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Ipaced my garden. Inside, Carletta was sleeping off what I could only explain as a near-meltdown. Underneath my feet, one of Tate’s people was kept in a cell, and Felix was somewhere out there, looking for more.
I didn’t know what he would find. Maybe he would find all of them and bring me Tate’s head on a plate. Maybe he wouldn’t find anyone.
I was banking on the latter. Tate was a lot of things—son of a bitch, traitor, murderer—but he wasn’t sloppy. He would only be found if hewantedto be found, and so far, I was pretty sure the guy in my cells was there only because Tate wanted him there.
What game was he playing at?
Had he come back to kill more of my family? To steal my throne?
Anger bubbled under my skin. How had this happened? When Delaney had died, I’d vowed that I’d never let anything like that happen again. I’d never let my guard down, and I’d done everything for my pack to keep them safe. Everything for Carletta, too.
I’d been a fool to let someone like Oaklee distract me.
Fated mates.
I snorted and shook off the thought. It had to have been some kind of magic forging the bond. I couldn’t be fated to the daughter of a traitor, a murderer.
The bond between us was still there. I’d been taught that the bond was forged through fate when two souls were made the same, and that nothing could break that bond but death. It sounded very romantic, but since the beginning of time, when all of us had come into existence, a lot of things had gone wrong. Through the dark magic that demons wielded and passed on to the vampires they created, and the shifters with the magic they’d made their own, humans had gotten in the middle of it, and mixed breeds, half breeds, and anything in between had come into existence. Demons and vampires weren’t the only ones with dark magic—fae who chose to turn away from their nature and become evil had magic that was very similar to the dark magic.
In other words, nothing that had once been was still the same now.
That had to include the fated mate bond. It had to mean that whatever existed between Oaklee and me couldn’t be real. It had to have been just another trick, another lie, another deception.
I became aware of the bond when Oaklee tugged at it. She was trying to reach out to me.
Not today.
I was done.
I shoved the wall between us, blocking her off even more than before. I wasn’t going to keep letting her in when all she’d done was wreck my heart.
A part of me cried out when I did it. I ached blocking her off like that. She was my other half, and to do that meant that I was just one half of a whole.
Was that what she’d done this for? Had she meant to tear me apart by weakening me like this?
I’d chosen to turn away from love and lust and anything else that could distract me from looking after my loved ones, and now I’d been caught in a trap by love itself.
It was so ironic.
“Jamie?” Carletta’s voice sounded from the patio door, and I turned to her.
She looked like a ghost of herself. Her dark hair was a tangled mess, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Her skin had turned almost translucent, so that I could see the roadmap of veins beneath it.
“Go lie down, Carly,” I murmured, walking to her. “You need to rest.”
“Someone’s here to see you,” she said.
I frowned. “Who?”
“I don’t know her, but she says it’s pack business.”
“What kind of pack business?” Carletta knew all the shifters in charge of the different groups.
“It’s about Oaklee.”
I stiffened. “Then I’m sure I don’t want to hear it.”
Carletta took my hand. Her slim fingers were almost icy to the touch, and her blue eyes, usually striking, had become watery.
