Page 19 of Bound

He squeezes harder before his thumbs strum over my nipples at the same time the man in front of me moves his hand between my legs, cupping me over my long, threadbare T-shirt.

I scream in fear and let my wolf break free. I shift quickly, letting her snap at their hands, leaving blood and bite marks behind.

“You little bitch!” one of them yells before something is thrown over my head, blinding me. A sharp pain in my temple is the last thing I remember before blacking out from the pain.

I shake my head and bring myself back to the present. After that, I told myself I’d never again give them the chance to touch me like that. So I stayed in my wolf form.

If I was eighteen at the time, that would have meant it was five or six years ago. No wonder I’m stuck.

My wolf isn’t like others, though. It’s calmer, more docile, less driven to fight, to hunt, to rage. Compared to my family, I’ve always been the quietest, the one who holds back while the rest of them storm forward, fearless. My hunting instincts don’t seem to exist, and when I asked my parents about it, they shrugged and said not to worry, that I’d probably grow into it when I got older, and that they’d take care of me.

But now I know the truth. My lack of normal wolf instincts—hunting, protecting, fighting—is exactly why my whole family is dead and I’m alive.

Every time I think of them, it twists me up on the inside, this sharp, bitter ache that isn’t just grief, it’s guilt. If my wolf had been like theirs, if I had fought, if I had been strong, maybe we would have died together.

I think of that day all the time. Wondering what I could have done to change their fate, but every scenario I come up with tells me the only reason I’m alive is because I didn’t fight those men, like my whole family did. I’m a coward at heart.

Their wolves took over, and they died from the gunshots within seconds. I would be too if my wolf had tried to fight. I don’t understand why my instincts are so different from theirs. I curse myself for it. I’d be in the afterlife with them instead of having to spend every day being tortured by a madman. Is being alive really any better than being dead if I spend it like that?

But I’m not in that place anymore.

Now I’m here, in the woods, surrounded by five male wolf shifters who won’t let me leave, but also aren’t harming me… yet. In fact, they seem to be caring for me, bringing me food and water, tending to my injuries. I noticed how they cleaned my stab wound to help it heal. They must have done that during those first three days when I was out cold, recovering from my journey.

That reminds me that I’d been unconscious around them fordays,and they didn’t do anything to me.

So why do I still fear them?

They scare me, not because I feel threatened by them, but because I don’t know what they want, or why they’re still here. They said they just want to help me, but that couldn’t be the only reason.Whydo they want to help? What’s in it for them?

I move to sit at the edge of the cave and watch as they do things around the clearing. The lumbersnack stands shirtless, chopping some more wood for the fire. His chest is the widest one I’ve ever seen.

How did he get to be so big? Does he bench-press trees?

Maddox sits by the fire, whittling a piece of wood with a sharp knife. Something about the way he’s concentrating makes me want to move closer, to see what’s caught his focus. I’ve never seen anyone like him before. Not just the way he looks with his hair pulled up into a knot at the top of his head, and the sharp glint in his green eyes, but I can sense a strange energy coming from him.

They all have it, actually. But Maddox is different. Although he appears to be the smallest of the group, he has this larger-than-life presence about him. Something that’s natural. He doesn’t need to announce that he is the leader of this pack, the alpha, because the energy just rolls off him, making me want to sit up and listen, my whole body eager to do whatever he asks.

The sharp sound of an ax hitting a log has me turning backto watch the giant lumbersnack in action. All of their bodies are extremely drool-worthy. As my sisters would have said, they’re built like Greek Gods.

Their mates are lucky ladies.

That thought has my stomach churning.Wereany of them mated? Maybe some of them were still single. Or all of them? They are all handsome alphas; there is no way they could be single, is there?

They had been out here for almost a week now. Surely they wouldn’t leave their mates alone to tend to another female?

I try to recall what I know about bonded and mated wolves. My family had never hung around other shifters, so I really only knew what my parents had told me. I knew they had been fated mates. Mom said as soon as they cast eyes on each other in a nightclub, they knew. They said it was like being struck by lightning, and they felt an undeniable pull to each other, along with other sensations they didn’t go into. They were never apart after that.

When I look at these five, I do feel something, but I wouldn’t say it was a bolt of lightning, so none of them are my fated mate.

Mine.

I gasp at the intrusive thought. My wolf hasn’t had separate thoughts from me in years, which probably means it’s me who felt the need to lay claim to them.

Shaking off the intrusive thought, I turn to look at the others. Gage has his nose shoved in a book, the title unreadable from here, but his eyes are lifted as he stares at me with a frown pinching his brows.

“Bain!”

I jolt in surprise, the loud voice startling me, and look to see Hunter beckoning the blond giant over.So the lumbersnack’s name is Bain.