Bonarata turned to Adam with a hiss. “She is mine.”

Adam assumed he meant Lenka, but given his addiction, he could have meant either one of them.

“Then you should have kept better control of your wolf,” Adam told the vampire. “If she had not attacked Honey, we would have left her alone.”

Bonarata growled soundlessly, but Adam heard it just the same. The vampire turned to the fighters and said, “Lenka, kill her for me.”

Adam was pretty sure that Lenka was doing her best to do just that. Those words had been aimed at Adam.

After that, everyone was silent, only moving to get out of the way—and Elizaveta was both quick and graceful for a woman of *ahem* years.

The room was mostly empty of furniture except for the small desk Bonarata had been using. And the desk didn’t last. Lenka ripped off a delicately carved leg and broke it over Honey’s thigh—a hit that was meant for her knee.

It was the table leg that got Honey’s head on straight. Up until that point, despite Adam’s order, she had been fighting defensively, unwilling to seriously hurt the other wolf. Honey tore off a second leg. When it broke off with a sharp point, instead of using it as a club, she used it as a modified lance.

“Good,” Adam said quietly. She’d hear him. “That’s it.”

She lost the table leg eventually. She brought it up as a shield when Lenka struck with her knife, taking advantage of an opening Honey had lured her into. The knife sank deeply into the wood. Honey twisted, and Lenka couldn’t keep her grip on the weapon. Honey threw the table leg, knife and all, through one of the plate-glass windows, shattering the glass and leaving the knife out of play unless and until someone decided to go through a window after it.

“She is beautiful,” Bonarata said, mesmerized, his desire scenting the room. “Like a tigress. All muscle and speed.” Lust had changed his eyes, and not even the most mundane human would have looked into that feral face and thought anything but vampire. Even though vampires didn’t need to breathe, he was sucking in great gulps of air, air now scented with blood and sweat and need. His need.

Across the room, Marsilia was watching Bonarata with sad eyes. Not hurt or brokenhearted or anything like that, just sad. The way someone would look at a fallen Ajax or Hercules.

She was wrong. Bonarata wasn’t even down yet, let alone out. But there was no question that his hunger for Honey—for any female werewolf’s blood—was driving him now.

He wouldn’t like having Adam and his people see him like this. He’d remember it later. But so would Adam.

It took her a while—because Lenka was a hell of a fighter—but Honey pinned the other wolf to the floor in a wrestler’s hold. Panting, blood dripping from her mouth and her nose, Honey looked, not at Adam, but at Elizaveta.

“Can this be fixed? I smell witchcraft on this band around her neck,” Honey said.

Adam was starting to think that he should find out more about Bonarata’s witches. According to Bonarata, he had a healer who had mended Mercy’s near-fatal wound. Healing was not something black witches are supposed to be good at, and no white witch would have that kind of power. He’d had someone who’d made a gris-gris that had impressed Elizaveta—Adam knew how to read that old witch.

Elizaveta walked to where the werewolf was pinned to the floor. She sank to her heels and examined the metal band around the werewolf’s neck.

Lenka bucked and struggled, but Honey held her fast. Elizaveta didn’t seem worried.

After a moment, she stood up.

“No,” she said sadly. “The band keeps her under control, but it is a simple thing, if powerful. It makes certain that she follows the orders she is given.”

Honey looked at Adam then.

He said, “It is a kindness.”

She nodded.

She had to let up, just for a second, to get the knife she kept strapped to the inside of her thigh. The one that she hadn’t drawn during the fight because she needed to be sure that killing was the right thing to do.

Lenka almost broke free, but she wasn’t quick enough. She was malnourished, and that had hurt her fighting abilities. She was neither as strong nor as fast as she could have been. Now she was tired, too, and her speed was half what it had been in the beginning, though the fight had been relatively short.

She couldn’t avoid the small blade that slid into the joint between her spine and her head. She died when the blade slipped in, but it took a moment for the air to leave her lungs and her body to quit moving. Honey’s blade wasn’t silver, but it was deadly enough.

Honey pulled the blade out when Lenka was dead. He couldn’t always tell with vampires, but werewolves were easy—their smell changed.

She wiped the blade clean on her pant leg. It wasn’t a prudent place in a building filled with vampires, but he thought she was not in the mood for prudence. She sheathed the blade and accepted Adam’s hand up. She didn’t need his help rising, but he knew the touch of pack would center her. She stood, letting him hold her for half a breath before she slipped away.

As soon as she was standing, Adam turned his attention to Bonarata. Adam knew he’d been taking a chance by turning his back on the vampire. But Honey came first, and he had people in the room who would watch the vampire for him.

As it turned out, Bonarata had had other things to occupy himself with. The Lord of Night was staring at Lenka’s body with an expression Adam had seen on junkies looking at a dime bag, a deep need that overwhelmed any other thought or emotion. But the expression faded as Lenka’s blood died with her. Leaving Bonarata with an expression that looked very much like regret and relief on his face.