“Oh, you have that right.” From the corner of her eye, Regan could see the silver of the dagger glittering in the moonlight. Time to bring out the big guns. “As your beloved Caine is about to discover. Salvatore is already on his trail.”

Sadie snarled, her eyes suddenly glowing with an eerie light as the urge to shift pulsed through her body.

“I suppose this is some pathetic trick to try and distract me?”

Regan managed a mocking smile despite her pain. “You really need to work on that sparkling personality of yours, Sadie. It doesn’t seem to inspire the sort of loyalty that successful revolutions are made of.” Her smile widened. “Duncan has already turned traitor.”

Sadie froze. “Liar.”

Regan began to covertly angle directly toward the dagger. She couldn’t waste any more time.

“Surely you can’t be surprised?” she demanded, inwardly judging the remaining distance. “I don’t know what you did to him, but the cur hates you with a passion. He couldn’t wait to set up a meeting with Salvatore to squeal everything he knows about Caine and his secret laboratories.”

“As if Caine would reveal anything to a mere peon like Duncan,” Sadie scorned, although she couldn’t disguise the tightening of her hard features. “They’ll never find him.”

“Oh, they will.” Regan grunted as the whip caught her across the shoulder. She was going to shove that thing up Sadie’s ass once this was over. For the moment, all she could do was grin and bear it. “And, if you’re as smart as you claim to be, then you’ll contact Salvatore and try to make your own deal. If you can lead him directly to my sister, he might be willing to negotiate with you rather than Duncan.”

“There will be no negotiating,” Sadie hissed, trembling with the need to shift. “If Salvatore interferes, he’ll die.”

“I hope you’re not a betting woman, Sadie, because you’re backing the wrong horse.”

“Enough,” the cur screeched. “We’re leaving. Now.”

“I don’t think so.”

Prepared for Sadie’s attempt to wrap the whip around her, Regan lunged to the ground, managing to avoid the strike. Remaining on her hands and knees, she crawled the short distance, at long last managing to grasp the dagger.

A surge of victory tingled through her. About freaking time. Sadie was soooo dead.

Closing her fingers around the hilt, she was already envisioning sliding the silver blade deep into the bitch’s heart when a low growl filled the air.

Damn.

Regan swiftly rolled to the side, barely avoiding the snapping jaws of the shifted cur.

Obviously Sadie had decided that if she couldn’t take Regan alive, then she’d take her dead.

Or maybe she just couldn’t control that cur instinct of hers.

In either case, Regan abruptly knew she was in serious danger.

Rolling onto her back, Regan caught her first sight of the transformed Sadie. She was a beautiful wolf. Of course. Large and lean, her pelt was a rich mahogany, with a touch of silver on her muzzle. In the darkness her eyes glowed with a crimson light, sending a tingle over Regan’s skin as if her own wolf was struggling to respond.

Something that might almost have been envy briefly flared through Regan before she was thrusting aside the inane sensation and concentrating on more important matters.

Like staying alive.

Growling deep in her throat, Sadie prepared to leap, and realizing that it would be fatal to be pinned to the ground, Regan lashed out with the dagger.

She was too far away to do more than cut a shallow gash through the cur’s chest, but the burn of silver was enough to make Sadie leap backward instinctively.

Swift to take advantage, Regan was on her feet, her gaze never wavering from the cur who was moving to the side in an effort to catch Regan from behind.

She stepped in perfect time with the cur, the dagger held at her side. In her current form, Sadie held a distinct advantage, not only in size, but sheer, raw strength.

Thankfully, any common sense tended to disappear when a cur was in full-rage mode.

Sadie continued to circle, snapping her impressive fangs and occasionally feigning an attack. Regan ignored the taunts, knowing the woman was hoping to lure her into overreacting, exposing an opening.

Behind her the fire continued to spread through the tea shop, the smoke and heat spilling through the garden, but wiping away the sweat that gathered on her brow, Regan remained grimly prepared to strike. Sadie wouldn’t last long. She was a cur, not a Were. Her emotions would be her downfall.

