“Fenrir help me,” Caius muttered under his breath, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“Cap? The fuck?” Quinn demanded.
Caius leveled a glare at each of them, Lukas included, which was completely uncalled for. “Of course you’re not a slave. Sexual or otherwise,” he said tightly.
Lukas gave him props for managing that with a straight face. Especially since the mirth coming off Max was strong enough to make his nose itch.
Max crossed his arms again and stared Caius down, which was quite a feat; Lukas had seen his alpha stand unflinching in the face of irate generals and entitled suburban housewives. After a moment, Caius’ shoulders released some of their tension, his expression turned sympathetic, and his scent shifted to protective alpha.
Lukas mentally rearranged their pack hierarchy, with Max firmly in the category ofDo Not Fuck With.
“Max, I promise you, you will be protected here. And far happier than you ever were with your family.”
Max’s breaths hitched, but his expression didn’t change. His fingers turned white where he gripped his arms, and he swallowed hard before letting his head dip forward. “Fine,” he said quietly. “Bind me.”
Lukas shared a quick look with Quinn, seeing his own surprise mirrored on his face. Apparently, even overly optimistic Quinn expected more of a fight than that.
He finished eating and dumped his containers in the trash. He personally didn’t care much about expanding their pack, but he knew Caius needed more than his bottomless bank account if they were going to successfully hold territory here.
“Do we have everything we need?” Lukas asked. Better to get this taken care of before Max changed his mind.
“Yes.” Caius pushed his barely touched plate of food aside and stood.
Lukas snagged a beer from the fridge and propped against the counter to sip it as Caius disappeared upstairs. He focused on Quinn and Max now that the need for sleep and sustenance was taken care of.
Even though Quinn was short for a shifter, Max was a few inches shorter, and thin enough to look frail, though Lukas couldn’t decide if that was more genetics or lack of proper nutrition. The few mages he’d worked with always looked like they would break in a strong breeze.
Max poked at his salmon, glancing at Lukas from beneath his messy tawny brown fringe.
Yeah, binding this mage to them was going to gosowell. He could already taste the chaos it was sure to cause.
Chapter 5
CAIUS GATHEREDthe needed ingredients from his office, along with three small bowls and brushes. He’d never intended to need them, but an unspoken rule for a pack alpha was to always have the necessary components for a binding spell on hand. Even though the Order claimed most mages, there was the occasional mage like Max, or those who Sparked but weren’t powerful enough for the Order to deem them worth the trouble.
He took everything to the living room and set the three bowls out on the live-edge coffee table.
The ingredients were simple enough: crushed mage ivy, blood anise, and wolf knot blossom. He mixed a batch in each bowl, then added a small bottle of black tattoo ink to each.
“Okay,” Caius said, sitting back and glancing towards the dining room, where the others were watching him. “All that’s left is a few drops of blood from each of you.”
Lukas tossed his empty beer bottle into the trash before joining him in the living room. He picked up one of the bowls before sitting and flexing a finger, his nail shifting into a sharp claw. He cut his finger and squeezed some blood into his bowl, watching it expectantly. “Isn’t it supposed to do something?”
“It needs mage blood.”
“Can’t believe I’m doing this,” Max muttered under his breath, almost quiet enough that Caius’ shifter hearing didn’t pick it up.
Caius waited until Max stopped on the other side of the table before offering his knife.
Max couldn’t hide all of his flinch, staring at the knife like someone familiar with the sharp edge of a blade. He flexed his fingers, and Caius pretended not to notice the tremble in them as Max took the knife and cut his own finger to bleed into the bowls.
Lukas’ lit up with a soft fiery orange glow.
“Holy fuck,” Max breathed, staring at it as if he still couldn’t believe he was amage with power.
Quinn gently pried the knife from Max’s slack grip to add his blood to his own bowl and watched with a grin as it lit up.
Caius took the knife back, wiped the blade on his pants, and added his own blood to the last bowl.
