legs, trying to get some feeling back into them. Gods, I wanted to shift and stretch my legs so damn badly. Speaking of.
“When am I getting these manacles off?” I asked bluntly. There wasn’t much point in beating around the bush. All my plans to use Matthew’s feelings against him had gone down in flames. He was too fucking volatile. Fuck that spell, anyway. I’d rarely hated myself so much as I did right then. “What’s it going to take?”
“If Ian gets his way, they’re going to be permanent,” Matthew replied, without bothering to move his arm and look at me.
Something cold slithered down my spine: maybe a drop of sweat, or maybe just sheer terror.
“Only until I get a hold of a hacksaw.”
Matthew snorted. “Don’t think hacksaws work on those. We got them from that freaky mage. Pretty sure nothing short of an atom bomb would break them.”
“I didn’t mean for the manacles. I meant for my arms.”
That got a reaction. Matthew’s arm flailed off his face, and he turned and stared at me. “The fuck you are. Hack off your hands?”
“Better than living like this forever,” I said grimly, meeting his gaze levelly. “I can’t shift. I can’t do magic. This is hell. It’s worse than being physically crippled.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to get me on your side. It isn’t working. And like fuck we’re letting you anywhere near a hacksaw, anyway.”
Well, he had a point there. My own arms wouldn’t be my first target. I could think of a few things I’d like to do to that asshole Ian with something sharp.
Or Nate. Although if there was any justice in the world, I’d kill him with some form of beverage container. I’d hold that thought for later, when I had the time. I didn’t think the fantasy would get old anytime soon.
“Whatever you think about my motives, I’m not going to stay like this long-term. So you can either figure out a way to make that happen, or assume I’ll make it happen on my own.”
Where the fuck was that lumbering moron with our lunch? Actually talking to Matthew hadn’t been on my agenda. I was in serious danger of starting to…
Hang on a minute. I wasn’t just in serious danger of telling the truth, I’d been telling the truth. Without even thinking about it. No filtering, no spinning, no manipulation — just whatever was on my mind. I went rigid with horror. Now that I was conscious of it, I could feel it, a barely-there pressure in my mind nudging me toward spilling my guts.
I focused hard and said, “I’m not hungry after all.”
Matthew was staring at me again. “What the fuck, Arik?”
“Never mind.” Fuck. It had taken a little bit of effort to lie, and that simply wasn’t on. I lied like I breathed, and I didn’t apologize for it — and if I had, I would’ve been lying. “I’m starving. When do you think they’re going to get around to feeding us? Aren’t you supposed to be the pack leader?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice tight. “I was, until someone cast a spell on me that made me incapable of doing my job.”
“That’s what you get for negotiating with that son of a bitch Kimball,” I spat back, stung and furious. “You should’ve never trusted him for a second when he contacted you trying to make ‘peace,’ like that was ever going to happen. And when you saw him with Jonathan fucking Hawthorne? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I didn’t see him with Hawthorne until you’d already cast your fucking spell,” Matthew snarled, his eyes flashing. He popped up, his arm sliding out from under me and dropping me to the bed with a bounce. “And by the time I did, all I could think about was getting you out of there safely, back home with me where I could protect you from the psycho presumed-dead warlock and that creepy fucking Kimball shaman. Not to mention Kimball himself. You told me you were his long-lost son and I believed you, because I would’ve swallowed any bullshit you fed me, but the way he looked at you was not the way a father ought to look at his kid.”
“Yeah, and I hadn’t put my spell on you when Kimball called you,” I yelled right back. “So what’s your excuse for that? Too fucking stupid to kill him when you had the —”
“That’s your solution to everything?” Matthew shouted, his face going red, and the tendons