Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(22)

I’d had some time to think while I ran. My current version of why Bonarata had brought me here went like this: he’d wanted to bring me here, thinking that I was Marsilia’s, because the thought that Adam and the pack could be cooperating without her being in charge just never occurred to him. I was a piece on a chessboard he’d decided Marsilia was the queen of. He’d taken me, who Wulfe had told him was the most powerful of Marsilia’s associates, to show her how powerless she was. I don’t know what he’d have done if I were the werewolf he’d originally thought me. But his little pet werewolf was enough to make me wary. She’d smelled off, smelled sick—the kind of sick that made my coyote decide something wasn’t good to eat.

I had other versions of why Bonarata had stolen me—but none of them made sense, including that one. Bonarata was smarter than that; he had to be to have lived as long as he had.

I really was certain that Marsilia was involved somehow. There had been something about the way he’d looked at me when he told me he hadn’t wanted to kill Marsilia, so he hadn’t broken the bond I shared (supposedly) with her.

I shivered, though the bus wasn’t particularly cold and my summer fur coat could have protected me in the heaviest blizzard likely to fall in Lombardy.

He’d thought that I was bound to Marsilia.

I hated that the word for what the vampires did to their victims was the same word that described what was between Adam and me, between the pack and me.

My understanding, from the things I’d learned since Adam and I were bound as mates, was that all magical bonds are formed from the same sort of magic. Humans have those kinds of bonds, too—but theirs are softer and more fragile. Breakable.

Like most things, pack bonds and mate bonds could be twisted, but by their nature, they encouraged empathy because they are emotional links. They were bonds between equals—even the bond between the pack and its Alpha. The Alpha had a job to do, but it didn’t make him more important than the most submissive of the wolves in the pack. Adam was of the opinion that he was less important. We agreed to disagree.

The bond between a vampire and his victim (I say his because the vampire who owned me—and that was exactly the right word—was a him) put the vampire in the driver’s seat. The vampire could, if he so chose, make his pet do anything, feel anything. Whenever the vampire decided to, he could take away his victim’s free will—and the victim might not even know.

The Kiss doesn’t always work. Stefan told me that it was almost impossible to take a werewolf the way they could take humans because of the pack bonds. That Bonarata had succeeded in doing so had added to his legend. There were people who were difficult to break. But given time, a strong vampire could control most any human he wanted to.

Stefan told me he didn’t know if that was true between us—but that he would not test it. I trusted Stefan.

Even so, Stefan owned me. He had saved my life by claiming me, and I’d agreed to it. But I’d thought it was broken, gone. Thought my ties to Adam and the pack had erased it, because Stefan had wanted me to believe it.

Apparently, because I’d taken the bond willingly, it wasn’t something Stefan could break even if he wanted to. Knowing Stefan as I did, I was willing to believe that.

The Lord of Night had tried to break it and failed. Or so he said.

My heartbeat picked up, and my mouth dried as I opened it and panted in fear. Of course he would lie. He lied a lot. I couldn’t remember now if I’d been watching for lies while he spoke of the bond I shared with a vampire. I’d been paying attention to the jealousy he’d displayed. Had he lied? Was he, even now, in my head, waiting to give me orders?

To take me from Marsilia would have been a better lesson than to have his wolf kill me trying to escape. I had only his word that he hadn’t done it.

Hadn’t I done what he wanted when I escaped? I’d known he wanted me to try it. What if he hadn’t wanted me to die at the fangs of his pet werewolf as I’d first thought? What—what if this was his plan? That I’d escape, think I was free, get back to the pack—and destroy them because I belonged to Bonarata. That story, unfortunately, made better sense than some sort of unrequited jealousy as a motivation.

Had Bonarata broken the tie between Stefan and me? Had he been able to do something that Stefan couldn’t? Was I a slave of the Lord of Night?

Since learning it still existed, I had never tested the bond between Stefan and me. Just the thought of that tie made me wake up in a cold-blooded sweat, understanding exactly how a trapped wolf could chew off a paw to escape.

The bus continued to rumble at a consistent speed, unimpressed by my panic. I needed to find the bond between Stefan and me and make sure Bonarata hadn’t done something to it—something that would turn me into his creature.

I didn’t even really know how to look. But even as I thought that—I knew I had a stepping-off place. After Adam brought me into the pack bonds, I’d had a bad incident because a couple of the members of the pack were able to manipulate me through them. After that, Adam taught me how to deal with pack magic and the bonds. Part of that process was learning to “see” the bonds in my head.

I closed my eyes and, after a fairly tough and lengthy struggle, calmed down enough to find the light meditative state Adam had taught me to help me negotiate the pack bonds—as well as the mate bond between him and me.