“You’re my mate,” he said carefully, distinctly. Tasting each word on its own. “And you’re a badass who fights sorcerers. There’s a nickname in there somewhere, I promise.”
It helped me feel better that he too shook just a little. I finally leaned into him, let him draw me close, and I tried to breathe normally even as tears spilled down my cheeks and I flirted with hyperventilation. I squeezed my eyes shut. “You’re naked.”
“I know,” he said. Henry’s arms tightened around me. “Don’t get any ideas about taking advantage of me, witch. We’re in public.”
I laughed and cried at the same time, leaning against him. My knees wobbled as I struggled to comprehend what happened. We confronted Rocko and he still managed to slip away, despite my binding him, but I survived. I wasn’t tied to the sorcerer. Maybe I’d finally broken free. I exhaled and pressed my cheek against Henry’s chest.
I was finally free.
Chapter 40
Henry
Henry couldn’t have said precisely how things unfolded once it was clear the sorcerer had somehow disappeared into nothingness. Deirdre, dangling a foot off the ground as Evershaw carried her around and refused to put her down, tried to assess the situation but eventually gave up. Henry focused on his own mate and making sure she was taken care of, then on his sister’s health. Nola had been rattled by whatever the sorcerer did and remained in her wolf form, snarling and snapping when anyone but Fran or Henry approached.
Fran took over managing his sister, leading Nola on foot back to Deirdre’s house. Henry hoped the short walk would clear Nola’s head and give her the chance to see through the magical haze. He meant to wait for a car to drive Ophelia back to the house as well, but gave up and carried her. He didn’t want her near that empty lot a second longer, in the off chance that the sorcerer returned.
Besides, it looked like Smith arrived, along with the bears and more of the wolf shifters, and Henry didn’t want any of them seeing Ophelia. Not until she was ready. The Russian bear wolf-whistled and called something about Henry’s “white wolf ass” but Henry waved him off and kept striding down the street. He needed to get Ophelia somewhere safe and warm, and the best place was his den.
He could wrap her up in blankets and put her to bed, then he could deal with Nola and Silas.
Henry clenched his jaw until pain ignited in his head. Silas. The poor bastard was in bad shape. Somehow the sorcerer forced him into a shift but then left him stuck halfway, so Silas was neither man nor beast. It was a stomach-churning mix and completely unnatural. He didn’t want to think about it, but he damn well wasn’t going to leave his friend in that condition.
Even Evershaw had been stunned at what Smith and his friends showed them. Smith managed to contain Silas with some weird fae force field, but warned it wouldn’t last long and wasn’t sustainable except for very short periods of time. The pack had to come up with another solution to managing a very pissed off wolfman, and fast.
Ophelia’s head rested on his shoulder, her voice whisper-soft in his ear. “Rocko said he left Silas…changed. Is he going to be all right?”
“We don’t know,” Henry said after a pause. He didn’t want to give her false hope; there wasn’t any reason to pretend everything would turn out perfectly just because they wanted it to. “We’ve never seen anything like it before.”
She shivered, then started to move around. “You should put me down. I can walk the rest of the way, and you can figure out what happened with Silas, and then—”
“I’m not carrying you because I don’t think you can walk,” he said, and meant every word. “I’m carrying you because I can’t stand the thought of you being out of my reach for another second. It might take a while before I put you down or let you sit somewhere that isn’t my lap. Fair warning.”
A smile crept over her face and her fingers traced over his chest, tugging on the mat of hair on his pecs. “Oh really. So we’re going to be skin-to-skin for the near future?”
He groaned and almost stumbled to a halt. It took all his concentration to keep walking and focus his attention on where they were going, instead of where all the blood in his