But still . . . I had thought I was safe.

The Lord of Night had come to my home ground and taken me there, then hauled me to Italy as if the pack, as if all of my allies, were no obstacle at all. He’d extracted me as cleanly as if I’d hopped on his airplane—because no way had he brought me here on a commercial plane—of my own volition.

I’d had some time to think while I ran. My current version of why Bonarata had brought me here went like this: he’d wanted to bring me here, thinking that I was Marsilia’s, because the thought that Adam and the pack could be cooperating without her being in charge just never occurred to him. I was a piece on a chessboard he’d decided Marsilia was the queen of. He’d taken me, who Wulfe had told him was the most powerful of Marsilia’s associates, to show her how powerless she was. I don’t know what he’d have done if I were the werewolf he’d originally thought me. But his little pet werewolf was enough to make me wary. She’d smelled off, smelled sick—the kind of sick that made my coyote decide something wasn’t good to eat.

I had other versions of why Bonarata had stolen me—but none of them made sense, including that one. Bonarata was smarter than that; he had to be to have lived as long as he had.

I really was certain that Marsilia was involved somehow. There had been something about the way he’d looked at me when he told me he hadn’t wanted to kill Marsilia, so he hadn’t broken the bond I shared (supposedly) with her.

I shivered, though the bus wasn’t particularly cold and my summer fur coat could have protected me in the heaviest blizzard likely to fall in Lombardy.

He’d thought that I was bound to Marsilia.

I hated that the word for what the vampires did to their victims was the same word that described what was between Adam and me, between the pack and me.

My understanding, from the things I’d learned since Adam and I were bound as mates, was that all magical bonds are formed from the same sort of magic. Humans have those kinds of bonds, too—but theirs are softer and more fragile. Breakable.

Like most things, pack bonds and mate bonds could be twisted, but by their nature, they encouraged empathy because they are emotional links. They were bonds between equals—even the bond between the pack and its Alpha. The Alpha had a job to do, but it didn’t make him more important than the most submissive of the wolves in the pack. Adam was of the opinion that he was less important. We agreed to disagree.

The bond between a vampire and his victim (I say his because the vampire who owned me—and that was exactly the right word—was a him) put the vampire in the driver’s seat. The vampire could, if he so chose, make his pet do anything, feel anything. Whenever the vampire decided to, he could take away his victim’s free will—and the victim might not even know.