Darkness settled over and between us as the voice I craved made a mockery out of my fear. “Your precious Jack might be a mongrel, but I’m a gentleman. I’ve told you before, I have no intention of raping you.”

  The word twisted up our mate bond, Ambrose’s disgust at the mere idea flowing down it toward me. I nearly laughed at this line Ambrose was drawing, but I closed my mouth around a sound that would have come out hysterical. Because Ambrose turned up his nose at rape but he wasn’t above plotting to steal a pelt from a child?

  Realizing I wouldn’t have thought much differently a month ago gave me pause as Ambrose continued to torment me with a promise that wasn’t a promise. “Perhaps, if you’re good, I’ll feed you tomorrow.”

  After that, I lay there in the dark, emptiness that wasn’t entirely related to hunger gnawing the inside of my belly while the man who wasn’t my mate fell soundly asleep.

  Chapter 15

  Werewolves take territories even more seriously than humans do. So Honor, Ambrose, and I showed up on the doorstep of the local alpha with metaphorical hats in hand the next morning. We’d decided to beg permission for not just the three of us but also for a double handful of Honor’s pack mates to attend a local horse show that afternoon with the intention of taking the internet predator down.

  Well, Ambrose and Honor had come to that decision during the ride over. I’d stayed silent, the ache of Ambrose’s dawn demonstration still arcing through my body.

  Two hours ago, he’d taken off my handcuffs and gone into the bathroom, at which point instinct had made me grab my sword and run. Yes, I’d known that leaving my pelt in his hands was a mistake. But surely distance would give me breathing room to figure out a way to deal with the internet predator and…

  I’d made it three blocks before my legs tied themselves into knots that refused to move forward. Pain made the entire world black out around me. And when I could finally see again, Ambrose stood above me with my pelt in his hand.

  “You won’t run again,” he purred.

  He was right. Even without handcuffs, I no longer considered overt escape attempts. Instead, I bided my time during the ride to the O’Connell mansion, hoping for a moment alone with Honor. She had to be made to understand that Ambrose wasn’t joining her hunt for altruistic reasons. She had to stop telling him about things he’d only twist to his own evil ends.

  That opportunity hadn’t presented itself yet, however, and lightheadedness was changing my focus from the bigger picture to how to keep myself upright. The towering columns at the entrance to the pack’s center of power were impressive, but they’d do nothing to keep me from tumbling off the edge of the portico if my knees gave out.

  So I was only half listening as Ambrose, within Jack’s body, acted the part of Jack’s brother with a silent glower while Honor spoke for all of us. “You’re turning away the Executioner?” she asked, voice incredulous. “You really think that’s wise?”

  Feet scuffed on tiles as the doorman tilted his head sideways, baring his neck in submission without actually moving out of the way so we could enter. “Chief O’Connell is indisposed at the moment.”

  Ambrose couldn’t speak without giving away the deception, but his gray eyes turned even more fiery. The doorman visibly wilted but didn’t cave.

  We were at a standoff and the body I inhabited—the body I was now—apparently didn’t deal well with down time. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind already, memories from the last time I’d visited the O’Connell mansion bubbled back up, self-loathing coloring my own past.

  Back then, I’d entered this luxurious home as a murderer, not as a supplicant. I’d killed without qualm, smiling at the brilliant red of blood splatter. Had laughed about it afterward.

  Now, belated regret made me double over, momentarily glad that Ambrose had allowed me no more than a sip of water before we left his apartment. If I’d eaten breakfast, it would have come right back up.

  “Are you alright?” Honor asked, her arm not particularly gentle but still warm as it guided me upright.

  Her moment of sympathy could have been the opening I was looking for if Ambrose hadn’t been right there with a smile on his lips that promised he’d seen my memory and was looking forward to sharing this further evidence of my dastardliness with Honor. Stuck, I was almost glad when Mariana breezed up behind the doorman, totally put-together in a way she hadn’t been back in Jack’s apartment.

  “Oh, let them in.” She smiled at Ambrose and I got the distinct impression she guessed this was Jack instead of his brother. “You can join me for a chat over breakfast.”

