...then gut-wrenching guilt as I understood how awful I’d been formerly. How much pain I’d caused Tru and Rosa and the strangers I’d murdered and manipulated. Their agony was splinters thrusting themselves under my skin.

  Then something worse affected my new body. An invisible noose clenched around my throat, choking me with a flood of familiar memories turned unfamiliar. My first moments in a human body, seen from the outside instead of the inside this time. Ambrose’s anticipation was heady as he sliced into Tru’s flesh, into my flesh. I rode his orgasmic pleasure, watched myself scream out pain sharper than the blade of my sword self.

  Gasping, the present reasserted itself over the fragment of past awfulness. My hands flailed, passing straight through the noose as I tried to claw it away and only managed to scratch raw strips into my own skin.

  Even knowing I was doing myself harm, I dug my nails in deeper, belatedly realizing what the noose and vision of the past represented. This was the mate bond Tru had formed with Ambrose. The one baked into the hair I’d stolen.

  The mate bond I now shared with the evil who had turned me from almost-nothing into almost-something over a century earlier.

  And now I was fully something. Bodied in a way I’d never before been bodied. Aware for the first time of the life-and-death stakes for those around me.

  I swallowed with an effort and blinked my eyes open to find Drake cradling a comatose Tru, Lynette gasping for air, Erik subsumed by Ambrose as Seth tried to wrestle him to the floorboards.

  And Jack. Jack staring at me with gray eyes full of questions and concern.

  He wanted to know if I’d stolen Tru’s hair for my own selfish purposes the same way I’d stolen memories to feed myself previously. He wanted to know if I was going to help or harm those he cared about.

  He wanted to know, perhaps, if I remembered that he considered me his mate.

  I did remember. I remembered all of it. And I knew, in that moment, what Jack would want me to do about Ambrose.

  Raising my voice, I drew the attention of the evil on the other side of the room. “Ambrose! You want a real body, don’t you? Not a paper plate to use and discard so you have to hunt another one tomorrow. Well, you’re still tethered to this life I stole. All I have to do is mate with a body and it becomes yours.”

  Chapter 11

  I had the spirit’s attention. I could tell by the way chilly air wafted toward me, the sounds of struggle ceasing. Of course I had his attention. A century ago, he’d tricked Tru into becoming his mate sight-unseen as a mail-order bride and now I’d stolen the life he’d mated with. Using that connection, Ambrose could inhabit a permanent body just as I inhabited a permanent body.

  The only hitch? To make that happen, I needed to formalize the mate bond between myself and Jack then watch the dimple I adored drown beneath the evil that was Ambrose.

  Before I could do so, Drake slammed his hand over my mouth and argued a case for being the one to mate with me, the one to meld with Ambrose. Jack countered. Lynette intruded. And finally Jack spat out an alpha command that settled matters once and for all.

  “Unhand my mate. Don’t come after me. I can’t handle being distracted by someone who doesn’t know who I am.”

  Only then did he turn to face me, that dimple reasserting itself as he exuded so much warmth it counteracted the chill of Ambrose’s presence. And even though Jack was sacrificing himself, his next words proved this was what he truly wanted. “Shall we?”

  He was so sure, but my own newfound human emotions tried to drag me in ten different directions. To lose Jack... To lose that dimple forever…

  Ice tried to freeze my lips, but Jack’s gaze made it possible to speak. “I don’t actually know how to do this,” I admitted.

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

  My cheeks heated. I’d never before been accused of being a hero.

  And that was irrelevant. “No,” I corrected. “I don’t know how to make you my mate.”

  The dimple deepened and I had the crazy urge to stroke my finger across it. Instead, I watched Jack, spellbound, as he told me: “I already am.”

  And he was. That connection I’d understood for the first time when I stole Tru’s hair and found myself inside this body expanded like light rippling out from a sunrise. Our mating filled my emptiness, relieved my tension, warmed my internal ice.

  I heard Jack’s sweet murmurs of welcome as caresses inside me. Tasted our joining as lemon sugar melting on my tongue.

