Broods Of Fenrir - By Coral Moore Page 0,27

her laugh. The connection between them helped her, and that made his decision a simple one. He reached for Alice"s arm, his fingers enormous around her slight wrist.

Dagny took two steps toward them but stopped when Brand fixed her with a stare. He waited for her to object, but she didn"t say anything.

Brand pulled Alice closer, lifting her arm to his mouth.

Alice turned her head away. He made a shallow bite halfway between her elbow and wrist. Shifting his eyes toward Dagny, he extricated his teeth from the wound. He swallowed a mouthful of blood, then licked the wound closed. Alice tasted like she smelled, of spring flowers.

With his power and Alice"s blood, he forged a new link between them, twisting it around the old thread in a complex pattern. He wove Alice and Dagny"s link in a similar way; he refused to consider that Dagny would leave his brood. Her strength would put her in danger anywhere else. Even if she wouldn"t be with him as he wanted, their connection wasn"t going anywhere so long as he lived.

He unfurled his power and drew some of Alice"s energy into the collective of his brood. She gasped as he ripped her away from Erik"s brood, the dozens of connections she shared with those wolves torn free in an instant of violence.

He lifted his head and looked into Alice"s eyes. “Your blood is my blood. To the last drop, you are mine.” Her head tipped back, and she fainted. Brand moved forward to catch her before she fell. He lowered her into a nearby chair, keeping one hand on her back until he was sure she wouldn"t fall out of it.

“That was different than it was for me,” Dagny said.

Brand turned to her. “You"re orders of magnitude stronger. Your wolf fights to get what it wants.”

“Didn"t feel like much of a fight to me. I couldn"t stop the wolf from going to you.”

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He smiled. “I never said it fought to escape.” The woman might be unsure what she wanted, but her wolf held no doubts. The wolf"s insistence had been the reason he changed the bond at the last second to bring her in as a partner.

Her forehead creased, but she didn"t speak.

Brand returned to the phone and dialed Erik"s number, but his friend didn"t pick up. He assumed Erik was either raging around his living room or on his way over. He hoped for the former. If Erik showed up, he would probably end up dead.

Brand left a message emphasizing that the choice to stay in his brood had been Alice"s.

Next, he called his office and spoke to his assistant, explaining he"d be out of town for a few days on a family matter. Cameron took the change in stride, promising to reschedule his appointments and redirect emergency calls to his operations manager.

After he hung up, he went back to check on Alice. For one as weak as she, every transition was painful. The small bit of power he took from her to bring her into his brood was a significant portion of her total. Her eyes were glassy as she looked up at him, but through the bond, he could tell she felt happy. He touched her cheek with the pads of his fingers and sent her some of the strength of the brood to speed her recovery. She showed him a tired smile.

Dagny moved closer. “You really do care for her.” Brand nodded. “She"s been my closest friend for a hundred years.”

Despite being glad to have both of them in his brood, guilt nagged at him. He wasn"t sure he"d done either of them a favor. The day he"d killed his sire and forsaken the crown that had passed to him, he"d sealed his fate. Anyone who wanted the power he spurned had to kill him to take it. That put any in his brood in danger, so he"d sworn to bond no one to him.

Dagny nodded, her throat convulsing as she swallowed.

“Thank you, Brand.”

It was the first time she"d used his name, and it stunned 76

him how much he wanted to hear it again. “What for?”

“For taking me out of his brood. He wouldn"t let me leave. I"ve been trapped there since my sire sent me to him.” Her revulsion, prompted by remembering her time with Ansvarr, turned his stomach. He would derive so much pleasure from tearing Ansvarr apart. “You were part of a treaty agreement, weren"t you?”

Surprise registered on her face, but shame was the emotion