33. Lycan #2
She rubbed her neck. “Look, I’m not a shifter.
I don’t know how your bonds work, but us witches have our own variation.
” Bridge gestured to Leander. “When a Harlot gets patched in, she gets assigned a warrior to protect her, to give energy when she needs it to keep casting. Leander is mine. For a long time, we didn’t think a witch could have two warriors. ”
That got my attention, and my wolf perked his ears, instantly curious.
“My cousin, Marta, got two when she patched in,” she continued. “Now, they were all blood-bound at the same time, but there’s a symbiosis to their magic. Two doesn’t work without the third.”
“So you’re saying Lycan fucked up when he bit Poe,” Moose said. “Typical.”
I sneered and gave him the finger.
“Maybe,” she said. “Poe’s shifter accepted both bonds, which threw off the equilibrium. The only way to fix it was for Lycan and Ava to bond as well.”
“What does this have to do with Evelyn’s curse?” Poe asked, bringing us back on topic.
Bridge shook her head and shrugged. “There are some archaic spells that require untouched blood…virgin blood.”
“Ava wasn’t a virgin,” I said.
“The translation’s a little tricky,” Bridge cut in. “Untouched blood could also mean unbound blood. Unmated blood, in this case.”
Gravity shifted under me as it all fell together, everything we’d learned until this point. I thought back to what Evelyn had said, what bits of it I could remember.
“Her fucking spawn weren’t supposed to receive the moon gift. They weren’t supposed to shift. That’s what we were paid for.”
“She needed an unmated female from the Kennedy line to fix whatever they started and couldn’t finish,” I murmured. “It was meant to keep the Vanderbilt children from shifting, but Priscilla interrupted the curse. Her children shifted.”
Put together with all of this, I understood Ava’s actions in that ritual room on a different level.
Her marking me, me marking her, Poe marking me—it had saved us.
There was no way she could have known that, but it had.
That bitch had been hunting down my mate, and my brilliant wife did the one thing that could have brought the rotting vampire to her knees. No wonder she ran off like a coward.
I glanced at Poe, watching as he put it all together himself. His jaw tightened, and grim satisfaction rolled through our bond. We were always meant to be a three. This confirmed it.
“The bond the three of you had going into it was incomplete,” Bridge said. “As far as magic this old is concerned, Ava was still unmated. Still viable. When you completed the mating, she stopped being the sacrifice for the curse.”
“So it’s done,” Moose said.
“No. It blew back onto Evelyn, same as it did the first time,” Bridge said.
“Twenty years ago, Priscilla stepped in front of it and took the magic into herself, so the spell never finished. But it was still tied to Marx and Evelyn. It was intended for Priscilla’s children, but it went to her instead.
That caused a blowback, and they’ve been rotting ever since.
My guess is they never knew where it failed. ”
“What changed?” I asked.
“Uther died,” Kodiak said.
“Percy sold Sol to Marx days after Uther went into the ground,” Orion said, his voice dropping to a growl. “Marx got close enough to smell what she was. A shifter about to go into transition.”
“She reeked of pheromones as soon as she stepped into the Fiver,” Poe said. “We all smelled it.”
“Which shouldn’t have happened if the spell had worked,” Bridge added.
“No one comes looking for a man’s wife,” Mill said. “He could have kept her for years, waiting for her to turn.”
“And she ran into a blizzard instead,” I added.
“Then he stopped being patient.” Mill sneered and bared his fangs. “He took Maeve outright, and she killed him.”
“When she took his head off, she didn’t break the curse. She took out half of the anchor.” Bridge grimaced. “Whatever the two of them had been splitting for twenty years, Evelyn’s been carrying all of it since. Alone. That’s what you saw in Europe. That’s a vampire running out of time.”
“Good,” Serpent said, adjusting his hips before bringing a cigarette to his lips. “Let the fucking bitch rot.”
“So, we kill Evelyn, and it’s over?” I asked.
“She’s the last anchor. Kill the anchor, and the spell has nothing left to hold on to.” Bridge made a face. “Getting close enough to do it will be the biggest problem. She’ll be back before you get the chance. Angrier. More desperate.”
“And Priscilla?” I asked. “If she’s still alive out there, what happens to her once we kill the anchor?”
Bridge was quiet a beat too long. “I don’t know. This is uncharted territory.”
“None of this explains why they did it in the first place,” Ren said. “Why would two vampires care if a rancher’s children turned furry on the full moon? He and Uther were allies.”
“Evelyn said they were paid to do it,” I explained. “The question is, by who?”
“That’s what you all need to find out,” Bridge said. “We can work backward from there.”
“Thank you, Bridge. The Bastards owe you and the Harlots. We won’t forget this.” Kodiak gave her a nod, which she returned, before she and her warrior left the meeting room so we could continue.
“Zion’s moving closer,” Mill said. “He’s teasing our borders now.”
“We should have dealt with his ass ages ago,” Orion cut in, his dark eyes shifting to Kodiak.
“What do you want to do?” Moose asked. “Send scouts? A hit squad?”
Kodiak rubbed a finger over his lips, his eyes focused on the table, his body still as he half listened, half ruminated.
“We don’t know what he’s doing,” Ruby said.
“It’s pretty obvious what he’s doing,” Talon said. “The question is…do we nip it in the bud now or do we wait until he’s a bigger threat?”
“Technically, he hasn’t done anything illegal yet,” Ren added.
“Except abandon his brothers and start a new pack of his own,” Orion continued. “That alone is punishable by death.”
The others debated the right steps to take with Zion, but my focus landed on Kodiak, who still hadn’t said anything. He pursed his lips and narrowed his gaze, but he wasn’t actually seeing anything. His thoughts were far away, and a small chill reverberated through the pack bond, coming from him.
“Kodiak?” Orion asked, putting a hand on the alpha’s shoulder.
“If Evelyn is going after unmated Kennedy females to finish this curse, then there’s only one more left,” Kodiak said.
Fuck.
It hit me like a sledgehammer, and the rest of the room went silent. Ava was mated. Sol and Maeve were mated. That left…
“Guin,” Kodiak said.
The one who swore she’d never be mated. The one who had stood on her own her entire life. The one who lived to bring our alpha to his knees.
“Seventeen years,” Mill said. “She shifted right before I left Vanderbilt Ranch, and she’s been unmated this whole time. Right out in the open.” He looked down the table at Kodiak. “So why didn’t they come for her first?”
No one had an answer.