Adam wouldn’t have a choice. I’d seen what that witch had made Elizaveta’s family do to each other, and to themselves. They were trained witches and they’d had no chance against Magda.
I was faster than most of the werewolves, I reassured myself. I put my head down and ran for all I was worth.
* * *
• • •
I didn’t make it a hundred yards before Adam’s teeth closed on the back of my neck and bit down. His momentum hit me sideways and we both tumbled to the ground and rolled. His teeth never left my neck.
They didn’t close down, either.
I lay limply on the ground, smelling my own blood in the night air. Adam crouched over the top of me. He growled, true anger in his voice, and I could feel the mate bond light up like a bonfire, sizzling flames burning through the muck of Magda’s compulsion with the force of Adam’s frustrated fury. Relief blossomed over me so strongly I don’t think I could have moved if I tried.
Our connection wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t care. His rage rolled over me first and his wolf let me know that he was not impressed with my brains or obedience. How dare I risk this, that he might be forced to kill me?
But beneath the rage was terror, so I let him get by with the insults. Relief hit him a few seconds later, as it had me. He let me go and lay down next to me, shivering once. Excess adrenaline, I thought. I felt the buzz, too.
Wulfe appeared a dozen yards off and gave us both a disapproving look. “When I told you that I thought your touch might free him from her hold—given your immunity to their magic—I didn’t mean that you should touch your throat to his teeth. That generally doesn’t work as well.”
Adam rose, head lowered, ears pinned.
I shifted to human and touched his shoulder. “He’s on our side this time,” I told him. “I think.”
“Thanks for that,” Wulfe said with a smirk.
I looked at him. “Adam is free. What’s the plan now?”
“I don’t think the plan needs to change,” he said after a moment. “Adam should go back to the witches; they’ll think he failed to catch the coyote. As long as you do what she tells you, she’ll think you are still in thrall.”
“And if she figures it out?” I asked. “I don’t want to lose Adam to her again.”
His eyebrows rose. “Keep your bond open the way it is now. I don’t think she can get him as long as you do.” He looked at Adam. “It looks to me like all the players are out on the patio. I heard Elizaveta. Is the senator there, too?”
Adam nodded.
“Go back there and look like nothing is wrong,” Wulfe said. “I plan on making an entrance and then killing the witches. Mercy was going to see if she could manage to touch you—because I was pretty sure, given how mate bonds work, that would allow her to lend you her natural talent. Then she was going to go plant herself out of sight, where she would watch for an opportunity to get the senator out of harm’s way. And looky, now there are both of you to save the senator, while yours truly bears the brunt of the battle.”
He left out the way I was going to help kill the witches. Wulfe was not stupid. Bat-in-the-belfry bizarre, maybe. Psychopathic, certainly. But not stupid.
Adam thought about Wulfe’s plan. Then he made a chuffing sound and gave a pointed look all around us. I could smell them, too. He paused, because there was a zombie standing twenty feet away.
She could see us, but she didn’t do anything but watch. This one, I was afraid, was someone they had killed here. She was not well made; there was a rotting patch in the center of her right cheek through which I could see her teeth and tongue. She was about Jesse’s age.
“Wulfe spelled them to inattentiveness for now,” I told Adam. “It won’t hold if the witch calls them. But Zee and Tad are out here, too. Their part is to take care of the zombies. They already took care of the ogre.”
Adam tilted his head to me, and our mate bond rang with his warning.
“Something worse than the ogre?” I said. “Do you think that Zee will be overmatched?”