Page 53 of Bound to the Wolf
His face was still too pale under the freckles, and a wet patch of sweat had spread down the front of his borrowed t-shirt. He stood with his feet planted wide apart, like he didn’t trust his own balance, and his brown eyes, not gold, not anymore, but close, locked onto hers the moment she turned.
“You’re both the freaking same,” Elise muttered.
Delainey didnotappreciate the comparison.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
The last time Reece had been at Nico’s new cottage, it had been full of wary witches and wolves on their guard. That wasn’t too different from what was happening right now.
He could feel the tug of the connection telling him the direction Delainey was in, and knew from her scent that she was standing out on the driveway about twenty-five feet away.
He was barely inside the door, looking over his new home. Half-unpacked boxes were stacked in a corner, the whole place only looking half moved in. One sat on the counter in the kitchen, full of plates that Nico, or perhaps Elise, hadn’t bothered to take out.
The coffee maker, thankfully, had made it to the counter. Several books sat on the brand new bookshelf. Reece knew Nico wasn’t much of a reader, so those must have come from Elise.
When he spotted the titles and covers, many of them cartoonish with men and women in strange poses, beachy backgrounds, and one that looked like a Hallmark-style illustration of a coffee shop with a prancing puppy on the cover, he knew they had to come from Elise.
“You really don’t have to do this,” Reece told Nico.
The other beta shrugged. “I’m not even fully moved in yet. And the pack will freak if Delainey tries to move into the house. Believe me, Elise could tell you,” he shuddered. “That?—”
“This is your home,” Reece insisted.
Internally he bristled at the thought of the pack rejecting Delainey just because she was a witch. What right did they have?
He knew he was a hypocrite for even thinking it. He had not exactly been welcoming to Elise, even before he knew she was a witch.
But Delainey was different. She was his.
His responsibility, he was hasty to mentally add.
Nothing other than that and the strange tether tugging them together, and until it was dealt with, it wasn’t like they could live separate lives, not unless they could find two apartments barely bigger than shoeboxes.
Reece saw Delainey grab a suitcase out of Briana’s car and haul it toward the house. She looked tired but not defeated. There was a sure set to her shoulders. She walked with purpose.
No, she walked like she was going into battle, and it might have been against him.
Reece forced himself to look away.
“The other choice was you staying with the coven,” Nico pointed out.
“Absolutely not.” The denial came out before Reece could even consider it.
Delainey, Elise, and Aya entered the house before he and Nico could say anything else. With Cole’s permission, and possibly his blessing based on how relieved he had sounded when the witches asked, Serena and Briana were setting up wards around the cottage and around the edge of pack territory, just in case whoever had set the manacles came looking for them before they could figure out who had kidnapped him and Delainey.
“Where do you want this?” Aya was holding a large box labeled fragile. Delainey rushed over and took it from her.
“That’s my computer, let’s be careful with that,” she said, tucking the box against her hip and steadying it with both hands. “Precious cargo.”
“There’s a desk in the corner,” Reece said, nodding toward the small wooden desk wedged between the bookshelf and the window, its surface bare except for a single power strip with its cord trailing to the baseboard outlet.
Delainey didn’t spare him a look as she crossed the room and set the box down. Elise came over with another box that seemed to have a monitor in it and put it right next to the first. She didn’t bother to ask him if he needed the space, and Reece didn’t make a big deal of it. He wasn’t exactly the desk job type.
Delainey took her time setting up the computer. Reece realized she was doing her best to ignore him, something that was going to get more difficult the second all their buffers walked away and left them alone.
Aya came over to him and Nico. “I’m going to do some more research on the manacles,” she promised. “I think there might be something tied to sympathetic magic, which is my specialty. That’s how the tether jumped from the manacle, I think, but I’m not sure.”