  Which is when my stomach reminded me—and everyone else within earshot—that this body had been fueled by only one bottle of sweet tea and a single cookie since coming into existence a day earlier. No wonder it continued complaining so loudly that Mariana’s attention was distracted away from Ambrose for the first time.

  “Who are your friends?” she asked as she led us across a vast, echoing entranceway then down a short hallway dim enough so my eyes struggled to adjust to the absence of light. What I could see was both luxurious and old-fashioned—gilded frames around cracked oil paintings, wooden molding carved into intricate shapes. I ran my fingers across the latter, trying to ground myself in the present and largely failing. Blood and my own laughter echoed up out of the past.

  “Honor and I go way back,” Ambrose answered, dropping the pretense of being Drake while leaning into the pretense of being Jack. “And you’ve met Kami.”

  “Kami?” Mariana opened another door and led us into a sun-soaked room that had been set up with a buffet so extensive it totally slapped away my guilty conscience. “She looks nothing like Kami,” Mariana continued.

  “And yet she’s the exact same person.”

  “Not her face.”

  “But everything else.”

  Perhaps, if I hadn’t been so hungry, I would have cared that Ambrose and Mariana continued talking about me as if I wasn’t present. But base bodily urges completely took over at that point. No one stopped me as I followed the delicious scent trail of bacon and eggs to the buffet. No one stopped me as I loaded a plate so high the third pancake slipped off onto the floor.

  No one stopped me, but Tall Nose’s voice proved that my actions weren’t going unnoticed in the spirit realm. “This is pitiful,” he whispered low enough so only I could hear him.

  I didn’t bother answering, too busy dropping into the closest chair. The plate barely made it onto the table before I was shoveling food into my mouth so fast I bit a wound into the inside of my cheek in the process.

  My own blood wasn’t such a poor seasoning for a side of sausage. Who would’ve guessed?

  “Even if you’re stuck in a human body, you still have abilities,” Tall Nose continued, his voice the merest murmur of a breath beside me. I couldn’t see him, but he was clearly here in the human realm. “Take a memory and strengthen yourself. Take another memory and give me a body. I’ll help you escape whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “No,” I mumbled around a mouthful of soft, flaky pastry, keeping my voice as low as his had been. Then Honor settled into the chair beside me, effectively ending the conversation I’d been holding with a spirit she didn’t even know existed.

  Honor would have seen me mumbling over my food though. No wonder she raised an eyebrow and addressed me. “Hungry?”

  I started to answer, but Tall Nose wasn’t quite ready to be kicked out of the conversation. “You’ve fallen under the sway of your meat suit,” he accused, still just as quiet yet deeply adamant. “Nothing you’re feeling is real. Can’t you see that? This is all just a fantasy.”

  I shook my head, and heard a minuscule pop as Tall Nose left me. Unfortunately, he seemed to take my appetite with him.

  A fantasy. Was he right? Was my mating with Jack pure bodily illusion? The understanding it created and the urge to help others mere mortal flimflammery?

  The idea seemed preposterous. And yet, how could it not be when I’d met Jack only one day earlier? When I’d been someone totally different before that, as my memories proved?

  My stomach turned over and I pushed the plate in Honor’s direction. “I’m done actually.”

  Being in a body was so strange. One moment, food had tasted like heaven. The next, what I’d eaten sat like a brick in my stomach and the sight of Honor popping a grape into her mouth raised my gorge.

  Looking away, I noticed for the first time that Ambrose and Mariana were no longer present. It was just me and Honor...and reality snapped me away from the concerns of my body at long last.

  Whatever confusion I held about my current situation, Merry’s safety was an imperative. This was my chance to prevent Ambrose from doing something awful to Jack’s niece and those like her. I had to seize it.

  So, ignoring the doubts Tall Nose’s words had awoken, I leaned in closer. “Listen,” I told her. “What Ambrose—Jack—said about us is true and is also a lie. I’m not the one an evil spirit possessed. He is. It sounds like you and Jack knew each other pretty well before this. Ask yourself, is he acting normally? Would Jack ever treat a woman the way he’s treating me?”

