Page 55 of Bound

“So that’s a no?” Dallas grinned. “This is the one who looks like Emma Stone, right? Ethan and I have a bet going. Ten bucks says she fries your laptop as a way to ask you out. She can do that, right, River?”

“Hell yeah.”

“You’re all assholes. No attempts to get back into our systems. She’s a wicked coder—”

Hayden coughed. “Get a room.”

August rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Here’s the part that doesn’t make sense. Why would she be aligned with Vlad?”

“Protection?”

“Okay, but if what Riv is saying is true and you can’t tell varewolves from shifters easily by sight or scent, wouldn’t she be safer in a shifter pack? We wouldn’t know what she was. And even if we did, we’d have no use for her blood.”

Brody ground his teeth. “August, you and Hayden get us more information on her. I don’t care if Hayden has to invite her backstage at a damn concert or the two of you geek out over hard drives. We need information.”

Hayden saluted. “On it.”

“River, you and Cal work on Fallon. I’ll take Guillermo. We’ve got to get him and Vlad to the table. This is too important.”

“How the hell are you going to do that?”

“Leave that to me. West—”

He was cut off when Topher’s phone began to ring.

Frowning at the screen, Topher swiped to answer. “Hello?” The room stilled as he listened, breathing growing shallow. His face paled. “Kieran… you’re breaking up. Where are you—”

A scream knifed across the connection.

Brody jabbed a finger at August, who was already typing furiously on his laptop. River quickly tapped something into his phone and slid it across the bar. Taking a deep breath, Topher switched the call to speaker.

River said, “Until we have verifiable proof of life, I’m assuming that recording was faked.”

A cold female voice said, “You will initiate contact with Vlad. Inform him that you want a meeting. We will set the time and place.”

“Who are you?” I demanded. “How do we even know—”

Topher’s phone buzzed with an incoming file. With shaking fingers, he clicked it open. Kieran looked far worse in this picture. Filthy clothes hung off a gaunt frame. His dark hair had been shaved off and his eyes burned into the camera—a bright shapeshifter gold.

He’d been turned.

“You have one week.”

I shook my head. “We’re going to need more time.”

“Then his brother dies.”

With a click, the line went dead.

8

West

I JERKED AWAKE TO THE SOUND OF DEATH METAL and a tornado watch across five counties that was blowing up the alerts on my phone.

In no particular order.

Jagged lines of pain knifed through my stomach, my magic rebelling against the cage of bone and blood I’d trapped it in. I hadn’t released the buildup of energy in days, not since Topher and I had briefly been together on my birthday. Now I was paying the price. Suddenly dizzy, I lurched off the couch and staggered for the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time to be sick. I’d spent three days wracked with guilt any time I thought about telling Topher what River had learned about Omega wolves and the necessity of getting mated in order to stop the attacks. I hadn’t meant to avoid him. It had just sort of… happened. Then there had been the freaky Cujo situation with my wolf. As in, even after having strapped silver cuffs to my wrists in a desperate attempt to cage the magic searing through my blood, I’d still woken up Monday morning on the floor of my kitchen, having shifted and eaten my way through a plastic container of brownies and a potentially lethal dose of cheese puffs, but fortunately not the guinea pigs, who after the first incident were now safely barricaded in my bedroom, nibbling their way through a pile of cilantro and cucumber slices.