Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)

“Oh, I know what you’re really saying. But after the last full moon we decided to stick around a while. I mean, what’s the fun in coming all this way if we can’t even enjoy the scenery a bit before we have to leave again. When’s the big day again, Kaleb?”

“We can talk about this later,” Rory says before Kaleb has a chance to open his mouth. “We were just on our way home.”

I feel the boys tighten their position around me and I start to feel my nerves heighten again.

“Who’s she, anyway?” the girl asks, coming a few steps closer and crouching down to look between the boys at me. There’s something predatory about her.

“No one,” Rory says too quickly.

The girl looks suspicious. She eyes the boys as if she doesn’t trust them, as if they’re protecting some secret that she wants to crack into.

Good luck, lady, I think. Believe me, I’ve tried.

But where I’ve found only questions, somehow, she finds an answer. I see the moment recognition dawns in her eyes as she looks at me, and then, a moment later, it’s followed by a building rage.

“So this is the reason, isn’t it? This human girl?”

“I think you should leave,” Rory says. This time his voice sounds threatening.

She works her jaw for a moment, deciding what sort of form her rage is going to take. There’s a second where I think she’s going to pounce on me. But then it calms and takes another baiting form.

Taunting me. Taunting them.

“Poor little thing. She probably has no idea, does she?”

“Shut up,” Rory shouts. I startle a bit at his voice. He’s definitely starting to lose his temper with this girl, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Normally I’d say not, but something about this girl gives me the impression she’s able

to hold her own and if it comes down to it, fight back. I see the struggle in her for a moment. She wants this fight. She’s practically chomping at the bit for it.

But something holds her back.

“Down boy,” she laughs, “I’m not going to bite her. Just don’t go turning a human now, no matter how much she smells like one of us.”

The change in her tone causes a visible shift in the boys’ posture around me. It relaxes, just a bit. That’s their mistake.

Under any other circumstances, I’d have thought what she said was meant to be some kind of insult. Smell like them? Like everything else today, it makes no sense. And yet, somehow here, it makes all the sense.

I don’t know what it means, but I know it’s a threat.

A threat, apparently, for another day.

She turns around slowly to leave, but she glances back at me one last time with an expression that I can’t quite make out. I hear a low, almost growl-like sound come from Rory as he watches her every move intently.

“Careful …” he says. “Don’t do something that we’ll all regret.”

“Regret? I don’t have any idea what you mean.”

The girl flashes him a wide smile and then does the unthinkable.

She turns into a wolf.

21

Sabrina

There’s no other way to put it. No way to make sense of it.