Page 92 of Bound to the Wolf
That was one way to do it.
Delainey scrambled over to help. With the Wallace Grove Coven otherwise engaged, they weren’t paying attention to her. While this was an unorthodox way of breaking a circle,physically disrupting it could work. She met Briana on the other side and started digging her fingers in parallel. The earth at the circle’s boundary was dense, packed hard enough that her nails bent back against the soil, and every time her fingertips brushed the circle’s edge, a sharp burn shot through the pads of her fingers and up into her knuckles.
“Are you okay?” Delainey asked.
Briana gave her a soft smile and nodded. “I’ll be okay.” Her words were muffled, like she was talking through water. That must have been the effect of the circle, strange, since it hadn’t been like that earlier, but now they were messing with the stability of it, which could be warping its effect on the physical world.
Reece looked like he could barely sit up straight, but he shuffled over beside Delainey. “Tell me what to do.” The words were a gasped slur.
He dropped to the ground beside her heavily, the impact jarring through his whole frame, his big hands already clawing at the dirt even as his arms shook with the effort of staying upright.
“Preserve your energy. Oh my god, if you die, I’m going to be so pissed.”
Maybe she needed to work on her lovey-dovey talk, but she had priorities right now.
Reece ignored that command. Every time her fingers got close to the edge of the circle, they burned as the magic tried to repel her. But Delainey would happily let them be singed down to the bone if it got her and Reece out of this mess.
She heard a feminine shriek of rage and looked up to see Serena deflect an attack that would have laid Hugh flat out. At least, Delainey thought it was Hugh, since he was in his wolf form and she wasn’t sure. The wolf was massive, gray-furred andsnarling, hackles raised in a ridge along its spine as it circled the nearest Wallace Grove witch.
Cole was standing next to Aya. Her hands were pressed flat in front of her, fingers spread wide as she fed power into her spell work. Javi and Aya had a magical barrier in front of them to keep the Wallace Grove witches from getting any closer.
The magic in front of Delainey wobbled, and she heard a sound like glass cracking.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she said. “Back up.”
Briana scrambled back as Delainey grabbed Reece’s arm and jerked him toward the center of the circle. The ward collapsed, and magic exploded outward.
The concussive force blew the grass flat in a perfect ring and sent a shockwave through the ground that Delainey felt in her teeth. She saw Briana fall backward in the wave, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. She thought she heard Brenda scream.
Yeah, that would hurt, having your ward collapse against your will, all the magic ricocheting back into you.
Delainey couldn’t find it in herself to feel bad about that.
She grabbed Reece’s arm. “Come on. We have to go.”
He tried to push himself to his feet. “Just give me a minute,” he said, or at least she thought that was what he tried to say. The words didn’t sound like any language she recognized. He tried to push himself up one more time, then his eyes rolled back, and he slumped over.
He went down like something vital had given way inside him, all two hundred-plus pounds of muscle and bone folding sideways into the churned-up dirt, his red hair fanning across the ground.
No.
Delainey clutched his shoulders and shook him.
Absolutely the fuck not. You do not get to die right now.
The tether was still there between them. She could feel it, but it was faint. Delainey clung to it with everything in her.
Ifthatwas the cost of keeping Reece alive, she would make it permanent right now. She just didn’t know how.
The fight raged on around them.
Elise finally managed to shuffle in and found Delainey holding Reece close and rocking, trying to send some of her magic back into him, as if that might give him the boost he needed to survive ten goddamn more minutes until they could end this battle and save his damned life.
His head was heavy in her lap, his skin so cold under her fingers that she could barely reconcile it with the man who always ran hot, whose body had been fever-warm every time she’d touched him.
Elise shuffled forward beside Delainey. “Let me,” she said, dropping to her knees on Reece’s other side and wrapping both hands around his limp one.
Delainey could feel Elise’s soft healing magic as it circled her and Reece. It tickled through the tether, and she gladly accepted that.
