“You still don’t get it,” I countered, tasting the memory of tears as I realized at last the one sure way to remove Ambrose from Jack’s body without either of us dying. “The important things are sunrises shared with allies. Petting kittens and being fed breakfast. Kisses and...”

  “Again,” Tall Nose interrupted, “You’re talking power and pleasure. That mate bond you’re all wrapped up in? It’s pure energy. Drink deep and you could beat me with one hand tied behind your back.”

  I wasn’t going to drink deep of my mate bond. I was going to have to steal it. Steal every memory of Jack’s that gave me the strength to listen to Tall Nose ramble. Strip away the sweetness that connected us and, with it, I hoped, strip Ambrose out of humanity once and for all.

  That wasn’t anything Tall Nose would understand. It was nothing I would have understood until recently.

  So I left Tall Nose there and let the human realm yank me back into my body. It was time to protect Jack from the evil inside himself.

  I burst back into humanity with a gasp. The time between and the energy Tall Nose had stolen made me feel like he’d held my head under freezing water until I was on the verge of drowning. Still, I wasted one split second measuring with my eyes, locking my memory around the spot where the two pelts had to be hidden.

  Then, rather than going to them, I went to Jack.

  Outside, the singing had swollen from a background murmur to a chorus so loud I had to raise my voice to be heard above it. “Jack, I’m going to do something irreversible and I need your permission to...”

  “Do it.”

  “You don’t want an explanation?”

  “How many ways do I need to tell you that you’re my mate? I trust you, Kami. I’ll keep repeating that until you start trusting yourself.”

  I choked on his words and on the tears that were already messing with my vision. I’d promised never to do this again. I’d promised not to steal another memory.

  But Jack was giving me carte blanche and I had no time for human weakness. So I swiped one angry hand across my face, remembering the clarity of between, my realization while talking to Tall Nose. Then I acted like the kami I was.

  My fingers on the inside of Jack’s wrist caught the pulse of his heart beating faster than I was used to. Strange that I knew his resting heart rate, but that’s what a mate bond does. Turns two disparate beings into one, united.

  Does. Did. Tenses were slippery given what I was about to steal.

  My throat was so tight I could barely swallow. I clenched my fists, refusing to believe what I needed to do was possible.

  Trouble was, I knew I could do exactly this. I’d already managed something similar when Jack was locked away in that prison cell. Then, I’d become adept at sucking up the tiniest fragments of memories, just enough to keep Ambrose from messing with us but not so much I gave Jack a headache afterwards.

  He’d survive what I was about to do. I’d survive it also. So why couldn’t I make myself act?

  “Do it,” Jack repeated, his words this time a caress rather than a command. “Do it, Kami.”

  I did. I dropped all finesse, twirling my index finger through our mate bond as if I was twisting a fork through great gobs of spaghetti...

  ...Then I tugged out one of his memories and the whole of my heart.

  Jack grunted. Only that wasn’t Jack. That was Ambrose.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  If Jack’s words traveling down the mate bond were a caress, Ambrose’s words were nails on a chalkboard...and I was the chalkboard. Still, I didn’t answer. Just reached deeper inside Jack’s memories, snatching up our shared hunt for Merry’s and Justice’s pelts here in this cottage, the sweet moments that came before and after our kisses. Each memory was so warm, so delicious...and they tasted like the poison of bitter almonds as I swallowed them down.

  “Stop that!” Ambrose’s demand came down the mate bond as mere words, then he tried to say the same words aloud with an alpha compulsion behind them.

  Luckily, the handkerchief Jack had demanded I tie around his face turned that command into an inarticulate mumble. The failed compulsion didn’t even slow me down as I tugged harder on the mate bond, sucking up yet more of our past together. I was working my way backward, through the cement that had glued us together, toward the connection I’d resolved to break.

  My eyes burned from salt, my cheeks were slick and I didn’t waste energy wiping them dry again. I had to do this. Jack needed me to. I had to work fast before Ambrose found a way to make me stop.

