Free Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) by Hailey Edwards

your wolves or I would lose her and endanger my current level of autonomy. This was the only way for us to meet. Therefore…” Bianca twisted the blade until the richness of her blood hit the back of my throat with every inhalation, “…I required leverage.”
    As much as my palm itched to drive the knife through the real Charybdis’s cold heart, all the act would accomplish at this moment was ending a woman and her unborn child. I had as much faith in him revealing true vulnerabilities to me as I trusted a coiled rattlesnake not to bite.
    Holding steady, I reached through the pack bond to alert Graeson then mentally swept the area once more for signs of Jensen. I found none. “How did you possess Bianca without an avatar to act as your vehicle?”
    “Bianca spent a great deal of time with Emily, learning what to expect from a warg pup I imagine. A pregnant female is a vulnerable female and a valuable asset.” She let her delicate shoulder rise and fall. “I laid claim to this body to, as you say, keep my options open.” Her grin chilled me. “It seems I was right to mark her. Never had I dreamed she would lead me straight to you.”
    Harlow had initiated contact with Emily, the Chandler alpha’s daughter, to trick her into performing small tasks for her. Did this mean Emily was infected too? I saw no other link between Harlow, his current avatar, Emily and Bianca. How his contagion spread gnawed at me, but I knew better than to ask a second time.
    Bianca tilted her head, absorbing every detail of my disheveled appearance. “Ask me what you truly wish to know.”
    It was a trap. I knew it. I walked right into it anyway. “Are my aunt and cousin still alive?”
    Eyes rolling back, she inhaled until her stomach rounded, then exhaled on a sensual moan. “Where would the pleasure be in telling you?”
    I bit my lip, hating I had exposed the pulsing heart of my weakness.
    “How you ache with their loss.” Bliss wafted off her skin, and she flared her nostrils wider. “How it eats you up inside to know you failed to save them, the same as you failed to save Lori.” Cruelty glinted in her eyes. “You are weak, Camille Ellis. You always have been, and you always will be. It will cost you all you love, and then, when you are broken and beg for my touch, then I might— might —bestow my blessing upon you.”
    The mention of her touch called to mind the shell that remained of Marshal Ayer after bearing the burden of such a blessing. “You’re offering me a position as an avatar-in-waiting?” Did she expect me to stand in line until her magic burned out Harlow? “I’m afraid I must decline.”
    “How much further must I push before I break you,” she mused. “It is such an individual process, one can never truly estimate the threshold until one crosses it.”
    Tamping down the fear and guilt, the worry and regret, I shut down my emotions the way I had trained myself to when the burden of carrying Lori’s ghost in my bones weighed too heavily on me. The change in Bianca’s expression was instantaneous. I had cut off her supply and slapped her back to attention. Now all I had to do was keep her focused on me and not the wolves I sensed circling us.
    “What is your purpose here? Not just in this forest, but on Earth?” I deserved that much at least. “Why did you leave Faerie?”
    “There is much game to be hunted here.” The thing inside Bianca exhaled on a lusty sigh. “Varieties of fae exist here that Faerie has long since forgotten in her eagerness to purge her excess into this realm.” She pointed a stained finger at me. “Gemini have been reduced to lore in Faerie.” A laugh fluttered past her lips. “What other forgotten gems might this Earth have to offer?”
    A sick feeling pooled in the pit of my gut. I doubted she meant game as in animals . She meant people. Humans. Fae. All of us.
    “Earth is not your playground,” I growled.
    “Yet.” Bianca drew herself up taller and sent her gaze