Page 91 of Before the Bond
I thought about it.
Jake may have kept Caleb’s secrets, but there was one thing he’d never managed: hiding how he actually felt. Not for long. His worry showed up on his face. His relief did, too. Hishappiness practically announced itself from across the room. I’d been able to laugh with him, listen to him, and feel whatever was between us as something real — not managed, not performed.
I swallowed and nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “You can tell me.”
Jake told me about the other side of the bond.
When Caleb had explained it to me the morning after the attack, he’d described what proximity did for both of them — the strength, the awareness, the way the connection deepened the closer they were. I’d never asked what happened on the other end of that. I hadn’t wanted to.
“When you left,” Jake said, “it hit him hard. He’s not just missing you. He’s losing the life force he put into you seven years ago. When you two were apart before, the drain was slow. You didn’t know about any of it, the bond was never fully acknowledged, so the connection was… muted. But now?”
He shook his head.
“It’s draining him.”
I pressed my hand against my forehead.
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “After everything, he’s still hiding things from me.”
“He did it because he didn’t want you to feel guilty,” Jake said. His voice didn’t waver. “He’d rather die with you free than live with you there for the wrong reason.”
“Well, he shouldn’t be deciding for me beforehand!”
I sounded angry. The only thing I could actually feel was my heart doing something unsteady in my chest. Without even seeing Caleb, I could feel my body tighten the way it had the first morning I’d found him in the grass.
Is it the bond?I thought.Or is it just me?I couldn’t tell anymore. I wasn’t sure that distinction was as clear as I’d wanted it to be.
I tried to slow my breathing down.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” I asked. “About the drain, about what leaving would do to him — why didn’t he just… say it?”
Jake looked at the wall. He thought about it, the way he took most things seriously underneath all that warmth. When he answered, the words came slowly.
“Because it would’ve felt like asking you to stay.”
The words sat there.
I thought about every time Caleb stepped back when he could have stepped forward. The story at the fireplace, the wolf who kept his mate without ever asking what she needed. The morning in the kitchen when he’d passed close enough to touch and chosen not to. Every exit he’d quietly left open for me, all the way up until the moment he’d told me I was free to go knowing it might kill him.
It should have made me angry.
I couldn’t find the anger.
“That’s not all,” Jake said.
He gave me the rest of it then — the Voss pack, the mobilization, how they’d figured out I’d left and were drawing in across the estate while Caleb was vulnerable.
“They know we’re weaker without him,” Jake said. “Donovan and Stella are already with him. I’ll be joining them shortly. But they’re banking on using Caleb’s condition to win, and the Voss pack knows as long as they haven’t technically crossed the line yet, our hands are tied.”
“What about allies? You mentioned them before.”
“Not fast enough,” he said. “Even if I could reach them tonight, they wouldn’t make it in time.”
He paused.
“It will be dangerous if you go back,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”
