The rain was nothing more than a light drizzle Friday morning when Patrick finally escaped the confines of Bellevue.

Dressed in actual clothes rather than a hospital gown, Patrick ignored the disapproving frown of his doctor and signed himself out against medical advice. Nadine hustled him out of Bellevue under a look-away ward and a stealth spell, keeping them hidden from any prying eyes.

“Where are we going?” Patrick asked, zipping up his leather jacket despite the muggy weather. Nadine had reset the durability charm in his jacket, and he liked the comfort that provided right now.

“Your apartment,” Nadine said.

His fingers brushed against the hilt of his dagger as they walked, and all Patrick could think about was Jono. Part of him wanted to ask Nadine to drive to Marek’s home on the Upper East Side so he could come face-to-face with his worst mistake. The rest of him wanted to run, but that was no longer an option.

It never really had been.

Nadine had traded in her rental SUV for a nondescript car taken from the PIA’s motor pool. Patrick got in the front passenger seat and buckled up, staring tiredly out the windshield.

“Here,” Nadine said, handing him the coffee thermos sitting in the cup holder between their seats. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

“You’ve done more than enough, and you know it.” Patrick took the thermos and thumbed it open. The smell of whiskey-tinged coffee reached his nose, and he sighed happily. “Thanks.”

“Figured you could use some liquid courage,” Nadine said as she pulled into the street.

Patrick froze with the thermos against his mouth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Take a wild guess.”

Suddenly the coffee made his stomach churn.

The thing about having friends was that sometimes they wouldn’t let him wallow in his guilt. He should’ve known Nadine wouldn’t indulge his vices without an ulterior motive.

The drive to his apartment didn’t take that long. Patrick wished it could have lasted forever.

“Can I request a ride to the airport instead?” Patrick asked when she finally stopped in front of the apartment building.

“No.” When Nadine looked at him, all he saw was encouragement in her eyes. “He doesn’t blame you.”

Patrick shook his head. “He should.”

Patrick got out and let the door slam shut behind him. Nadine drove off without a backward glance. He ducked his head against the drizzle still coming down and pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket. He’d lost his original set during the fight and these were his second, reissued set. He’d have to return them soon, because no way was he staying in this place permanently.

Patrick made it to the apartment and was unsurprised when the door opened before he could stick his key into the lock. He held on to the key tight enough it left an imprint against his palm as he stared at the man who’d occupied nearly all of his thoughts since waking up after the fight.

Jono stood framed in the doorway, alive and in one piece, even if it was all a lie. Jono’s soul no longer belonged only to him, and Patrick would never forgive himself for doing that. Patrick drank in the sight of him, noticing the dark circles under Jono’s eyes, the beard growth that needed a good shave, and the exhaustion in every line of his body.

“Hi,” Patrick croaked out.

Jono stared at him, wolf-bright eyes drifting up and down his body. “Shouldn’t you be in hospital still?”

“I hate hospitals. I signed myself out.”

Jono huffed out a tired sigh, running a hand through his messy black hair. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “Of course you did.”

Jono pushed the door open and stepped aside. Patrick walked past him, shoulders hunched, waiting for a blow that never came. He followed Jono into the living room and shrugged out of his leather jacket, hanging it off the back of a dining room chair.

“Have you been staying here?” Patrick asked.

“I’ve been staying at Marek’s. I came here this morning because Nadine told me to meet her. Guess I know why now.”

“How is Marek? And Emma? What about her pack?”

“They’re all right. Marek is in a bit of a tiff with Youssef and Estelle. They weren’t pleased about the Tempest pack fighting on summer solstice.” He paused, staring at Patrick with tired eyes. “They’re angrier at me for being at the center of the entire cock-up.”

Patrick was aware that maybe, admittedly, he wasn’t ready for this conversation. But hiding would only push off the inevitable because here, now, this was where he faced his mistakes. To not make amends would be criminal.

