But the memories I’d lose if I handed over the energy suffusing me? I’d forget not just Jack’s experiences, but mine also. It would be as if we’d never mated.

  I couldn’t imagine erasing our shared past.

  “How about...?” I started. But Tall Nose was already speaking.

  “Do you want your precious friends to be cut down while you quibble over details? This is my final offer. Take it or leave it.”

  I took it. Demanded he show himself to the O’Connells and admit to his wrongs first, but otherwise made no complaints about the terms he’d laid out for me. I could tell Tall Nose was done bargaining.

  “I’ll need energy now if you want me to show myself in the human realm,” he observed, eying my throat where a pulse would have fluttered if I’d been in physical form.

  “One sip,” I agreed, even though I wanted to put off the inevitable as long as possible.

  His beak pecked at what wasn’t skin, not really, not here between. And for one split second, I was watching Jack from the opposite rooftop. I let my body fall into thin air, peering up at a face I hadn’t known would become as dear to me as my own existence. Then…

  The cavity in my memories felt like a lost tooth. What had been there? I could almost guess from context. Perhaps I could piece it back together…

  But Tall Nose had already found another nugget of energy. A quiet moment with Jack on one side of metal bars and me on the other, our lips too sore to kiss any longer. Still, words connected us as fully as flesh ever could.

  “I’m the luckiest man alive...” Jack started.

  Then I was pushing Tall Nose’s greedy beak away from me. “The rest comes after.”

  “After,” he agreed, following me back into the human realm.

  Tall Nose was true to his word, materializing backlit the same way he’d shown himself before then stepping into the light and letting his bird-like features reveal his complete lack of celestial heritage. “You’ve been duped,” he told the O’Connell pack. “Bamboozled, hoodwinked, swindled, deceived.”

  “He has a future as a thesaurus if theft doesn’t work out for him,” Drake rasped beside me. And that made me remember I was grounded on two feet at the moment. Which meant I needed to pre-tie an upcoming loose end.

  “I made a deal with Tall Nose,” I murmured to Drake, quietly enough so I wouldn’t disturb the drama playing out on the other side of the cottage. As best I could tell, Chief O’Connell was realizing his mate really was gone for good and was sending the rest of his pack away so they wouldn’t see him crumple in the face of a loss that had actually happened days ago. Tall Nose was interrupting to make sure the two who had been involved in Mariana’s murder stayed behind.

  “After this,” I continued, focusing on Drake again, “I’m giving Tall Nose all the energy from my mate bond. I’ll still have this body, but I won’t act human when he’s done with me. I’ll do anything to fill the emptiness. You’ll need to lock me up and keep me from touching anyone’s bare flesh.”

  “For how long?” Drake asked.

  “Indefinitely,” I answered.

  I’d expected my case to speak for itself, but Drake rasped out a monosyllabic denial. “No.”

  “You’ve seen me at my worst,” I countered, my cheeks heating as I tried to explain what shouldn’t have needed explanation. “You saw that Jack was the only one able to bring me back to reality. Well, that plus the energy from his half of the mate bond. I know what I’m like without those crutches. I can’t...”

  Drake interrupted before I could finish. “Jack won’t want me to lock you up.”

  “Jack might not have wanted that yesterday, but today he won’t care.” I knew that so surely my breath had to smell of truth rather than falsehood.

  Perhaps that’s why Tru interceded. Or perhaps it was because of the bandage on her left shoulder which I suspected was the result of that slashing cut I’d engaged in one moment before Jack dragged me into the cottage. Whatever the reason, she nodded. “I’ll do it.”

  I considered the woman who shared my exact body mass but was softer than me and kinder. No way could she halt one of my feeding frenzies. “You and what army?”

  “That army,” she said, pointing at Drake. He growled and she rolled her eyes at him. “Yes you will because I’m asking you to. Now be quiet,” she told both of us. “I’m trying to eavesdrop.”

  Despite the stolen mate-bond energy seething through me, my gut twisted in on itself after that. I trusted Drake’s abilities to keep me from future awfulness, and unfortunately that meant I could finally consider what had to happen before my cell door clanged shut.

