“Is it true?” Sage asked, getting the words out through clenched teeth. “That you made no promises?”
“Not to Lucien,” Jono hedged, because he’d made promises to Patrick in many ways. They were bound together, but the promises Patrick made on his own didn’t bind Jono no matter the pack they had. He could see now why Patrick had stressed that fact back in Ginnungagap.
“You’re learning.”
“Learning what?”
“How to speak without losing pieces of yourself.” Sage looked at him, the rage in her eyes burning straight through to his own. “I can’t interfere.”
She was here at the behest of the Night Courts, in the capacity of the fae firm that employed her. Jono understood that. He also understood what Sage was asking him without saying a single bloody word.
Jono was a god pack alpha, and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t act like one.
Jono didn’t hesitate when he threw himself over the railing, the snarl escaping his mouth that of a wolf born of fury, Fenrir howling through his mind and soul.
7
Jono landedon both feet between the teenager and the jaguar, legs folding beneath him to absorb the force of impact. He stayed crouched in the center of the circle, one hand pressed against the floor. His fingers spread over the open mouth of the drawn face, the heat of magic burning against his skin.
Around him the crowd became more vocal. Jono would’ve ignored them all in favor of the threat right in front of him—except he saw a face he only remembered in his nightmares.
Jono had done his best to bury the memory of what Ethan Greene had put him through, but there had been others in that house somewhere in Manhattan. People he remembered in flashes and could never forget. The crowd was a blur of faces, but one stood out because the high, mocking sound of her laughter as she drank wine while he bled was embedded deep in Jono’s mind.
He saw her in the crowd before she slipped away, head ducked to hide her face, but she wasn’t quick enough, and he had a feeling she knew it.
She disappeared, and Jono let her because he had other things to worry about. His gaze snapped back to the jaguar, watching as it lashed its tail and bared its teeth in a snarl that cut into words.
“Do you wish to die?”
The voice of a god was never easy to hear, but Jono had spent nearly half his life listening to one. While some in the crowd clutched their heads in pain, Jono merely tipped his to the side, letting the words wash over him.
“That’s a dumb fucking question, mate,” Jono ground out before letting go of the bits that made up the human part of him these days.
The shift hit like a lorry, vicious in the way the wolf clawed its way out of his skin. For a single instant, Jono suffered through the agony that came with the shift from human to werewolf, fiery pain lighting up his brain and central nervous system to a point where it drowned out the world. Then it switched off, the werevirus blocking the pain so suddenly it left him momentarily light-headed.
It was long enough for his body to twist itself into something new.
Bones broke, a distant crunch Jono could feel as pressure but not pain. The world wavered at the edges, his eyesight shifting, still seeing in color but muted, picking up motion his human eyes couldn’t. His body grew, the clothes and shoes he’d worn to the club shredding as mass redistributed itself into the heavy bulk of his werewolf form.
Muscles grew and reattached as his center of gravity changed to incorporate moving on four legs instead of two. The itch of fur rolled over his skin in a wave, nose flaring as scents he couldn’t pick up even as a human with enhanced senses hit his brain with information Jono could easily make sense of after all these years.
The shift took less than a minute, but in that time, the jaguar wasn’t waiting for Jono to complete it. The godlike creature launched itself not at Jono but at the teenager cowering behind him. The teen smelled rank from blood, urine, and fear mixed in with the scent of foreign magic keeping the teen from shifting.
Jono tossed his monstrous head upward midshift, jaws opening wide to snap at the jaguar, catching a hindfoot between his teeth as they sharpened into fangs. Jono wrenched his head to the side and slammed the jaguar to the ground, biting down on the hindfoot with all the strength in his newly formed jaw.
Hot blood filled his mouth in a gush before he had to let go or risk losing an eye to sharp black claws. The jaguar roared, twisting out of reach with an unearthly speed that had Jono’s teeth snapping at air. He crouched lower, tracking the way the jaguar retreated to the outer circle to regroup.
Power flowed through Jono’s mind, claws digging into his thoughts as Fenrir used his eyes to see the mortal world. The double vision they shared brought with it the shining bright aura of a god spilling out of the jaguar, save for a dark spot that incorporated his left hind paw.
It is mortal, Fenrir said.A construct. Kill it.
The aura said otherwise, but Jono wasn’t one to question his patron. A head-on attack would put the teenage werecreature at risk of dying, so Jono stayed where he was despite Fenrir’s warning growl that echoed in his soul.
Piss off, Jono shot back.Let me concentrate.
His paws didn’t burn from the magic in the containment circle, not how his hand had while human. Fenrir’s power was pushing through his soul, sinking into his bones, filling his mind with a wrath that Jono found difficult to shake off.
Let me feast.
