Then I’m chatting with younger female shifters who are looking at me with round, admiring eyes, and I feel entirely like an imposter.

On and on the conversations go until Kane grabs my free hand and physically hauls me away from his pack mates. He doesn’t release his hold until he’s led me out the rear of the house and onto a secluded back porch.

Night has already fallen out here. Frogs and insects call out from the darkness, and it’s such a shift from the high-energy conversations inside that my body relaxes.

Kane closes the door behind us, and the noise inside quiets to a dull background murmur.

“I thought you might need a break,” he says by way of explanation.

I give a shaky laugh, my breath misting. “I did. Thank you.”

Kane smiles tightly. “I love my pack mates—would give my life for them—but they can be a lot.” He moves over to the pine railing, leaning on it.

For a moment, I stare after him, my breath hitching. I’m unsure where the two of us are at or where the relationship goes from here.

“Relax, Selene,” he says, not bothering to turn around. “I’m not going to bite you. That’s what you’ve been worried about, right?”

Maybe I thanked Kane too soon. This conversation is already harder than any of the ones I had inside.

“Do you love him?” he asks.

Memnon, he means.

I step up to the railing next to him and lean against it. “I did once.”

“Once,” he echoes. His gaze returns to me. “But not anymore.”

I lift a shoulder. “He’s my soul mate—but no, I don’t.” If I did, the binding spell Memnon invoked would break.

“You don’t have to be with an asshole just because your magic is joined,” Kane says.

“I’m not with him,” I remind Kane. “Last night was … just sex.” I try to ignore the fact that it was the most searing, erotic sex I’ve had in this life.

“Just sex,” Kane echoes, his voice bitter. “Tell me, if he hadn’t shown up, would you have spent the night with me? Would you have had just sex with me?”

I open my mouth, but I genuinely have no idea what in the seven hells I’m supposed to say.

“You were worried about me biting you,” he continues. His eyes drop to my neck before returning to mine. “Was that it?”

I remember how it felt kissing him last night. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“That was partly it,” I say, hoping to avoid discussing all the ways my bond betrays me when I’m with people other than Memnon.

“Would that really have been so bad? Would I have been so bad?”

I frown, flustered by this entire conversation. “Kane, I’m sorry if I unlocked some secret insecurity⁠—”

He laughs hollowly at that. “An insecurity? Selene, I’m all but begging you to actually consider me instead of the menace who thinks you belong to him. This isn’t me being insecure. This is me wanting you and wanting you to want me back the way you did a few weeks ago.”

I want that version of me back too. I stare at the dark sky. “Kane, my life is a mess. I’m a mess. I don’t know what you see in me, but you’ve picked the wrong girl.”

“What I see in you?” Again, he laughs, but this time, the sound has a pained edge to it. “You saved my pack mate—you nearly died doing so. You are hilarious and a fucking good time when you cut loose. You’re honorable, beautiful, and powerful.” His eyes drop to my neck again.

I’m barely breathing. Intuition is telling me to back away from the shifter, but I’m also caught up in his words.

He reaches out and touches the pulse at my throat. “Would it really be so bad?” he says again. His gaze flicks to me, and his wolf is in his eyes. It looks…hungry.

I go still the way I imagine hares do when they face down a predator.

“You’re not serious, are you?” I breathe. I can’t tell, but intuition is still insisting I back away.

“I could claim you. Right here, right now,” he says, his eyes fixed on my throat. “I would make sure it didn’t hurt.”

Holy Goddess.

I force myself to turn more fully to face him, startled at the proposition. I search his features. “You hardly know me.”

He draws his attention up to my eyes. “There is an understanding shifters have with their wolves that mates are a matter of instinct. My wolf likes you—he has since the moment you healed him.”

“I’m already mates with someone else,” I say.

“You are with a monster,” Kane says. “One who was happy enough to destroy your life when it suited him.”

Sort of. I mean, shit pulled an Uno reverse real quick.

“If I claimed you,” he continues, “then I would have an equal right to be your mate.”

I place a hand over the juncture between my neck and shoulder and shake my head. “Kane, I don’t want that.”

His eyes are lupine when he takes a step toward me. There was barely any distance between us before; he’s fully in my space now.

“Are you sure?” he says, his voice unnaturally low. “Imagine what it would be like to be tied to someone who wants you, loves you.”

I do know what that’s like. That’s never been the problem. For all Memnon’s flaws, he’s always loved me.

This is…a lot. And if my life was different—simpler—I might happily bare my neck for Kane and go along with this.

But things aren’t simple.

“I think,” I say, carefully picking my words, “if it’s loyalty your pack holds in high regard, then you’re going to understand that I can’t be with you like that.”

Kane looks like I struck him, and I feel like I’m carving my own heart out with a dull kitchen knife.

“I have a soul mate,” I continue. “One who is legitimately terrible, but he’s…mine.” I laid claim to him in my mind earlier today, but the sentiment rings even truer now that I’ve spoken it out loud. “Long ago, I gave my life for a spell strong enough to be with him again. To be here, in this life, trying to figure it out with him, and I owe it to who I was to⁠—”

I choke, the rest of the words falling away as sharp, burning pain blooms from my side.

“Selene?” Kane says, alarmed.

I grip my ribcage against the sizzling pain, grinding my teeth together to keep from screaming.

“What’s wrong?” the shifter says, reaching for me.

“My side,” I gasp out.

Kane gently pries my hands away and lifts my shirt. The skin beneath is smooth, unblemished. I neither sense nor see any malicious magic, but it hurts like someone has shoved a hot poker into it.

What in the seven hells is going on?

“There’s nothing there,” Kane says.

As he speaks, another wave of pain comes. My back arches, and I fall into the shifter.

“Selene!” Kane wraps his arms around me, a note of panic in his voice. “Tell me what’s wrong.” His voice deepens as his wolf enters it. “Is this a curse?”

Selene! Memnon bellows down our bond. Where are you?

The bond—the bond, of course. The pain isn’t my own; it’s coming from my bond.

Kane’s still talking to me, but I’m no longer listening.

Memnon! I shout. Memnon! What’s happening to him? The pain is unbearable, and I’m only feeling an echo of it.

What’s happening? Memnon demands, echoing my thoughts. Are you all right?

Am I all right? Why would Memnon be asking that if he’s the one hurt?

I suck in a sharp breath when I realize who I’m actually feeling.

“Nero.”

My familiar is being attacked.

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CHAPTER 22

I slip down my connection with my panther and into his mind, right as he’s snarling.

He pounces on someone, the action making his side scream. The metallic tang of blood coats my mouth—his mouth—as he sinks his teeth into their neck, then rips out their throat.

Vaguely, I’m aware that my actual knees have buckled and Kane’s fully holding me up. I’m shocked by the violence, but I did recently give Nero permission to maim and kill anyone who tries to hurt him.