  Once Tall Nose finished his conversation with Chief O’Connell, he’d require I make good on my promises. Which meant soon, very soon, I would lose not just Jack’s connection to me but also my connection to Jack.

  It was impossible to even comprehend the upcoming loss. To be deprived of all memories of Jack’s sweetness, his jokes, his dimple? The dark outside the cottage seemed to creep inside the walls and into my skin.

  So I did the human thing. I shied away from all knowledge of the future. Followed Tru’s lead and considered the drama on the other side of the cottage.

  There was more blood on the ground now than had been present the last time I’d looked. More blood and more bodies, plus Tall Nose puffing up his chest feathers as if he’d managed to grab every ounce of energy as lives were silently and expeditiously squandered.

  Chief O’Connell was the only shifter left standing outside our cluster, and now he walked over to rejoin us. He was splattered in blood, none of which appeared to be his own. Yet he somehow managed to appear pitiful as he addressed Drake. “Executioner. I apologize for my actions and I acknowledge my debt to you. My mate...”

  “Understandable,” Drake rasped. “You owe me nothing. I was just doing my job.”

  Rather than continuing the conversation, Drake turned away. As if he wasn’t feeling the gut-deep empathy I was, empathy that twisted my stomach up nearly as badly as thinking of what was about to happen between myself and Tall Nose.

  Chief O’Connell, I guessed, would never stand quite as tall in the future. His world had permanently darkened in a way no amount of sunshine could ever illuminate.

  Losing a mate was horrible. Losing my mate had been horrible.

  Losing my memory of my mate would be ten times worse.

  Only once we were out of sight of the cottage did Drake’s left hand curl around Tru’s right hand. My own fingers clutched at empty air.

  Chapter 32

  While energy can be rent out of a spirit quickly and permanently, transferring that energy from one being to another is a slow process akin to a blood transfusion. So I was vaguely aware of the landscape passing by outside the car window and I was vaguely aware of Drake and Tru murmuring together in the front seats, but mostly I drifted in a pained half-slumber while Tall Nose stole first Jack’s half of our shared memories then my own.

  Jack slapping the handcuffs over my wrists and me hunting the key then finding his pelt instead. Jack cracking jokes to make Lynette smile on our way to the coffee shop and the moment I understood what it meant to be a mate.

  Those pieces of our shared past were hard to relinquish, but dreams and beliefs were even harder. Jack’s admission that he’d always figured he and his mate would settle down in a house next door to Drake and Tru. My inner scoffing at that rosy domestic picture slowly morphing into wishful fantasizing. Jack’s steadfast humor gradually leading me to the realization that I was capable of growing into a partnership like the one he imagined.

  Each moment from the past slipped away, and with it my hold on personhood. I was biting down on a new, gnawing hunger by the time the car I rode within slowed then stopped.

  “Can you walk?” That was my voice, which meant it was Tru. I hadn’t forgotten who she was even though memories of Jack continued eroding out of me like a deepening gully. Despite knowing Tru’s identity, however, I barely managed to shake my head by way of reply.

  Then a hard shoulder bit into my stomach and the car’s forward momentum was replaced by a different sort of up-and-down jolting. I lost track of my body for a long while after that as Tall Nose lapped up shared banter and sweet kisses. Chains of days with Jack behind bars and me wishing I was inside with him ran into one another then disintegrated.

  Losing memories left me a smaller person than I’d begun.

  Vaguely, I heard a phone ring. “Honor,” Tru said by way of greeting. Then, after a pause, an aside to Drake and maybe to me also, “Merry and Justice are awake. And Jack’s okay. Weak but recovering.”

  It was the last part that got me to focus. To remember that there was more to this ending than losing my mate connection.

  Because Jack cared about the bigger picture. He wouldn’t want a super-powered tengu wafting around wreaking havoc. And I’d planned for that. I just needed…

  “My pelt,” I croaked out.