Swallowing against the sudden dryness in his mouth, Patrick forced himself to look Jono in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Pat.”

The soulbond they shared now said otherwise, and always would.

Patrick could see how Jono’s soul bled through his aura now, like he had magic when he didn’t. The lack of wounds on his body was nothing compared to what Patrick had done to Jono’s soul without permission.

His whiskey-laced coffee wanted to crawl back up his throat. “This is my fault.”

Jono shook his head and sat down on the couch, picking up his mug of tea from the coffee table. He gestured for Patrick to take a seat beside him. “You have a thing for misplaced guilt, don’t you? All of the bollocks that happened on summer solstice? It wasn’t your fault.”

Patrick sat down, mindful of his left leg. Even with a witch’s brew pushing his healing weeks into the future, his leg was still sore. “You don’t know that.”

“I know that you weren’t the one who hurt me.”

Patrick instinctively reached for him at that admission but froze when Jono flinched, spilling hot tea over the side of his mug. Jono grimaced and set it down on the coffee table, wiping his hands clean on his jeans. Patrick stared at him, stomach twisting.

“Oh,” he said woodenly, thinking back to the day he’d lost while past the veil. “What did Ethan do to you?”

Jono wouldn’t look at him. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Jono—”

“No, mate. That’s not on you.”

Patrick clenched his teeth, his chest tightening. “Except for how it is.”

More than anyone else in the world, Patrick owed Jono a truth he hadn’t given voice to since he was a child. Patrick scrubbed a hand over his face and slowly dropped his shields. Without them, Jono was a shining beacon beside him that Patrick would never be able to walk away from.

“I’m not very good at talking about my problems. Even my therapist doesn’t know what I’m going to tell you. It’d probably help with my therapy if I could tell him, but he can’t know,” Patrick confessed.

Jono’s scrutiny was difficult for Patrick to face, so he didn’t. He looked at the wall, his hands, the floor—anywhere but at Jono. It made it easier to find the words, but they still hurt.

“I was born in Salem, Massachusetts,” Patrick said quietly. “My mom’s side of the family is originally from there. She was a witch, a healer, who belonged to the Salem Coven.”

The Salem Coven was the only group of witches who practiced in that city these days. Everyone in that coven were descendants of those who had survived the Salem Witch Trials. They were one of the oldest covens in the country and the most powerful, a tight-knit group of extended family.

Patrick hadn’t set foot in Salem in twenty-one years.

“My mother was Clara Patterson. She would’ve been the Salem Coven’s high priestess one day. If she had lived.” Patrick picked at a thread on his jeans, dredging up memories he’d buried long ago. “She married Ethan when she was eighteen. She gave birth to my twin sister, Hannah, and me when she was nineteen. Eight years later he murdered her in the basement of our home.”

Patrick swallowed thickly, but kept talking. “Ethan wasn’t around much. He spent most of his time at the SOA head offices in DC than in Salem, or in the field. I think his absence took a toll on my mom. I remember they fought a lot near the end, always over us. But it didn’t matter because my mom was always going to lose against the Dominion Sect.”

“Why?”

“Because Ethan’s family is one of the three that helped found the Dominion Sect. It’s why Ethan believes he deserves to be a god. It’s why he only ever saw his wife and kids as a means to an end.”

Patrick shook his head, trying to shake off the memory of that long-ago night when his world was destroyed. The past he came from was one he’d resigned himself to never fully outrunning.

“I saw your sister,” Jono said quietly. “She was there where they kept me before taking me to Central Park. She wasn’t…right.”

“She’s carried a stolen godhead in her soul for over two decades. There’s nothing left of my twin sister.” The words hurt, but they were true. Patrick scraped a hand through his hair, hunching his shoulders. “I was told when I was a teenager that the Dominion Sect had found Macaria at Harvard. They lured her to Salem for the Halloween festival. Ethan sacrificed us to the spell that was supposed to transfer Macaria’s godhead to him. I don’t know how Persephone found us, but she did. It was still too late to matter.”

