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Shit. He could be right. No, he’s definitely right. I messed up. No wonder Sadie didn’t want to play backup to the marshals. “I should go talk to Sadie.”
“I would wait until she’s not with the Gorgon. She, her sisters, and Tisia left together. They ran out of spell stuff.”
“The Gorgons don’t scare me.”
He grins a stupid wolf smirk. “They should. All the Houses should in their own way. The Gorgons can still magic their hair into snakes.”
A shudder runs through me. “Gods, I hate snakes.”
“You’ll also need to figure out how to ditch the Huntress outside.”
“True. If I’m lucky, she’ll get tired of watching.”
“Check the kitchen drawers. Most of these loaner cabins have a deck of cards. Might as well play while we wait.”
I rummage through a couple of misses before turning up a deck. “Poker or blackjack?”
“Gonna need another beer.”
The bear’s a damn poker shark. He wins every single hand, teasing that wolves lack patience. I’m shuffling the cards when the mating bond that has been pulsing since I kissed Sadie in the back hall of the Hack and Ale suddenly goes dead. No colors, no connection, no Sadie. It damn near doubles me over. My heart kicks into my throat, and my head throbs like someone took a two-by-four to my skull. “Something’s wrong. I can’t sense Sadie.”
Stone goes still. “There’s no distress coming off my mate, and they’re together.”
“I’ve got to find her. The garden.” I head for the door. “If they needed herbs—”
“Wait.”
Terror spirals in my chest where there’s emptiness. Worse than I felt all those years without her because now I’ve tasted her and seen what the mating bond might become if we both wanted it.
“I can’t wait if she’s in danger.” I won’t lose her again. Stripping and shifting, I take off through the woods. I’m coming, love.
20
SADIE
“What did I do wrong?” I ask Tisia, my voice echoing in the kitchen of the Hack and Ale above the background thump, thump of my two Fury sisters tossing axes in the front of the bar. “Why didn’t the cord cutting ritual work? I followed every detail in my family’s grimoire.” Which I brought with me along with my sisters’ book of shadows in case either had info we could use.
Tisia shakes her head. “I think it might’ve taken, just not in the form you wanted. Remember Syn City can twist magic.”
“The protection spells went fine.” We’d worked on them all day at the school, testing them with counter spells and attacks. “They performed better than expected.”
“Walk me through the steps of this ritual again. Out loud this time instead of pointing at the recipe.”
Only Tisia would think of spells like recipes with the kitchen magic she works on the daily. Or she did until the recent craziness closed the Hack and Ale. “I cleansed the space with sage, marked a safe circle with salt, concentrated on visualizing my grief going into the cord as I knotted it—"
“Did you hold your intention in your mind through the entire ritual?” she asks.
“Of course I did. I’m not a novice. I concentrated like a mofo on putting every bit of hurt I’m dealing with into that cord. Then I chanted This hurt no longer binds me and I am free as I untied each knot. I kept my affirmation positive and willed any negative away.” The lingering scents of sage, chamomile, and rosemary do nothing to calm me.
“And you made sure to let go of your grief when you cut the cord? You were ready to let go of the pain?”
“You’re damn right I’m ready. That pain doesn’t serve me. I need it gone so I can get clear on who the immortal Furies brought me back to take out.”
Tisia reads through the rituals, the variations, the notes that my mother made and her mother before her. “And you still carry the grief?”
“The same as always.” Missing my sisters and parents thrums through me as heavy as Fury magic when it hits. “I don’t get it. I followed all the rules.” My whole damn life I have complied with rules, expectations, and responsibilities, and what’d it get me? Murdered. Everyone I love murdered. A mate who doesn’t want me… The thought trails into terror. “The mating bond. It’s gone.”
“What?” Tisia stares at me.
