Entangled With the Thief (8 page)
Read Entangled With the Thief Online
Authors: Kate Rudolph
Krista gave Bob a big hug when they arrived back at Luke’s house. While they’d thrown a dozen ideas back and forth over the course of the flight, nothing had stuck. Mel was ready to tear her hair out in frustration, but every time she reached the edge, Luke was there, saying the right thing, offering a small touch, making things better.
But he wasn’t her mate. She didn’t have a mate, didn’t need one. Especially not him.
Maya came down the stairs and took a look at Krista and Bob. “We can’t waste time,” she turned to Mel. “Did you get your magic powder?” Something bitter tinged her words. Other than stealing from right under her nose, Mel hadn’t wronged the second in command. But in just two days her demeanor had soured towards Mel. The lion’s glance shifted to where Krista let Bob go.
Perhaps it wasn’t Mel then.
Interesting.
Mel tossed the powder at Krista. She caught it. “Give me an hour. Bob can try his mojo while I get this ready.”
Maya led Krista to the kitchen and Mel and Luke led Bob upstairs. Cassie smiled when she saw her brother. They’d taken away her bindings and she had a book sitting on the bedside table. “Luke!” She smiled, her face glowing. “Give me a hug!” She held out her arms.
Mel could see that the girl had lost weight since the beginning of this ordeal. After only a few days her cheeks were hollow, her skin far paler than it should have been.
Luke explained who Bob was and what he would try to do. With Cassie’s permission, they let the other man take the seat beside her bed and stepped back to let him try to work. Without preamble, Luke grabbed Mel’s hand and held it tight. Mel didn’t have the heart – or the desire – to let him go.
She was in so much trouble.
Krista came upstairs a little more than an hour later. Bob stepped back to let the witch take his place. “I’ve taken a psychic imprint of Cassie,” he told Luke and Mel. He didn’t comment on their linked hands. “If Krista is unable to find whoever did this to her, I’ll do my best.”
Luke nodded. “You have my thanks.” He turned to Mel. “I guess we could always go meet them like they want. That vampire hasn’t given up anything.”
Mel narrowed her eyes. “You never said anything about a vampire.”
“Because it might have nothing to do with Cassie. And he isn’t talking. It was one of the guys with you that night.”
Krista looked over at them. She, Bob, and Mel all knew that Krista’s mother, Tina, didn’t have enough power to place a hex that powerful. But that was another connection to Ava. And to the Scarlet Emerald. All three of them kept silent. They would know soon enough.
“We didn’t know they would be there until they showed up,” said Mel. “I don’t know who they were.”
Luke accepted that. And a part of Mel felt horrible for not telling him all, but she had been who she was for much longer than she’d known him. She wasn’t going to change overnight. She wasn’t going to change at all.
“I’ll need to be alone with Cassie,” said Krista. “I’ll need to ward the room and I can’t have you in here distracting me. I’ll set the ward so that Mel can break it if anything goes wrong.”
“Wrong how?” Luke took his hand from Mel’s. “You didn’t say anything about things going wrong.”
“Magic always has risk,” Krista explained. “But with Marco’s powder we should be more than adequately prepared for any funny business.”
Luke nodded. Krista produced a needle and pricked Mel’s finger, collecting a speck of blood on a napkin. “It will only take a few minutes. If I’m not out of here in half an hour, break the ward and check on me.”
Mel nodded. She and the other two men exited the room, leaving Krista alone with the alpha’s sister.
Mel set her clock to time thirty minutes. Maya joined the three of them in the hallway. She gave the alpha a hug. “It will be okay.” And it only helped to solidify Mel’s belief that Mel wasn’t Luke’s mate. She wasn’t jealous when another woman touched her man. And didn’t that mean he wasn’t hers at all?
Even she didn’t buy that lie.
Luke hugged Maya back, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at Mel. Bob’s glib accusation had been flashing through his mind for hours. Mate. Mel was his mate. Of course, it made complete sense in a strange way. From the moment he’d first seen her, she hadn’t been far from his thoughts. And he couldn’t keep his hands off her. She seemed likewise afflicted.
But her eyes didn’t narrow when he hugged Maya; he sensed no aggression from his thief. That was good. It meant that she already knew that he was hers, sensed it in her bones. At least he hoped that’s what it meant. The alternative was not something he wanted to contemplate.
He’d deal with it either way later. He had to make sure Cassie was safe first. Once the hex was lifted, he was sending her home, and telling their parents what happened. He couldn’t hope to keep it from them.
Just a few more minutes and the nightmare would be over.
A scream rent the air and Luke’s heart tore in his chest. He bolted for the door, stopped only by Mel and Maya holding him back. “Wait,” said Mel. “It hasn’t even been five minutes yet.”
He didn’t want to wait. The lion inside of him roared to burst through the door and save his sister. Except the ward on the other end would prevent him from even entering the room. After a second both Mel and Maya took their hands off of him.
Another scream, this one filled with pain. Luke looked at Mel. “That doesn’t sound right. You know it doesn’t.”
A roar, a leonine scream, came through the wall. Mel had her hand on the door before he could react. She placed her hand on the thickened air, opening a gash in one palm with one of her claws. The air rippled, a shockwave knocking him back a step.
