Page 93 of Bound to the Wolf
As long as she could feel him through it, he was still alive, no matter how hard it was to find his pulse.
But then Elise drew her magic back.
“What are you doing?” Delainey demanded. “Heal him!”
Elise looked up, her face ashen. “I can’t. There’s nothing wrong with him.”
“What are you talking about? Look at him!” Delainey shook Reece again, wondering if she should be doing that, but at this point she didn’t care. Anything necessary, she would do, as long as it got Reece back.
“They didn’t hurt him, not physically,” Elise said, pulling her hands back from his and pressing them against her own thighs. “They drained his life force. It’s not something a healer can fix.It’s not somethingIcan fix. I don’t know. I’m so sorry.” She took his hand again, and her healing magic circled them, but Delainey could feel the futility in it.
“He can’t die,” she said.
Elise closed her eyes and bowed her head. “I’m so sorry. I can’t save him.”
Chapter
Forty-Three
Reece heard yelling voices, but they were in the distance.
For a moment he thought he was a child again, playing with his friends at the clearing they weren’t supposed to be hanging out in. He felt the magic strong in the air, the scent cloying and overwhelming, but that was wrong.
Since when could he smell magic?
A snout booped his head and pushed him, trying to make him roll over. Reece’s eyes snapped open, and he scrambled back from the wolf that was about to fucking attack him.
Except when he looked at it, he saw himself staring back.
Not his own face, of course, but it was his soul. He knew this wolf, and this wolf knew him. He’d never seen it before, not like this. He hadn’t known it was possible, and it was in that moment he realized he had to be dying.
The wolf was gray, with black paws that faded lighter up the legs as if the animal had been pulled from the ground itself, and its gold eyes were the same ones that stared back at him when his wolf pressed close to the surface.
Around him, shadows of the battlefield played out in blacks and whites, mist rolling all around. Two women were barelymore than outlines, one clutching a male form that was even dimmer than they were, the other holding the form’s hand.
Hewas the male form.
The ground beneath him wasn’t ground at all; there was no grass, no dirt, just a formless gray surface that gave slightly under his weight like standing on packed fog, and the air had no temperature, no wind, no taste.
“Am I dead?” He asked the wolf. The wolf tilted its head to the side and offered no answers. “Great.”
Stupid mystical dream wolf couldn’t even help him with that.
Pain blazed in his chest and, for a moment, the woman clutching him was illuminated by a light so bright it was blinding.
Not just a woman. She was his mate. Delainey.
How could he forget her even for a second?
He reached out for her, but his hand passed through her like she was a ghost, or maybe he was.
The light didn’t dim. It reached out to him, to his body, and wrapped around it like vines from a rose bush, the thorns digging in and pulling him tight against her, so tight there was no space to even breathe.
The vines encircled his body, then climbed down an invisible trellis until they found his wolf and wrapped around one of its legs. The wolf yelped and tried to back up, but the vines were as tight as chains. There was no way to break them.
Memories of the past weeks came rushing back. Their time in the woods, the manacle that had bound them, the tether that gave them just enough freedom that they didn’t murder each other.
But it was gone now.
