Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)

For a second, I panic. My body writhes uncontrollably against the restraints, but they won’t loosen. Finally, I’m able to get ahold of myself just enough to wiggle my hand out from between the mangled strings at the top to unzip the hoodie and slide free of it.

The brief moment of relief that floods through me comes too soon.

The second I’m free of the garment, I drift down into a strong undertow and am swept away. It’s like the ground drops out beneath me. One moment, I’m trapped and tangled in the darkness, the next I’m thrust into a spinning current that moves so quickly, I immediately lose track of which way is up, and which way is death.

I shoot my arms out, trying to stop my spin. I manage to gouge one hand on a sharp rock outcropping, and though it’s too slippery to get a grip, it does help me get my bearings.

Just for a second.

By the time I surface and am able to take a heaving gulp of air, I see that I’ve already been carried to the bend in the river. I surface just in time to avoid bashing my head on a rock before I’m pulled under a second time.

This part of the river is not like the part we were sitting by. Here, the river narrows into rapids with white-capped water and steep, rocky banks. Each time I’m able to stay afloat just long enough to take in a half lungful of air. Never enough to stem the feeling that I am steadily, surely, drowning.

This is it.

Everything I’ve worried about, everything I’ve done to try to keep myself safe, it’s all for nothing if I end up drowning in this river, right now. It’s all pointless if it ends here.

More importantly, however, I realize that I don’t want it to end here.

I don’t want it to end like this—the pointless end to a long line of pointless self-torture. Because that’s what it’s been, hasn’t it? All the running. The hiding. The keeping people away, never letting anyone in.

It’s all just been leading up to … to … this?

No.

This can’t be it.

The next time I surface, I try to scream. I prepare to lose my last chance at breath, just for a shot at being heard, but as soon as I open my mouth water crashes against me and fills my throat with water.

I’m not able to make a single sound.

I’ve watched drowning scenes in the movies before. They always make it seem so peaceful, like all of a sudden you just stop breathing and you’re dead … peacefully, open-eyed, and motionless. But that is not at all the way it feels in real life. My lungs burn, my limbs are flailing around me, and terror grips at every corner of my mind.

It’s not at all like the movies.

All I can keep thinking over and over and over inside my head, is how pointless it all was. That this is it. After everything I tried, this is the end of me.

Maybe this is what I deserve. This deep, dark water. The sharp sting of rocks. The sweeping undertow dragging me—like life—beneath the surface.

I’m so sure that this is the end, that when I do feel something hook underneath my arm and start pulling me upward, I’m not even sure if it’s real or not. At this point, I think I’m too delirious and numb to understand what’s happening anymore.

This must be what it is to be dragged to the underworld.

No angels beckoning. No welcoming trumpets.

Just more sharp, jagged rocks across my back.

Darkness closes around my vision as if I’m entering a subway tunnel, and then just as quickly I blink my eyes and I can kind of see blocky shapes fo

rming in front of my eyes.

Slowly, the forms begin taking shape. Even in my delirious state, I recognize Rory’s face materialize above me.

But how could that be?

He was way back with the others and I’m too far down river for anyone to have caught up with me. I lose my thoughts again as the darkness closes in. When I open my eyes again, Rory is still there. His face looks blurred as it pulls away from my own face.

Am I breathing?