Luke pushed past Mel and took in the scene.
Krista had been knocked to the floor, all of her supplies scattered on the floorboards. The witch had an ugly, bloody gash across her collar bone. She held a hand to it and tried to crawl away from the monster on the bed. But Cassie had her claws out, digging into the witch’s back as she tried to move.
His sister was in the throes of her first shift, brought on by the trauma of the hex and from trying to remove it. The shift couldn’t be stopped, and if they didn’t act quickly, Krista was going to die. A shapeshifter’s first change was a thing of madness. The animal took over, hungry for blood, for the hunt. And once blood had been spilled, they were wild until they sated their hunger or shifted back.
And Cassie hadn’t even completed her first shift.
Her hands had transformed into gigantic claws and her mouth and nose elongated to form the beginnings of a snout. But the rest of her was still human.
Maya was already moving, approaching the witch and trying to get her out of the way. Luke couldn’t see Mel, but he had to trust that she was trying to help. He approached his sister and put steel in his voice. Speaking as her brother wouldn’t get through to her, but being an alpha might.
He roared, letting the sound fill the room. It didn’t sound right coming from his human throat, but it gave Cassie pause. She tilted her head towards him. Her eyes were turning to a yellowish brown. More and more of her was shifting. He needed her to shift all the way. He could try to control her then. Maybe talk sense into her.
“Let it happen, Cass,” he said. “You need to relax into it.”
But she didn’t understand. Only pain and hunger lived in her eyes. She swung her claws at him, growling wildly and missing by several feet. Luke jerked back anyway. Cassie wasn’t this violent thing, and he wasn’t going to help her by playing nice.
Maya got Krista completely out of the way, giving him more room to maneuver. Mel was still absent.
The next time Cassie swung at him, he grabbed her arm, pulling her to the floor and straddling her legs. He had full control over her in this position, but Cassie had anger. She kept scratching, making little nicks in his flesh. They stung, but Luke could handle the pain. He just had to hold her there long enough for the shift to take over.
But Cassie didn’t want to be held.
She bucked at him, the sudden motion jerking him forward. With a swiftness he didn’t know she possessed, she rolled out from under him, onto her feet and ran for the door where the bleeding woman was propped against the wall of the hallway.
Luke grabbed for his sister, pulling her back down. He tried to hold her again, but he couldn’t do much without hurting her. Even knowing that she couldn’t feel any blows on top of the pain she was already experiencing, even knowing that he wouldn’t cause any permanent damage, he couldn’t hit her. She was his baby sister, and she wasn’t doing this on purpose.
Cassie had no such compunctions.
She swiped at him again, this time getting in a lucky shot and opening up several inches of flesh on his arm. The only positive from that was that she was now focused solely on him, no longer diving for the wounded Krista.
Fur covered his sister’s arms now, though the bones beneath hadn’t completely shifted. He needed to get her farther into it. No matter how much she didn’t want to cooperate.
But he hesitated and Cassie took another swipe, this time making him stumble back to stop from hitting her or slamming her to the ground.
A black mass barreled into him. Mel in her leopard form. She spared a second to bare her teeth at him, growling. And Luke understood. He couldn’t stop Cassie, he wasn’t willing to hurt her.
Mel could. If he trusted her.
He scooted back, letting the leopard thief take over. She wasted no time, pouncing directly on his sister and letting her claws prick at the human skin. Fur bloomed on Cassie wherever she was hurt, her body healing itself into the form it wanted to shift into.
Mel got on top of the girl and planted her teeth within her. But she was gentle, making sure that whatever injury she caused wouldn’t last beyond the shift. Luke scented his mate’s blood and had to hold himself back. This wasn’t a fight he could win.
And nearly as soon as it began, it was done. Cassie’s body gave a final ripple and a lioness stood where once there had been a girl.
“Alpha, down!” Yelled Krista.
Luke ducked, rolling out of the way without seeing the threat.
Something whizzed through the air over his head, landing in the golden fur of the lioness. Cassie took two steps on her new paws before crashing to the side, the sedative knocking her out. Luke looked over at the witch.
Maya had a rag pressed gently against her biggest wound. Krista held a huge tranquilizer gun against her shoulder. She slowly lowered it. She tried to speak, but coughed before any words came out. After a moment, she tried again. “I couldn’t lift the hex. Something triggered her shift before I could do anything. And the anti-hex powder’s gone.”
Luke looked away. He couldn’t deal with that yet. He padded over to his sister and plucked the dart out of her side. She breathed evenly, probably sleeping better than she had in weeks. He laid a hand on her head and sat next to her.
Mel snuck up beside him and lay down, still in her leopard form. She rested her head on his thigh. Luke used his other hand to pet her head. It was an intimate gesture, something he would never have felt right doing to someone he didn’t know.
But Mel was different.
He closed his eyes, allowing himself three seconds to wallow in defeat. Sitting on the ground, even with his mate by his side, he didn’t know how anything could ever get better. Cassie was still hexed, Mel would probably try to leave him the second she got the chance, and he had no idea what enemy he faced.
But those seconds passed and he opened his eyes. He couldn’t afford more than three seconds. His enemy wanted to meet.
Bring it on.
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