Page 47 of Ignited

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

Boomer took a moment to contemplate what a teenage kid with practically unlimited magic, the ability to walk through walls, and dragon invisibility powers could do if he really wanted to. Then he decided it was better not to think about it.

But he didn’t want to think about what could happen to Karisma, either. She was so strong, so tough, but she looked so vulnerable lying there. She was still barely breathing.

He took her hand, rubbing it between both of his. “Hold on,” he murmured. “You’re going to be okay.”

His wolf was freaking out with the need to protect her, and having nothing he could see to protect her against.

And Boomer was freaking out over how much he and his wolf were both freaking out. When the hell had Karisma become so important to him?

He said to DB, “I thought you said that spell wasn’t life-threatening.”

DB sat down on the floor in front of the toybox. “I said probably. And it would have been a lot less life-threatening if someone had fucking mentioned she was energetically connected to the damn Orb of Thekate. Because what the fuck is even up with that?”

“You think I know? I’m not sure she even knew.”

DB started pulling out silk and velvet-wrapped objects and laying them aside, muttering to himself. Something about fucking humans and fucking amateurs, and magic items being next to each other that shouldn’t be within ten feet, and a lot more that sounded mostly like Draken swear words.

Beneath all that was a long, narrow wooden box, black with silver symbols painted on it. The air around it seemed to shimmer.

DB opened the box. Inside were shining crystal rods—nine of them, along with three crystal spheres. They were all glowing with a sparkling silver-black light. DB muttered a couple of words, and that spiderweb-thin thread appeared, leading from the box to Karisma.

Even worse, another thread led from the box through the wall of the cabin, out to who knew where.

As Boomer watched, the thread tightened, pulling on that place in Karisma’s belly. A little ball of energy moved from her along the thread, through the lattice of crystals, and headed out toward the unknown person or thing at the other end.

DB cursed.

He spoke in Draken, and green light moved across his fingers. It surrounded the box and coalesced at the place where the thread left for parts unknown.

“Call her back,” DB said to Boomer. “Hold her hands, touch her. Do whatever it was you did when you pulled her out of her tiger form last night. Now. We’re losing her.”

Boomer held onto Karisma’s hands. They were cold, so cold. I am not losing you, he told her, inside his mind. And he reached out with his wolf, for the connection he knew was there.

This time it almost staggered him with its intensity. Images flickered through his mind—the two of them in the snowy woods, in the back of the truck, here in this bed, together.

He focused on the images, trying to catch them, but it was as if they all slid out of reach, sucked away down that damn connection. He knew Maximilian was on the other end of it.

He followed the memories back further into the past. The night after the carnival fire. He’d gone after Maximilian, threatened him with the Enforcers and the Shifter Council.

And Maximilian had nearly caught Boomer in his magical web. If it hadn’t been for Bro, busting in with his gun, he’d have been gone.

But even then, he’d looked the bastard in the eyes and sworn to take him down one day.

And then he followed the memories further still, to the eyes of a tiger, staring at him out of the smoke of the carnival fire. Only this time she was on the ground, and he was standing over her, and with all his might he grabbed her collar and dragged her out of the tent, out to safety and freedom. Come with me, he was saying. You’re gonna make it. I’ll save you.

Don’t leave me.

The energy coming from Karisma through the pieces of the Orb suddenly stopped at the edge of their box, like a leak had been plugged. The thread leading into the distance thinned, as if someone was still pulling on it from the other end, and then it went slack.

Karisma’s hands warmed, and she stirred. Her eyes fluttered open, and she whispered, barely a breath. “Boomer?”

“That’s me.” He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.

“Don’t leave me.”

“I’m right here.”