“You—” My voice comes out as a croak. I clear my throat and try again. “You’re adragon?”
Villeneuve’s expression is unreadable. He pushes his hair back from his dark eyes as they move from me to Killian to the wolves still snarling between us. What might be regret flickers across his features.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t find out this way,” he says, his voice as smooth and cultured as ever even though he was spitting flames a minute ago. “The coven must have obtained assistance from someone whose magic is powerful enough to slip past my wards unnoticed. For that, I apologize.”
An apology.
He’sapologizingfor letting a coven of angry witches and a necromantically reanimated werewolf attack us as if he forgot to RSVP to a dinner party.
I don’t have time to process the absurdity of that. Killian’s breath is coming in short, shallow gasps, and through our bond, I feel him fading.
Not gone, not yet, but close.
Way too fucking close.
Villeneuve takes a step forward.
All three wolves move at once. Micah’s snarl is the loudest, his fur bristling as he positions himself directly between Villeneuve and Killian. Rowan flanks him, silver fur catching what’s left of the daylight. Even Sean, injured and limping, puts himself in the line of fire.
Villeneuve stops. His eyes meet mine over their bristling forms.
“He will die if I don’t help,” he says quietly. “Shortly.”
I know he’s right. I feel it. The thread connecting me to Killian is fraying, thinning with every second that passes.
My magic isn’t enough.
All the energy I can draw from the fuckingbondisn’t enough.
He’s lost too much blood, taken too much damage, and the wounds…
The wounds aren’t closing.
“Let him through,” I hear myself say.
Micah’s head whips toward me, golden eyes wide with disbelief. He doesn’t move.
“Please.” My voice breaks on the word. “We’re out of options.”
No one moves. The wolves stare at me, at Villeneuve, at each other. I feel their resistance through the bond. The instinctive refusal to let this unknown predator anywhere near their injured alpha.
But they feel Killian too.
They know what I know.
Slowly, reluctantly, they part.
Villeneuve moves through the gap with that same unhurried confidence he brings to everything. He kneels beside Killian, and for just a second, I see something in his expression that I’ve never seen before.
Compassion.
Genuine compassion as he studies the damage. The deep gashes across Killian’s side. The torn flesh of his shoulder from where the creature’s jaws sank in. The dark blood matting his black fur into wet, dark clumps.
“The damage is extensive,” Villeneuve murmurs, more to himself than to me. His long fingers hover over the wounds,not quite touching. “I can heal him physically. But the poison already coursing through his veins...” He pauses, and when he looks at me, his eyes are lit from within with the same burning green rather than their usual darkness, as if the dragon lingers just beneath his skin. “I cannot stop that. The process has already begun.”
The process.
Theturning.