  Then the noose around my neck tightened. I felt rather than saw or heard the pop as Ambrose passed between worlds and became just as fully bodied as I was. Embodied within my mate, forcing the man I loved away.

  Now Jack’s lips were laughing. Only it wasn’t Jack. Jack was gone, lost somewhere deep inside the awfulness of Ambrose. My mate’s absence was like a red-hot poker being forced into my gut.

  “We’ll have so much fun together,” the evil with my mate’s voice told me. And even though I covered my ears, his laughter wouldn’t stop.

  Of course it wouldn’t. Because it was traveling down the mate bond. It was inside me, part of me. I could never turn it off.

  And Ambrose didn’t even need words now to remind me of our shared history. Teasing flickers down the mate bond resurrected my terror at being forced by Tru’s vow to lie still when I itched to fight or to flee from evil. Another whispered reminder and Ambrose was coloring in gaps I’d forced out of my conscious memory long ago.

  The coldness of his knife before it cut through me for the first time. Ambrose’s hard lips forcing themselves onto mine moments later, his kiss salty with the flavor of my own blood.

  “Do you want more of me?” he’d purred.

  “No!”

  “Then I’ll cut instead. Far be it from me to force myself on a lady.” He’d chuckled long and low then. “But if you change your mind, all you have to do is ask.”

  I choked on the remembered bitterness of terror and the complete absence of power, but I didn’t let memory stop me. Because I’d known Ambrose would still need to be dealt with after I made this deal with him. I’d known and I’d plotted out a sequence of events I now put into play.

  First: grab the gun Ambrose had forgotten on the table. Second: send my intentions down the mate bond, letting him feel my certainty that I would pull the trigger faster than any alpha command could force me to drop the weapon.

  Aloud, I croaked out additional instructions. “Strip. Then shift. We’re not doing this here.”

  Because Jack had wanted to protect these people. Jack might be gone now, but I would abide by his wishes. And the only way I knew to protect the bystanders was to move my struggle with Ambrose to a new venue where no one else would be caught up in the undertow.

  For one long moment, I thought Ambrose might force the issue. He could feel down the mate bond the yawning black hole of dread that arose when I considered shooting the body that used to be Jack’s and was now Ambrose’s. He could feel the depth of loss that already filled me after having mated with someone wonderful then stood by and watched in horror as our connection turned to rot.

  But if Ambrose felt that, he also had to know how determined I was to make amends for my past actions. He had to know how, when my gaze had met Jack’s before our mate bond kindled, I’d silently agreed to do my part to make Jack into the hero he wanted to become.

  Jack wanted to save Drake and Drake’s loved ones more than he wanted to protect his own life. So, yes, if killing Jack was the only way to kill Ambrose, I’d do it. I’d pull the trigger.

  Maybe that’s why Ambrose didn’t test me. Well, he did test me in one way. He disrobed just as I’d demanded, but he did so slowly, sleekly, teasing me with the sight of a body my skin craved as my gaze took in each newly bared muscle.

  Each muscle...then that pelt I’d stroked mere hours earlier. It was larger than I imagined, larger than the one I wore around my hips. Of course it was larger—Jack’s back was larger than my back and the pelt needed to be big enough to cover him all the way up.

  Otherwise, though, the pelt was similar. Leathery on one side, dense with furry softness on the other, it called to me with a siren-song of promised pleasure. And Ambrose understood that. His gray eyes met mine as he spun the pelt across his shoulders slowly, slowly…

  Then he was lupine, the fur of his pelt melting into his own fur. Meanwhile, inside my brain, Ambrose’s immaterial fingers seemed to stroke my own pelt. “You want this,” he murmured with that voice I couldn’t block out. “You crave it.”

  He was right. For one split second, all I knew was pleasure. Need at my center. An unbearable urge to consummate our mating.

  Then, layered atop that: disgust, horror. My newfound body rebelled against wanting anything from Ambrose. It remembered, far better than I did, the actions that had resulted in Tru’s death a century ago. It remembered...and my fingers tightened around the gun.

  I might have pulled the trigger then and there if gnarled hands on my shoulders hadn’t drawn my attention to Rosa. “Kami, listen to me,” she demanded. “You won’t shoot this man unless it’s your last resort.”

