Page 23 of Bound to the Wolf
It started coming back to her—meeting up with Nico, Elise and Nico walking away, the strange attack in broad daylight. But who would target her and Reece, and why?
She almost reached for her magic to do a physical scan, to make sure there was nothing more wrong with him, but something stopped her. Delainey wasn’t a healer. She wasn’t great at healing spells, and she didn’t want to risk making anything worse.
But what if Reece was really hurt?
Well, then she would get out of this mess, go find help, and bring someone to rescue him. He could be thankful to her forever.
That was the sensible thing to do. It didn’t stop the worry roiling inside her, though.
She needed him to be okay, and that need felt more urgent than just worrying about a fellow kidnapping victim. Delainey wasn’t going to think about that too hard right now. Reece would wake up, hopefully, and if he did that in a decent amount of time, they could get out of this together.
She didn’t like the guy in any way—stupid night at the bar notwithstanding. Two heads would be better than one when it came to escaping this situation, and she wouldn’t mind a werewolf at her side if they got attacked again. One of her coven sisters would have been a better option, but was still grateful none of them had been taken. Though if whoever had taken her and Reece had taken Serena alongside her—this would have been...
They never would have been taken in the first place. Delainey couldn’t get caught up in could-have-beens.
She stood and stretched her legs, bending down, but she didn’t want to take any steps away from Reece. Just in case he woke. Just in case he needed help or started coughing up blood or something. Ew, gross. She hoped he didn’t.
Her knees popped when she straightened, and her calves were stiff, the kind of deep-muscle ache that came from being unconscious on a hard surface for too long. As she stretched her arms, she noticed the weight around her wrists. She must have still been kind of out of it, because they were heavy—two large brass manacles that took up a third of her forearm and made it difficult to roll her wrist around. The brass was dull and tarnished, greenish at the edges where it met her skin, and the etchings carved into the surface were intricate. There were vague etchings on the surface of the brass, and the metal pinched at her skin. They were magic, but she didn’t recognize the source. She had never seen anything like this before.
She reached deep inside herself for her own magic, worried the manacles might suppress her power, but she felt the well that was always there… and that well felt wrong.
Her magic was roiling like an angry ocean during a hurricane. It sloshed around and made it impossible to grab onto a controlled wisp of power, to send an inquisitive burst into the manacles without possibly cutting off her own hand. Heat pulsed erratically along the insides of her forearms, flaring and dying without rhythm, as if the magic couldn’t decide which direction to flow. She wasn’t going to risk that.
Okay. Problem for later.
The room was about eight feet by eight feet. She didn’t spot a door, but she was sure there was one; it was just the darkness that made it impossible to tell which wall held the exit. Maybe once Reece woke up, he could use that wolfie vision of his and give them a way out.
She had just convinced herself to step away from him and start investigating when he groaned, and his eyes snapped open.
Yellow eyes. Wolfish eyes.
He was looking at her like she was prey. Delainey froze. Some part of her said to scuttle back as far away as she could, but therewas nothing in the room she could use to defend herself. She had her magic, but it felt out of control, and she didn’t need to use it just yet.
He blinked slowly. The flash in his eyes should have subsided to their normal brown, but they remained gold. If they flared any brighter, she could have used them as a lamp to see around the room. It was disconcerting.
Those weren’t fully human eyes. The intelligence was there, but there was something wild underneath it, something feral. Like he was a wolf wearing human skin more than usual.
“Are you still in there?” She asked, not really sure what she was asking. She held both hands out in front of her, palms flat and fingers spread.
Werewolves complicated everything. She didn’t know how Elise put up with it.
Reece sat up fully and kept staring at her. His head tilted to the side, in the same way she had seen a wolf cock its head. His shoulders were hunched forward, and his hands rested on the floor with his fingers splayed wide, his weight balanced on his palms like he might drop to all fours at any moment.
He was in full predator mode right now, and the whole angle of his body was just wrong. Humans didn’t hold themselves like that. He pushed himself to his feet, and Delainey forced herself not to step back.
Standing, his head nearly brushed the low ceiling, and his broad frame seemed to fill the small room, cutting off what little light reached past him from the wall cracks behind.
She wasn’t going to yield any ground no matter how creepy he looked. He didn’t seem like he was about to attack her, though. So she put his strange wolf-gold eyes to the side and decided to deal with one problem at a time.
Whatever was going on with Reece, they’d deal with it later.
They had to escape first.
She squinted and saw he was wearing matching manacles. His were clamped higher on his forearms than hers, the brass darker against his pale skin.
That made sense. If they were making her magic feel weird, maybe they were having some sort of effect on his wolf.
But what was the true purpose? Just to fuck up their power? She didn’t know, and that worried her more.
