Page 44 of Bound to the Wolf
Reece wondered if there were more baked treats coming their way. Since Hugh had eaten the cupcake and didn’t look like he was about to die, Reece took one for himself and finished it in two bites.
Oh, itwasgood. Was that a sign she was under too much stress? He couldn’t say he regretted it.
“Now that we’re all here,” Briana said as she, Emerson, and Cole filed into the room, “how about you give us the breakdown again? Then we can figure out how to deal with that.” She nodded towards the manacles.
Delainey slumped back in her chair. “I was getting lunch with Elise a few days ago. We ran into Nico and Reece in the park.” Reece nodded in agreement. “Reece and I walked down the path a little bit and ended up in a quieter part of the park.”
“Why?” Aya interjected.
Why had they done that? Reece tried to remember.
He and Delainey had a tumultuous relationship, to say the least. They should have split up the second Nico and Elise were out of sight. Instead, they had lingered and talked.
Because you wanted to, his wolf reminded him.
Delainey blinked a few times. “We were talking, heading towards our cars.” The coven accepted that. “Then we got jumped. They had magic.”
“But I smelled wolves,” Reece added, since she might not have realized it.
Then he let her continue.
She did not acknowledge him. “We woke up in the weird murder shack in the woods and figured out we had these on.” She held up her wrists. “We can’t get more than six feet apart. We busted out of the shack, walked through the woods for a few days, and eventually found a road where a good Samaritan picked us up and brought us into the city.”
Cole gave Reece a look. “Is that it?”
He wondered if Delainey had left out one part on purpose, but they couldn’t ignore it. “Two rogues found us. They were searching for us, and they might have had something to do with the kidnapping. I can’t imagine why else they would have been in those woods. They said they were looking for us specifically.”
“Are they going to be an issue now?” Cole asked.
“No,” Reece said, and he held Cole’s gaze without flinching, his hands flat and still on the table in front of him. “I took care of them.”
He didn’t look at Delainey. He hadn’t mentioned that she had killed one of them, and he didn’t know why. He had killed before, to protect his pack, to protect himself. It didn’t weigh on his soul as heavily as it seemed to weigh on hers.
“How did you figure out the six-feet thing?” Javi asked, letting his chair drop forward onto all four legs with a thud. “Did they leave you a note or something?”
Delainey took that one. “It hurts. If we get too far away, the manacles start burning and it radiates up until we get close together again.”
“But like six feet,” he insisted. “How did you go to the bathroom?”
“Seriously?” Reece snapped.
“What? It’s a serious question.”
“It isn’t relevant,” Aya said, not looking up from the small leather-bound notebook she had pulled from somewhere, her pen already scratching notes in a tight, cramped hand. “I think they had bigger problems.”
“I don’t know that there’s a bigger problem than that,” Javi muttered.
“Can I see the cuffs?” Emerson asked, leaning forward in his chair and pushing his wire glasses up the bridge of his pointed nose with one finger, sounding like every curious witch Reece had ever encountered in his life.
No,the denial was swift and absolute.
Reece was tempted to stuff his hands behind his back. There was something off about the man, or perhaps it was Reece’s general aversion to witches, but he wasn’t going to examine those feelings too closely.
Delainey reached out her arm and let Emerson get close.
Jealousy spiked through Reece.
It was ridiculous. He had no claim on her, no hold over her. There was nothing between them, and there never could be. One stolen night in the woods and a few stolen moments at the bar didn’t mean he got any say in which men could get close to her.
