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“How many did she fail to save?”
Cassie exhaled a sigh. “I never saw for sure. But she said one in five survived… maybe?”
“And those were curs?”
“Except for one.”
“A Mah?” Isaiah asked just to be sure he hadn’t misheard.
“Yeah.”
“How was he captured?”
“He wasn’t. He’d been separated from his Uma when his family was cast out after his father had been stripped of his wolf and they were labeled Mah. After his Uma took a wolf, she went searching for him in Egypt.”
Where the Anubis had taken Jia and built its empire.
“I think she thought once his Sarvari was removed, things could be like they were before.”
“She wouldn’t be the first bonded to lie to themselves,” Jelani said.
“I don’t think she believed he could no longer give her offspring, and if she wanted young, she’d have to be bred by one of the Mah who hadn’t manifested a Sarvari.”
Because the dead couldn’t reproduce. This was why neither egg-bearing nor seed-bearing Mah with a Sarvari ever produced offspring. Stopping the line of Mah by rendering them sterile with death was the only favor the Anubis ever did.
And Isaiah was grateful for it. “What happened?”
“The Uma brought him to Eliza. She was positive once the Sarvari was gone, he’d return with her, and she could argue his innocence so he could stand before a Cana and receive a Fenrir.”
“He was there against his will?”
“He had to have been,” Jelani said. “Even a Mah would have refused to surrender their wolf for any reason.”
There was no such thing as Varu taking a new wolf.
“He wasn’t awake when she brought him, so I’m sure he was. She’d traveled for a few weeks, and he was in bad shape. I thought he was dead, and so did Eliza, but our wolves said he wasn’t. I’m not sure Eliza would have believed the woman, but she believed Sona and me.”
“And Eliza did the same thing for him she did for the curs?”
“It took longer, but the same routine. Eliza kept him sedated, though, because the Uma was adamant that he was under the Anubis’s control, and until the Sarvari was gone, he’d be a danger.”
“What made her think there was anything left of the male after the Anubis gave him the Sarvari?” Jelani said.
“She said he loved her.”
Another delusion. The Mah with Sarvari were puppets to the Anubis. And it was incapable of emotion.
“Then?” Isaiah said.
“He got very sick. There were several days Eliza was sure he would die. Then he purged the ichor.”
But there was something else, and Isaiah said so.
“I don’t think the Uma knew how much time had passed since they’d been separated. A hundred years, two?” Cassie exhaled a shaky breath. “Within minutes after the ichor purged, he aged and died.”
“Wait, he aged?” Jelani said.
Cassie nodded. “Eliza said it was because his body returned to what it was before the Anubis gave him the Sarvari. Like when a Varu is stripped of their wolf.”
