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“Mortals and their titles.” The voice curled around the words, amused. “I change no more than you, shifter.”

“You should know—Jude’s mine now.” The possessiveness inside me roared to life at the idea that this thing stalked him.

Another laugh. “He’ll always be mine first.”

I wanted to reach out and strangle the beast, but it felt like he was all around me. Slithering through the dark. Touching me.

“We are not the only ones who want him, though. Yes?” The changeling’s voice curled into a hiss.

I tried to tamp down my rage, even as the thought surfaced that Jude and I had never cemented our bond before Erlik took him. Before he was used as some sort of puppet.

“You mean Erlik?, I presume. I’ve already severed Jude from him once.”

“To your own detriment…”

I bit back a curse. He wasn’t wrong.

“Yet the abomination still gnaws on the corpse of your lover.” The changeling’s voice dripped with something like pleasure. “Deliciously full of power and memories. Even if he can’t wear it like a suit.”

I shuddered at the mental image. “Like you did to Jonah Thayerson?”

“Delightful boy.” A pause. “Sad, really. Feeding him to the monster was the only way to make my own escape. Could have spent decades cultivating his strands like I did your lover.”

I swallowed hard. “Explain,” I demanded.

“Ah, ah, ah.” The voice chided. “No bargain has been made.”

“You’re not fae.”

“Bargains are currency for more than the fae.”

I’d barely gotten out of the last poorly made deal. Still waiting for it to come back and bite me, mostly in the form of Xavier being royally put out by whatever they’d demanded in exchange for protecting me. “What do you want?”

“What all my kind want. Existence.”

“Isn’t that why you take pieces of mortal souls? I am not going to give you anyone’s soul.”

“A bargain would be a life for a life,” the voice whispered, sounding reasonable. “Like your mate’s very existence was a bargain to fulfill a bargain. A babe to provide leverage and power.”

My chest tightened. Jude’s parents had bargained with this thing? “What?”

“One babe can provide so much chaos, don’t you think? One life can be of little consequence, or change the entire universe.” It tittered again. “A seed to ponder, mate of Jude Alexander Holt. Erlik wants all life to feed his insatiable hunger. I ask only one.”

The lights snapped back on, and the changeling’s presence vanished, leaving behind a slimy sense of wrong that made me shudder, even as the light burned spots into my vision. The door opened and Sergeant Hanna stared at me with a sour expression. One that made me think my troubles were only starting.

Hanna didn’t give me time to process the changeling’s words. She marched me through the corridors of the SED, past the empty bullpen, past the conference rooms with their blinds drawn, to the medical wing.

I hadn’t been observed in a shower since my military days. The full physical was just as off-putting. An injection to try to prod the chip in my arm for changes brought a sharp ache. And my useless arm, poked, bent, examined a hundred ways, left me feeling less like a trained operative and more like a cornered animal, my back up and ready to snarl at anyone getting too close.

I settled for clenching my jaw and enduring.

Hanna waited for me to dress outside the exam room. She handed me a box of food and waved me toward an interrogation room.

I sighed, glancing at the two-way mirror along the far wall. Someone was watching. There was always someone watching.

“Is there a point to all this?” I asked as I sat down and opened the box, glaring at the familiar cafeteria food. My stomach turned. “Am I fading? Or some sort of super soldier the military wants again?”

She waved at my limp arm. “I’ve never seen anything like that. When did it start?”