Page 22 of Bound to the Wolf
The light was white hot and sourceless, filling his vision from every direction at once, and the concussive force of it hit his eardrums like a pressure change, popping them hard enough to make his jaw ache. Reece dove in front of Delainey, trying to shield her from the worst of it.
His shoulder caught her collarbone as he wrapped himself around her, driving them both down toward the dirt, his knees hitting the packed earth with a jolt that shot up through his thighbones. But Delainey was already pushing at him.
“Get off of me, you oaf,” she said, raising her hand in a magical shield as she looked around to find where the attack had come from.
A shimmer of translucent light rippled outward from her palm, curving into a disc about four feet wide that hung in the air between them and the tree line.
Dark figures were running at them.
There were at least three—dressed in black clothing, faces obscured, closing the distance at a dead sprint through the oak shadows about forty yards out.
Reece had no idea if they were witches or shifters or, hell, even humans in tactical gear. They were insane to be attacking in the middle of a park in broad daylight—they could be seen at any moment. But clearly the attackers didn’t care, and if Reece wanted to survive and keep Delainey alive, any risk of discovery was a problem for future him.
He shifted into a stance and summoned his claws, partially shifting into a form better for fighting. His fingers lengthenedand thickened, the nails splitting and curving into claws that were each as long as his thumb, and the bones in his hands cracked and reformed with a grinding ache that raced up to his elbows.
His eyes flooded gold, sharpening the dim oak canopy into high-contrast detail, every leaf edge and bark ridge snapping into focus. But instead of getting close, one of the figures threw something at him. It passed through Delainey’s magical shield like it wasn’t there and hit him square in the chest.
The impact was dull and heavy, like being struck with a sandbag—not sharp enough to cut but hard enough to cave the breath out of his lungs. A cold numbness radiated outward from the point of contact, spreading across his ribs and up into his throat, and his half-shifted claws retracted involuntarily as his muscles went slack. The ground tilted. His knees buckled, and the packed dirt rushed up to meet the side of his face.
Reece vaguely registered the sound of Delainey shouting as everything went black.
Chapter
Nine
Delainey woke with a groan, her whole body aching.
What the fuck just happened?
Everything hurt. Her head was pounding, and the sounds coming out of her throat didn’t exactly sound ladylike—not that she particularly cared about sounding like a lady.
The ground under her cheek was cold, damp, and scratchy. Grit pressed into the soft skin below her cheekbone, and when she peeled her face away, tiny splinters clung to her jaw. She placed the palm of her hand flat on the ground and pushed up, blinking her eyes open and taking in her surroundings.
What? How? Her brain was trying to catch up as the questions flooded in.
Her mouth tasted like sleep and dust, but not the kind of sleep that came from a good night’s exhaustion. She looked around, and none of this made sense. She was in a bare wooden room. The scratchiness under her hand was untreated floorboards. The planks were warped and uneven, with nail heads poking up at intervals and gaps between the boards wide enough to show dark earth underneath.
She didn’t see a window, but there were cracks in the walls where light from outside peeked through—so it was daylight out, maybe.
It was very dark in the room, with only those faint sunbeams for light, and Delainey could barely see as she squinted. This place was… it was kind of serial killer-y.
It smelled like mildew and, beyond that, the woods. The air was stale. Like no one had been here for a while.
Except someone had brought her here.
Her and Reece. He was laying not far from her feet, his red hair falling over his face and obscuring his eyes, out like a light. He was on his side with one arm trapped under his body at an uncomfortable angle, his legs sprawled unevenly across the floorboards, and his henley had ridden up to expose a stripe of pale skin above his waistband.
Delainey leaned in close to get as good a look as she could.
He was still and wrong. Normally he was all restless, coiled energy, but now it had been stopped. His broad chest barely moved, and his lips were slightly parted, colorless in the dim light. For a terrible second she thought he was dead, and then his chest rose, fell, and rose again.
She spent several moments cataloging his breaths, convincing herself he wasn’t going to spontaneously stop breathing if she looked away. She was worried because she didn’t want to deal with a corpse right next to her.
That was normal. Baseline. Anyone would feel kind of concerned.
It had nothing to do with Reece. Nothing to do with the feel of his body pressed against hers, or the way he had tried to shield her in the park.
The park!
