Captive Mate - Eliot Grayson Page 0,6

one fucking word about killing you.” His blue eyes were cold, icy cold, and they made me shiver. I was starting to get the idea that being a generally decent person wasn’t enough to make him weak.

He’d have a strong enough stomach for whatever he needed to do to help his brother, and at this point — I didn’t. I wouldn’t hold out for long. My head whirled with sickness and frustration and anxiety. Keeping the spell in place was my only leverage. But if it was the spell I’d cast that was affecting me and Matthew…it shouldn’t have, that was the thing. It damn well shouldn’t have. I’d built in the failsafe that would kill Matthew if I died very much on purpose, and I’d been damn proud of it, too. I still was.

Only…the only way to do that had been to modify the love spell, deepening its usually more superficial effects. It didn’t just cause lust. That wouldn’t have been enough to anchor the I-die-you-die that I needed in there. It mimicked a mate bond — specifically a werewolf mate bond — to make it more effective on Matthew.

And mates…well, they didn’t do well when they were separated. Especially when I’d enhanced that effect too, in order to make Matthew crave my presence and keep coming back to the Kimball territory.

Except that it wasn’t supposed to make him sick.

And it wasn’t supposed to do anything at all to me.

But…I didn’t have access to my magic, which had been anchoring the spell, using me as the focal point because that was how mate bonds worked. And now the spell had been running amok for days, without any anchor at all.

Fuck.

Frantically, I ran through my options, which ranged from fuck-that to oh-hell-no on the desirability scale. I could remove the love spell. That would leave Ian free to rip me apart, although he’d need to take me out of the spelled chains for me to do the spellwork, which might give me an opportunity…no, surely he’d have Nate and possibly that other freakazoid mage right there breathing down my neck. Not to mention, he’d have something sharp directly on my neck. I’d die that way, almost certainly.

I could do nothing. Then, Matthew and I would both get sicker, and probably die. Not an option.

That left me with confessing my fuck-up — though I’d try to phrase it a little better than that, to preserve my pride if nothing else — and admitting that actually, it looked like Matthew and I would need to be in closer proximity for the near future.

Much closer proximity.

Fuck.

“Well?” Ian prompted me. “Cat got your tongue?”

I stared at him, my heart pounding. Did he know? How the fuck would he know? I put up a good werewolf front. I’d gotten a lot of practice. And even if Nate had examined my magic or the spell, he wouldn’t be able to tell. Shifter magical signatures looked very, very alike to a non-shifter warlock like Nate.

But Ian didn’t know, obviously. He was just using an expression. I took a deep breath and put my game face on, as best I could given it was grimy and dripping with sweat and probably still streaked with dried vomit.

Best possible spin. I could do this.

I smirked at Ian. “Looks like you’ll need to not only keep me alive, but get me out of this basement and out of these chains. Because if Matthew’s sick, that means the spell I put on him is doing its job.”

Ian’s face went dangerously red, but Nate spoke up first, his brows furrowed. “Doing its job? I don’t believe you. This was an accident, wasn’t it?”

Oh, I was going to kill him the moment I had the chance. “You would think so,” I said snidely. “But not all of us are incomp—”

“Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence,” Ian snarled, taking a menacing step toward me. “Tell me how to fix my brother, or the claws are coming out!”

“And you obviously did screw up,” Nate put in, “or you wouldn’t look like you’re coming down with the magical I-fucked-up-my-spell stomach flu, would you? Maybe it was meant to do this to Matthew, but not to you. You. Fucked. Up. So tell us what needs to happen to get that spell off.”

My anger rose past the point of restraint, boiling in my chest like magma. “The spell’s not coming off! No fucking way. I’m a dead man if I remove it. Let me out of this basement!”