“I willwin.”
His conviction made me purse my lips. It also made August’s pulse spike and hammer my tightspine.
“Have a little faith in me,Ness.”
“Okay. Fine. What happens after you win? How exactly are you planning on eating herheart?”
A corner of his mouth curled. “With myteeth.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be dense. If her blood’s full of silver, then her heart istoo.”
“Little Wolf’s right,” Mattsaid.
“I’ll have it injected with Sillin. Or I’ll inject myself with Sillin. Greg would know. You broughtit?”
I pulled the tablets out of my bag just as the front door opened and Greg steppedin.
Liam smirked. “Look at that. I speak his name and he appears. We were just talking aboutyou.”
Surprise crinkled the fine lines around the doctor’s eyes. Or maybe it was concern. “And what were youdiscussing?”
“We were discussing how you’re going to purge a heart of silver without purging it of blood. You know, so I can eatit.”
47
Greg scrutinizedthe screen of the portable device in which he’d just inserted a drop of August’s blood. “Down by a little more than a half. You should be Sillin-free by the next fullmoon.”
Considering the duel was tonight, it was a good thing I hadn’t been the guinea-pig in theexperiment.
“Can you shift at all?” Greg asked, putting away the handheldmachine.
August, who was sitting at the game table between Cole and the doctor, palmed his cropped hair. “No.”
“Can you get your claws to comeout?”
Studying the ball of cotton he held to the puncture wound on the inside of his elbow, he said, “No.”
“Did it affect the matinglink?”
August raised his gaze to me. “No.”
I was standing by the windowed wall, alternately watching the males behind me and the ones on the other side of the glass. Ever since Greg told Liam that injecting him with a hefty dose of Sillin at the end of the duel—not as hefty as what he’d given August, because we didn’t have enough pills left for that—would counteract the silver in Cassandra’s blood, Liam was mentally and physically psyching himself up for theduel.
Both he and Matt had shed their clothes and morphed into fur. For the past half hour, they’d been battling relentlessly. Liam wasn’t immune to Matt’s blows—he tumbled and winced—but he’d hop back on his paws and give as good as hegot.
Better.
But then, they were play-acting.
However violent the fight, it wasn’treal.
I lifted my gaze to the miles of swaying pines that separated Liam’s property from the Inn, wondering what the Creeks were doing at this exact moment. Vandalizing more of our homes, burying Aidan’s ashes, or preparing to face-off withus?
As Lucas came to stand next to me, I hugged my torso. “Sarah got with Alex to help us. She hateshim.”
He watched Matt catch Liam’s hind leg and flip him onto hisback.
“How do you feel, by the way?” Iasked.
