I didn’t think we’d been in the house too long, but it was already dusk outside. Snow still covered the ground, but tracks marred the white surface. It made me smile to see wolf tracks beside hoof and paw prints.

Rik gave a jerk of his head at Daire. “Go on patrol. I have a feeling she’ll attack after dark.”

Daire stepped in close to me first, giving me a quick but deep, full body hug. He didn’t just use his arms, but managed to drape his whole body on me, even though he was nearly a foot taller than me. “When you’re ready, I’d love for you to try and burn her out of me.”

In Kansas City, I’d had the idea that I could try and burn their previous blood bonds out of them, so that Keisha Skye wouldn’t have any hold on them any longer. No one had been able to break a bond like that before, at least not that we knew of.

“I don’t want to hurt you like that.”

“Hurt me. I don’t care. I hate being a liability, a weakness.”

I wrapped my hands in his hair and tugged his head back. He started purring, so I tightened my grip, pulling his hair back to bare the long, sexy line of his throat. “You’re never a liability or weakness. In fact, I fully intend to use your bond with Skye court to betray them.”

“How? When?”

I smiled and kissed his throat, giving him only a faint prick of my fangs. Then I released him. “You’ll see. Don’t worry about her bond.”

He pouted, but I felt a push in their bond. Rik, exerting his alpha will. Daire shifted immediately, though he bumped his head into my stomach for some scratches behind his ear.

Rik let out a rumbling growl.

Daire twitched his tail, smacking Rik’s legs, but obediently headed out into the darkening night.

“So what’s this plan of yours to use our Skye bonds?”

My fangs descended, making me shiver. My stomach knotted. Hunger rose. Need burned. Rik rumbled deep and low, his arm sliding around my waist, and yeah, I wanted his blood. But not yet.

I dragged my fangs across my wrist.

Power bubbled up inside me like a pure mountain spring. My senses sharpened. I could feel my other five Blood. Their heartbeats. Each feather in Nevarre’s wings. The thud of Guillaume’s hooves pounding the ground. The whisper of Xin’s fur as he ghosted across the snow.

“You don’t have to add blood to the circle.” Rik’s voice rumbled deep and low in my belly, stoking my desire.

“I know,” I whispered, holding my wrist out so blood dripped down my skin and onto the ground.

The first plop of blood on the ground sent a ring of power rippling out like a wave. Primed by my blood circle’s sacrifice, the great Earth Mother, Gaia, answered eagerly. The earth absorbed my blood like a starving creature. Frost melted in the heat of my blood. Life sparked in the dirt. A tiny seed sprouted, a faint green leaf unfurling in the snow.

Regret tightened my throat. I didn’t want the tiny sprout to die. I hadn’t meant to make something start growing in the dead of winter.

The sprout had other ideas, though. It grew quickly for a few moments, green leaves up to my knees. But then it stopped, tender leaves wilting a bit. The whole young stem leaned toward me, leaves straining to stand against the snow and cold.

I held my wrist back out over the young plant and allowed blood to splatter on the leaves. Immediately, the plant started growing again until its tender stem was replaced by a woody stalk taller than me. Leaves and branches stretched up to the sky, but more importantly, the roots sank deep into the ground, spreading like a sensitive network.

My blood pulsed in the tree, deep into the ground. Pumping energy through the soil and rock, the roots cast out a steady radar bleep, searching for anything out of place.

“Wow,” Rik said, his voice soft with reverence. “How did you know to do that?”

“I didn’t, not exactly. But I felt how much She loved my blood when we set the nest, and I figured that was a way to start.”

The lattice of roots stretched a good thirty feet down and out in a wide circle, but nowhere near the entire nest. Trailing blood, I started walking, listening and feeling for another seed to spark. “What kind of tree is that?”

“Looks like an oak.”

I glanced back, amazed. The tender green leaves had transformed into gnarled thick branches running low the ground. The tree looked like it’d been here for a couple of hundred years.

I felt a spark in the snow and paused, watching as another sprout broke through the snow, stretching up toward my blood. This one was some kind of evergreen. In a few minutes, a mighty pine stretched into the sky, interlacing its roots with the oak. I sighed, looking at how much ground I needed to cover. It was going to take a hell of a lot of blood.

Rik drew me into his arms. “Then you should definitely feed on me while you grow the next tree.”

“I don’t want you weakened if we’re going to have to protect the nest.”

He snorted and walked with his arm around me, waiting until I found the next seed that sprouted beneath the snow. “Feeding you makes me stronger, not weaker. And I want my queen well-fed and pumped with alpha power before Skye attempts to spoil your nest.”