Page 28 of Bound to the Wolf
Reece was next to a tree now, shoulders tight with tension. He was breathing slow and steady, almost like he was counting each breath to make sure he didn’t forget.
She was pretty sure he was trying to let the man come closer to the surface. The wolf had been in control for the past several hours. He still looked annoyingly good doing it.
His hair was slicked back from his face with sweat, and though his clothes were dirty with dust from the room they’d woken up in, dirt from the forest, and even a bit of blood from the poor bunny, he looked good. His shirt had a fresh tear along the left sleeve where a branch had caught him during the chase, and the freckles on his cheekbones stood out sharply against skin that had gone pale from exertion.
She had to tear her gaze away and look toward the small pit that would hopefully be holding a fire pretty soon.
They had to camp for the night. It was getting dark, and already Delainey was having trouble seeing.
The darkness seemed to bloom under the trees and creep out further and further. She could still catch glimpses of the sun through the canopy, but that was becoming harder by the minute.
Their pursuers, if they existed, would be able to use flashlights—they’d be stuck on foot, possibly on four feet if they were werewolves—but there was nothing to be done about it.
If Delainey could control her magic well enough, she would put a ward circle up that might protect them overnight. But she was going to need to do some meditation before she was willing to even try. She didn’t want to accidentally knock down a tree or three setting up a protective circle.
Reece came to sit beside her on a log, as far away as was possible at the moment, and gestured at the firewood in the little pit in front of them. The log was stripped of its bark on top and worn smooth by weather, wide enough for both of them to sit with about three feet of space between their hips, the maximum the manacles would comfortably allow. He had gathered it, though she had been forced to follow behind him every step, andshe was thankful when she saw him dip his hands in a small stream and wash off most of the bunny guts.
The pit was shallow, barely a hand’s depth, scraped into the dirt between two exposed roots. Reece had stacked the kindling in a rough teepee of dry sticks and stripped bark, with thicker branches leaning against them.
This was a test. She had to control her power when it was still roiling like a hurricane.
She could do it.
Delainey was an experienced witch, and fire was one of her specialties—a hard element to control, and she took pride in the way she wielded it. She reached inside herself for the tiniest pinch of power, the equivalent of a single match if she could manage it. She kept her eyes closed, held her hand out, fingers pinched over the firewood, then opened them and let the magic go.
The wood went up like it had been doused in gasoline. The heat hit her face like opening an oven door, and the flames leapt three feet high in a roar that sent sparks spiraling into the canopy, each one winking out against the dark leaves above.
The whoosh of it made her jerk back, hoping she didn’t catch her hair on fire. Reece flinched. He threw one arm up in front of his face, and she felt the log shift beneath them as his weight lurched sideways.
“Damn it.” That was supposed to be a flicker. Just a candle’s worth of flame.
Instead, she had created a bonfire.
But she hadn’t burned down the forest around them, so maybe it was a win. She could have killed Reece with that flick of magic she had sent his way in the shack; that had been obvious when she launched him into the wall. It was only supposed to be a nudge.
All she had wanted was to create a little space, make him step back. It was a normal way to use magic. She used it on her coven sisters all the time and expected it right back from them. But never anything that could cause true violence or harm.
She didn’t like Reece.
Liar, a voice deep in her head said, and she ignored that as hard as she could.
She didn’t like Reece. But that didn’t mean she wanted to kill him. And if she was going to kill him, she wanted to do it on purpose, not because her magic was going haywire.
Reece picked up the bunny and started to peel off the skin with fingers that were too sharp to be considered human. His nails had lengthened into thick, curved points, not quite full claws but far past anything human, and they slid through the rabbit’s hide with a wet tearing sound that Delainey felt in the back of her teeth.
Delainey looked away.
Reece grunted but didn’t say anything. A few minutes later he had the rabbit on a spit over the fire, rotating it in one hand.
The smell of cooking meat hit her nose, and her stomach growled. It had to be close to dinner time, or the magic she had expended and the hike through the woods had burned so many calories that she would have been hungry, regardless.
Delainey tried to be grossed out by the realities of hunting, but she didn’t have the energy. They needed to eat, and she couldn’t exactly identify which berries were safe and which would make them trip, or which one’s might send them to the hospital.
Not that an ambulance would be coming anytime soon.
While Reece cooked the rabbit, Delainey focused on the manacles.
He could hunt for them, which meant it was her job to figure out the magical problem and try to solve it. If they could getmore than six feet apart, it would probably be a lot easier to fight their kidnappers whenever they caught up. Because she was sure they would catch up, and soon. They had been sloppy not to leave a guard on the shack.
