It’s a shameful confession, but no one in the room looks horrified. If anything, I see a level of respect from the faces I look at. I guess to lycans, who value pack loyalty and whose wolves drive them to kill creatures all the time, taking a life to protect another is the ultimate show of devotion.

I end with the dim recollection of the lycanthrope who collected Cara from me as I wove in and out of consciousness.

When I finish speaking, the room is quiet. My own magic sifts out through my palms, curling protectively around my midsection and over my shoulders. I feel split open in the worst way.

Finally, a soft, feminine voice says, “We thank you.”

Another, gruffer voice adds, “We thank you.”

Then another voice and another and another, until the whole room seems to be thanking me.

I glance at Cara, whose cheeks are wet. She gives me a soft smile, and I see her lips move. We thank you.

I bow my head as my own eyes prick. I’ve done so many things wrong and earned so much ire along the way that the compliments are unexpected and deeply moving.

Once it grows quiet again, someone else speaks up.

“You carried Cara the entire way,” a female shifter says, sounding impressed. Her eyes slide over me. “And you did this without the strength of a shifter.”

“I did use magic,” I say.

“You must be very powerful.”

I cringe at the word. “I had help,” I deflect.

“Help?” someone else from the crowd says. There’s a note of skepticism there.

Shit.

There was one single thing I hadn’t mentioned during my conversation. Memnon. Trying to explain the ancient warlord would only complicate things, so I omitted him.

Or I tried to at least.

“I…have a soul mate,” I confess. “We can share power through a bond we were born with. The night I fled with Cara he sensed I was in danger, and he gave me some of his magic.”

The room is deathly quiet.

“Who is this man?” a deep, rumbling voice questions, and they sound distrustful.

I guess I get it. The Marin Pack extended friendship to me, but if I have a soul mate, that relationship could affect this friendship pact.

“He’s…” Ah. How to put this without freaking everyone out? “A sorcerer.”

All at once, murmuring breaks out. Sorcerers aren’t exactly known for their shiny reputations. There are whole dynasties of them scattered throughout the world, and the more powerful they are, the more dangerous they tend to be.

“He’s the one who came and took care of me after I delivered Cara to your pack.” I don’t know why I’m trying to defend the man. He’s smeared his own good name. But I also don’t think of him the same way I do most other sorcerers.

Maybe because villain or not, he’s mine. And maybe because once upon a time, he gave me the whole world.

“Do you trust him?” someone else asks.

He had my absolute loyalty when I was Roxilana, but as Selene, he’s fucked me over a few times.

I don’t know what the truth potion is going to pull from my lips until I speak. “He’s loyal to no one but me.”

Kane’s voice cuts through the room. “Tell them how.”

I glance sharply at the shifter. At my friend.

His expression is stern and unbending. “Tell them how you’ve made him loyal to you. They deserve to know what you confessed to me last night.”

Again, there are a few scattered murmurs from around the room.

Kane set me up for this.

My heart pounds harder as the truth serum is pulling at my windpipe, readying its own sort of answer.

The forged bond between Memnon and me is the one thing I really, really don’t want to share. The more people who know about it, the more people might exploit it.

I will have to butcher a lot more people to keep them from coming after you.

My hands begin to tremble. “He is bound by magic to serve me.”

There are a few scattered gasps, and I hear a low growl start up, one that seems to catch and spread across the room.

“The same way Cara was nearly bound to another?” someone asks.

“No.” The serum permits the answer because the context matters. “Memnon offered to bind himself to me to earn back my trust. It is not a forced bond between us but a forged one.”

“Why would a man who is already your mate do such a thing?”

At the word mate, I see Kane glance down.

I assess the rest of the room, wondering if the truth serum will be enough for them to believe my next words.

“Memnon isn’t just any sorcerer.” The words come out tentatively. “He’s an ancient one who happens to be my long-lost soul mate. There’s lots of complicated details that I could overshare about that situation, but basically for the last couple months, he believed I betrayed him, so as revenge, he framed me for the murders of the witches found on Henbane’s campus. When he discovered I didn’t betray him, he offered the bond as a type of”—I search for the right word—“restitution.”

Silence. Absolute fucking silence.

“If your mate really did what you said he did,” a shifter finally asks, “how do we know he didn’t kill those women?”

I squeeze my hands together. “He confessed his innocence to me while under a truth spell of his own.”

More murmuring.

“Why isn’t he here?” a woman calls out. “We should hear this from him as well.”

This evening feels like it’s spun wildly off course. I knew I’d be retelling the events that unfolded with Cara, but I didn’t expect the truth potion or the informal inquisition I’m now getting. And I definitely didn’t expect to get Memnon involved. The thought of him in this room, politely answering questions for the lycans, is laughable. He’d sooner gut them all.

“Even if you wanted him here,” I say, “he answers to no one.”

Vincent gives me an intense look. “No one—except you.”

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CHAPTER 21

I spend another thirty minutes answering more follow-up questions, and my tongue trips over itself as I try to explain various aspects of the same few topics—the night of the spell circle, the witch murders, and Memnon.

Eventually the questions peter out until there are none left. I stare at the room as several long seconds tick by.

Vincent stands. “Thank you for coming here and speaking to us about all this, Selene.” He turns to face his pack. “Now we vote.”

Wait, there’s a vote for this? One I have to sit in on?

I slide a panicked look to Kane, but his eyes are on his alpha.

“A simple majority will determine whether Selene becomes a friend of the pack. By a show of hands, who is in favor of her?”

My heart races as most of the room raises their hands. I exhale.

“And those against?”

Only a few hands rise into the air.

Vincent turns to me. “By the laws of lycans and men, I formally welcome you, Selene Bowers, as a friend of the Marin Pack.”

Howls go up across the space, the sound raising my gooseflesh. Instinct is screaming at me to flee, but my magic comes alive at the noise. It spills out of me, moving about the room and weaving in between shifters.

I meet Kane’s lupine gaze. Though there’s a hard set to his jaw, he smiles at me, then howls along with the rest of them.

Only once the noise dies down do the lycans rise. One by one, they come up and greet me, giving me a hug and rubbing their cheeks against mine. It happens over and over, the entire pack marking me with their scents as they recognize me as their own.

It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced, but it’s definitely not your normal fucking Wednesday either.

After the last shifter has embraced and marked me, drinks and food are brought out, and the wolves begin to mingle. Before I can so much as attempt to slip away, I’m whisked into a conversation with an older lycanthrope woman who likes to crochet scarves and doilies, then I’m speaking to a bear of a man with a bushy, strawberry-blond beard and kind eyes who insists that Nero is welcome to hunt on their land.