There was another feint, but as Regan refused to flinch, Sadie laid back her ears and howled in frustration.

Regan shifted her weight to the balls of her feet, her fingers tightening on the grip of the dagger. Any second now. Any…second…

The howl lowered to a growl as Sadie abruptly charged forward, her jaws parted as she leaped directly at Regan’s throat. Prepared for the attack, Regan bent backwards, avoiding the snapping teeth even as she plunged her dagger deep into the cur’s chest.

The blade slid in with sickening ease, but the force of Sadie’s heavy body sent Regan reeling from the impact. Landing flat on her back, she ignored the teeth that sank into her shoulder and kept the dagger stuck deep into the cur’s flesh. Already the stench of burning flesh was tainting the air. It wouldn’t be long before the silver weakened Sadie.

She was right.

Only a few minutes passed before there was a shimmer around the wolf form, and Sadie was shifting back to human. A few minutes that seemed like an eternity as the bitch managed to gnaw her way to Regan’s shoulder bone.

As the wolf melted to a human shape, Regan forced herself to ignore her pain and rolled over so she was perched on top of her nemesis. Still clutching the dagger that she’d deliberately stuck in an inch above the woman’s heart, she struggled to catch her breath.

“Tell me where to find my sister,” she rasped.

The pale features twisted with hate. “Go screw yourself, freak.”

Regan didn’t hesitate as she yanked the dagger free and plunged it back in. This time directly into the heart.

The woman would rather die than betray Caine, and Regan wasn’t about to waste any more time.

“This is for Jagr,” she muttered as the dagger hit the cur’s heart.

She didn’t wait to watch Sadie die.

The silver would eventually do its thing, even if the cur managed to pull out the dagger, and Regan was far more interested in reaching Jagr.

Dripping blood from a half dozen wounds, Regan reached the back terrace when she heard an eerie laugh behind her.

Against her will, her feet halted and her head turned to see Sadie, crawling the short distance to her shredded clothing, pulling a pistol from the tattered pile of leather.

Stupidly, all Regan could think about was how the hell the woman had managed to hide a gun. The freaking outfit had been stretched so tight that not even a prayer could have come between leather and skin.

Then it no longer mattered where Sadie had stashed the gun.

Smiling with cruel intent, the cur pulled the trigger. Over and over.

“And this is for me.”

Regan was quick, but there was no dodging the bullets that drilled into her torso, shattering ribs and puncturing her lungs.

The force of the projectiles dropped Regan to her knees, her breathing labored, the pain ripping through her with relentless force.

“Shit,” she whispered as her life began to drain from her body.

The bullets had been coated in silver.

Chapter 20

Jagr felt like hell.

It might have been because he’d just survived an explosion, had a tea shop fall on his head, and was forced to dig a tunnel to avoid becoming charcoaled.

It might have been.

But it wasn’t.

For all his lingering wounds, his current suffering was entirely due to the woman lying on the bed in Tane’s lair.

Perched on the edge of the mattress, Jagr gently stroked his fingers through Regan’s golden hair, his gaze compulsively running over her too-slender form that he’d stripped down to the tiny bra and panties so he could keep a constant surveillance on her numerous injuries.

The gashes from the whip had healed before they had returned to the lair (not soon enough to ease Jagr’s fury at the thought of Regan being flayed by the damned cur), but the bullet wounds remained angry red lesions that made his gut twist with pain.

Silver-plated bullets.

If Sadie hadn’t already been dead, Jagr would have torn her apart limb by limb.

Without warning, Regan stirred beneath his fingers, and abruptly realizing his frigid power was blasting through the room, he hurriedly smothered his fury and leaned down to brush his lips over her temple in silent apology.

“Jagr.”

He pulled back just far enough to watch her lids flutter upward, revealing her pain-dazed eyes.

“I’m here, little one.”

“The explosion…” Her voice was a low, tortured rasp. “I thought…”

He tenderly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You thought you were rid of me? No such luck, I fear.”

An echo of remembered horror darkened her eyes. “Gods, don’t even joke. How did you get out of the house?”