Caged No More: The True Heir's Wrath novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Where the Strength Went

"Through the bond," I repeated.

My own voice sounded far away.

The healer sat down across from me with her hands on her knees.

"When the heir bonds, the Alpha's seat goes to her mate," she said. "It's old law. The mate takes the pack, and the pack takes his word. But the strength doesn't change hands. The heir keeps her blood."

"Unless somebody changes it."

"Unless somebody opened it," she said. "The tea did that, and the bond carried whatever it lifted."

"Across to Dane."

"To whoever is on the other end of the bond. A wolf on the other end of a draw drinks it without knowing. He gets faster, stronger and harder to kill. He takes on a power that isn't his."

"But he'd have to need it," Jonah said. "A drain like that makes the one receiving sick. It burns him."

"Unless he's been given a second brew to hold it."

I thought of the coffee.

Every morning in his own cup, at the same table, in Bree's hands.

I sat very still.

"I don't understand," I said.

But I did.

I was cold because I was being emptied.

My wolf had been silent because the blood she lived in was running down a bond into somebody else.

And for ten months, Dane Locke had not lost a single challenge.

"I stood at the edge of the ring for every one of those wins," I said slowly. "I clapped."

"It was your strength," the healer whispered.

"I thought the pack had chosen well."

"The pack chose a man with borrowed blood."

I laughed, and it was a sound I did not want to hear again.

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