Page 6 of Bound to the Wolf
He was guessing these two were freelancers. If the Iron Runners wanted to cause trouble, they would have sent far more than two. And if they wanted information, they wouldn’t have needed to send spies like this. Somebody else wanted in.
They were close to the cabins that dotted the edge of the property, where mostly some families within the pack lived if they didn’t want to stay in the main house but still wanted to be close.
Each cottage had more than enough space for a family of wolves to make a home. It was almost impossible to see one house from another. And, if Reece remembered correctly, at least three were vacant right now.
Were these two playing house? Reece would have to check it out later.
Reece took another step forward, and his paw crushed a leaf. Two lupine heads snapped toward him.
Damn it.
The wolves launched themselves at him without warning, further proof that they were professionals. But Reece was bigger than both of them, and no one liked to fight him. He bared his fangs while he growled, and let the fight bleed through him. Reece had been itching for violence for weeks. He almost felt bad for his attackers.
It was a brutal thing.
Claws scored fur and teeth dug in until they reached bone. Reece tasted blood from the wolf under him, and it would take almost nothing to snap his neck, even in this form. But the wolf’s friend wasn’t standing idly by. He attacked Reece’s flank with enough force to make Reece rear back. Reece snapped and turned toward the second wolf, and the one he had bloodied took off running deeper into the woods.
Goddamn it. He would have to deal with that later.
But now it was one on one, and his enemy wolf was significantly smaller than him. Reece showed no mercy, snapping at him and digging his fangs into fur.
But he hesitated. Killing an interloper could cause problems. The supernatural world wasn’t so violent that they didn’t have to answer for murder, even when it was done in self-defense.
Reece’s hesitation cost him. The wolf managed to jerk away and took off running faster than Reece would have thought possible. Reece took off after him and then forced himself to slow down.
Because what if this wasn’t just two isolated interlopers?
They could be leading him into an ambush. Reece could easily take on two wolves. But four? Five? No, it was probably better to let them run away and report this back to Cole. The pack would increase its patrols, and if anyone else tried to cause trouble, they would take care of it.
With that in mind, Reece turned back toward the main house, and then paused as a sensation rolled over him and made his hackles raise once more. But this wasn’t the scent of a wolf.
It was the scent of magic. Sour and so out of place, Reece growled.
He’d gotten somewhat used to smelling Elise’s magic, but she used it sparingly, and it smelled like flowers and warmth. She was a healer.
Thiswas something off, and even more wrong because it was on pack territory. His animal recoiled, but he forced himself to slowly move in the direction the wolves had run. That was where the scent was coming from.
Three steps later, the scent evaporated. That was the annoying thing about magic. It was there, and then it was gone, and you couldn’t trace a damn thing if you didn’t have magic of your own.
Reece prowled back and forth for several minutes, trying to make out any sort of scent, any sort of clue that he could take back to the pack that would offer insight, but there wasn’t anything. Reece hated that he would have to go to Cole empty-handed, but this had to be reported.
He made his way back to the pack house, senses on high alert, and had a feeling that the other shoe he had been fearing was starting to fall.
Chapter
Three
Cole agreed about the peculiarity of the wolves’ scent and the magic he had sensed. He had authorized more patrols, and now the pack was on alert for trouble.
But the next day, it was still bothering Reece.
He was sitting in the kitchen and clutching a coffee mug so tightly in his hands that it might shatter as he stared out the back window onto the forest behind the property.
The pair of swiveling bucket chairs were a hot commodity in the kitchen, and he’d grabbed them both with one leg stretched out to rest on the chair opposite him. The chair was soft, but Reece was a big man and took up every inch of the space available.
The kitchen was big enough for two dozen people to squeeze in, and they had squeezed in even more from time to time. There were fifty adult members of the pack and then enough children to go along with them, which made the Southern Basin the largest of the small packs in Hobson.
There was a giant table at the center of the kitchen where twenty people could sit, though usually wolves came in twos and threes. There was evidence of life in here with dirty dishes thatshould have been cleaned sitting on the counter and in the sink, which Reece guessed meant that both of the dishwashers were full and no one had bothered to unload them yet.
