Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)

“Sabrina.” When I say her name, I say it softly. Carefully. “We’re not stringing you along, I promise. We’re just trying to be realistic.”

Sabrina throws back her head and laughs, but there’s no humor in it.

“Realistic?” Her voice comes out cracked and broken. “How on Earth is any of this realistic?”

She waves her arms around her at the night air, at the forest, at us.

“You’re wolf shifters. There’s nothing realistic about you.”

Rory, Kaleb, and I share a glance—and now it’s our turn to burst into laughter.

“What?” she snaps at us, her foot tapping impatiently on the ground. “What is it? What’s so funny?”

It takes me a minute to be able to splutter between my gasps for air.

“It’s funny,” I say, sounding like a maniacal crazy person, “because it’s true.”

Another moment later, I manage to compose myself enough to straighten back up. This time, when I reach to rest one hand on Sabrina’s shoulder, she doesn’t flinch away. She still pulls back a bit, but I see it as an improvement.

“I’m sorry, I … we … sometimes it’s easy to forget how different our world is from everyone else’s.” From yours.

Just the thought, the single string of words played over in my own mind, sobers me all of a sudden.

And all of a sudden, I see the dark clearing as she sees it.

Strange. Foreign. Dangerous.

She must see it on my face, because her posture softens under my touch.

“See,” she whispers, “now, don’t you see?”

I nod ever so slightly. “Only a little.”

“See what?” Rory says, a little too loud over my shoulder.

Even though Sabrina doesn’t roll her eyes, I imagine the urge can’t be easy to suppress.

“You can’t see how all this must look to me. How the things you keep telling me, what Lydia said tonight, it’s not … it’s not okay.”

Her face scrunches up a bit. “That doesn’t begin to sum it up. I just … I can’t find the right words.”

She stamps her foot in the dark, and though I know she means it out of frustration, it’s just so god-damned adorable that I want to sweep her up in my arms and kiss her.

The fact that I can’t makes the animal in me ache.

“What is it you want from me?” she whispers into the silence. “Can’t you just break the bond and go find someone else. Someone … better suited?”

I wait for Kaleb to answer impulsively, or for Rory to spout some honest, if rather blunt, truth.

But neither of them does. Instead, they both—then all three—look to me.

My hand trails down Sabrina’s shoulder, tracing the outline of her arm until I’m able to gently take her hand. I lift it to my face, closing my eyes as I nuzzle into it. I take in the scent of her, one long lungful of it.

“We couldn’t do that even if we wanted to,” I say, the words coming slow and breathy. “And that isn’t what we want.”

“Then what is?”

I squeeze her hand. “To be with you as long as we can. As long as you’ll have us.”