  Then Ambrose took his refusal up a notch. He threw his body sideways, toppling the chair he was connected to. Breaking the physical connection between us.

  My fingers slid off his wrist. But it didn’t matter. Tall Nose was right. I was so full of energy now that I didn’t even need contact to finish what I’d started.

  The huge mass of stolen energy should have made me exuberant. Instead, it was all I could do to focus on not rushing through the awful finale. I had to ensure every shred of connection between me and Ambrose was gone in its entirety, so I circled past the most important part and stole away Jack’s memory of our first meeting.

  Banter on a rooftop when I’d been scared then he’d been scared, each of us for entirely different reasons. My breath came faster, the pain in my gut expanding up to my temples and down to my toenails. It felt like being shredded by Tall Nose’s claws, only worse.

  I took the morning Jack handcuffed me to his bed and the deal we’d made so he’d let me come with him after waking. Pain, pain, so much pain slammed into my body. I almost lost the thread of what I was trying to do at that point.

  Because all that was left was the most powerful moment, the moment I most dreaded breaking and most craved the opportunity to relive. The past replayed like a movie in front of my eyes, the same way humans say a recap of their life flows over them just before they die.

  “Shall we?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t actually know how to do this...” I answered.

  “How to save the day? I think you’re doing an excellent job so far.”

  That dimple. That darn dimple... I needed to slow down time and bask in the moment forever. But the conversation spooled out as I stole our past and, with it, any chance of seeing Jack smile at me that way in the future.

  “No.” Back then, I’d been so confused. “I don’t know how to make you my mate.”

  Back then, he’d been so certain. “I already am.”

  He had been...and now he wasn’t. I sucked up the final fragment of connection between us, power strumming beneath skin that felt like it had been lashed with ten thousand saw-tooth grass blades.

  And with that last memory, I consumed Ambrose himself.

  Consumed rot and evil, swished it between my teeth the way I’d de-seed a grape, then spat what was left—Ambrose’s barest essential self—out into air unbodied. Every ounce of energy he’d once shrouded himself in was denuded. Any connection to Jack and to me was severed. He lacked the strength to repossess a body the way he’d done multiple times before glomming onto my mate bond.

  Ambrose wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t coming back again either. If I didn’t miss my guess, he’d drift around for a while like a dust mote then lose even that hint of awareness.

  Spirits don’t die. We simply forget we exist.

  As the mote of glowing dust disappeared and Ambrose with it, I was so full of energy I felt like I could lift the roof off the cottage. So why did it hurt so much when Jack’s eyes opened and his dark eyebrows lowered in confusion?

  There was no dimple, that’s why. The man in front of me was no longer my mate.

  Chapter 30

  I ripped off his gag and Jack’s inimical charm filled the air between us, not lessened one iota by the fact he had to gasp a new breath between each word. “Is...this...a...meet-cute...or...a...kidnapping?”

  Still, his gaze slid away from mine before he was done speaking. I was a stranger he felt no need to engage further given the ropes binding him.

  My throat tightened and I opened my mouth to answer, but a crash made me spin around instead. The door Jack had locked was bursting open, the jamb splintering and Drake nearly falling as he thrust himself through the fragments left behind.

  Behind the broad form of the man who looked exactly like Jack and also subtly different, I could barely make out candlelit faces, mouths Oed as their song rose to a crescendo. The air was electric. Ambrose might no longer be a problem, but Tall Nose’s hope for embodiment was about to be realized at the expense of a little girl and a man who’d lost his pelt while trying to save his daughter.

  Good thing I knew where both pelts were hidden.

  “Ambrose is gone,” I called to Drake. “One pelt is under the kitchen sink. I’ll get the other.” As I spoke, I twisted my own pelt around my waist while sprinting toward the harder-to-explain location. Because the second glow had seemed to come from the other side of this wall and...ah, that made sense.

