The plan had just backfired. In my face. As usual.
“Ambrose fessed up about why our mate bond is wonky.” I couldn’t meet Midas’s gaze. It hurt enough having a witness present, but Linus required full disclosure in order to help me manage Ambrose, and I didn’t want to have this conversation twice. “When you and I got serious, he hitchhiked through our mate bond to forge a secondary link with you.”
Midas took this news in stride. “Can it be severed?”
A dull ache set up camp behind my breastbone. “Can a mate bond be broken?”
We each stared at a different section of the floor, and neither of us spoke.
“What does it do, exactly?” Linus cut the lingering silence. “Did he explain it to you?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “We can pull energy from Midas when we run low.” I wet my lips. “He says the reverse is true. That we can feed power into him too.” Might as well tell them the whole truth. “He told me the symbiosis of our bond will allow Midas to live for as long as we do.”
Eyebrows arching, Linus asked, “How long will that be?”
“Oh, you know.” I swallowed. “Forever.”
“Interesting.” Linus tapped his steepled fingers against his lips. “Shades are already dead, so it stands to reason they could linger for an interminable amount of time, assuming they fed regularly, but an immortal necromancer is unprecedented.”
“Yay me.”
“So little is known about your condition, and less is understood about the modifications I’ve made to you. I’m sorry, but the best I can do for Midas, if Ambrose is right, is tattoo protective sigils on him as well.” His tone went soft. “We can’t afford Ambrose learning to use that link to take control of Midas.”
“There’s no bargain between them,” I protested. “He can’t do that.”
“Midas accepted you,” Linus said quietly. “Ambrose is a part of you. Ambrose might only need that bit of gray area to manipulate Midas the way he controlled you prior to your tattoos.”
The shadow on the wall shook his head and mimed shoving his hands into his pockets.
I wanted to believe him, so much, but I couldn’t gamble Midas’s life away on hope.
“The power transfer could give you enough energy to finish the wards?”
“Come again?” I whipped my head toward Midas. “Now who’s talking crazy?”
“This bond doesn’t have to be a bad thing.” He lifted his head. “It gives me an opportunity to help you.”
Expecting fear or revulsion from my big news, I received only absolute acceptance and staunch support.
Goddess, what had I ever done to deserve him?
“It might also get you killed.” I wanted to strangle him for thinking it. “We have no idea how it works.”
A prickle slid down my arm, and I turned my head to find Ambrose’s hand on my shoulder.
“There’s another way.” I withdrew. “Ambrose can feed, and it will give him energy to finish the job.”
There was a veritable smorgasbord of coven members to choose from, a buffet of tantalizing powers.
A wave of nausea crested within me, and I was certain as the moonrise Ambrose had given me the idea.
“Never mind.” I clamped a hand over my mouth. “Forget I said that.”
Sympathy softened the harsh lines of Linus’s face as he came to his own conclusion about my outburst.
“The pack bond connects more than you and me,” Midas said slowly, as if thinking it through. “It also links you to Mom and the rest of the pack. I wonder if you could draw on them through me? I was born in, and my alpha is a blood relative. I’m the better conduit in that scenario.”
Jaw smacking my chest, I croaked, “You expect me to endanger not only you but the entire pack?”
“If you spread the draw across that many lives, the impact will be minimal.” Linus kept his expression as neutral as I had ever seen it. “That’s the safest option available to us, unless you consent to a contractor. I have a trusted coven on retainer. They can be there within two hours.”
Within two hours, if I did as Midas suggested, I could be finished. The whole building, and all its occupants, were in the coven’s crosshairs. It was my fault for using the Faraday as an extension of the OPA’s HQ. I had fallen into the habit a little at a time, as I interacted more with enforcers, but I shouldn’t have let those lines blur.
Waving away the offer, I made my choice. “I’ll try again.”
“You’ll kill yourself,” Midas growled. “You’re not strong enough to handle this alone.”
I palmed the phone’s screen, unable to look at Linus, and it was all the mistake I had to make for Midas to hit the ceiling.
“Linus is your friend, Hadley. He’s not going to write you off because you asked for help one time. He’s not going to flunk you. This is not a test. This is your life. You have to take better care of it. If not for your sake, then for mine.” He gripped my upper arms. “What would I do without you?”
“The bond Hadley described,” Linus interrupted, “leads me to believe her death would end your life.”
Trembling, I ripped my hand away from the phone as if it had burned me. “But Ambrose said—”
“In our final moments, we struggle to survive at any cost. Are you strong enough to die without a fight?” The words stung, but he only spoke the truth. “The instant you enter that battle, the moment you choose to live, you’ll consume whatever it takes to make that happen. From Midas.”
“A life for a life,” I murmured through numb lips and shrugged off Ambrose’s touch.
The shadow melted into my shape then slid onto the floor in a dejected puddle.
That’s what Ambrose meant when he said Midas could live as long as we did, and I had misunderstood. I might have even chosen to misunderstand, the alternative too horrifying to contemplate.
I wasn’t only risking Midas’s heart when I endangered myself, but his life too. I didn’t have a suicide wish. Far from it. But I also didn’t have a problem throwing myself at problems until I solved them or gave myself a concussion, or both.
This changed…everything.
Fear, doubt, and worry speared my chest, piercing me, paralyzing me on the spot.
To hold that much power over another person was terrifying.
“Make your calls,” I told Linus without hesitation. “We need people here as fast as possible.”
Midas stepped back. “Hadley?”
“I’m not going to risk your life.” I tossed the covers off me. “Not when there’s another way.”
“We don’t know how much time we have—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t put my life above the lives of everyone in this building.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed then glanced back at him. “Watch me.”
Seven
Within the hour, Linus had called in his marker to a coven of tactical witches, Ford had been volunteered to pick them up in his warded truck, and I sidelined myself to watch onscreen with Bishop as Ford played cabbie right under the coven’s nose.