Sound came back with a snap, Fenrir halting the panicked spiral of Jono’s thoughts and emotions in the face of a horror he’d never dreamed of. A rising tide of voices washed over him from the pack alphas who were loyal to him, the distress and anger sour in the air.
Jono finally found his voice, tearing his throat raw when he spoke. “Get out of him.”
Andras lifted Patrick’s hand, pale blue magic sparking at his fingertips. “You know, I’d forgotten what it was like to possess a witch, but mages are so much morepowerful, that I’m inclined to stay.”
“I did say you’d never see him again if you insisted on fighting. Since you persist in challenging my authority, you’ll face Patrick in the ring,” Estelle said, almost coyly.
Jono didn’t look at her, still staring at Patrick and sinking his awareness into the soulbond, but there was no responding acknowledgment when he pulled on it. Nothing but that strange emptiness at the end of it, which could only mean that Andras was blocking it. Jono wondered if Andras had been possessing Patrick since the first time he tried reaching through the soulbond. The thought made bile rise in the back of his throat.
“That’s not how a challenge works,” Sage snarled, suddenly by Jono’s side.
“Patrick is an alpha. You made him so when you claimed your pack. Loyalty can be shifted, and he’s fighting for me now.”
“He’s notyours,” Jono snarled, unable to keep the desperation out of his voice.
“He was never going to stay yours, not when Ethan wants his son back,” Andras said.
Jono hated the sound of the demon in Patrick’s voice, the way the tone was off, the cadence wrong, everything that was Patrickgonedespite the other man standing right in front of him.
“You can fight him for the right to keep New York City, or you can forfeit, show your throat, and die. All the packs you stole will revert back to me and be punished, or be exiled, no matter what you choose,” Estelle said.
She said it with a smile on her face, basking in the knowledge that she believed she’d won without needing to shed a single drop of her own blood.
Andras walked forward in Patrick’s body, his stride all wrong, a mageglobe forming against one palm. “Are you going to yield and die to save his life? Or will you fight and lose him and your territory? Because you won’t win. You can’t break me out of his soul.”
Jono watched the body of the man he loved come closer and knew there was no way he could ever lift a hand to him. Estelle had been counting on that, and she ended up being right.
“I won’t fight him, but I won’t forfeit,” Jono said, shoulders tightening as he caught the scent coming off Patrick, one that was all Andras and nothing like what he got when he buried his nose in Patrick’s hair.
“A pity. Because I do solovea good fight.”
The mageglobe streaked forward, almost too fast to track. Jono shoved Sage out of the line of fire, unwilling to see her or anyone else harmed. Jono held out his hand toward it, as if he’d be able to shield himself when he knew he couldn’t. The mageglobe slammed into his palm and exploded, the force of the magic tearing through his arm up to his elbow, catching him in the chest and face, knocking him to the ground.
Jono landed on his back, screaming up at the sky for a few horrible seconds before he choked it off. The agony was bright and vicious in his brain before the pain was blunted by nerves turning off. The shift was almost instinctual—his or Fenrir’s, Jono didn’t know—but it cut off the blood pumping out of his artery at the shredded end of his elbow. Skin grew over the tattered remains, reorienting the veins and arteries to stop the blood loss. The bones in his face and chest rippled, broke, forcing hideously burned skin to smooth out into something less than seared flesh.
He could grow his arm back. If he shifted to wolf and then to human again, it would be as if he’d never lost it.
Jono just needed tomove.
The shock of losing half his arm didn’t hurt nearly as much as the specter of Patrick being the one to give the blow, even though Jono knew it was Andras who had done it, just with Patrick’s face.
“Jono!” Wade cried out, falling to his knees, his head blocking out the sky, a frantic expression on his red-scaled face.
Jono pushed back the pain, let it hollow him out, and rolled to his left side, using his one good remaining arm to prop himself up. Wade’s hand settled on his right shoulder, shoring him up, as Jono stared at where Andras stood in Patrick’s body, another mageglobe burning in his hand.
“Going to lie down and die?” Andras asked with Patrick’s voice.
“I said I wouldn’t fight Patrick,” Jono grunted. “I said nothing about fighting you.”
Fenrir’s claws sank into Jono’s soul, teeth cutting into his thoughts, seeping into every layer of who he was.
Let me out, Fenrir growled.
Jono closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he didn’t have control, but he’d given it up willingly.
Jono knew Patrick hadn’t been given that choice.
Fenrir pushed his body to his feet, shaking off Wade’s touch. Through eyes he had no control over, Jono saw Estelle’s face go slack from shock, while those around her with demons in their souls didn’t react.
