“Don’t take it out on me.” I smoothed my smarting fingers together. “I can’t help it if Dell’s got your number.” Ears pinned back, he managed to look unamused. “He’s a lot more aware in there than I gave him credit for at first.”

“Graeson sees and hears everything, but it’s far away, like a dream.” Meemaw sipped her last then scratched the lip of her mug with her thumbnail. “The wolf is a simple creature. He hungers, he eats. He tires, he sleeps. He mourns, he heals. He accepts loss as natural. Even if he sings his grief in the nights, he walks in sunlight too.”

That made sense. “That’s why Graeson defaulted to wolf when the bond broke.”

“Yes.” Dell studied him. “What Bessemer did wasn’t right. Cord held on to the end. He was the last link broken. That means all that rebounded emotion—his and ours—slammed into his psyche and KO’d him.”

“Are the others recovering as well as you are?” It shamed me that I hadn’t asked after them sooner.

“Mostly.” She held out a hand and wobbled it. “It’s better than it ought to be, and I think that pisses Bessemer off too.”

“You were out of your mind for more than twenty-four hours,” I protested.

“The depth and length of the bond Graeson sustained with the others would have driven them mad if he had surrendered the burden of connection first. Only by waiting until the last did he manage to preserve their sanity.” Watery eyes met mine as Meemaw exhaled. “It was a foolish thing he did. I’ve never seen a warg come back from where he went, not even soul-mated ones.”

A bitter taste rose up the back of my throat and with it the certainty that Bessemer didn’t hate me as I first suspected. He probably loved me, fae nature and all. I was the perfect weapon, a scalpel for him to excise the troublesome wolves from his pack, starting with those who obeyed Graeson. I was the choice Graeson had made, even if I fought him at first, and the repercussions of that decision were ours to face.

Uppity beta mates a fae? Kick-start the selection and hope it kills her. Upstart beta shanghais six wargs? Snap the bond and hope their minds break too. Usurper stuck in warg form? Initiate vague ceremonial proceedings and hope he commits the faux pas of appearing wearing his fur suit instead, qualifying him for an automatic banishment.

All this back-patting was well and good, but it didn’t change the facts. “But he’s not back, is he? Not really.”

“Not yet.” Dell pushed from her chair and crossed to me. “He just needs some time.”

Thanks to Bessemer’s latest proclamation, time was the one thing he didn’t have. That none of us had.