The lycan transition required a sequence of two bites. If the mortal didn’t receive the requisite follow-up bite, the human would die an excruciatingly painful death.
I gaped at my darling pet, her warrior strength taking on a whole new meaning. “If she was bitten at the camp, then she ran all the way here while fighting the transition.”
“And then you gave her your blood,” Damien put in, drawing my gaze back to his, another piece of the puzzle sliding into place.
“Effectively curing her,” I whispered. “At least temporarily.”
“And you continued to give her blood over the last month.”
“So my essence kept her alive and in limbo this entire time,” I breathed, awed. “That would explain her sudden catatonic state. The moon energy would have encouraged her to shift last night.” While lycans could control when they took on their wolf forms, a young changeling like Willow who hadn’t indulged in her animal side might not be able to so easily fight it. “Except she couldn’t shift.”
“Because she’s missing the second bite. And you couldn’t turn her because she was already in lycan limbo,” Damien said. “That’s my theory.”
“Which is why you wanted to talk to Luka.”
“Which is why I wanted to talk to Luka,” he agreed. “But we’re getting the new alpha next door instead.”
Edon.
I’d met him briefly last month during the whole Silvano fiasco. My predecessor had orchestrated some sort of game with the old alpha of Clemente Clan—Walter. It hadn’t gone according to plan for either of them, as they’d died. Hence my newly appointed position and Edon’s ascension. Which reminded me… “Did I hear you mention a triad at one point?”
“Yeah, he completed it last night before his ascension. Jace was in the middle of the post-celebratory festivities when I called.”
I could only imagine what that meant. Jace had a notorious fetish for lycans. “I see.”
Damien cleared his throat. “That’s not all. I was able to download Willow’s file on the flight here. It reflects a history of noncompliance at the breeding camps. There are videos of her fighting them while they rutted. The footage is… graphic.”
We’d lived through countless acts of violence. As such, not much fazed me and Damien, but I caught the glimmer of remorse in his gaze. That alone implied whatever Willow had experienced was the epitome of vile.
He cleared his throat again. “They marked her for termination, determining she wasn’t suitable to carry a child due to her inability to comply.”
Damien stared at me, his look telling me he had more to say and I wasn’t going to like it. I dipped my chin in a subtle way to encourage him to continue.
“Willow was marked for termination after her third week at the camp, yet Blood Day was several months ago. That means there are at least two months of data missing from her record. I’ve heard rumors of what lycans do when playing with humans. None of them are good.”
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing Edon is coming over. I have a few questions for him.”
“I imagine you do, yes,” Damien agreed.
We fell into a comfortable silence while I finished unlatching the cuffs at my back. I brought them around to lie on the coffee table before me. Damien didn’t even flinch. He knew I’d free myself and had banked on providing enough information up front that I wouldn’t lunge at him.
“I’m still going to shoot you,” I promised. “But as we’re expecting company, I’d prefer my only ally to be healthy and aware for the meeting.”
He lifted a shoulder, uncaring. “I’ll take a bullet.”
“Three,” I corrected. “One for each hit.”
“Then, technically, you owe me four,” he drawled. “I had to make sure you were really unconscious.”
My jaw ticked as I studied my wrists. The only evidence of a wound was the dried blood on my sleeve, which could have been from me slicing open my own vein. Except I felt the lethargy in my body, an odd sort of sensation I hadn’t experienced since my youth. It indicated I’d gone too long without blood. As I could survive on very little in my old age, the hunger rioting inside me was telling.
I’d lost a lot of my essence, and somehow, I hadn’t felt it until it was too late.
“There’s another bag of O-negative in the warmer,” Damien said. “You’ve already gone through three. It’s how I revived you.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Three bags?”
“Plus two on the plane to keep you alive,” Damien replied. “Your wound was healing at an