Mate Bond

Bowman’s chest felt as though someone crushed it. “My son? You saw him?”

“I did. I—”

“Where?” Bowman leaned to her. Dimly he realized Cristian was trying to hold him back from her, a fact that might surprise him at any other time. “Where are they?”

“The man called Turner has them.” The Fae woman sounded sad. “He took them, I know not where.”

“How did you get the sword?” Pierce asked. He reached for it, and Cristian relinquished it to him.

“I found it. Or it called to me. The runes—”

Bowman straightened, and Cristian stepped in front of the woman as though protecting her. “Her name is Brigid. She is of a Fae clan called the Hunting Warriors, translated from her language.”

“I don’t care if it’s called the Dancing Clowns,” Bowman growled. “Why were you able to find the sword, and why were you able to get here, when Kenzie couldn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Brigid said. “I started to explain that the runes called to me.” She gestured to the sword, her hands tied with a thin piece of clean leather—Bowman didn’t want to know why Cristian had been carrying tethers around with him.

The sword in Pierce’s hands was quiet now, simply the Sword of the Guardian as it always was.

“She might be telling the truth,” Pierce said, sheathing the sword and slinging it on his back. “I’ve carried this thing around for thirty years, and I still don’t understand all it can do.”

“She speaks the truth,” Cristian said. “I can scent lies, and she has not made any so far.”

“Then where is Kenzie?” Bowman demanded.

“I do not know,” Brigid answered, unhappy. “Why not use the sword and try to part the mists again to find her?”

“That might not work,” a new voice said.

Bowman swung around to see two men striding toward them. He recognized both, but Cristian and Pierce came alert, and Jamie and Cade stepped behind the newcomers, blocking their way out of the clearing.

The speaker was a tall man with a wiry runner’s build, black hair, and eyes like pits of night. Brigid stiffened as she saw him, her nostrils flaring. She took a step closer to Cristian.

The other man was a Shifter. He was big, almost as big as Cade, but he was all Lupine. He had flame tatts down his muscular arms, buzzed black hair, and hard gray eyes that looked upon the world and dared anyone in it to mess with him.

“She is right that the sword called to a Fae,” the dark-eyed man continued. “It knew danger, and it sought one who could wield it against a powerful, magical enemy. It might not be able to go beyond the mists again now that she is here, not there.”

The Lupine, Graham McNeil, growled. “He’s been spouting shit like that all the way across the country. Just my luck I get holed up with a crazy Fae in the cargo hold of a tiny plane. I hate airplanes.”

“I am dokk alfar,” the dark-eyed man corrected him. “Not Fae.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Graham said, making a dismissive shrug.

“I’m Stuart Reid,” the dark-eyed man said to the others. “Eric told us you had a problem with the worlds in the mists.”

“Whatever the hell that means,” Graham rumbled.

Bowman was as impatient as Graham. “My problem is that some asshole has taken my mate and cub and hidden them behind these mists. What I want you for is to help me get them out.”

“And kick some evil human ass,” Graham said. He grinned, his harsh face softening. “That’s where I come in. I get the fun part.”

The Fae woman said, “If you let me loose, I can help in the, as you say, ass kicking. Find me a weapon to wield, and I am as good a warrior as any of you. This Turner has stolen my life and my work, has taken me from my children and my sisters. He must die.”

Graham gave her a look of grudging respect. “I like her. Huh. Never thought I’d say that about a Fae.”

Cristian studied Brigid as though examining a new species of insect. “She is intriguing. If I decide we can trust her, she might be useful.”

Brigid shot him a withering glance. “How kind. I would say, as my daughter does, bite me, but I fear that you, wolf, actually would.”

“Hmm,” Cristian said seriously. “You never know what I might do.”

Brigid turned a wary eye on Reid. “This one, he is . . .” She spoke a word that sounded like a lawn mower crushing metal.

“She means I’m an iron master,” Reid said. He raised his hand, showing them a straight piece of rebar he’d held by his side. “The dokk alfar have always been able to wield iron, I more than most. And so the hoch alfar fear us.”

“It is not fear,” Brigid returned, though Bowman heard the lie. “It is disgust.”

“I see the Fae are at each other’s throats again,” Gil said, stepping out of Turner’s house. “Typical . . . Ah . . . Whoops.”

He started to hurriedly retreat, but Graham leapt forward and grabbed him by the back of his neck, hauling him off the steps and around to face them.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Graham shouted into his face. “Misty’s been worried sick about you. She’s driving me effing crazy.”

Bowman abandoned Cristian and the Fae woman to move to Graham in sudden swiftness. “You know Gil?”

Graham stared at Bowman. “Gil?” Graham’s face flushed with anger, and he shook Gil by the back of the neck. “His name’s not Gil. It’s Ben. Ben Williams. He’s some kind of species—a gnome, he calls it—that got kicked out of Faerie a thousand years ago. He’s magical, he’s a total shithead, and Misty says he helped her save my life.”