  The pelt I pulled out from under the bathroom rug was too small to wrap around an adult’s shoulders. And, in my hands, it felt lighter than it should have been. As if it was made of spider silk rather than fur and leather. There was very little energy left inside.

  A shout from the room where I’d left Jack and Drake interrupted my suppositions. By the time I reentered the living area, I found Honor and her mate trying to force O’Connell shifters back through the broken-down doorway.

  Some of the locals, it appeared, had stopped singing in favor of fighting. And, unlike last time, they now bore swords.

  Swords plus guns. A shot thudded into the wall ten feet from me. Ten feet from me...and two feet from where Jack lay bound to the overturned kitchen chair. “Missed...me,” he observed.

  Despite his bravado, he was a sitting duck amid a werewolf feeding frenzy. For one split second, I tried to send my muddled thoughts down the mate bond, hoping Jack would unmix my metaphors while feeling my intention to free him ASAP.

  But of course we lacked that connection. I could no longer count on his witty banter to center me.

  Instead, I centered myself.

  Centered myself and rolled through the space between us, snatching up the sword I’d dropped as I passed it. Unfortunately, the blade was too long to be effective hacking at ropes and Jack didn’t remember ever having met me. No wonder he flinched away from the blade’s shiny surface. No wonder I cut skin rather than rope.

  It was only the tiniest wound, but I clenched my teeth, knowing what would come after. Waiting for bloodlust to consume me.

  It didn’t. Not when stolen energy bubbled beneath my skin so strong I had no need for blood to fill my emptiness. Instead, it was words that slapped my face as effectively as a dueler’s glove.

  “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to finish the job?” Honor demanded. Without waiting for a reply, she yanked a knife free from her boot top, shoved me out of the way, and slashed through the rest of Jack’s bindings.

  Unlike earlier when I’d flubbed the same task, Jack didn’t flinch away from Honor. And the words he managed this time were aimed at her. “I’m...afraid...I’m...too...wobbly...to...assist...you.”

  “I’ll bet,” Honor answered, glaring at me as if she knew whatever happened had been my fault. “Good thing you and I are taking some pelts out the back. Here’s yours. Now lean on me. If somebody attacks, just get out of the way so I can use my sword arm.”

  “Falling...sideways...is...exactly...my...speed.”

  Jack was barely able to speak, let alone clutch the pelt Honor had handed over, and every part of me wanted to be involved in guiding him away from danger. But Honor had other ideas. Snatching Merry’s pelt out of my hand, she ordered, “Drake wants you beside him. Go. Now.”

  It wasn’t an alpha command, but lack of magical compulsion didn’t matter. Jack had already forgotten me as he struggled his way upright. He was still beautiful, even with barely enough energy to limp along beside Honor. But he was no longer mine to look at.

  I allowed myself one final glance before turning around to face the fight.

  There were only four people on our side attempting to hold back an uncountable number of O’Connells. Lynette and Rosa must have gone home, or at least I hoped their absence indicated safety. The others—Drake and Tru and the mates of both Justice and Honor—had swords in motion. The quartet spread out across the entire width of the room, preventing their enemies from passing through and following in Honor and Jack’s footsteps.

  “Coming up behind you,” I warned once I was close enough to be heard above the clang of metal against metal.

  “Welcome to the Alamo,” Tru replied without glancing backwards. She sidled a little further away from the shifter beside her while speaking, which allowed me to squeeze into the gap.

  On my other side, a woman I’d never been introduced to but who I assumed was Justice’s mate observed, “The Alamo. Interesting choice of comparison. Shall we make this battle so morally ambiguous that future historians will argue for centuries about which side was the side of the angels?”

  Even further down the line, Honor’s mate chuckled. “You’ve been spending too much time around Justice.”

  “That’s the danger of mating,” the woman beside me tossed back.

  Then I lost the thread of their banter as our line indented deeper. We were letting more of the O’Connells into the cottage, our goal perhaps to draw the attention of as many as possible so Honor and Jack would have fewer enemies to contend with while slipping away in the other direction. Or maybe we were just floundering in the face of so many opponents. It was hard to tell which.

