Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [132]
“That’s not fair,” he said.
“I felt what you were doing to her, Richard. You took away her free will, and filled her up with this false happiness,” Jason said.
“It’s not false.”
“It’s not her version of happiness, Richard, it’s yours.”
“You have no business interfering between your Ulfric and his lupa.”
“Maybe not, but I couldn’t stand there and feel what you were doing to her. Anita asked me to help her, and I had to do it.”
I touched his arms where they were still wrapped around me. “What do you mean, had to, Jason?”
“You’re my friend, and the main squeeze of my best friend. I couldn’t let him rape you like that.”
“That is not what I was doing,” Richard said.
“By definition of the law, using magic or psychic ability that takes away someone’s choice is rape.” Jason said it, but I’d thought it.
I felt Jason go quiet around me, and I think I did the same thing in his arms. “Did you just say out loud what I was thinking?” I asked.
“Did I?”
“I think you did,” Richard said. He leaned in toward us, sniffing the air. I still found it a little unsettling when my lycanthrope friends did very animal things in human form.
Jason drew us back, as if his back could push through the wall and gain us distance. “What are you trying to smell?” he asked.
Richard was on all fours now, sort of looming over us, with his hair falling in thick waves around his face, so I really couldn’t see his expression. I think Jason could. “Jean-Claude could have broken her free of me. Maybe even Micah or Nathaniel, because they have their metaphysical tie to her. Damian could have shared his coldness, his control, and drowned me out. He is her vampire servant.” Richard leaned past me, nearly pressing his chest against my face, so he could sniff Jason’s face over my shoulder. “But you’re just food. You’re Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang, but you’re nothing special to Anita.”
It was a little hard to speak firmly while being wrapped arm and leg by one man, and nearly kissing the chest of another, but I did my best. “He’s my friend.”
I heard Richard take in a huge, noisy breath. He jerked back, as if something had hurt. “He’s more than that now,” he whispered.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Can’t you feel it, Anita? He’s your wolf to call.”
Jason tensed against me, and I said, “What?”
“Before, he smelled of pack; now he also smells of you. The same way that Nathaniel does, or Micah.”
“I live with them; of course, we start to have a family smell.”
Richard shook his head. “No, Anita, never try to argue sense of smell with a werewolf. It’s as if a little piece of you rides around in their skin. Micah always smelled that way, but Nathaniel…his scent changed. Damian’s scent changed. Now, Jason smells like he has your touch like a perfume against his skin.”
“I’m holding her, Richard, that’s what you’re smelling,” Jason said.
Richard shook his head again. “No, Jason, I know the difference between proximity smells and changed smells.”
“I couldn’t have made him my wolf to call, Richard. I’d remember doing it.”
“You don’t remember most of the last two days, Anita.”
I thought about it, tried to argue it wasn’t so, but a hard, cold lump started forming in my stomach. The moment my stomach started reacting, I knew the truth. I tried to push past the fear and use my own abilities to test the theory, but I was too panicked. Had I bound Jason to me like that and didn’t even remember doing it? And if I’d done that without remembering, what else had I done? What else had all of us done? Shit, shit, shit.
“I remember it was dark,” Jason said, “and you called me. I remember trotting through these tall trees that I’d never seen. I thought it was a dream.”
“That’s what I see inside my head now, since Marmee Noir fucked me over. Tall trees and shadows and darkness.”
“You called me, not this me, but my wolf. You called me.