Niko’s golden eyes widened.
The wooden door creaked open.
“Alice, no!” Niko disappeared from the window but he wasn’t quick enough to stop the female hellcat from emerging.
Cait dropped her gaze to the woman as she stood on the step of the building, a ripple of shock flowing through her as she saw the reason why Niko had been so protective of her.
Alice placed slender hands on the large swell of her belly, rubbing it through the rich purple long sleeve maternity top.
No wonder Niko had been protecting her so fiercely. In her condition, she would feel an even stronger need to fight to defend her territory and might end up hurting her unborn cub.
Niko appeared behind her, dwarfing his female, and was in front of her a second later, shielding her with his big body.
Alice peered around his arm at Cait, her pale blue eyes filled with only warmth and compassion, no trace of malice in them. Her sleek black hair fell over her shoulder as she canted her head and smiled.
“It’s okay, Niko,” Alice said, her soft voice lyrical and light, laced with deep affection.
She stroked Niko’s left arm, running one hand up it and over his shoulder, shifting the tight white material of his t-shirt. Niko’s golden eyes slid towards his female but he showed no sign of allowing her past him.
Cait backed off a few steps, afraid the compulsion to fight the hellcat for her territory would get the better of her. She didn’t want to hurt this female. Alice might be Owen’s only hope.
“Niko,” Alice murmured, her tone holding a firmer note now. “I must speak with the female and it’s a little difficult to do that from back here.”
“She’ll fight you.” Niko practically growled those words, his golden eyes settling back on Cait and brightening as they narrowed.
Cait held her hands up. “I won’t. I mean… I don’t want to. Have your lion shifters restrain me.”
Niko nodded and called over his shoulder. The two males from before appeared and squeezed past him and Alice. They loped over to Cait and seized one arm each, holding her in a vice-like grip that she felt sure she wouldn’t be able to break.
The big panther shifter moved to one side to allow Alice past him and then nodded when Alice looked at him. He looped his arms under hers and hooked them over her shoulders, restraining her.
Cait fought the urge to fight as she looked across the narrow strip of cobbles at Alice, breathing as hard as the other female hellcat, her eyes no doubt shining as bright a shade of blue.
“Please… I bit Owen… now I don’t know what to do. I was hoping you might.” Cait held Alice’s vivid blue gaze and relief coursed through her when the other hellcat nodded.
“I saw a male go through a transition once.” Those words leaving Alice’s lips only made the relief she felt grow stronger, but then the female shattered it by adding, “It was horrendous.”
Cait swallowed hard. “What happened?”
“It was close, the male almost died, but in the end what saved him was blood.”
“Like a transfusion?” Cait searched her eyes, desperate for more information that she could use.
Alice frowned. “He needs to drink yours… it has to come from the hellcat who bit him. The sooner the better. But that isn’t all.”
A shiver ran down Cait’s spine and spread along her limbs when Alice’s expression turned cold and serious, laced with unease.
Cait should have known it wouldn’t be as simple as just giving Owen blood. She had a horrible feeling that Alice was about to say the last thing she wanted to hear.
“When he’s strong enough… you have to force a shift out of him.” Alice looked away from her. “It completed the transition I saw… but it almost killed him.”
Another cold shiver blasted through Cait like an arctic wind and she struggled to breathe. The thought of forcing her blood down Owen’s throat had been sickening enough, but the knowledge that she would have to convince him to shift made her heart feel as if it was splitting in two.
She wasn’t sure she had the stomach for it or would be able to convince herself that it was a necessary evil.
Hellcats were different to other cat shifters.
Unlike the other breeds, they could take pain while in their animal form without being forced to shift back into their normal forms.
To force a shift out of a hellcat required pain.
Their defence mechanism was to shift into their stronger form on being badly injured—their cat form.
She had already hurt Owen enough. She didn’t want to have to do such a horrific thing to him.
“There’s no other way?” she said, and Alice looked across at her, a wealth of sympathy in her blue eyes, and shook her head.
Cait nodded and sucked down a deep breath, struggling to come to terms with what she had to do in order to save Owen’s life. He was definitely going to hate her. He would never forgive her when he discovered what she had done to him and what she had put him through.
“Thank you.” She managed to smile at Alice and the female nodded. “I wish you well with your pregnancy. The cub is strong. A male.”
“A male?” Niko stuttered, his eyes wide and leaping down to Alice as he released her.
Alice shifted to face him and smiled as she touched her swollen belly. “I only just realised it too. It seems the old wives tales about female hellcats having powerful abilities when they group together are true.”
Niko placed his hand over Alice’s on her stomach and smiled, his golden eyes bright with affection that made Cait look away. She couldn’t bear how the male looked at Alice with so much love in his eyes, not when Owen would never look at her that way again.
She had to get back to him.
She knew how to save his life now.
Cait looked at the two lion shifters and the males released her. She thanked Alice with another smile and then bolted for the alley that would lead her into the warren of streets.
