Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)

I know they’re doing it to try to spare her some kind of pain, or out of some respect for our own secretive traditions, but it’s not doing her any favors.

This girl … as much as everyone’s trying to avoid admitting it … is my mate. She might be shared with my brothers, this bond might tie me to them nearly as much as it does to her, but that doesn’t negate the fact that as inconvenient as this pairing is, this is it.

It won’t happen again.

Not for me. Not for us.

Not in this lifetime.

Rory gets to his feet beside Sabrina, his muscles pulling tired and slow. “I’ll drive you hom

e.”

“Actually,” I say, forcing my own body to spring to life as I get up beside them. “We should walk. You, me, Kaleb, and Sabrina. Sabrina, you don’t mind, do you?”

She looks a little surprised to be asked.

I blame Rory. He’s not very accustomed to the concept of choice.

Pack hierarchy, and all that.

He’s grown all too comfortable with ordering us all—including Sabrina—around.

The night air seems to wake us all up as soon as we step outside. Overhead, the sky is a blanket of tiny stars. No moon shines over us tonight.

Not that I mind. It means no itching in my own skin to shift into a wolf.

I grab a coat from the back of Rory’s Jeep and help Sabrina shrug it over her shaking shoulders. For late spring, the air is still cold enough to make a human girl shiver.

She doesn’t look at me when she takes it, a gesture that makes the growing pit in my stomach grow even heavier.

“We could still drive you,” Rory says, one hand already reaching towards the door of his car.

But Sabrina shakes her head, and I take it as a good sign.

“No, Marlowe was right. We should walk.”

It’s as if, for the first time, my brothers sense the unease in her.

We’ve barely walked ten paces before she breaks the silence again.

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

We all stop suddenly.

Sabrina stands in the middle of the clearing, still a few paces from the edge of the dark forest. She’s shaking again, but it’s no longer from the cold.

When she finally looks up from the damp ground, her eyes are glittering with unshed tears. “I don’t understand what it is you want from me.”

Kaleb takes a half step toward her, but she flinches away. “Stop,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “It isn’t fair. You hold all the cards … and you keep telling me just enough to barely hold on. I won’t be strung along on some fairytale that’s guaranteed to have a bad ending.”

Her breath rises above her in a cloud, and I understand.

She wants a modern fairytale, not Grimm’s.

“Sabrina,” Rory starts, but I can hear that gruffness in his voice again, and I quickly move to stand slightly between the two of them.

I shoot Rory a look that shuts him up faster than anything I could say.