Page 4 of Bound

Topher straightened against the wall. Gold flickered in his irises, and I felt the wolf stir beneath his skin. Hungry. No, he hadn’t missed the way my hands had started to shake. Crap.

I shot him a warning look. “What do you need?”

“Guillermo Montemayor has frozen the pack accounts. I’ve got a thousand people to protect and he’s making me fill out ten pages of paperwork just to buy a bottle of aspirin.”

Of course he was.

My Uncle Guillermo was one of the most powerful shapeshifters in North America. He had an unparalleled gift for projection and had ruled the Southern Territorial Council for the past three decades. My uncle loved expensive cars, Italian shoes, and I was fairly sure had never been inside America’s largest big box store before, if only because when I sent him a t-shirt with their logo on it for his birthday along with a note that it was designer, he wore it to our next video game night. He would have also done anything for me or my brothers, which was why, other than tormenting him at every turn (which we were pretty sure he kind of liked), I would never have taken advantage of our family connection.

Topher flicked a glance my way. This was taking too long. He could do his thing from out in the hall. Maybe. But three hours had passed, edging towards four since Hudson Smith had been called in missing. The clock was ticking down. Run it out and all traces of the vampires who took him would vanish forever.

In short, we were out of options.

Concentrating, I fractionally lowered the guard I always kept locked in place. Nausea rolled over me. Moon magic vibrated through my bones, searing my blood. My wolf stretched out, awakened and suddenly ravenous. I balled my hands into fists. The attacks were coming more frequently now, all but impossible to control as we neared the full moon.

Pale gold tendrils of power unfurled around me, craving the connection of the other minds in the immediate space. Omegas were the sirens of the shifter world, one of its most closely guarded secrets. We drew off moon magic at a far higher rate than other wolves, using it to manipulate pack bonds. No one could resist our call. Rumor had it many of the powerful urban packs had someone like me, someone close to the Alpha manipulating pack loyalties just below the surface. Omega magic imprinted a bond between two people that couldn’t be refused, would always linger in the back of your mind no matter how hard you tried to scrub it from your temporal lobe. If you were careful to stay below a certain power threshold, your target didn’t fully imprint. The connection faded after a few days to a dull echo. If you lost control—

Beside me, Topher stiffened, his eyes half-lidded, fists clenched at his sides, struggling against the indefinable something between us that was now pulling taut. I shivered, trying to close down our connection, desperately wishing I couldn’t feel the way that damn Aerosmithtee fit snug across his chest as if I were wearing it on my own skin. He glared, a wave of revulsion hitting me so hard that for a second, I swore I saw stars. He needn’t have bothered. He couldn’t possibly have hated me more than I already hated myself. Topher could never escape my control, could never run so far that I couldn’t eventually find him.

And that wasn’t even the worst part, the private shame I had buried so deep I sometimes no longer knew where to find it, layer upon layer of guilt and regret melding together seamlessly until you could no longer find a scar. No. It was this:

In those quiet moments when I was nakedly honest with myself, I could admit I never wanted him to.

And that made me a monster.

It took constant mental vigilance to suppress my power. My mother had drilled as much into me from the moment I’d manifested as an Omega shortly after reaching puberty. In a decade and a half, I’d never slipped.

Not until that night.

Topher Greer had been on the run, having freshly escaped a year of torture and imprisonment at the hands of the vampires. Forced to turn other shapeshifters against his will every full moon and used as a blood slave in between, by the time we caught up to him, his mind was deeply fractured. We’d tried to talk him down. Instead, he lunged for the sheer cliffs overlooking Lake Buchanan, intending to end his life.

And in that fractional second, in my desperation to save him, my concentration slipped, instinct taking over before my rational mind caught up. We’d plunged together into the icy lake, my power searing an indelible bond between us.

I couldn’t go back and change the reckless mistake that had bound Topher Greer to me. This was my penance.

“What you said before, about my brother hooking up with London… you may not be entirely wrong.” Sweat beaded at my temples. Carefully, I drew more power, fighting to contain the maelstrom of pack energy threatening to bind me to everyone in the building. “But it’s not for the reasons you think.”

“I’m listening.” Like all Alphas, Maddox Blake had a strong mind, and Phoenix Richards was a natural shield. I couldn’t press any more power into the connection I was creating. Not without the risk I would slip and bond four more people to me. Just like I had Topher. I couldn’t hold out much longer. I had to get out of there. But the clock was ticking down and we had to figure out how the vampires were choosing their targets before there was a seventh victim.

“There have been too many incidents involving our pack in the last year. The bombing west of Blood Moon. The attack out in the corn maze the night of the Harvest Moon Festival. The feds setting up camp in town for weeks. Now Topher’s brother.”

He snorted. “Pretty impressive for a town with two stoplights.”

Six, but who was counting.

“We’ve been asking ourselves why. Why do we keep getting targeted? Why not one of the larger packs? Now your people are disappearing, too. No one in our territory will feel safe until these raids are ended. We may not have always been allies in the past, but now we have a common enemy. It’s time we joined forces.”

“Your brother is using my niece for intel. He thinks she’s still working with the undeads?”

“We don’t know what to believe. But your people are disappearing, too, and no one in our territory will feel safe until these raids are ended. We may not have always been allies in the past, but now we have a common enemy. It’s time we joined forces.”

Maddox Blake studied me for a long moment. I willed my magic to draw a hairsbreadth tighter—

“Let him in.”

At the sharp jerk of the Alpha’s head, Phoenix reluctantly stepped aside, allowing Topher into the apartment. Maddox followed him in. I stayed out in the hallway. I felt the weight of Phoenix’s stare as I leaned against the opposite wall and scrolled through my phone. He knew there was something offabout me, probably had suspected as much for years. He just wasn’t sure what. We were playing a dangerous game. And I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I ran out of time.

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