Her heart lifted as she ran, tracking her scent back through the alleys.
She would save Owen.
She would save her mate.
That same heart missed a beat as she caught a familiar scent.
Dread twisted her stomach.
A sharp pain in the back of her left shoulder made her flinch and she staggered a few steps, turning her head to see what was wrong.
A dart with black and red feathers stuck out of her shoulder.
The world wobbled and swirled around her. Her knees turned to jelly, her right side slammed into a building, and she slid down it. Darkness bled across her vision but in the centre of it was a shadowy hazy figure.
One she recognised before slipping into a black abyss.
CHAPTER 11
Fire burned in his bones, seared his mind, and licked across his skin. Owen shuddered and moaned as he kicked at the restrictive material covering him, trying to get it away so he could breathe again. He needed to breathe.
“Owen?” A soft female voice swirled around him.
Not the one he wanted to hear.
Not Cait’s sweet voice.
He groaned and fought the covers again. They were making him too hot. He needed air. Clean, cold air. He needed it to quench the fire blazing inside of him.
Something wet and cold spread across his forehead but it didn’t cool him down. It didn’t subdue the fire. That only grew hotter.
“Rest¸ Owen.” Julianna’s voice came again.
Rest? What had happened to him?
He remembered being with Cait, telling her things he shouldn’t have, not only his secrets but his feelings too, baring all of himself to her. He remembered kissing her and then making love with her.
He remembered an incredible moment when he had felt connected to her, more than physically. The link had been emotional too and it had run deeper than blood in his body.
He remembered something about blood.
“What happened?” he croaked and tried to open his eyes. His lashes stuck toge
ther, caked with gunk. What had been happening to him? He weakly lifted an arm that felt as if it was made of rubber. Julianna caught hold of it and settled it back on his chest.
She wiped a soft damp cloth across his eyes.
When she had finished, he opened them and looked up at her where she hovered above him, her dark eyebrows furrowed and concern shining in her rich brown eyes.
“You were bitten.” Julianna sat back and reached off to her left, towards the small wooden side table beside his double bed.
Owen’s eyes widened as he stared blankly at the ceiling, everything coming back to him now. He found the strength to shift his hand up to the left side of his throat and felt the marks there. It had felt incredible at the time and he hadn’t given it a second thought, had been lost in the bliss of her bite and the mind-blowing release it had triggered in him.
Cait had bitten him.
That single bite had infected him.
He was transitioning.
Julianna leaned back again, an ice-cold glass of water in her hand.
He stared at it, aching to take it from her and drink it down in one huge gulp. She caught hold of his arm and helped him to sit up on the bed, and brought the glass up to his lips. He drank it slowly, forcing himself to take it little by little rather than inhaling it. The cold slide of it down his throat was bliss that he didn’t want to end. It spread through him, icy tendrils that quenched the fire.
He realised his cousin had given him more than water as the cooling sensation remained, helping to lower his temperature. She had put a spell in the water, one to help him, and he was grateful for it.
He needed one to restore his strength too. He didn’t like feeling weak, his bones like rubber and muscles like water beneath his skin. He felt too close to death and it only increased his fear as he sat on the bed, listening hard for a sign of Cait in the other room.
He stared into Julianna’s dark eyes. “Where’s Cait?”
She looked away from him and his heart kicked in his chest, the fear of his weakness becoming a fear that something had happened to Cait. He loved Julianna, but he would never forgive her if she had driven Cait away from him in an attempt to protect him.
“What did you do to her?” Owen snapped.
Julianna’s dark gaze darted to meet his. “Nothing. I came in soon after you passed out and she told me what had happened. I said I would look after you while she…”
“While she did what?” His heart began to pound and he looked beyond his cousin to the door that led into the living room.
She couldn’t have.
“She went out to find a way of helping you,” Julianna whispered.
She had.
He barked out a foul curse, lunged at his cousin and grabbed the front of her plain black dress, hauling her towards him. “She what?”
He didn’t want to believe that Cait had gone out there alone, not when there were so many mercenaries on the prowl. Word of her would have spread through the town by now. One of those mercenaries might have contacted Marius.
“She’s been gone a while.”
Owen really hadn’t wanted to hear those five words leaving his cousin’s lips. Cold filled his veins and he could only stare at her, his heart labouring as he struggled to cope with the sudden deluge of fear and adrenaline.
“How long?” he snapped.
Julianna cast her gaze down at her knees and the cold inside Owen turned to ice.
“How long?” he barked, harder this time, narrowing his green eyes on her.
Julianna closed hers. “Over five hours.”
His cousin suddenly lifted her head and clutched his arm, her eyes leaping between his and her eyebrows furrowing.
“I would have gone looking for her, but I couldn’t leave you,” she rushed out and her hand shook against his arm. “You were too sick… you are too sick.”
“I’ll be fine.” Owen mustered his strength and shuffled to the edge of the bed beyond Julianna, where he had left his black jeans. “I have to find her. Something is wrong.”