  Tru and Drake didn’t hear me. They were discussing Jack’s favorite foods and passing that information along to Honor. Apparently, his healing would be improved by a diet of sushi and grilled-cheese sandwiches. Watermelon and gelato. Definitely not pickles and anchovies, which he removed from egg salad and pizzas with disgust on his face.

  Had we eaten any of those things together? The memories were slipping away, along with any future possibility of serving Jack special dinners. When he’d been behind the same bars that caged me now, our food choices had been limited by what I could find in the abandoned larders of the nearby cabins. I thought we’d eaten mostly canned and frozen items? But the only thing I was sure of now was the laughter that had hovered over every meal.

  That memory faded even as I relived it. We wouldn’t laugh together again. Soon, I wouldn’t even remember wanting that.

  Because our thread of connection was drawing thin now. I couldn’t see Tall Nose, who had regressed back to the spirit realm long ago. But I could feel him pecking, pecking, always pecking.

  I had to…

  “My pelt,” I managed again, louder.

  “It’s beside you,” Tru answered, voice wary. I’d warned them not to come within arm’s reach of the cell once I reached this point and she likely thought I was trying to trick her closer. After all, a touch would let me steal memories, refilling the gaping emptiness inside me.

  But that wasn’t what I was trying to do at the moment. I needed my pelt so I could…

  “Drake! Stop!” Tru demanded as metal clinked against metal.

  “She’s weak as a kitten,” her mate responded. “I think I can handle her.”

  Then fur was pressing itself up against my fingers. Drake had ignored my warnings and moved exactly what I needed closer to me.

  “You...can’t...come...inside...again,” I admonished, dragging the softness up over me. I needed to go between but I lacked the energy to get there. I’d waited too long. I’d failed Jack.

  Then a large hand cupped my smaller hand. Warm and brotherly, no fabric between us. “Take what you need,” Drake rasped.

  The voice that replied sounded like me but it didn’t emerge from my lips. “No!”

  I agreed with Tru, but I had to do this. So I stole the tiniest fragment of awfulness out of Drake’s recollections. One death among many. A gasp followed by a bloody geyser and a victim’s staring eyes.

  That was all it took to push me between to where Tall Nose had expanded out like an overinflated parade balloon. He was giddy with power as he sucked up the final fragment of glowing mate bond, leaving me uncertain who had told me it was so important to do this.

  I didn’t know why but I knew I had to. So I used that hint of recently stolen energy, combining it with the muscle memory from the samurai. And I became a weapon one last time.

  Rip. Tear. I didn’t try to hold onto the cloud of luminous energy that exploded out as I slashed huge holes into Tall Nose. There was no time for that. I just shredded then stretched gaping cavities wider, working quickly before my opponent could muster countermeasures.

  “What are you doing?” Tall Nose’s hands and wings tried and failed to press the escaping energy back inside himself. It was no use. The punctures were too large.

  Soon, he wouldn’t be able to speak as not only the memories I’d given him but every ounce of the werewolf pack’s transferred power dissipated into the ether. Like a punctured balloon, he deflated down to the merest slip of himself. And the words he managed at the end came out as a squeak.

  “You wasted it! You wasted all of it!”

  He was right. The bubbles of energy were like fireflies floating away too quickly for either of us to catch them. Tall Nose was turning transparent.

  My job here was done.

  Jolting back to the human realm, I curled around the emptiness inside me, not quite sure what I’d lost but missing it anyway. The pain was so intense I was glad when night fell because Drake and Tru left me alone then. Without them present, I could test out the hypothesis that humans cried to make themselves feel better.

  I was wrong. Tears didn’t make me feel better. Just soggy and swollen and more empty than I’d started.

  Eventually, however, I discovered the more effective human solution to agony. I relinquished the struggle to remember and drifted into the oblivion of sleep.

  Chapter 33

  “Knock knock.”

  My reply merged with a yawn as I unwound out of slumber. “Who’s there?”

  A short pause then that same velvety voice chuckled: “Breakfast.”

