Page 111 of Bought for Blood

“No. I am.”

My wolf comes all the way up the front of me with her hackles going. The growl starts in the back of my throat before I’ve decided anything about it—low, rolling, no words in it—and it doesn’t stop when I want it to. Every one of them hears it.

The young one stops walking.

“She growled,” he says, and he’s delighted.

“Sit down, Aubrey.”

The voice comes from the far end of the room. It isn’t loud.

There’s a woman in the chair by the fireplace. Tall, even sitting down, dark hair pinned back off her face, dressed in dark wool and boots, a coat already over the arm of the chair. She could be fifty. She could be anything. She hasn’t gotten up and hasn’t turned her head. Aubrey sits so fast the chair legs go across the floor.

“The rest of you, the other end of my room,” she says.

They go without one word.

One of them doesn’t.

There’s a woman by the window in a black coat down to her ankles, her gloves lying on the sill beside her. The whole room moves, but she stays exactly where she is, and Faine doesn’t tell her twice.

I know her.

“Odile.”

“Serenity.” She comes away from the window and focuses on me the whole way across the room.

“How are you here?”

“Ysabelle sent word the night he didn’t come out. I was on the road before the call was over.” Her face doesn’t move. “Whatever she meant to do about it, she knew I would come. She knows what he is to me.”

Crowe’s arm comes down. He walks me the length of the room.

“Ysabelle Faine,” he says.

Up close, she’s immobile. Her hands stay folded in her lap the whole time she’s looking at me.

“He’s alive,” I say.

“So Crowe tells me.”

“Say that again.” Odile has come down the room behind us. Her voice is very quiet.

“He’s alive. I know which direction he’s in, and he is alive right now.” My voice comes out with more of the wolf in it than I meant. “Nobody at Aurora will listen to me. I’ve stopped asking them to.”

“Bastien,” Odile says, to nobody, and puts her gloves down on the table. Her shoulders drop a fraction. It’s the only part of her that moves.

I turn back to Faine.

“Aurora’s going in for the captives, but not before the end of the week. He hasn’t got that much time.”

“No,” Faine says. “He has until the sun comes up.”

My knees go. I lock them and stay standing before anyone sees it.

“What?”

“If they kept him alive this long, it’s because they wanted something from him. Val-Serein won’t give anybody anything unless he wants them to have it. So now he’s a liability.” Herhands don’t move. “They’ll put him in a room facing the sun, and they’ll go home to their beds.”