Page 58 of Bound to the Wolf
He pulled a shirt over his head. “I’m decent now,” he said.
“I very much doubt that,” but she turned around, and her eyes flicked up and down.
Maybe he preened a little bit under her regard, but he couldn’t help it. However she felt about him, there was a fire in her eyes when she looked at him, and a spark in her scent thathe recognized all too well. If her nose was as attuned as his, she would recognize something similar in his own.
“We need to tell Cole,” he said.
She gestured to the room around them. “I kind of figured that part out.”
He didn’t want to leave his room just yet. He wanted to invite Delainey to sit on the bed, and he would join her, and then maybe one thing would lead to another.
But he knew they needed to go downstairs and find his alpha.
When they did, Briana was with him, which seemed strange. He didn’t know that the witches had become so close to the pack over the last week.
Reece kept his expression neutral. It wasn’t his place to judge what his alpha did or who he talked to. Delainey gave Briana a hug and didn’t seem at all surprised to see her coven sister.
Javi followed them in without being summoned, so he must have noticed both of them in the house. He was strangely serious today. Javi was normally all vivacious energy and humor, but that was caged right now. Thrumming beneath the surface, there was a look on his face that told Reece he was ready for a fight.
“What happened?” Cole asked.
“An attack in the woods,” Reece said. He and Delainey gave a quick rundown of the interaction.
“When was this?” Briana asked.
“A half hour ago,” Delainey said, dropping into a chair. “We were a couple miles away by the ward line.”
It wasn’t a couple of miles, but if her pride needed to think she had hiked that far, he wasn’t going to steal that from her. He could tell Cole and Javi exactly where they had been when it came time to it.
“Well, that points us in the direction of a witch,” Javi mused. Cole was nodding, but neither Briana nor Delainey seemed convinced.
“Someone could have been using hired magic,” Delainey said. “That’s what Austin LaSalle was doing. He had charmed artifacts.”
“But someone attacked us the second we crossed the ward lines,” Reece pointed out.
Delainey shrugged. “There could have been a trigger out there. There’s no guarantee someone was actually there. It was one blast of magic. Someone might have buried a charm in the woods and hoped for a lucky shot.”
“Someone is putting magical land mines in my woods?” Cole growled.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Briana said. “But if you’d like, we can run some scans to see.”
Cole growled again. “I don’t want witches in my woods.”
Reece expected Briana to back down, but she proved she was as much of a leader as Cole. “If you want your wolves to walk blindly into magic, you are welcome to do so. But this is something my coven could handle.”
“We could do it,” Delainey offered. “Reece and me. It’s not like we have much else to do.” The last came out as a grumble.
Reece knew it had to be weighing on her that they couldn’t stay with her coven and help directly, and part of that was on him. If only he could get over his bullshit and let her stay at her home. But no, that wasn’t an option.
He got hives just thinking of living among witches.
“Austin LaSalle,” Javi said, circling back. “Do we know what happened to him? Maybe he had some sort of underling causing trouble?”
Reece nodded along. “Yeah, what did Dawson say about him? Have you followed up on that?” he asked his alpha.
“I haven’t,” Cole admitted. “Dawson told us he was banished. What more can we do? We have no pull over the Iron Runners.”
“And why would he target you anyway?” Briana asked. “You guys have nothing to do with Nico and Elise, and it’s not like you two are—” she made a hand gesture, and Reece could interpret well enough what that meant.
