Page 33 of Bound to the Wolf
Delainey opened her mouth to answer, then closed it.
Why did this guy think he deserved a heart to heart? They were prisoners together, relying on each other for survival. He didn’t get to know her deepest, darkest acts.
But even though she couldn’t say the words, she nodded.
She didn’t expect Reece to say anything back. What was there to say? She felt guilty for what she’d done, but she wouldn’t have done anything different if she had to do it again.
She wasn’t going to let someone kill her because she was afraid of what her magic might do. She was going to survive, and she was going to try and let Reece survive right along with her.
She wasn’t sure if she owed him that, but she wasn’t going to let him die if she could help it.
“I killed my first wolf when I was nineteen.” His words came out of the shadows. The fire really didn’t offer that much light, surprisingly, but she wasn’t much of a camper. Give her a nice hotel room with luxury room service and a spa any day.
Oh, a spa, that would be nice.
And a jacuzzi. Her mind was trying to find nicer things to think about, but she couldn’t ignore this conversation.
“In Hobson?” she asked. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around.
The southern basin pack had only been around for about ten years or so, she thought. And judging by how old she thought Reece was, maybe thirty, maybe a little older, it had probably been before he joined up.
Wolves weren’t supposed to kill each other. Again, back to that civilized society they all allegedly lived in, but things happened.
Things happened in covens, too.
“I’m not from around here,” he said. He stretched his legs out toward the fire, his mud-caked boots nearly touching the ring of stones around the pit, and leaned back on his palms.
“Okay.” She was tempted to ask where he was from, but she got the idea that if she pushed too much, if she prompted him too hard, he would clam right back up. She wanted to know what he was going to tell her. This man was a bit of a mystery.
One she wanted to solve, she was horrified to realize.
It must have been the days spent surviving together, because there was no other reason to feel that way.
But she remembered the night at the Brass Tap, the way he had followed her every place she went, his eyes never leaving hers. She had felt powerful that night. Desired. When she had led him into the back alley and let herself get pressed against the wall, she had been tempted to see where it could go… before sanity came crashing back down and she remembered exactly who he was and why that couldn’t happen.
She expected Reece to let the conversation lapse, but a few minutes later he spoke again.
“I was turned when I was seventeen,” he said. He held up his hand and rotated it back and forth in front of the flames before looking at his index finger. In the firelight she could see how large his hands were: wide palms, thick fingers, the knuckles scarred and rough. “A wolf nipped me in threat, telling me to back off or something, and a few weeks later…”
“Fur?” she guessed.
“Fur,” he agreed.
That was fucking strange.
Humans got turned into werewolves, that definitely happened. Often it was a ritual thing: partners of pack members, friends, business associates, people they wanted to share their fur with.
As far as she knew, wolves were normallyverycareful not to bite humans.
It was one thing if a wolf thought he was facing off with a witch or some other form of supernatural, then the wolfiness couldn’t be passed on. But against a human, you didn’t nip in threat unless you were reckless or you didn’t care.
Delainey forced the questions down.
Reece was going to share what he was willing to share, and that had to be enough. “My parents kicked me out not long after that, when I turned eighteen,” he said.
“That’s horrible.” She didn’t want to start finding excuses for why he might be so standoffish and bristly, but that kind of rejection probably had something to do with it.
“I had no idea what to do or where to go,” he said. He was picking at the fraying edge of the tear in his sleeve, pulling a thread loose and winding it around his finger without seeming to notice he was doing it. “I wasn’t a tough kid.” He huffed out a laugh. “I had no idea what life in a werewolf pack would be like.”
