Something brushed his hip.

He glanced down, but didn't see anything, even when it touched him again. Unobtrusively, so as not to attract the witch's attention, he dropped his hand and it landed on a furry back-that wasn't there to any of his other senses. Even so, he knew what he touched. Foolishly, hope grew in his heart as his fingers closed on a silky coat he'd once been very familiar with.

Can the witch change shape?

Bran again, dragging him back to reality. Unfortunately Mariposa noticed his hesitation.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked.

"A lot of things," Asil told her. She'd been right, he was happy to mislead her with the truth as much as he could. She hadn't yet acquired the ability of all good Alphas to ask specific questions. Bran was a lot harder to deceive.

"My Sarai is dead, and I am not." He unobtrusively sampled the air and relaxed as the wilderness gave him a better answer for her. "And there is something in the trees- a large predator that is not a bear. I have heard that there are wolverines in this place."

She shrugged off the predator and quit paying attention to him. He wondered if she knew she was humming Sarai's favorite song. Did she do it to torment him with the memory of what was lost, or because she derived comfort from it?

Bran waited until Mariposa was occupied with her own thoughts before he talked to Asil again.

The witch has the immortality, the strength, and the speed of a werewolf. Can she change shape, too? Is she really a werewolf? Disguising her scent somehow, so she smells human and witch, but not werewolf? Or is she just borrowing from her creation?

Asil shrugged. He'd never seen her change. He looked down at the hand still buried in invisible fur. Maybe there was a chance to learn more about Mariposa.

For almost two centuries, as soon as he realized that the mating bond gave Mariposa access to him, he'd blocked the connection as best he could. But the worst had happened, so what was the danger in it anymore?

He dropped his shields and only iron control allowed him to keep walking as if nothing had happened as Sarai's love flooded him like an ocean wave. For a while all he could do was put one foot in front of another.

Some few mated pairs could talk to each other mind to mind, but with Sarai it had always been emotion. Over the years, practice had allowed it to develop into something not so much different from telepathy.

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?"