“You’re alive.”

Patrick tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling as mirthless laughter escaped his mouth. “Yeah. I’m alive. No thanks to Persephone. She broke me free of the spell and brought me to the Underworld. She left Hannah behind.”

He pressed a hand to his scars, chest suddenly aching. The phantom pains made Patrick dig his fingers into the scar tissue he could feel beneath the T-shirt. He startled badly when Jono pulled his hand away, strong fingers looping around his wrist. Patrick looked at him, his breath coming quicker than was comfortable.

“You didn’t get those scars during your time in the Mage Corps, did you?” Jono asked.

Patrick slowly shook his head. “Ethan had soultakers helping with the spell. One of the demons kept trying to claw out my heart. Both our hearts. The last thing I remember is Hannah screaming for me to help her when Persephone arrived.”

“The immortal saved you.”

Patrick’s mouth twisted in a hateful smile. “She didn’t save me. She enslaved me. Persephone owns my soul debt.”

Jono blinked in surprise. “Oh.”

“I tried to convince Persephone to go back and save Hannah, but I was bleeding out in the Underworld and she asked me if I wanted her to save me. I said yes. I was eight and didn’t know any better, so I said yes. Yes to her healing me. Yes to me owing her my life and soul. To owing her and her kind a debt.”

“Because of what Ethan did to Macaria?”

Patrick nodded tiredly. “The Greek pantheon wants Macaria back. When Ethan is dead and she is returned to them, they’ll let me go. My soul debt will be paid in full.”

It was an impossible task that got harder and harder to complete with every year Patrick put behind him.

“Ethan isn’t a god, even with her under his control.”

“No, he’s not, because the spell went wrong and she got trapped in my sister. Back then, Macaria wasn’t worshipped and was mostly forgotten. She didn’t have the worship recognition most of the other gods did at the time. Ethan was able to bind them together and…” Patrick’s voice trailed off, and he tried to pull free of Jono’s grip. Jono wouldn’t let him, instead sliding their hands together and holding on tight.

“And?” Jono coaxed.

“He’s still searching for a godhead. He went after Ra during the Thirty-Day War.”

“Reports on that war only focused on all the hells.”

“Yeah, well, hell makes a great distraction. People aren’t looking for the creation of a new god when they have literal hell on earth to worry about.” Patrick chewed on his bottom lip and shrugged. “I had a chance during that war to kill him. We were in Cairo, and I had Ethan in my sights and in my magic, but Hannah got in the way.”

Patrick lost himself in that memory, the scene in his mind vivid and surreal, almost like a waking dream. A wounded Ethan on his knees as the spellwork broke apart around them, the dagger in one hand and his rifle in the other, when Hannah came between them. The shock of seeing her alive had robbed Patrick of his focus and the upper hand.

He should have killed her that day. He could have.

He didn’t.

“I thought she’d died in that basement all those years ago. When I saw her, I thought maybe there was something left of her for me to save. I couldn’t kill her to get to Ethan. I begged her to get out of the way, but she wouldn’t move. Looking back, I know there wasn’t anything left of my twin, but it was impossible to understand that at the time.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Jono said.

“Easier said than done,” Patrick replied, trying not to sound so bitter. “Ethan destroyed what was left of the nexus below Cairo through Hannah’s soul before escaping. I took the brunt of that backlash to try to save my team. I’m Ethan’s son by blood, so I could access the spellwork, but it cost me.”

“Were you able to save them?”

“Not all of them, and I lost my ability to tap ley lines and nexuses because of my efforts.”

Patrick looked away, eyes dry, because he’d already had his breakdown over finding his twin sister alive and losing members of the Hellraisers three years ago. He’d done his damnedest to climb into the bottom of a bottle and drown his nightmares after that fight. He’d buried too many people, folded too many flags taken from caskets, watched as the brothers-in-arms he couldn’t save were lowered into the green hills of Arlington.

