Page 32 of Bound to the Wolf
She and Reece had trekked across more of these damned woods until night encroached again with no sign of more pursuers. If the two from earlier had friends, they might still be waiting for them to report back, and they never would because she had killed a man today.
Well, a werewolf, but close enough. He was in his human form. He had a face, and he was dead because of her.
Their second night’s camp was rougher than the first, a narrow shelf of flat ground between two boulders, barely wide enough for both of them to sit side by side. Reece had scraped out another shallow fire pit and built the flames up from dry pine needles and split sticks. The boulders at their backs were cold and gritty.
She squeezed her eyes shut until her face hurt, then blinked them open again. She had never killed someone before.
Delainey liked to fight. She liked violence. But this wasn’t a time of war. She was a civilized woman; when would she have had the chance?
The chance, ha!
As if it was something she had been waiting for. Bile swirled around her near-empty stomach, and she wasn’t sure if it was the hunger making her nauseous, or the shock, and surprisingly, the guilt.
She didn’t feel guilty for fighting back. It was her life or his. But she had thought if she was ever going to kill someone, she would have meant to do it. The blast of power she had sent his way should have knocked him off his feet. Maybe knocked the air out of his lungs.
It shouldn’t have sent him crashing into a tree and broken his neck.
But Delainey had to keep on a brave face.
She didn’t want Reece to know how much this had rattled her. As a werewolf, he had probably killed dozens of people. Life in a pack was violent; at least, that was what they said. Though from what Elise had told her, the most violence she had witnessed had come from a battle over who was going to get the last cupcakes on some wolf’s birthday at a party last month.
There was a hollow in her chest, all cold and heavy, like something fundamental had changed about her. She had to find something to fill it, because she wasn’t going to let some kidnapper werewolf steal a piece of her… even if she had stolen everything from him.
Something snapped in the fire, and she forced herself not to jump. Reece was a shadow next to her. Too close, too present, but they couldn’t escape one another, not with the stupid, freaking shackles on their wrists.
Beyond the boulders, the woods were a wall of black, the trees visible only as slightly darker columns against the sky. Thetemperature had dropped sharply once the sun went down, and Delainey could see her breath in the orange glow.
Her stomach growled, and the shadow that was Reece looked her way.
“We should hunt,” he said.
“No.” It came out fast. An automatic denial that wasn’t exactly logical; neither of them would be on their best if they were faint from hunger. But she recalled the skinned bunny from yesterday and didn’t think she could handle the blood.
The wolf she had killed hadn’t bled. Was that a small mercy? Or did it make it worse, that he had looked like he was sleeping if you ignored the wrong angle his head was tilted at.
“It won’t take long,” Reece offered, as if that was her objection.
But she shook her head harshly. She reached into her pocket and pulled out two protein bars. That was the only thing her—don’t call him a victim,she thought—the rogue wolf had been carrying. She offered one to Reece.
“You got that off a dead man,” he said, and it felt like a stab to the heart.
“If you won’t eat it, I will.” She started to jerk her hand back, but he reached out and grabbed the bar, his fingers brushing over hers.
Delainey put thoughts of its provenance out of her head and tore into the wrapper, eating it like it had done something to her: stole her boyfriend, called her a bitch. It tasted like ash and fake chocolate, but that might have been two days in the forest.
The bar didn’t last long, and her stomach was still growling when she stuffed the wrapper into her pocket.
She shouldn’t litter, she thought distantly, and had to bite back a laugh at the ridiculousness of it. They had left two dead bodies some miles back, and she was worried about one biodegradable wrapper.
Her priorities were skewed.
Reece stuck his own wrapper in his pocket and stared at the flame.
“Was that your first kill?” he asked.
He didn’t look at her when he said it—his gaze stayed fixed on the fire. His voice was still a bit gruff, but he was having an easier time talking now. If the manacles were messing with his wolf, he was starting to get some control back.
That made one of them because she still couldn’t control her magic.