  And there was no time for me to catch up on strategy. All I could do was hold my spot in the line while searching for the gunman who’d menaced us earlier. I found him, finally, or what was left of him. Beside his crumpled form, the pistol and the hand that had wielded it rested in a puddle of blood which everyone seemed to be giving a very wide berth.

  Drake must have noted where I was looking because he rasped an explanation from the other side of Tru. “His pack took him out. Guns are antithetical to shifter law.”

  And what we were doing wasn’t? We’d trespassed and raised weapons against the rightful owners of this territory. I didn’t see how we’d be let off the hook even if we survived the night, even with the Executioner on our side.

  Ever since Jack had walked away from me, I hadn’t been able to muster much interest in my own future. But I didn’t want the four shifters fighting on either side of me to perish tonight. I didn’t want Honor and Jack’s faces to don wanted posters, didn’t want them to be forced to flee from whoever was slotted into Drake’s place once Jack’s brother lost his position and likely his life for failing the impartiality test.

  But future complications were too much to layer on top of the fight before us. So I ignored might-bes and could-have-beens and I fought. Fought like the samurai had taught me and like I’d taught the samurai. Sneakily and cagily and with bursts of wild abandon.

  All the while, fluids flowed from facial orifices. Snot and tears and maybe a little blood—I wasn’t invincible after all. But the pain of cuts was nothing compared to the image of Jack hobbling away with his arm slung across Honor’s shoulder. I couldn’t seem to forget how he’d glanced at me then away again with no recognition lighting his face.

  I only realized the singing had ceased when the fighters before us faltered. “Have you come to your senses?” Drake rasped.

  “Have you?” Chief O’Connell growled from the center of the line in front of us.

  And Tru turned toward me, eyes just like mine squinting with intensity. “Time to prove spirits aren’t angels, Kami. You’re up.”

  Chapter 31

  The trouble was, I wasn’t exactly a spirit any longer. Reminiscing about the bad old days wasn’t going to end this. I needed visual proof.

  Once again, I twisted my pelt around my shoulders and I went between.

  “Tall Nose!” I yelled. He wasn’t there. For once, I wanted the tengu and he wasn’t hovering around making trouble.

  Still, I doubted he’d gone far. Woelfin pelts would do him no good without the will of the singing werewolves to channel ambient power out of them. His source of energy was here; he wouldn’t have abandoned it.

  So I spoke as if Tall Nose was listening, hoping I wasn’t wasting time during which the O’Connells might overrun everyone I’d left behind back in the human world. “You’re desperate. I get that. Swords have fallen out of favor in this century and the old ways are no longer cutting it.”

  My voice hiccupped as I imagined Jack making a joke about my word choice. “Not cutting it, eh? How very on point.”

  “Not now, Jack,” I told the memory, glad that I had no real eyes to tear up in the spirit realm. Still, I felt strangely wobbly for someone with no body and scads of energy as I continued speaking into the emptiness of between.

  “But shifters still use swords. And I’m willing to make the same deal with you that the samurai made with me. Embody yourself within my sword and you’ll feed on the blood I spill with it. I’ll make sure that when my human body grows old, you’re passed on to someone with equal reason for swordplay. I’ll...”

  “No.”

  I jumped as Tall Nose popped into existence an inch in front of me. “You’re here though,” I managed while backpedaling far enough to make out the glint of greed in his beady eyes. “Which means I have something you want.”

  “You,” Tall Nose observed, sidling around me. This time he didn’t lash out with his claws, but words did the job just as well. “You’ve landed on your feet over and over again. You’re so full of power I can almost taste it. I’ll take that energy then we’ll work together. A team. Your good luck and my superior brains.”

  My hands wrapped themselves around my waist protectively even though I had no real body. Tall Nose wanted the power bubbling up inside me, and that I would have given up willingly. Even being his partner, while unpleasant, wouldn’t be nearly as vile as sharing a mate bond with Ambrose had been.