He bent forwards and his head spun as he grabbed his jeans from the floor. He struggled with them, making several attempts before he managed to get his feet into them. Sweat trickled down his bare back and down his cheeks from his brow. He breathed hard and forced himself to keep going as the room twisted around him.
“Owen,” Julianna said and caught his shoulders as he began to fall backwards. She held him, her front against his back. “You’re not strong enough.”
He growled at her and shoved her away.
He wrestled with his jeans and got them up to his thighs, and crashed back onto the bed as he tugged them under the covers and over his hips. He managed two of the buttons, enough to keep them up, and rolled ungracefully onto his front. He grunted as he shoved his hands against the bed and his legs slid off the side of it. His bare feet landed on the wooden floor and he pushed onto them, rising unsteadily.
He stayed upright all of a second before his knees gave out, sending him crashing onto the floor. He spat out another curse.
He was stronger than this.
He knew about hellcats and he knew he stood a slim chance of surviving the transition, and an even slimmer chance if he overexerted himself, but he didn’t care about himself.
He cared only about Cait.
He could find her.
She had bitten him.
There were countless spells he could use to track his own blood in her.
He would find her.
But first he had to do something about his weakness.
He crawled towards the door to the living room.
Julianna huffed and muttered something, and then she was beside him, grabbing his arms and helping him onto his feet. She slung his left arm around her shoulders and slowly walked with him into the cramped living room. He thanked her with a smile when she set him down on the wooden seat in front of his desk and then went to work.
He grabbed several jars of herbs from the shelves in front of him, instructing Julianna to take some others from the cupboard beside his desk as he worked to measure the right quantities.
When he mentioned nightshade, she stopped dead.
“It’s too dangerous.”
He grimaced and silently cursed her for knowing the spell, and then cursed himself when she looked at him and he realised that she had made an educated guess based on the ingredients rather than possessing the knowledge he had thought she had of the spell. His grimace had confirmed her suspicions.
She turned on him. “The spell might backfire. There’s a reason it’s a black art, one rarely made by modern witches. It’s volatile and it’s taboo, Owen, and you know it. I don’t want to know how you know the spell… but I won’t be a part of this. It might kill you.”
He smiled solemnly. “I’m probably already done for… but what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, right?”
She looked as if she wanted to punch him, but instead she reached out and touched his cheek as she tried to smile. “Please, Owen.”
He wished he could do as she was asking, but he couldn’t. “I’ll only take a small dose. Just enough to numb the pain.”
He knew that the spell was dangerous, but it wasn’t the first time he had used it. It was how he had gained a reputation as a silent killer, a sort of wraith.
A phantom born of shadows.
He would never tell Julianna that he had used this spell countless times. She would condemn him for it, the witch community would banish him for it, and he would probably deserve it. He was flirting with death each time he used it, but it had saved his life more times than he could count, turning jobs that would have killed him into ones he could survive and emerge from as the victor.
He was counting on it to save his life this time too, and not only because it would make it easier for him to slip into wherever Cait was being held and free her and fight the bastard who had taken her.
He took hold of Julianna’s hand. “If I use this spell, I will be incor
poreal. It might slow the transition because I won’t have a physical form for it to affect. It’s my one shot at helping Cait, and maybe saving myself in the process.”
Julianna looked torn until he grunted as a fresh wave of fire seared his insides and he doubled over, clutching his stomach and shaking violently. Sweat rolled down his nose and dripped from the end, each tiny bead hitting his thigh and soaking into his black jeans as he rocked, fighting the pain and the nausea that came with it.
“Owen.” Julianna poured another glass of water, crouched in front of him and helped him with it, slowly lifting it to his lips.
He managed to drink half of it before choking on it.
She patted him on his back, dislodging the water that had gone down the wrong tube, and then slowed to a gentle rubbing as he settled again. The fire abated but the iciness didn’t flow through him this time, and he knew it wasn’t because he had only managed to drink half of the concoction.
His condition was worsening.
“I don’t have much time.” Owen struggled to lift his head and look at his cousin.
Steely resolve filled her eyes and he stared at her, seeing another woman for a split-second. His mother. Julianna had her eyes and his mother had given him that same look a thousand times. It took him back to when he had been learning to wield magic and she had been pushing him not to give up, to keep fighting to master it, even when he had felt on the verge of collapse.
Fight filled him now as it had then, flooding his veins with the strength he needed, the resolve to keep battling and never give in.
He would save Cait.
Julianna rushed into action, gathering everything he had requested, including the jar of nightshade. She set it all out on the wooden table in front of him and stood beside him.
“Why do you need to help her? What’s happened to her?”
Owen picked up a black upside-down-teardrop-shaped glass vial from the shelf at the back of his desk. It was beautiful yet grim, fitting for the potion he was about to make.
“Cait thought a male hellcat was after her to make a mate out of her.” He stared at the vial, seeing his pale reflection in the curved glass. “I suspect that Marius has no intention of keeping her as a mate.”
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