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“I found this book.” She held out a leather-bound square without any other explanation.
She was helping me? I realized my mouth was hanging open in shock, and closed it. Cosette had been with the coven for three months. In that time, I’d gotten to know her as much as she let me. She wasn’t usually helpful. Sometimes she seemed frustrated by it. Almost like she knew more than she let on, but couldn’t let us in.
From what I’d pieced together, fey rules were hard to live under, and Cosette was having an especially hard time with them.
I took the book from her. “Thank you.”
She gave me a small nodded. “There’s a part that you might find interesting. Read Chapter Seven.”
I flipped through to the first page of the chapter. The subtitle read “On Breaking Blood Oaths.” Wow. When she helps, she really helps. “This is fantastic. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she murmured so low I almost didn’t catch it.
What did she find? I narrowed my gaze, and started scanning the page. Raphael came to stand beside me, reading over my shoulder. The second I read the part she was talking about, I slammed the book closed, placed it on the table, and stepped away. I wanted no part in any of that.
I met Cosette’s gaze. “No. No way.”
She shrugged. “I know it’s not ideal, but what you’re all going through is horrible. The best I can do right now is give you a real option.”
Yvonne came closer. “What is it?”
“Yeah,” Tiffany said, as she came over to look. “It can’t be that bad. I mean…it’s not evil, right?”
Cosette shook her head, and I closed my eyes, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “No, it’s not evil,” I said.
The rest of the group trampled over to the table, all leaning over the book. I knew from the dead silence when they reached the part that I had.
“You can’t… We can’t…” Yvonne muttered.
“It worked for your cousin,” Cosette said.
“We’re witches,” Beth said. “We don’t just mate with fey or any of these other creatures they mention here. Has anyone seen a djinn before? Do they even exist anymore? And if we agreed to mate with a wolf, wouldn’t they have to bite us? I don’t want to be a wolf. I’m a witch.”
“It doesn’t say anything about changing over.” Tiffany pointed out. “Just that the new bond would override any prior claims.”
“Is that really possible?” Raphael said, and I spun to stare at him. He held up his hands. “I’m just wondering. You could form a mate bond without being a werewolf?”
He couldn’t possibly be considering this.
“I thought to succumb to the pack, you had to be a wolf,” Shane said.
“Not necessarily.” Cosette tucked her hair behind her ear. Her aura glittered as she moved. “Packs and covens of the past intermixed enough to follow a single leader. Tessa isn’t such an anomaly if you dig deeper.”
This was ridiculous, and I still got the feeling that Cosette wasn’t revealing everything she knew. “This is a non-issue. Unless anyone has clicked so well with one of the wolves that you really think you’re mates? Because unless you’re basically two halves of a soul, it won’t work.” I couldn’t speak for the rest of them, but I wasn’t binding myself to anyone unless it was my soul mate. Who might not even exist. I’d already made a mistake taking an oath to the wrong kind of person, and I wouldn’t redo that particular mistake just to get out of this.
Elsa shrugged. “They’ve given us such a wide berth, it’s not like any of us would know if one of them were interested in us in any way other than guard duty.”
“You’d know if they were interested,” Cosette said.
I blew out a breath. “Well then, it doesn’t apply to any of us. Thank you for trying, Cosette.”
“You really shouldn’t thank me.” Her jaw clenched and for a moment, I thought her aura flickered, but it steadied into its usual glitter before I could be sure. “But more knowledge is never a bad thing.”
She was right, but as I looked around the room, I noticed the hope dwindling. We’d been at it for three hours, and weren’t any closer. The past two days had been failures, and the way today was shaping up, it would be more of the same. Unless we did something different. “Shane, you broke your oath, right?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t much of an oath. I’m not sure it even counts.”
“What do you mean?”