  I’d thought Honor was listening. But her gaze now rose past me to focus on the door at the other end of the room, not the one we’d entered through but another. And there came Ambrose, striding back toward us, looking just like Jack had when he tried to save me on the rooftop and when he refused to let his brother take the fall back in that coffee shop. Tall and straight and confident. He met Honor’s gaze and nodded, a promise that he’d won permission from Mariana to hunt on O’Connell territory or perhaps from the alpha himself for all I knew. It was hard to say how long I’d been lost in my food reverie.

  A reverie which, I knew, hadn’t made me look particularly human. So I wasn’t surprised by what Honor said when she finally answered my question. I was only surprised she bothered to answer me at all.

  “Who else would drop everything to take down an internet predator who doesn’t threaten him in any way?” she asked, the question clearly rhetorical. “Sorry, Kami, or whoever you are, but I don’t buy it. Jack is acting exactly like Jack.”

  Chapter 16

  Ambrose continued to act so much like Jack that he almost had me fooled. During the ride to our meeting spot, he not only participated in a video call with Merry, he thoroughly charmed the girl.

  “Aunt Honor thinks every little thing is her responsibility,” Honor’s niece observed. Despite her close call, she couldn’t quite keep a grin off her face while she gave the man she thought was Jack marching orders. “Sometimes she forgets to guard her own back. You do too, Lemondrop.”

  “If I’m a lemondrop, you must be a dwarf lemon tree—small but mighty and just a little bit prickly,” Ambrose said, making the girl giggle. Then he turned serious. “You don’t have to worry about us though. I’ll guard your aunt’s back and she’ll guard mine.” I was the only one close enough to smell the lie on his breath.

  After that, he willingly donned the massive foam hand Honor supplied, my time spent immaterially surfing television signals providing the insider knowledge that its brilliant orange color would be a slap in the face to every Kentucky football fan and even more of a sore thumb in an equine crowd. “I don’t know how our contact will find me,” Ambrose observed dryly. “I’m definitely going to blend right in.”

  He didn’t blend in, but the rest of us did. We spread out among the horse buyers, sellers, and general looky-loos in the stands, earpieces and unobtrusive microphones allowing us to communicate while mingling. The pack mate who’d been handing out the tech clearly hadn’t been clued in about my status, because I was given the same gadgets everyone else was. Meanwhile, Honor had donated some of her own clothes to the cause.

  So I didn’t stick out like Ambrose’s foam fingers, especially since I kept to the unobtrusive edges, well out of sight. After all, unlike everyone else, I didn’t need to have actual eyes on Ambrose to know what happened. He hadn’t shut down our mate bond, so I was able to see what he saw, hear what he heard. Together, we listened to the chatter of Honor’s pack mates while watching sleek horses pace around the track below us. Together, we noted a tow-headed kid even younger than Merry sidling up through the crowd at the edge of the stands, gaze focused intently on Ambrose’s foam hand.

  “Here ya go, mister.” I felt rather than saw when the boy slipped a card to Ambrose. Felt Ambrose’s greedy pleasure at winning a contact into this shady world that had so intrigued him.

  At the same moment, the crowd buffeted my body. I was still too close to the action to focus entirely on what Ambrose was seeing. So I turned further away from the thick of things, heading to an empty alcove near the bathrooms and settling against the wall so I could safely close my eyes and focus on the mate bond.

  “Who gave this to you?” Ambrose asked. But the kid was already slipping away into the same crowd I’d just walked away from. His lack of height made it easy for him to disappear, while Ambrose’s size prevented him from following fast enough to catch up. Within seconds, the boy was gone.

  Immediately, my earpiece crackled as Honor began rattling off names and directions. Only once her troops were mobilized did she ask, “What’s on the card?”

  I watched my hands—Ambrose’s hands—take out the phone the tech guy had given him to replace the three Jack had already lost during our short acquaintance. He scanned a QR code then purred pleasure as what appeared to be a fancy invitation popped up on the screen.