  “I won’t?” The words came out as dark as my mate bond. “Haven’t you heard? I’m an evil spirit just like Ambrose. He and I have a lot in common.”

  And shooting him was what Jack had wanted. I wasn’t actually sure why I hadn’t done it already. My finger tensed around the trigger.

  “Perhaps,” Rosa countered, her words distant, barely making sense to me. “But I’ve fed you multiple meals. You’ve slept under my roof. You owe me a promise and that is the promise I want.”

  “I’m not a kitsune. I can make promises then break promises. No harm, no foul.”

  “I still require your promise before you walk out of here,” Rosa answered, angling her body to block the door.

  She was old and frail. I could have pushed her aside so easily.

  But I didn’t. Holding myself back from that urge reminded me why I needed to get Ambrose out of here. I needed to deal with him in a way that wouldn’t implicate Drake and his friends in a murder. Which meant leaving the coffee shop and the innocents within it behind.

  If empty words were what Rosa needed to let me achieve that goal, I’d give her empty words. “You want a useless promise? Okay. I won’t shoot Jack unless it’s my last resort.”

  Then—“Walk,” I told Ambrose. At gunpoint, he preceded me down the stairs, past terrified humans, and out onto the open street.

  Chapter 12

  I didn’t realize until we were three blocks away that a wolf body with a bullet through its head wouldn’t raise the same red flags among local authorities that a human corpse would have. My reasons for failing to kill Ambrose back in the coffee shop didn’t actually hold water. My mind had been playing tricks on me, trying to save that dimple.

  The dimple was gone, though. So I’d deal with Ambrose. Now. It was what Jack had wanted.

  I swallowed hard and squeezed the trigger.

  Only, despite the tiniest smattering of snowflakes drifting down out of a sky as gray as Jack’s eyes, sweat made my finger slip across the metal. The gun didn’t fire. I fumbled to regain my grip before Ambrose could take advantage of my lapse.

  While I fumbled, a voice I hadn’t expected to ever hear again materialized inside my head. “Ambrose, I’m disappointed in you. You’re saying you don’t like threesomes?”

  “Jack?” It was a good thing there was no one else around because my question emerged as a shout. He wasn’t gone! My mate was still there inside the wolf staring up into my eyes.

  Unfortunately, the tinge of rot on my tongue suggested the reply came from Ambrose. “This body is mine now. She’s mated to me.”

  “It’s true that possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Jack replied. “Pun intended. We could argue over that fact while Kami wipes her hands on her pants then kills us. Or you could let me talk to my mate and maybe cling to this last chance for us both to stay on earth.”

  Behind the eyes of the wolf, both men were now present. Jack—warm, protective, and somehow amused by even this life-or-death struggle. And Ambrose—darkly furious that the body I’d granted him was being prodded down the street at the muzzle of his own gun.

  “We need to get out of sight,” I told them both. Because Jack’s alpha command might have forced the werewolves to stay behind back in the coffee shop, but who knew what Tru, Lynette, and Rosa would get up to? Somehow, Jack’s mere presence made the muddle in my head crystal clear. We needed to—“Keep walking.”

  As I spoke, I tucked the gun into a baggy pants pocket, angling it awkwardly so the business end continued pointing at the wolf I both loved and hated. The fabric chaffed my frozen fingers but it also acted to wick moisture away from my palm. If I had to pull the trigger again, this time I wouldn’t fail.

  As if he’d heard my thoughts, the sensation of Jack on the other end of the mate bond grew into an infusion of lemon sugar. His words, however, were hard and not aimed at me. “Kami will shoot us without a second thought if you try to escape or hurt her. She’s a sword—sharp in every sense of the word.”

  Jack’s evident pride in my sharpness firmed up my resolve and I believed my own words when I asserted, “He’s right. Plus, I’m pretty sure your ability to stay on this earth is now linked to me and our mate bond. Mess with me or with that bond and there’s a good chance you’ll disappear for good.”

  I must have been more convincing than I felt, because Ambrose growled out a question. “What do you suggest then?”

