Inked

great deal.”
    “Of course I do!”
    “Then I must admit to being confused. You said you’ve never had a choice.”
    “I haven’t!”
    “Yet it appears that the life you have is the one you would have chosen.”
    I started to fire back a response, and then stopped as his words sank in. “We cannot change what we are,” he said simply. “Only what we do.”
    “And what do you expect me to do?” I demanded. “Because I don’t know how to make this connection you want. I don’t even know how to start.”
    “It isn’t a task to be performed or a skill to be learned. It’s instinctive.”
    “Can’t you track him?” I was desperate for another answer, any other answer. Cyrus’s life could not hang on the tenuous thread of my Were heritage. It just couldn’t.
    “Not through a city, not without having a very good idea of where to start looking. There are too many conflicting scents.”
    “But he’s your brother!”
    Sebastian shook his head. “After the challenge I was forced to sever ties, and for it to look real it had to be real. In Were terms, I am no longer Cyrus’s brother. The ties between us were cut, metaphysically as well as legally, by the ceremony making him vargulf. And an Outcast wolf has no clan until he forms one by taking a mate.”
    Leaving Cyrus exactly one hope. Me.

4
    “NO.” Sedgewick didn’t even bother to look apologetic, not that I’d have believed it coming from him.
    “I’m fine,” I insisted urgently. Hargrove had taken Sebastian off to confer with Jamie, and I didn’t have a lot of time. The release form was on Sedgewick’s desk, but so far, he’d refused to so much as glance at it. “I was planning to go back on active duty soon any—”
    “Oh, were you? How kind of you to enlighten me.” He was in rare form even for him. He’d taken Sebastian’s refusal to allow him to carve up the so-fascinating corpse hard. And since this was Sedgewick, that meant that the rest of us were going to suffer, too.
    “You know what I mean,” I said, trying for composed while a thrumming instinct urged hurry with every beat of my heart. “After you release me.”
    “Which I haven’t done. And won’t, for at least another two weeks.”
    “Two weeks!”
    “You almost died, mage, not even a month ago!” he snapped. “Or did I imagine the puddle of blood in the hallway, and the five hours I spent in surgery patching you up after that son-of-a-bitch shot you?”
    “I’ve been shot before,” I reminded him. Although not at point-blank range. I’d uncovered a traitor in the Corps and almost gotten killed taking him down. I was better now, except for my magic, which had yet to completely stabilize. But it would have to do. “And I’m not going to be doing anything strenuous—”
    “I know you’re not, because you’re going to be here.”
    “Sedgewick!”
    “That’s doctor to you. And you can whine all you like, but I will not sign a release for anyone whose magic is acting as unpredictably as yours!”
    “You said that would even out!”
    “And so it will, once you’re fully healed.” I started to speak, but he cut me off. “Let me put this in very simple terms. Your body had too many assaults on its magic at one time. Now it is stuck on high alert, very similar to a person’s immune system revving up to combat a serious infection. With the exception that your magic is attacking anything it perceives as a threat—whether it actually is or not! That makes it erratic and dangerous and therefore restricted to base !”
    “But—”
    “Although if you think you can convince Dick otherwise after almost decapitating him this morning, be my guest,” he finished, with the smug expression that was factory standard for assholes.
    I left before I was tempted to put Sedgewick in one of his own hospital beds. I slammed out into the corridor, furious but already planning how to get around his prohibition. He might not have a problem saying no to me, but the leader of the Clan Council was another matter. I’d let Sebastian talk to—
    Something hit me with enough force to slam my head back against a row of lockers. I saw stars, and my lip split, spraying blood across my chin. I could taste it—hot and metallic-sweet as I grabbed for a weapon, before I belatedly remembered that I wasn’t currently authorized to carry one.
    I threw myself around the side of the lockers, trying to prepare a rough-and-ready spell that might carve through my assailant’s shields