His expression cleared, that proud smile that had been present a second before disappearing. He looked away, breaking eye contact. “No, I . . . scryed.”

But I detected the deception in him. I sniffed, a new odor hitting my senses. It smelled bitter and off. And deep down, in some new part of me, perhaps where my awakening power lay, an instinct told me that he was lying. I didn’t know how I was so sure of that, but I could smell it.

My lips parted, cold hurt biting me. Any warmth I’d been feeling for him vanished. “You’re lying. You’re lying to me right now. That’s not how you found me.”

He abruptly stood and went to the window before planting his hands on his hips.

I pushed the covers back, and despite the weakness I still felt from whatever the hell that ax and those cuffs had done to me, I forced myself to pad up behind him. His citrus and cedar scent hit me, nearly drowning me in its intensity—and that subtler earth and pine aroma was there too—but I shoved those details down.

I needed answers. Twice in the past two weeks abduction attempts had been made on me. And twice, this hunter had either saved me from death or saved me from falling into their hands.

And I wanted to know how.

“Kaillen,” I said sharply. “Answer me. How did you find me?”

He stood rigidly, and I wondered if he was even breathing. I was about to open my mouth, to demand again that he tell me, when he spun around suddenly, his eyes blazing with black fiery embers. The depths of the underworld shone behind them again. His demon side looked at me front and center, and I instantly recoiled at the immense power roiling in those irises.

“Why does it matter?” he bit out.

I righted myself, anger swirling inside me that he was evading my questions. It was bad enough that we still hadn’t figured out exactly where we stood, but if he was going to start lying to me on a regular basis, then the choice would be easy. It would be sayonara to the hunter, once and for all. Because I could put up with many things but outright lying wasn’t one of them.

I took a step forward until we stood toe to toe. “It matters, because it shouldn’t be possible. Nobody, not even you, can find somebody that quickly. How did you find me? Did you put a tracking hex on me?”

His head dipped, a guilty look streaking across his face.

“You did?” My insides stilled. That was such a grotesque breach of privacy. “How? When I was sleeping?” Fresh hurt cut through me.

“No,” he snarled. “It’s not a hex. That’s not how I found you.” His gaze shifted again as he continually refused to make eye contact.

“Then how?” I demanded. “How?”

A tense moment of silence passed between us. It was so thick I could have stabbed it with a knife. My fingers itched, wishing more than anything that I had a blade at my side. ’Cause even though I couldn’t actually stab the air, I could sure as hell stab this lying fucking demon who was apparently keeping more secrets from me than his hoard of fairy charms.

“Tell me,” I seethed. “Right now.”

He shook his head, silent again, and I was convinced he wasn’t going to answer me, but then he bit out, “It was my blood.” His words were so quiet I barely heard them. “That’s how I found you. My blood bound you to me.”

His blood? I shook my head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He finally looked up, his jaw locked tight as black fire flashed in his eyes. “The blood I gave you on the night you nearly died following that first abduction attempt. It tied you to me. I can sense you now. Feel you. I know your whereabouts at all times. The second they took you from Oak Trembler, I knew.”

My breath sucked in. “The blood I drank from you that healed me makes you able to track me?”

He didn’t reply.

A second passed, and then another. “And you knew this? Or did you not know? When you gave me your blood and saved me, did you know this could happen?”

“I knew it would happen, if—” Guilt flashed in his eyes.

“If what?”

“If I spelled my blood as you drank from me. I knew you would have to take enough that it would fill you, and by spelling it as you consumed it, I could tie you to me.”

I stumbled back, shock rippling through me. He’d tied me to him. Willingly bound me to him. All without my consent.

“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded. “Am I tied to you forever? Will you forever be able to hunt me? Feel me? What other ramifications does this blood bond have?” I nearly yelled.

A feral expression twisted his features, then he snarled and tore a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Tala. Okay? But the mate bond . . . I didn’t fully understand what I was feeling when I first detected your scent. I know now that it was the mating instinct. It was pushing me, driving me. I was doing things I shouldn’t have because of my fucking wolf. I know now that I shouldn’t have bound you to me, but at the time, all I knew was that I needed you—craved you—and that pull was driving me crazy. It made me . . .” He shook his head, growling. “I’m sorry, okay? I fucked up.”

But his apology fell on deaf ears. “Answer my questions. What else does it mean?”

He looked at me with pleading eyes. “I’m sorry.”

I took another step back, fear and apprehension slamming through me. “Why? Why are you so sorry? What else does this bond do?”

The light from the moon streaked across the floor when I stepped into it. That tug pulled on me again, snagging my attention to it.

My breath sucked in. The moon. Its pull. My breathing sped up when I thought about the other new traits I’d been noticing in myself. Heightened senses. Increased strength too.

Were those traits not related to my new awakening power, but instead tied to the hunter’s blood?

A flash of something Cameron had said that day at the training center collided with my thoughts. He’d sniffed and then uttered, “What are you? Not a normal witch from the smell of it. Are you like him? An abomination?”

Perhaps I was.

Tears of anger, pain, and betrayal pricked my eyes.

The hunter took a step toward me, but I took a much larger one back.

Kaillen glanced toward the window, toward the glowing orb in the sky. His expression turned pleading again. “I don’t entirely know what else my blood could do to you, but I’ve—” His throat bobbed in a swallow. “I’ve been scenting a change in you lately. It’s possible—” His lips pressed into a tight line.

My gaze drifted to the moon again, to that beautiful heavenly body that called to me. The tears grew in my eyes as a growing sense of dread filled me. “What have you turned me into?”

A look of absolute devastation rippled across his features. “I think you might be a werewolf now.” Another bobbed swallow. “And I think you might shift, but we won’t know for sure until your first full moon tomorrow night.”

A strangled sob of disbelief tore from me.

My chest caved in.

My lungs shattered.

I stumbled back, my knees meeting the bed’s edge before I collapsed and sank onto the mattress. “I’m a werewolf now?” I began shaking my head back and forth, the movement becoming faster and faster and faster until it felt as though my head would spin off.

He made a move to reach for me, to touch me, but I scrambled back.

“But female werewolves can’t shift. They’ve never been able to. They only carry the gene.”

“But you’re not a born werewolf,” he said softly. “You’re a made werewolf. Men who are made can shift into wolves.”

“But that’s never been possible for females! You can’t make a female werewolf!”

His expression turned so forlorn, so broken, as though sensing that the rage flowing through my veins precipitated the end of whatever had started between us. The end before the beginning. Because the blinding fury that I felt at having been transformed into something other than what I’d been born was consuming me, eating me away bit by bit, as if my soul were being devoured in its intensity.