  “Breakfast who?” By this point, I’d finally ungunked my eyelids enough to pry them open. Frowning, I interrupted the handsome stranger on the other side of the bars before he could complete the joke. “You look like Drake, but you don’t sound like him.”

  “That’s because I’m his far punnier brother Jack.” The most adorable dimple indented Jack’s left cheek and I lost my breath for one split second, only to regain it as he lifted the tray he was holding and obscured that inspiring feature. “And I’m glad you didn’t wait for the punchline because there wasn’t one. I really am just bringing breakfast.”

  Fragrant eggs, crispy bacon, and fresh fruit made my mouth water. But the key in Jack’s other hand was what made me shoot to my feet.

  “No!”

  Unfortunately, my body wasn’t ready for such precipitate action. It did its best to collapse out from under me, my vision dimming and my own voice sounding distant as I continued: “Don’t come in! I’m a kami and I emptied myself yesterday. I’ll touch your skin and steal a memory and...”

  “Hey.” The proximity of a sweet lemon scent proved he’d ignored my efforts to save him. Warm, calloused hands on my shoulders felt nothing like Drake’s as they guided me back onto the cot I’d risen off of. His hands looked ordinary...but where they touched, I tingled. Honeyed heat spread from the two points of contact even as Jack chided me, “Sit down before you fall down.”

  I obeyed, embarrassed by the fact I was stark naked and the most beautiful man I’d ever seen was preventing me from keeling over. As if he’d read my thoughts, Jack lifted my pelt off the bed and…

  ...Fingers in my fur. Fingers on my soul. The pelt slipped out of Jack’s hand, drifting down to cover my nakedness, but I didn’t care about nakedness any longer. In fact, nakedness was a time saver. I leaned in toward him…

  Then forced my muscles to freeze as I remembered the danger I was supposed to be warning against: Myself.

  “Talk to Drake,” I managed, my voice oddly husky even though the spots had receded from my vision. “He’ll tell you the same thing I did. I need to stay locked in here and you need to stay outside. It’s for your own good.”

  “My brother’s the one who sent me.” Jack realigned my pelt so it wouldn’t slip off my shoulders and I shivered regret as his astonishing touch receded as quickly as it had come.

  I wanted to chase the lost sensation, but moving would have messed with my balance. So I let Jack regain his personal space while I requested confirmation. “Drake’s not here?”

  “He had a job and I’m pretty wobbly on my feet at the moment.” Jack’s dimple reappeared, which turned me far wobblier than he looked. I barely caught the rest of his words as he continued. “Drake figured we could recuperate together. Take a sip.”

  A straw slid between my chapped lips, sweet juice replenishing my insides. Emptiness still gnawed. But filling the void no longer seemed so imperative.

  Not when Jack’s warm voice continued to soothe me. “You may not remember, but you saved my life yesterday. Probably thought I was my brother. I get that a lot. Women throwing themselves at me hoping I’m Drake.”

  I spluttered around the straw, laughing despite myself. “No one throws themselves at Drake. Throws themselves out of his path maybe.” Then I frowned, realizing I had no recollection of meeting Jack before this moment. “Listen, I don’t trust myself not to steal from you...”

  “It’s not a theft if it’s freely given.”

  The heady aroma of lemon sugar wafted toward me along with Jack’s words. His eyes were the gray of the sky just before sunrise, luminous and full of potential. His dimple had faded, as if what he was telling me was far too important for humor.

  And when he finished his thought, his words were as warm as his hands. “If you want something from me, take it,” he murmured. “It will be my pleasure to give you what you need.”

  I didn’t take any memories and Drake and Tru didn’t reappear, not for weeks after that. During the intervening time, my strength rebounded quickly, Jack’s even quicker. Soon, he talked me into leaving the cell and hiking the surrounding forest with him.

  “I can take care of myself,” he’d asserted. “And there’s no one else out here for you to worry about.”

  I believed him for no reason I could put my finger on. And it turned out he was right. I should have been desperate to fill the emptiness inside me, but Jack’s mere presence soothed me. So did the food he relentlessly cooked and forced me to consume alongside him.