He still left quarters on their headstones every year around Memorial Day.

“Ethan tied Hannah to him so he could access Macaria’s godhead like a nexus. He siphons off the power in the godhead to his acolytes within the Dominion Sect to keep Hannah alive as its vessel. But he never intended for things to be like this. Ethan wants to be a god. He wants power. He wanted it to be him.”

Jono squeezed his hand. “You are nothing like Ethan.”

“Except for how I am, and I never wanted to be like him, Jono. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

“I bound your soul to mine,” Patrick said, his voice tight, panic making him bite out the words at a quick pace. “I bound you, Jono, and that’s a death sentence in this country. In any country.”

Deep down, part of him reveled in being able to tap a nexus again, even if it was through Jono’s soul. Patrick felt whole again in a way he hadn’t in years.

It just came at the cost of Jono’s freedom and autonomy.

“Look at me, Patrick. Please.”

Patrick shook his head, trying to tug his hand free of Jono’s grip. Jono wouldn’t let him go. Strong fingers curled over his chin, forcing Patrick’s head around. He found himself staring into Jono’s eyes and seeing none of the hate he expected, none of the anger.

“Can you undo it?” Jono asked.

“No,” Patrick answered truthfully. “It wasn’t my magic that bound our souls together.”

“Can someone else?”

Patrick hesitated, thinking of his only friend living on the West Coast. Spencer Bailey was a mage whose magic was technically classified in the family of necromancy, but the government had issued him a pardon to live when he was a child. Spencer was a soulbreaker, but he used his magic to exorcise demons and send the dead to rest; he didn’t raise them. Patrick didn’t know if what tied him and Jono together was something that could be broken, but if anyone had a chance at succeeding, then it would be Spencer.

“Maybe.”

Jono’s thumb skimmed over his cheek in slow strokes. “It can wait.”

“It really can’t. I won’t use you like how Ethan uses Hannah. For fuck’s sake, I just said—”

“I know what you said,” Jono interrupted. “But it’s okay, love.”

Patrick stared at him in disbelief, digging his fingers into the back of Jono’s hand. “How is this okay?”

“Because the Fates gave me to you,” Jono said slowly. “I think that’s why Marek brought me here. For you.”

Patrick swallowed thickly, the motion making his ears pop. “Who do you serve?”

Jono tipped his head to the side, as if he were listening to something Patrick couldn’t hear. “Fenrir guides me. He’d guide my pack if I had one.”

Patrick closed his eyes, taking a steadying breath. Jono was meant to be a weapon, a way for the gods to give back what Patrick had lost over the years. To level the playing field between Patrick’s crippled magic and Ethan’s slowly decaying hold on Macaria’s godhead.

The gods had stolen a life the same way Ethan had, and Patrick wondered if this was a punishment or the only way forward through the lonely dark of this fight.

Knowing the gods, it was probably both.

“My usual answer to what Fate wants is a middle finger or a bullet,” Patrick muttered, opening his eyes again.

Jono’s mouth quirked into a soft smile. “Bit mercurial, are we?”

Patrick lifted his free hand to Jono’s mouth, pressing his fingers over dry, chapped lips. “You like me that way.”

“Yeah, Pat. I do.”

“I hate that nickname.”

Jono smiled against his finger, slow and warm. “No, you don’t.”

Patrick owned so little of himself these days, and names were currency in their own right. But Patrick hadn’t bothered to hide the lie he’d just spoken. “You’re right. I don’t. Not when you’re the one using it.”

Jono tugged his hand aside and closed the distance between them. The first touch of their lips meeting was soft, a gentle exploration that was as easy as breathing. Then Jono tilted his head, slipped his tongue past Patrick’s teeth, and kissed him until it hurt. Patrick let him, drawing him closer, feeling that connection between their souls burning at the edge of his awareness.

“I’ll be your weapon if you’ll be my pack,” Jono whispered against his lips, echoing Patrick’s thoughts.

