Page 45 of Bound to the Wolf
This wasn’t even Emerson approaching her as a man. He was looking at the manacle, touching Delainey carefully, holding her hand to take in the metal around her wrist. It was purely observational. She might as well have been a statue.
The scent of magic suffused the air, sour and new. It hit Reece’s sinuses like vinegar cut with something oily, nothing like the warm rose and fire scent of Delainey’s magic that he had long since stopped noticing.
Reece knew what Delainey’s magic smelled like, and it hadn’t bothered him for a while, but Emerson’s was stinky and he didn’t like it. The scent dissipated after a moment, and Emerson let Delainey’s hands drop.
“I can sense the binding, but I don’t know how to break it.”
Aya and Serena each took a turn after him. Aya spent the longest looking at Delainey’s wrist, and after about twenty minutes she gave Reece a piercing look.
He was forced to reluctantly offer one of his wrists for her perusal. He didn’t like it, but if he had to choose between the coven and Emerson, he would gladly choose the coven every time.
They had a truce. They had a vested interest in not betraying each other. He didn’t want a stranger’s magic playing over his skin.
Aya’s fingers were small and cool against his forearm as she turned his wrist this way and that under the light, her dark eyes tracking the etched symbols the way someone might read a sentence, her lips moving slightly without sound.
Aya studied them for several more minutes. Reece’s discomfort shifted from a general aversion to witches toward something more specific. He felt less like a person under her gaze and more like a thing. She finally dropped his hand.
“I have some ideas, but I need to do a bit of research. Can you guys handle this for another night?”
It wasn’t like they had a choice.
“If we have to,” Delainey said, turning the manacle around her wrist with her opposite hand.
Reece agreed.
He would survive.
Probably.
Chapter
Twenty-One
Delainey watched Briana, Aya, Serena, and Emerson head down into the basement with the longing of a kid not picked for a middle school sports team, stuck upstairs with the werewolves and Elise, who seemed to be on babysitting duty.
The basement door was just off the kitchen, a narrow, heavy thing with peeling white paint and a brass latch that Briana pulled shut behind her, cutting off the glow of the work lamps below and the faint smell of old candle wax and dried herbs that drifted up from the root cellar workshop.
Elise probably had to stay up here and make sure they didn’t die in case the manacle decided to go crazy. Delainey was pretty sure that since it hadn’t gone crazy yet, it wasn’t likely to in the next hour. At least Elise was grounded here with her.
The dining room was chaos, so they moved into the living room. The living room was the largest room on the ground floor, with a high ceiling edged by crown molding and tall windows that faced the front porch. A worn sectional sofa dominated the center, flanked by two mismatched armchairs, and a low coffee table scarred with candle wax and mug rings sat between them.The floorboards were original hardwood, dark with age, and creaked under every step.
She and Reece sprawled out on the couch, putting as much space between them as possible, while the others took whatever seats they could.
“So who’s this Emerson guy?” Cole finally asked. He was trying to seem like he didn’t care, but he hadn’t said almost anything in the past two hours, and this was what he led with. The question had been desperate to come out.
“He’s Briana’s ex,” Delainey said, pulling one of the couch’s throw pillows into her lap and picking at a loose thread along its seam.
“He’s an old friend from my birth coven,” Elise said at the same time.
They shared a look.
Elise glared, as if to say:Even I don’t share coven gossip with the pack. What the hell are you thinking?
Javi barked out a laugh. “Ooh, what’s the drama? You have to tell us.”
Delainey looked away from Elise. The kid could judge her all she wanted. Something about Emerson was rubbing her the wrong way, and maybe she was feeling extra vulnerable given the whole situation, but she was going to say what she wanted. No one was allowed to tell her otherwise.
“Your birth coven.” Cole worked that out slowly. “The Wallace Grove coven?” He still couldn’t seem to believe that Elise was basically magical royalty.
