Desire Unchained

“Ah … did you guys miss the bulletin? Roag is gone. For real this time.” Their oldest brother had plotted a gruesome revenge against the three of them, had nearly succeeded. If Wraith never saw the dark depths of a dungeon again, it would be too soon.

Eidolon ran his hand through his short, dark hair. “Yeah, well, he hired the assassin to handle his revenge on us in the event of his death. You must have injured him, because he was in bad shape. Tayla tracked and caught him while Shade was bringing you back here. He confessed everything before Luc ate him.”

“Ate him?”

E nodded. “The assassin was a leopard-shifter. Nothing scares them more than werewolves, so we chained him up in Luc’s basement to get him to talk. We thought we’d secured him far enough away from Luc.” He shrugged. “Apparently not.”

“I love werewolves,” Wraith said, shooting Shade a sly grin. “Guess you’d better not piss off Runa. She might eat you.” Shade had bonded to a werewolf last year, and had been disgustingly happy since. “Why are you here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be helping her with the monsters?”

“You mean the ones you haven’t bothered to come see yet?”

“Shade.” Eidolon’s voice held a soft warning, which was odd. Usually Shade was the voice of reason when it came to handling Wraith.

But ever since Runa had delivered their triplets, Shade had been seriously overprotective and easily offended. He just didn’t get that not everyone went goo-goo over his offspring as much as he did.

Wraith shoved the sheet off his body and saw that he was naked. Not that he cared, but his coat had better not have been ruined when they stripped him. Knowing Shade’s love of trauma shears, Wraith figured odds were good that he’d have to buy another one.

“So why all the doom and gloom? The assassin failed.”

Shade and E exchanged glances, which set Wraith on high alert. This wasn’t good.

“He didn’t fail,” Shade said softly. “The guy has a partner. He’s still out there.”

“So I hunt his ass down and kill him. I don’t see the problem.”

Shade’s pause made Wraith’s gut do a slow slide to his feet. “The problem is that the first assassin shot you with a slow-acting poison dart.”

Wraith snorted. “Is that all? Just shoot me up with the antidote.”

“Remember Roag’s foray into the storeroom?” E asked, and yeah, Wraith remembered. Last year during Roag’s bid for revenge, he’d helped himself to E’s collection of rare artifacts and crap Wraith gathered for him. “One of the things he took was the mordlair necrotoxin. That’s what the assassin used.” E exhaled slowly. “There’s no antidote.”

No antidote? “Then a spell. Find a spell to cure it.” Panic started to fray the edges of his control, and Shade must have sensed it, because his grip grew firmer.

“Wraith, we’ve consulted every text, every shaman, every witch … there’s nothing that can flush the poison from your system.”

“So, bottom line. What are you saying?”

E handed Wraith a mirror. “Take a look at your neck.” He brushed Wraith’s hair back to reveal his personal symbol at the top of his dermoire. The hourglass, which had always appeared full on the bottom, had emerged following his first maturation cycle at the age of twenty.

Wraith inhaled sharply at what he saw now: the hourglass had been inverted, the sand flowing from top to bottom, marking time.

“You’re dying,” Eidolon said. “You have a month, maybe six weeks, to live.”