Page 65 of Bad Blood Bear

Chapter 28

“He compelled you to come to him?” Flynn asked. “From half a block away?”

Lissa nodded. “There was a horrible stabbing pain in my skull, and then my body just walked off without me. I couldn’t stop. And when I was standing in front of him, I had to do what he told me, even though I didn’t want to.”

“Shit,” Flynn muttered. He was pacing back and forth in the living room of the cabin, a constant rumbling growl in his throat. “Just please tell me you didn’t kill him,” he said to Tank. “Not in the alley by the supermarket.”

“I should have killed him.” Tank was breathing heavily. “He tried to Turn two more women, Flynn. They both died. He said so.”

Flynn dropped his head back, shaking it in disbelief. “Shit,” he said. He turned to Lissa, his voice gentling. “People you knew?”

Lissa’s voice was shaking with anger. “He didn’t say who. But I knew everyone in the cult. They were—they never hurt anyone.” She swallowed hard. “And those men with him. They were my friends—one of them used to be my boyfriend. And they stared at me like they didn’t even know me. He Turned them too—I could smell it. And then he did whatever he did to me, that made me into his zombie bitch.”

“Tank should have killed him,” Xander said, running the flat of his knife blade across his thigh over and over. “We could have hidden the body.”

Flynn swore again. “We can’t drop bodies in town, for God’s sake,” he said. “But if he comes here, you can rip him apart for all I care. My concern is that he’ll lure Lissa somewhere else.”

Or try to make her turn on them. They didn’t say it, but they didn’t need to. “I guess nobody’s letting me near any sharp objects for the duration,” she said.

Tank growled.

“Should we call the Council?” Sloan asked. “We’ve got more than enough for them to move on him.”

Flynn and Tank exchanged glances. “I’d rather not,” Flynn said. “It could turn into a legal tangle. She does have his claiming mark.”

Lissa looked from one to the other. “What does that mean?” she asked. “He said something about me being his under the law, but I thought he was delusional.”

Flynn blew out a sigh. “Well, not quite. There are several different kinds of matings under shifter law. True mates have a magical bond that’s invoked when they have sex with the intention of accepting the bond between them. That bond is unbreakable and can be sensed by other shifters, and is a legal mating.”

She looked at Tank. That must have been what he had with Angie.

Flynn went on. “There are also more informal matings that can be recognized by the Council or an alpha, and can also be dissolved if the two people want to. Like a divorce. And then there are claimed mates.”

He rolled his big shoulders, obviously tense. “Claiming is normally for shifters of different species, so that one can be accepted into the other’s crew, pack, or clan. Or for a human/shifter mating, so the human gains rights and privileges in the shifter world that they normally wouldn’t be allowed.”

Lissa said, “It didn’t sound like I was getting any rights or privileges. More like I was being enslaved.”

“The claiming bite has magic,” Sloan said. “If it’s done with intent, and supposedly with consent by the person being bitten, then it binds the two people with a weaker bond than a true mating. If the person doing the claiming is pledged to an alpha, then the claimed mate is also automatically bound to that alpha. It’s a way of keeping humans from going off and outing shifters, if necessary. The alpha can compel them.”

“Is that what Brother Damien did to me? To make me obey him?” Lissa shuddered. It was horrible, her body doing things whether her mind consented or not.

“Yes, but apparently he’s such a wuss he was afraid it wouldn’t take, so he went one step further and put compulsion magic on you. That’s the red energy that fights Flynn’s alpha magic.” Xander shook his head. “Wanker.”

“That’s illegal magic, even for witches and sorcerers,” Jasmin said. “You can’t just go around taking over people’s minds.”

“People do,” said Flynn dryly. “Ask Noah Reilly. Hell, ask Tristan. He could probably do shit like that if he wanted.”

Lissa shuddered. If this Tristan person could do that, she was glad he wasn’t here anymore.

“So then why can’t we call the Council on Brother Damien?”

Tank was growling. Lissa put a hand on his back to try to calm him, but her bear was just as riled up.

Flynn said, “It’s dicey. He could claim you agreed to the mating and then ran away. And your bear is still out of control. They might return you to him until they can investigate.”

“Are you kidding me?” Lissa said. “This is worse than the human system when there’s domestic abuse, and that’s saying a lot.”

“Yeah well, that’s why we want to keep it out of the courts. Israel and Ashley will be here on Friday. If they can lift the compulsion magic and testify to the fact that it was there, then the Council will accept their word and nullify the claim.”