  “Turn in here,” Jack answered. We’d walked just far enough so the tiny town was beginning to give way to countryside. The driveway beside us was gravel, winding up a rutted tenth of a mile to a house trailer half hidden by trees.

  Jack hadn’t mentioned being familiar with this town when we drove toward it, but I wouldn’t put anything past him. “You know who lives here?” I asked.

  His reply was carried on another tide of mouthwatering lemon sugar. “Don’t have the foggiest clue. But that pickup truck? Looks ancient enough to be hot-wired.”

  He was right. It was red and battered and older than I was.

  But what put a smile on my lips was this chance to banter with a mate I’d thought was lost. “You’re contemplating grand theft auto? I thought you were supposed to be the one with a moral compass.”

  “I never made that assertion.” Then, in the face of Ambrose’s growl, Jack changed gears to needling the evil who shared his skin. “Don’t like being a third wheel any more than you like threesomes? Did you really expect to be treated like the guest of honor when you crashed our party of two?”

  If he’d been trying to soothe away my body’s jitters, Jack had succeeded. My mate was still very much present, which allowed me to focus in a way I hadn’t been able to since Ambrose invaded Jack’s skin.

  And that focus reminded me there were dangers to bystanders wherever I brought Ambrose. Of course that was the reason Jack had chosen this isolated driveway.

  “Quiet a minute,” I told both of the men inside my mate’s lupine body. “I want to see if anyone is home.”

  Nobody answered when I banged on the trailer door, and Ambrose seemed willing to bide his time as long as I kept the firearm handy. So I took a long step backward while Jack shifted at gunpoint, naked humanity materializing as the pelt slid off his shoulders and onto the ground.

  He was gloriously beautiful as he unfolded himself upward, each movement a haiku, a sonnet, an ode. My feet inched forward and it wasn’t until I tasted rot on my tongue that I remembered why I shouldn’t get within arm’s reach.

  With an effort, I forced myself backwards. Forced myself not to want what wasn’t only Jack’s.

  “You won’t stay alert forever.” This was Ambrose, speaking inside my head. His voice was sly, the scent of rot just barely coloring each syllable. “And once the gun is mine again, you’ll enjoy this body. Or, rather, I’ll enjoy this body and yours also...”

  “Your dirty mouth counts as hurting her.” There was no humor in Jack’s voice now. Instead, his gray eyes were fiery as he spoke to his own hands. “This is your only warning. Next time you disrespect her, Kami will shoot us.”

  “Is that so?” Same voice, very different scent.

  Silence spun out as gray eyes considered me with rot behind them. What Jack said about my intentions had to be true or we’d lose all of our leverage.

  So I remembered what it had felt like to be full-on kami. I remembered the casualness with which I’d set a bomb that killed multiple shifters. I remembered knocking Rosa out without thinking twice about concussions and healing times.

  And I nodded. “That is very much so.”

  “Good,” Jack praised me, breaking the moment. Then, stepping sideways away from the pelt on the ground, he added: “Pick it up.”

  A whiplash of emotions made me both crave slipping my fingers into that fur a second time and nauseous from the knowledge Ambrose would feel everything Jack did. Into the pause that followed, Jack murmured, “I can’t shift without it. And you can use it to give me pain as well as pleasure. It’s leverage. Use it.”

  We needed all the leverage we could get. So I forced myself to ignore the electricity sparking through my fingers as I picked up the pelt. I ignored Ambrose’s chuckle of pleasure and the shiver that spun through Jack’s body as the pelt’s heaviness draped warm and seductive over my arm.

  I’d prepared myself to ignore the effects of touching the pelt, but I hadn’t prepared myself for the nearly overwhelming urge to touch skin moments later as Jack’s arm’s flexed and the plastic popped off the truck’s steering column. Ambrose had demanded tools but Jack just laughed and stripped wires with his teeth, his capability drawing me closer like a magnet. Our gazes met and that dimple reemerged.

  Then Jack was sweeping everything that could possibly be used as a weapon out of the cab. He fashioned a choke collar and leash for himself out of a length of rope while giving me instructions that Ambrose, of course, overheard.