She was so happy he'd finally let her in so she could drink of his energies, create herself from him, rather than Mariposa. He opened himself to her so that she could do as she wished. If it had been the witch behind it, it would have been fatal, but he was confident that this was his Sarai. She sipped only a little from him as he learned from her.
Sarai was dead, he'd never have her back. He understood it, because it was something this half-living shadow of his mate understood. If he succeeded in killing Mariposa, even this shadow of his mate would be gone forever-if not, she'd be trapped in this half-life that was a living hell. He understood, but part of him couldn't be bothered with future mourning while he absorbed the joy that something of her remained to him.
What?
He could feel Bran's frustration and wondered how much he sensed of what he and Sarai were doing. Did he need Bran to know? Sarai thought so, so he tried to tell him.
"I know now that your guardian isn't her, but she feels like Sarai. I sometimes think about what it would be like to speak to her. Just once more," he said, and was rewarded when Mariposa's nails sank into the sleeve of his white coat.
"She is here; she is Sarai. But she is mine," Mariposa said. "You don't need to talk to her. She doesn't want you."
But Bran had understood; Asil could see in the thoughtful gaze his Alpha turned on him. He could stop there. But Mariposa was laying claim to someone who was his.
"She still loves me," Asil replied, knowing it was just going to antagonize her. "Part of her does. I could see it in her eyes when she came to get me." And what he'd seen had been real, he knew that now. Fiercely, he held the thought to him. "She came to me-you didn't send her."
"She belongs to me." The witch sounded agitated. "Just as you do." She stopped as she spun the thought around and found something that pleased her. She turned to him and gave him a seductive smile. "You love me, too." He felt her reach out to him through the bond he shared with Sarai's wolf and felt her quiet panic that the witch would see what they were doing. She was so afraid-and he couldn't bear it.
So he set out to distract Mariposa. It wasn't as if it was difficult.
He bent down and took her mouth in a carnal assault. After a bare moment's surprise, she welcomed it. He had known, all these years, what the real basis for her obsession with Sarai was. He'd tried to tell Sarai when he'd first understood, but she wanted to see only the good in people. She thought he was too suspicious-and vain, which was true enough. She thought that obscured his judgment, which was not true.
She hadn't believed him when he told her that Mariposa had fixated on him, until that night, the second time Mariposa had poisoned Sarai. The girl had tried to disguise herself as his mate. It had been useless, of course. She might have been able to change what she looked like, but she smelled nothing like his mate. If Sarai had been only human, she would have been dead from the poison; instead she'd been sick for three days. Mariposa had meant her to die.
Only then had Sarai agreed there was something wrong with the girl that she couldn't fix. Only then had she agreed to send Mariposa away.
He kissed Mariposa until she was breathless and panting, until the scent of her arousal rose in heated waves. Then he released her, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and told her the absolute truth. "I don't love you. I never loved you."
She heard it in his voice, felt it in his unaroused body. For a moment her face was blank with shock, and he might almost have felt sorry for her. Almost. If he didn't think about Sarai, about the poor coyote under the cabin floor and the raccoon she'd carved to pieces and kept alive-not because she needed it alive for her spell but because it pleased her to do so.
The next moment her shock was over. She gave him a cynical smile, a whore's smile. "Maybe not, but you wanted me. I saw it in your eyes. I see it now. I am young and beautiful, and she was old and big like a cow. You wanted me, and she knew it. She was jealous and sent me away."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're mixing up your stories. I thought it was I who was jealous of the great love Sarai bore you. I thought I was the one who sent you away because Sarai loved you. Isn't that what you said?"
"¡Cabron!" She stomped her foot. "Hijo de puta."
Hard to believe that she was two centuries old and not the young girl she looked and acted. Like Peter Pan, she'd never grown up.
"She loved me. She chose me in the end. That's why she is with me and not with you. But"-she held up a finger- "you wanted me. That's why she made me go away. You wanted me, and it made her angry. I was young and helpless, a child in your care, and you wanted me."
"Why would I want you?" he asked her coldly. "I had Sarai, who was more woman than you could ever be. I wanted Sarai; for Sarai I lived and died. You were never more to me than a stray pet Sarai wanted to take care of."
He let his truth ring in her ears, and when her hands came up, full of magic, he made no move to defend himself. He was confident that she wouldn't kill him-not before she convinced him that she was right. Or until he drove her into a real rage.
Honor demanded that he fight to live as long as he could, to try to stop this threat he'd brought to the Marrok. Anything short of death, Asil could handle. And while she was concentrating on him, she wasn't paying any attention to what he and Sarai were doing-and, more importantly, she wasn't paying any attention to Bran.
But Sarai's wolf wasn't so sanguine. In the instant before the witch's power hit him, she flashed him pictures of things that she'd seen the witch do to people. Things that might have made him question his earlier assessment that as long as he didn't die, he'd be fine.
If he'd needed proof that he was only dealing with a shadow of his mate, he'd have known it then. Sarai would have known that scaring him in advance wasn't helpful. But it did remind him that if he didn't block her out, she'd feel his pain, too. And even if she was only a shadow, he didn't want her hurt. He pulled up his shields to block Sarai out just before the witch hit him with more fury than finesse.
He screamed because he wasn't braced, because it hurt worse than he'd thought possible, and because his wolf decided that it wasn't going to let him just lie down and take it.
Changing at that moment was as imperative as it was stupid. Pain quadrupled and sizzled down nerve endings he wished he didn't have. Time changed for him, seconds became hours until he existed only in a limbo of agony. Then it stopped. His whole body went numb as he completed the change. It was only a moment, a space of freedom that Sarai bought him as she took his pain for him. Leaving him in wolf form, standing two feet from Mariposa and in full control of his body.