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then gritted his teeth against an obvious stab of pain. “If you have no’ after twelve hundred years, then you never will.”
    Lachlain knew he was right. But then Bowe had always been singular among the clan.
    Like most Lykae, Bowe was impatient and hotheaded, yet he’d also been known to spend hour after hour patiently teaching bairns the fundamentals of rugby, his favorite sport before Americans had come up with their own “football.” Though Bowe was always the first into a fight, eager to punish slights, once the battle was over he was also the first to forgive those slights.
    In the north of Scotland, winters could be harsh, with spring eagerly awaited by the clan, but Bowe always regretted seeing winter, his favorite season, fade. Lachlain supposed he’d enjoyed it because it was stark like him.
    At least Bowe had enjoyed it until he’d lost his Mariah in the dead of winter...
    “What’s so important that you canna rest more or eat?” Lachlain waved at the gel packs of food and strange-smelling mineral replacement drinks beside his bed. Bowe was supposed to partake of them, having just come off such a long interval without food and water, but had scarcely touched them. “Is this about revenge against Wroth?”
    Bowe said nothing, just seemed to be preparing to rise, planting his feet wide on the wooden floor.
    “If so, I ask you to reconsider that action. And no’ only because of the debt I owe his brother.” If not for Nikolai Wroth, Emma would have... died. At the mere thought, suddenly Lachlain needed to see her, to feel her, even when he knew she waited for him just twenty minutes away with her fierce Valkyrie family. He’d left her safe at Val Hall behind thick curtains, protected from the sun, and happily playing video games. “Bowe, you have to remember that it was a contest. And the reports we received all said ‘the Lykae competitor’ was proving ruthless—and that he played dirtier than Kaderin had in three previous Hies.”
    Bowe shrugged.
    “We heard you mesmerized Kaderin with a glittering object so you could barricade her behind a rock slide. Did you no ’ trap her alone with three hungry basilisks?”
    A flicker of something arose in Bowe’s eyes—or eye—that Lachlain suspected was satisfaction. “And we also heard that when you were on a task in the Congo, you whaled a shovel across Sebastian Wroth’s face. Knocked him out and then threw him into a raging river. At high noon in Africa .”
    His cousin had obviously taken a savage thrill in that act—and still did.
    “This is no’ about Wroth,” Bowe said. “No’ yet.”
    “Then are your thoughts occupied with the witch?”
    At last, Bowe turned to him with interest. “What have you heard?”
    “I know about the curse. And that you can actually die from these wounds.”
    Bowe didn’t appear to be concerned about that in the least. “That witch and I have much unfinished business. I’m going to retrieve her from the tomb, since no one else has been able to. Though I doona understand how none could locate that place. In that round of the Hie, the coordinates were given to all the competitors.”
    “I’m told the goddess Riora erased them with each round,” Lachlain explained. “No one took note of that location if they dinna plan to journey there. You trapped anyone who did.”
    Bowe scowled at that. “I was sure they’d eventually escape.”
    “And what is the witch to you?” Emma actually knew this Mariketa fairly well because the witch often visited the more rowdy Valkyrie at Val Hall. That didn ’t surprise Lachlain—nearly every time he’d been to Val Hall he’d spotted intoxicated witches laughing and staggering about the place.
    Bowe hesitated, then said, “She put another spell on me besides the weakening one. A spell to make me feel things for her. I think it’s triggered me to think of her as... my mate.”
    “You are sure it’s a spell?” Lachlain hastily asked. “What if it’s real?”