After everything they’d gone through—everything that had changed between them at the hands of the gods—Patrick could deny Jono nothing. He would fight to his last breath to keep Jono safe from any further machinations the gods might throw their way, no matter how fruitless his efforts might be.

For Jono, he would do anything.

“Okay,” Patrick said, leaning into Jono’s touch, craving it. “We’ll figure this out.”

Jono hauled Patrick onto his lap, mindful of his left leg. He was warm and solid beneath Patrick, his skin unmarked thanks to the werevirus running through his veins.

“Do you think you can do what you did in Central Park with your magic again?” Jono asked.

Patrick ran his fingers through Jono’s hair before cupping the back of his skull. “Yes, but I won’t.”

“You should never hold back in a fight.”

“I’ve lived without that part of me for years already. Hurting you just to tap a ley line isn’t something I’m willing to do.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Jono said, staring at him with those bright eyes of his.

Patrick leaned forward to kiss him. “You’re such a fucking liar and I don’t even need enhanced senses to know that.”

Patrick kissed away Jono’s argument, drowning in the taste of him. Jono’s hands stroked down his back to grab him by the hips and pull him closer. Patrick didn’t know if the desperate need for closeness was driven by their newly bound souls or the exuberant realization that they’d survived the fight. Whatever drove them, it was a far cry better than searching for the bottom in a bottle of alcohol.

Only when his lungs ached with the need to breathe did Patrick tear his mouth from Jono’s, pressing their foreheads together.

“What happens now?” Jono asked into the quiet between them.

Patrick sighed, leaning backward a little and trying to ignore how uncomfortable his jeans were getting. “I’m being transferred to the New York City field office here, so you won’t have to move.”

Jono slid his hands beneath Patrick’s T-shirt, rucking it up a little as he sought out skin. “Bet Youssef and Estelle will be thrilled about that.”

“Do they have immortal patrons?”

Jono shrugged. “Maybe? Don’t really know. I’m not part of their god pack.”

“Great. That’s all we need,” Patrick muttered. “A fucking civil war in the werecreature community.”

Jono nipped at his mouth, stealing another kiss. “When does the transfer happen?”

“Setsuna gave me a month for the move. She even offered me a vacation.”

“So you’re not moving because of me?”

“I didn’t tell Setsuna about you.”

Jono eyed him thoughtfully. “But she knows?”

“About our bond? She suspects, but she made sure no one else would find out,” Patrick said carefully. “If someone discovers what I did to you, I will go to jail, Jono. I will be charged with destroying the essence of your soul, and that’s a capital crime right up there with murder.”

A soul, like a life, was sacred. The law was very clear on that, and as often as Patrick had bent the law to finish a case, he’d never outright broken it like this before.

“I’ve spent the past thirteen years without a pack. No one is taking you away from me,” Jono growled.

“I don’t know anything about how to be pack.”

“Neither do I. We’ll figure it out.”

Patrick looped his arms around Jono’s shoulders, drawing him forward. Jono went willingly, pressing his forehead to Patrick’s chest, right over the scars. He let out a shuddering sigh that made Patrick hold him tighter.

“I can’t sleep,” Jono said in a slow voice. “I’m so tired, but all I see is…”

He trailed off, but Patrick knew what lived in that silence. He knew the way nightmares could steal everything from a person—their sleep, their dreams, their sense of peace. Trying to go through the motions of acting normal after trauma would only make a person crazy over time. If there was anything years of one-on-one and group therapy had shown Patrick, it was that normal was relative, and you lived every day one day at a time.

He shifted, pulling away from Jono just long enough to get them both lying down on the couch. Jono wrapped his arms around Patrick’s torso, their legs tangling together. Patrick settled his chin on the top of Jono’s head, listening to him breathe.

Between them, the soulbond drew ever tighter.

It should have scared him, but if Jono was okay with it, then Patrick would learn to be as well.

What was one more debt, after all?