Unbound (Knight and others) by Anthology

Author:Anthology [Anthology]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adult, anthology, fantasy, paranormal, romance
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2013-03-04T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

Nell pummeled him blindly, old anger and grief surging from the past, wrapped in Magnus’s name. Cormac couldn’t have known him, had no business saying he had.

She was shouting that as she bashed at his face, but Cormac blocked every blow with rapid efficiency.

Finally Cormac grabbed her wrists and rolled over with her, pinning her against the cold ground with formidable strength. His blue eyes had darkened into near-blackness; Shifter eyes, willing her to be still.

Nell scented the distress of the others on the porch, Reid’s Fae scent heightening as he debated what to do. Cormac held Nell down without quarter, but his hands on her wrists were surprisingly gentle.

“You never knew Magnus,” Nell snapped at him. Her mate had never mentioned anyone called Cormac—not that he’d mentioned many people from his past. Magnus had liked isolation.

“I didn’t say I had,” Cormac said. Damn him, he wasn’t even breathing hard. “He was of my clan, but he was gone from them by the time I found them. He’d abandoned them.”

“I know.” Nell couldn’t stop growling.

Shifters, especially bears, could live apart from their clans, and often did in the wild, but they still had deep ties, and the clan leader could call on them when he needed to. Clan leaders even had a spell that could drag clan members to him in times of desperation—useful in the days before cell phones.

A Shifter who cut all ties, including the blood bonds that made the spell work, was unusual, and the clan declared said Shifter dead to them. Magnus had cut ties, because he disagreed with his clan leader’s very old-fashioned and rather severe form of ruling.

Nell had been young and so soppily in love she’d thought it romantic that he’d decided to strike out on his own. She’d had no trouble traveling with him until they’d found a place where they could be utterly alone—herself and him—to start a new clan.

The problem was, when a Shifter severed himself from his clan, he lost part of himself. Magnus had regretted his action almost at once, but hadn’t known how to undo it. He’d certainly have been punished if he’d gone back, maybe even with death. He hadn’t been wrong that his clan leader had a cruel side.

If Magnus had lived long enough, he might have found a way to reconcile and bring Nell with him, but he’d grown more and more remote and depressed. Nell had seen the signs, but hadn’t really understood them until too late.

“They didn’t know about you,” Cormac said. His hands softened on her wrists, his eyes returning to the deep blue. “Magnus never told anyone he’d taken a mate or had cubs. No one knew until about six months ago. Then I knew I had to find you.”

“What do you mean, you knew you had to find me? If Magnus never told anyone, how did you know?”

“He wrote a letter before he died, all about you, but it was lost. Not until a Shifter I knew in

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