‘Look, so— lad, maybe the ritual needs a bit more time,’ Carlson said placatingly. ‘Ain’t doing yous any good brooding ’bout it now it’s done anyways. She’s gonna be hungry once she shifts. Ain’t a bad idea if yous go hunting, get us all some victuals. Yous needs to keep yous strength up for the mating too.’

I was lying on– the muscles of my neck freed and I turned my head – a pile of dark furs atop a bed of hay mixed with herbs. I made out the clean scent of sage and something minty which smelled oddly enticing. But even with the herbs, hay and smoke from the fire filtering the air, I could still smell the sulphur and shit reek from the swampies. Good. They hadn’t brought me too far into Between, then.

The two males sat either side of the fire, just inside the low gaping slash of the cave’s entrance. Beyond them, it was night outside. How long had I been here? Was this the same day, or longer?

Carlson turned his head slightly, his gaze meeting mine without any visible reaction. His eyes were glowing eerily, reflecting like a cat’s.

I tried to shout, but my voice was still gone.

‘I’m not mating with her.’ Marc’s voice was firm as he stood, his head nearly brushing the cave’s roof as he raked his hands through his dark hair. ‘Better she dies than be forced into something she hasn’t agreed to.’

‘If that’s how yous feeling, lad,’ Carlson said, his eyes not leaving mine. ‘Then fair enough. But if yous so concerned ’bout her feelings, ain’t it better if yous give her the choice? Might be she’d choose to live as yous mate, ’stead of dying.’

Marc stilled with his hands on his head. After a long moment, a frustrated growl came from his throat. ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s not my decision to make. I can’t change what we’ve done to her, can’t take it back. But we can explain what’s what, then let her decide for herself.’

Fuck, this guy Carlson was good. Though if he thought I was going to jump on the get-mated-instead-of-dying bandwagon, like his pal Marc, he could think again.

‘Might as well fetch a brace of those rabbits we saw.’ Marc’s tone said he was resigned. ‘I’ll just check she’s okay first.’

‘Nah, yous git out there and hunt boy,’ Carlson said, ‘And check on Steve while yous out there. Make sure he ain’t gitting any trouble from that goat-man. Ain’t wanting them swampies to git him.’

Finn. He was somewhere nearby. They had him. Captive, but alive.Relief made me limp.

‘Okay,’ Marc said, pulling off his T-shirt, then he dropped his jeans, showing the cave he went commando. He took a deep breath, expanding his chest, and seemed to fall to the floor. As he did so his human shape morphed into that of a grey and black striped big cat. The shift was fast and seamless and, even more worrying, I couldn’t feel any magic. If I couldn’t feel it, then there was less chance I’d be able to use it to fight them. I pinged him. Only animal came back. Seconds before he’d pinged human. Well, that answered that question. Ailuranthropes, and possibly all therianthropes, hit my inner radar as human or animal depending on what shape they were in.

Big Cat Marc padded out the cave and disappeared into the night.

Carlson stood, picked up a backpack from just inside the entrance, then grabbed what looked like a brush torch. He shoved it into the fire, making it flare up, then came towards me. He was wearing jeans, his chest bare other than a wide bandage wrapped round his lower ribs. Grim satisfaction trickled through me. He was injured. Maybe Finn had got a horn in before he’d been captured.

Carlson dropped the backpack down, jammed the fiery torch into a hole and crouched next to me. I glared at him as he lifted my head, pulled something from behind me and fastened it around my throat. Not constricting, but tight enough that I could feel it was stiff, like new leather. A loud click at my nape, the chink of something metallic, and he lowered my head back into the furs. It took me a stunned moment to realise he’d put a collar and chain on me.

A sudden image of Malik’s memory of the snow-covered plateau with Dilek a.k.a. Fur Jacket Girl werewolf, naked on her hands and knees inside an ash-marked circle, tethered by a leather collar and chain, slammed into me. Whatever had been done to her, this male was planning on doing to me.

Terrified panic rose up in me. I shoved it back. Forced my hand to slowly clench around Ascalon’s ring. Marc the innocent was gone. Carlson the guilty was easily within sword distance and, if the damn anaesthetic would wear off so I could move more than just my fingers and head, I was going to kill him.

Carlson the guilty moved to sit cross-legged out of my reach. He looked impassively at where I lay, the fire throwing half his face into shadow. ‘Yous ain’t no virgin, girl.’

Chapter Fifty

I stared at him. It was a statement, not a question, surprising me, even though I knew he’d been lying earlier. Then I recalled his easy manipulation of Marc. However stupid he’d initially sounded by supposedly not checking his facts, he wasn’t. ‘No, I’m not,’ I said calmly, then realised my mouth had unfrozen and I could talk again.

‘S’pected as much.’ He patted his chest. ‘Yous don’t feel quite right.’

‘Then why didn’t you check?’ I asked, working on the age-old maxim that if the baddie wants to talk, let him; there’s always a chance he’ll tell you something you can use against him. Of course, I didn’t really have any other option than to let Carlson talk. But I was curious. Somehow, for all his manipulations, I couldn’t see this guy letting Marc try to mate with a non-virgin if it meant the younger male would die. Not that I’d have wanted Carlson to check. If I had my way he wasn’t leaving this cave, so there was no chance of him kidnapping any other poor girls, virgo intactaor not, ever again. ‘All it would’ve taken was a simple medical examination,’ I added.

‘Ain’t only the physical that counts,’ he said. ‘Yous gotta be able to take the shift. Gnome says yous probably magical ’nuff it’ll work. That’s why I were watching yous in the park.’

‘I heard,’ I said flatly.

He nodded, telling me he’d known I’d been listening. ‘Gnome said I should take the blonde, but ma nephew likes the girl. Knew he ain’t gonna agree to using her.’

The blonde was Katie. Whether Marc agreed or not didn’t make me like him any better. He was out of Katie’s life, for good.

‘Lad wanted this redhead. Only, like I says, she definitely ain’t a virgin. I seen her with the gnome one time.’ His mouth turned down. ‘If yous know what I mean.’

Ugh.

‘She got habits,’ he added.

Poor girl.

‘An’ once yous no longer intact, then even if yous shift, the mating kill yous.’

Nice. ‘So even though you thought I might not be a virgin,’ I said, voice dry as dust, ‘and even if I did shift, then this mating would kill me and your boy, Marc, you still decided I was the one. I’ll be honest, leaving aside the whole kidnapping and performing magical rituals on me against my will thing, doesn’t sound like you’re on to a winner with me. So why bother?’

‘We always birthed girl an’ boy kits till this last generation. Now we’s got four boy kits in need of mates. Ma nephew’s the first. If he ain’t getting a mate soon, he ain’t gonna live. If all of thems ain’t getting mates in next five years, then our pride is dead. Adults ain’t living once kits all gone.’

I snorted. ‘C’mon, you can’t really expect me to believe that?’

‘We’s already lost seven male kits,’ he said softly. ‘We’s descended from old, old tigers. Tigers ain’t livin much past they be twenty or so. Ma nephew’s twenty-four. Soon as his animal soul moves on, his human soul goes with it. Only thing keeps us all living is if we’s mated an’ having kits.’

Shifters had two souls? Was that the explanation for their long lives, the one Mary hadn’t got around to reading in the witch archives?