  “Jack?” Honor prodded. After another moment, Ambrose finally answered.

  “We are cordially invited to an auction at the full moon, twelve days from now.”

  “Send me the details?”

  I could tell he didn’t want to. Ambrose wanted to clutch what he’d won tight and keep it all to himself.

  But that would have clued Honor in about her friend’s possession. So Ambrose screenshot the invitation and sent it over.

  I’d squeezed my eyes shut even more tightly in an effort to see what Ambrose was doing when a mosquito bite on my neck reminded me of my own body. No, not an insect bite. A man-made needle prick.

  And now there was a hand over my eyes. Another over my mouth.

  I’d been an idiot to go off alone. I tried to yell, but the sweaty palm muffled my breath. I heard a click then a crunch as the microphone was plucked off my blouse and crushed beneath someone’s boot heel.

  Struggle, I ordered my body. After all, I still had hands, still had legs even if I couldn’t see my attackers or call for help.

  But the world around me was twisting, spinning. The sounds above me had turned foggy and distant.

  “Strip her.” A waft of scent came along with the words. Black pepper and tangerine.

  “Jack!” I screamed, using the only connection I had access to—the mate bond. “I need you!”

  Then everything went dark.

  I woke to something scratchy beneath my right cheeks. Yes, bodies do have two cheeks on each side—the one on your butt and the one on your face.

  I giggled at the realization. Jack would love that. Jack would…

  A burst of sheer adrenaline coursed down the mate bond. It slapped away the muzziness and when I opened my eyes I found a wolf bearing down on me. A wolf who I knew to be my mate... which meant he was also Ambrose.

  And I was naked. Lying atop clean straw in what appeared to be an empty horse stall. I tried to spring to my feet, but my body wasn’t quite ready to obey me. I did make it upright but then the world tilted. Or maybe I tilted. Either way, my cheeks were going to become reacquainted with that straw very soon.

  Only they weren’t. I was caught by my mate’s strength. He was human, ignoring his pelt as it slumped to our feet. “Are you hurt?” he demanded, his breath caressing my cheek with lemon sugar.

  “Are you Jack?” I answered. He smelled like Jack. But could I really tell the difference? Or would my bare skin against his bare skin cause so many brain misfires that even rot was redolent with sweetness?

  “In all my water-buffalo-riding glory,” Jack answered, drawing back just enough so I could see that dimple making a reappearance. “I...”

  Then his eyes clenched shut, his upper lip curling as if a fight had broken out beneath the surface. Now I did smell rot and it took an effort not to flinch away from the hands holding me upright.

  I refused to be a distraction. Not when Ambrose was trying to break through and Jack still had a chance to stand firm…

  “Is she okay?” Honor pounded through the door with three shifters behind her. She was out of breath, was drawing her sword despite the fact whoever kidnapped me was long gone and the hum of a not-so-distant crowd suggested there were humans nearby. “What do you need?”

  “I need Kami’s pelt and her sword. Clothes for both of us. A car.” Jack was speaking into my neck, his face averted from Honor. But he was my mate. He smelled like lemon sugar and he couldn’t help cracking jokes even while fighting a monster inside himself. “Also a cell phone. A really, really cheap one. Because I’m pretty sure I dropped the one you gave me into a horse trough.”

  Laughter tickled my insides. “That’s four you’ve lost now.”

  “Yep,” he answered, breathing the words into my ear so Honor couldn’t hear him. “But I have no intention of losing you.”

  Chapter 17

  He didn’t lose me and he didn’t lose his hold over his body either, not for a good long while at least. Not during the ride to the safe haven he’d plotted out for us, a village his brother had created up in the West Virginia mountains then evacuated after Ambrose discovered its location. Not while hiking up the long, winding path from car to village, passing by a rain-ruined backpack and a pair of dropped sneakers, visual proof of how fast the Strays had fled in the face of Ambrose’s depredations.

  The whole time, Jack kept up a running patter of jokes that culminated in the groan-worthy: “What kind of flowers do werewolves plant in their gardens? Howllyhocks!”