Page 82 of Bonded Through Bite

She breaks down, crying silent tears. Her hands twitch in mine, curling into fists, and behind the tears, a new snarl rises. The moment she lunges at me, Santiago wraps his hands around her neck. She is not fighting him. She’s pressing against his hold, but he’s not pressing hard, only curbing her efforts to bite me.

“You think the thing can see through her eyes?” I ask the wolf.

“No. Shifter bonds don’t work like that, even the mate bond. And she’s not that thing’s mate.” The alpha’s voice is tight, barely controlled, and he holds Samantha’s feet down. She tries to kick him again, but he doesn’t budge an inch. “At most, he can deduce that something is holding her back and preventing her from coming to him.”

“And the mood swings?” Santiago asks as he cradles the back of Samantha’s head against his chest.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the poison? I tried to clean the wounds, but it’s possible it already absorbed into her. I have no idea what it was, just that it tasted foul.”

“Didn’t it affect you?”

“No. Werewolf, remember? Would have to be wolfsbane or similar to work on me.”

“Hmm…” I hum. “What are we going to do about this?”

“Kill the fucker,” Santiago replies.

“We need to draw the thing out. No way I’m letting Samantha anywhere near him again,” Zack growls.

“Agreed,” I snarl.

There’s no debate over killing the thing. We are not going to leave some beast with any hold over her. If there’s a mate bond—which there fucking is not—we’ll find a way to break it, so it dying doesn’t hurt Samantha.

“The pack needs to be part of this too,” Zack says and cuts me off when I open my mouth. “That thing killed their alpha’s mate. If you—we—go behind their backs on this, there’ll be trouble.”

He’s right, but I don’t have to like it. I want to cut that fucking piece of shit into itty-bitty pieces, burn them, and scatter the ashes to the winds. I guess I’ll have to settle for sharing. It’s doubtful that Santiago is willing to sit back and let me have all the fun either.

“The pack can run the perimeter, make sure we get him where we want him.”

“Far away from Samantha,” Santiago says and then huffs when she tries to twist free again. She’s not struggling hard against my hold, but clearly, it’s taking effort to keep herself under even a shred of control.

“You’ll need to use me as bait,” she says quietly.

“No.” All of us protest at once, and she hisses, fangs shooting out.

“Yes. If you think I’m going to hide in a tower while you slay the dragon, you are wrong.”

A frown tugs at Santiago’s lips and he strokes her throat, reminding her that she’s ours and not going anywhere.

“Sweetheart,” I start, “I—we want you safe.”

“And I don’t care what you—any of you—want,” she replies, getting back some of her fire. “I want to be rid of that thing as soon as I can be, and the fastest way to do that is to use me as bait.”

“You can’t control yourself now,” Zack says reasonably. “How do you think it will go when the thing gets close to you?”

Samantha shudders against me and I want to punch the wolf for making her fearful again, even if he has a point. A very good one.

“You won’t be able to draw him out.” She sounds sure about it.

“Why not?” I ask and again she presses against my hold when she twists to face me.

“I just know.”

“You don’t think he’s influencing you to think like that?”

She falls silent for a moment and then shakes her head slightly. “I don’t think so. At least when I try to focus on finding him, his voice fades a bit.”

“You hear him?” Zack sounds horrified.