In the days that followed, Mara shadowed countess Riffa’s every step through different city-kingdoms. The countess came out of her meetings looking strained, her porcelain skin cracked around the eyes.
Tonight, a morose, nameless specter of a man stood guard with Mara outside the door of the royal palace of Tornia, where the current meeting was being held.
Which was odd. Riffa never hired specters.
“Why you’re here?” Mara asked.
The specter turned to her slowly; his white mustache and long whiskers glowed. “To aid Her Majesty Riffa implement the agreement.”
What in the five hells? Mara took a step back. “Did you just say Majesty?”
The specter intoned, “She will control the portal of dusk; command shifters of her choosing do her bidding.”
“She’s turning into a ghoul queen?” Mara shivered. Riffa’s power would increase tenfold. Her control on Mara, too. “No wonder the shifters tried so hard to kill her before that happened.”
“It hasn’t happened yet.” The specter grinned. “Tonight, the moon is full and she will receive her full power.”
Damn. “I bet the shifters can feel it.” She cursed floridly under her breath. “It’ll be a bloodbath.”
He gave her a hard look, and she cursed herself for showing weakness.
“Taking care of security is your job,” he said. “I will focus on helping her lift the veil.”
A heavy weight settled on Mara’s chest. “What veil?”
But she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
The specter gave her a stern look. “The veil between the dead and the living.”
Mara fought back nausea, and the feeling of being trapped and cornered. Riffa was about to tear the veil between the dead and the living, and the world itself would shift. Into a darker, crazier place.
Mara touched her darts, felt the familiar weight of her scimitar on her back, the knives in her boots and belt. She was as ready as she would ever be. “Why didn’t anyone warn me?”
“I was told you can take on anything.”
“Yes.” Anything but this. The dead would latch onto her, try to drag her back to their world. Family, friends. Her whole clan.
But she couldn’t go back to the underworld. Riffa held her soul. Whatever happened, this could well mean Mara’s end. No afterlife. No reincarnation. No return. “When is all this supposed to happen?”
“Any moment now. But it won’t affect us, it will only—”
“Us?” She scowled. “Talk about yourself. When the shifters attack, and the dead try to drag me back to the underworld, I’ll perish.”
He shrugged. “Really?”
Right, what did he care? “Just bear in mind that Riffa will be unprotected.”
Unless she was so strong already she needed no protection. Mara frowned, but then had no more time to ponder because she felt several things happen at once.
The veil tearing, allowing in the cool scent of the shadow world, the cry of distant voices and the howl of the death wind.
The hot smell of fresh blood as shapeshifters crowded outside, crashed against the gates in a wave of life, demanding to be let in.
And among them, through the bond, she felt the white wolf.
She hadn’t seen him since that first time, and had hoped the bond had withered and died. But now her chest throbbed, her heart pounded, and a tide of protectiveness rose inside her. The bond was very much alive.
But Mara couldn’t afford a bond. Being undead was a dangerous line of business. You couldn’t have others depending on you. She grunted with the effort of shutting the white wolf out of her mind.
Then the veil between the worlds parted, the portal opened, and the shadows fell on her like hawks. Among the stinging pain of their claws, she felt the sweet caress of her mother’s soul, her father’s, her friends’. She collapsed to the ground, a cry tearing through her chest. She had missed them, mourned them, had longed to follow them, but couldn’t.
Their hard hands pulled her toward the invisible portal that sucked everything toward its center like an eddy.
“I can’t come with you!” She dug her heels in the soil, resisted the pull. Their love was harder to deny than any pain. Tears ran down her face. “I’ll vanish if I cross with you. Don’t you understand?”
But they couldn’t hear her, only smell her, recognize her as their own. Held in their incorporeal arms, she couldn’t shift into shadow and escape.
The metal gates surrounding the palace grounds broke and the shifters poured inside. Distantly, she heard the specter howl. A werepanther fell on her, but she twisted in the hold of the dead and the sharp teeth missed her throat.
“Release me!” she cried out, but the love of the dead was endless, and closed over her like warm water. She was drowning.
A werelion fell on her, pinned her with a forepaw. Dazed, she looked up into those amber eyes. They narrowed, the mouth opened, yellowed teeth jutted inches from her face. That was it, then. She prayed her end would be swift.
Then something crashed into them, throwing the lion off her.
Which left the tug of the dead stronger than ever, jerking her backward, toward the invisible portal.
Hells. She took a deep breath. “Close the damn portal! Specter, tell Riffa what’s happening—”
Her breath caught in her throat. The white wolf, ears flat, faced the lion. He snarled, bit and clawed at the much bigger animal, trying to push it away. The lion roared.
The bond inside her pulled like a wound. It was getting stronger, wrapped around her heart. Each act of devotion on the werewolf’s part would make the bond stronger. And the roots reached already so deep inside her that her body arched against the beloved dead to break free and let her reach him.
Bonded! The word shot through her mind, ripping it.
Mara gasped. “No! Leave me be.” She should be fighting the shifters, fulfilling her contract to Riffa, earning back her soul.
But the bond threatened to tear her heart out.
“Stop this!” She struggled to free herself from the hold of the dead. The wolves surrounded her, growling and snarling, foam flecking their muzzles.
Just great.
Something white streaked across her vision, and the white wolf dropped among them, biting and fighting to protect her.
Time stopped. Everything froze in a giant tableau. Gray-furred bodies, amber eyes glowing in the light of the full moon, spectral arms and faces. Her vision tunneled, centered on him, blue eyes, soft white fur, strong legs.
Dizziness hit her, her heart thundered.
Her wolf. She had to protect him. Had to hold him close.
Power unlike anything she had ever felt poured through the bond into her limbs. “Wolf!”
She tore herself free and raced to him. Pulling out her darts, she struck down the other wolves fighting him, methodically, coldly. My wolf. Mine. He belongs to me.
A small voice in her mind still objected. Shadows don’t bond. Shadows hunt the shifters.
Mara kept firing, unable to stop. He’s mine.
She pulled out her knives and slashed her way to him, pushed dead bodies off him with a strength she didn’t know she possessed. He was bloody, a wound gaped open on his foreleg, a new one on his hind leg, another on his back. Blood laced his body, a crimson filigree hem.
Her chest constricted, her eyes stung. The bond inside her ticked like clockwork, the spring coiling tighter with every breath.
“Shift!” she commanded him, even as she knew she shouldn’t be doing this, she should shut this bond down.
But she couldn’t.
The shifters swarmed the palace, jumping on the festooned balconies, through the narrow windows. Riffa’s link in her mind pulsed with pain, bringing Mara to her knees.
The white wolf’s fur rippled, waves of muscle and bone rose and fell, and the tide of animal skin receded to leave a naked man sprawled on the concrete — pale, his short hair white, the blood a shocking splash o
f crimson against his skin.
Albino.
The face was handsome, the jaw strong, the straight brows framed a direct, ice-blue gaze that bore into her mind. Heat rushed through her, and she knew the bond was directing her, but she didn’t care anymore.
“What’s your name?” she asked, the bond stretching between them, then contracting, pulling them together, until her hand touched his shoulder, his hot skin. Her breath hissed.
“Azer.” His voice was deep and smooth, a warm current.
“Azer, you’re mine.”