loco, and Ambrose was zooming off to explore. His recon didn’t take long. Within a minute, he skidded to a stop before us and reported by spreading his hands wide.
“Here.” I handed Midas three more truffles. “Toss them in, wrapper and all. He doesn’t care either way.”
Shadow morphing into the outline of an eager dog, it thumped its silent tail and lolled its tongue.
“He can assume any form?” Midas flung them one at a time. “Anyone’s form?”
“He can mimic any shadow he’s encountered from what I can tell, but he can only manifest one face.”
Midas dusted his hands then flashed his empty palms, like Ambrose really was a dog who required proof he was out of treats. “Linus’s, right?”
“More or less, yes. He took artistic license, but from a distance, we could pass for him.”
Mouth tight, he watched the shadow reshape to match my outline. “Can he manifest now?”
“This is it.” I caught the flicker of annoyance through my bond with Ambrose. “Unless I lose control.”
“You’re so much stronger than I ever knew.” Midas fisted his hand in my hair. “I had no idea.”
“I don’t deserve all the credit. Those tattoos you’re so interested in counting? Linus designed them. They help me control and contain Ambrose. Day to day, they do the heavy lifting.” And they looked good doing it. Linus truly was an artist. “They give me space to think and act beyond obsessing over whether a snap in my temper is me having a bad day or Ambrose nudging me toward a bad decision.”
While absorbing that, Midas turned his gaze skyward, toward the lightening horizon. “We have time to hit the last site if you want.”
“Yeah.” I had to go if there was even a slight chance of discovering another clue. “Might as well.”
I was dragging by the time we arrived. The ring in my pocket must have weighed a thousand pounds.
“Ambrose.” I tossed him three more treats as I stood where the bar used to be. “Do your thing.”
Straining my eyes for the telltale gleam of another clue, I was reminded of the glint that saved my life.
“The night the bar was bombed, I was standing outside on my phone when I saw this glint. I was going to check it out when the place exploded.”
Ambrose was fast, but one day he wouldn’t be fast enough. That was simple math and plain truth.
“Bishop reviewed the footage from that night. He said it resembled a flashbang. The kind the pack uses.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I should have told you sooner, but there was Claudia and then the challenge and then…”
The news about Boaz and Addie had been my true breaking point.
“We’re all under a lot of stress.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Things are going to slip through the cracks.” He reached for his phone. “Every enforcer is required to sign out their gear at the start of a shift and must account for it before they go home.”
“Our mole won’t be that careless.”
They would steal a replacement from another enforcer or from the supply room to stay under the radar.
“It won’t hurt to check.”
“Every clue leads us that much closer,” I agreed. “That extra bit of distance probably saved my life.”
“You think they lured you away.” He searched my face. “You think someone was protecting you.”
I think I was desperate
