Page 90 of The Lunatics

She nodded at me.

“Please don’t,” I said.

Her expression softened. “I’m sorry. I’ll give them back when you’re ready. I promise.”

CHAPTER 21

Michael shot out of bed. “There was a woman here.”

“The vampire who dealt with the MacKenzie wolves,” I told him.

“Is that what I smell? Why my bones hurt?”

I nodded.

He frowned. “What happened? Why don’t I remember anything?”

“She thralled you.”

The blood drained from his face. “Vampires can’t thrall us.”

“This one can. You saw her glamour, Michael. She’s not really a beautiful woman. Trust me on this.” I shuddered, recalling the reed-thin, red-eyed, fang-toothed nightmare from my childhood.

“What did she say? What did she want?” He climbed back onto the bed and grabbed my shoulders, checking me over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, actually.” And I was. For the first time in days, I didn’t feel the hot breath of imminent danger breathing down my neck. “She didn’t kill my parents. They died in the infighting before she was forced to cull the rest of the pack.”

“And you trust her?”

“Somehow, yeah. She wasn’t like I thought she’d be. She was… kind of nice?”

He stared at me like I’d grown another head.

It was weird. I couldn’t recall everything she’d said to me, but I knew in my heart of hearts that she meant me no harm, that she cared for me in her own way.

“She just wanted to make sure we figured out the bond,” I told him. “And to tell us to be careful in the city.”

He frowned. “But why does our welfare matter to her?”

“She saved me, when you really think about it. Life couldn’t have been easy in the MacKenzie pack. We’d nearly wiped ourselves out by the time she stepped in. Imagine how I would have been raised if she hadn’t, and I’d been left to them.”

“So now you’re fine with the fact that she might have killed other people you were related to?”

I shook my head. “I’m not fine with it, but not everything is black-and-white. She did the best she could in an impossible situation.”

He was looking at me like I was some sort of puzzle he couldn’t figure out. “I still don’t trust this. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I really don’t think she means us harm.”

“What else did she say?”

“That you need to tattoo me. But make it more powerful than yours. Does that make any sense to you?”

His gaze shuttered. He locked down on his emotions.

“What is it?” I asked.

“How did she know that?”