Page 25 of Bound to the Wolf
His shoulder blades struck first, the impact punching through rotten pine like cardboard, and splinters raked across his back through the fabric of his henley as the planks bowed and snapped outward. His breath was knocked out on impact.
He heard a crack and splinter of wood, a brighter shaft of sunlight piercing the room, but all of that was distant compared to the pain radiating out of his wrists and up through his chest. It was a deep, bone-level burn that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, as if the manacles had hooked into his circulatory system and were sending fire through his veins instead of blood.
Delainey rushed toward him, and as she got closer, the pain dissipated until all he felt was a dull throb from the impact. “Fuck! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. You were just supposed to...” She reached for him and helped him up.
“Pain,” Reece managed to gasp.
“You’re hurt?” Her hands hovered over him like she was afraid to touch him. “Where are you injured? Fuck, did I make it worse?”
“No.” Words were still too hard. Full sentences were even harder. But he had an idea of what might have happened. “Stay,” he told her.
“Excuse me?” Delainey crossed her arms over her chest.
He didn’t know how to put his thoughts into words. He took a step away from her and held up his hand to keep her back.
Then another step. Another.
He managed about six feet of distance when the pain started radiating up his cuffs. Another step nearly sent him to his knees. He scrambled back until he was close to her again.
“Stay close,” he managed.
Delainey looked down at her manacles, then glanced at him. “These things are keeping us close together.” She worked it out from his experiment and his few words. “What was that, about six feet? That is not a lot of space. We’re going to have to get these off, because I think you and I might murder each other if we have to stay six feet apart for too long.”
No,his wolf insisted.
He managed not to say it out loud. He wouldn’t harm her; his instincts were riding him too hard, and he refused to even consider the possibility.
She turned from him and looked at the wall. “Well, looks like one good thing came out of that little display of aggression. I am sorry about that.” She tilted her head toward him. “In addition to the six-feet-distance thing, we’re going to have to figure out… my powers are going a little bit haywire. So we’re going to have to be careful.”
There was a large crack in the wall now. He could smell the forest outside, but from the angle of the light he couldn’t tell what time of day it was.
“Get behind me,” Delainey said, rolling her shoulders back and shaking out her wrists.
Reece didn’t want to. Every instinct said he should be the one in front, shielding her.
But she had an intense look in her eyes, one that said she would absolutely blast him again if he argued. He took a step behind her.
From here he could see the tension corded through her neck and the set of her jaw, the way she widened her stance. He couldfeel something tickle his wrist as Delainey closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Then she motioned at the wall like she was throwing a baseball, and a percussive blast expanded the gap where he had slammed into it. The blast hit with a sound like a thunderclap compressed into a single flat crack, and the wall didn’t just break—it blew outward in a spray of splintered pine and rusted nails, the pieces tumbling into the undergrowth outside.
Cool mountain air rushed in through the ragged opening, which was now wide enough for both of them to walk through side by side. Light poured in. Before they had a chance to celebrate, though, the house started making very scary noises, groaning and cracking, and the whole place started to tilt.
Delainey reached back, grabbed his arm, and jerked him through the new hole in the wall just as the house, really more of a shack, tilted and then collapsed.
They stumbled out onto a slope of packed red clay and dead leaves, and behind them the shack folded in on itself with a long, drawn-out crunch of timber.
“I guess that wall was load-bearing,” she said as they surveyed the damage.
If the man were more in control, Reece might have smiled.
The shack, what was left of it—was little more than a heap of gray, weathered lumber and a half-collapsed tin roof, the whole pile no bigger than a single-car garage.
Reece looked around. He didn’t recognize these woods. The smells were not of the Southern Basin Pack. They were in the mountains somewhere, he could see that, and he would bet they were in foothills that rolled on for miles.
“Any idea who took us?” Delainey asked, brushing splinters from the sleeve of her denim jacket and then picking a long sliver of pine out of her hair.
Reece managed to shake his head.
