Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)

I squirm a little at the counter. The coffee maker hisses, ignored, in the corner. The scent of the fresh brew is almost strong enough to cover the scent of anxiety that’s settled over the kitchen—though whether that’s mine, or Lydia’s, is yet to be seen.

“I know a little of it,” she continues again, her eyes finally alighting on something outside one of the windows. “I was human before

too, you know. I know that having your heart lead you in multiple directions at once can sometimes get to be too much. It can feel like you’re trapped, rather than free, from the indecision of it all.”

I shift awkwardly on my feet as I wait for the boys to come downstairs to meet me. Rory had texted to say that they were finishing up something with their dad and that they’d meet me in the foyer when I got here. I have a feeling that was code for “Romulus is chewing us out for not sending you home yet”, not like any of them would tell me.

It’s not that I don’t want answers. I would love answers. I’ve just come to realize that Lydia, as much as she means well, doesn’t really ever give them. She’ll wax poetic for a moment, but when it comes down to it … she still won’t tell me the things I really need to know.

“It’s okay,” Lydia says, suddenly seemingly coming to her senses and patting me on the shoulder. “You have feelings for all three of them, I know that. And it’s okay that you do. It’s also okay to be confused. Surety and security aren’t things you find often once you get mixed up in the pack life.”

I’m not sure how to respond to her. I feel like saying something like “thank you,” but realize that would sound completely stupid. Everything I say around her ends up somehow sounding stupid—even more so around Romulus. To them, I’m just another irresponsible pup.

Worse, I’m just an ignorant human girl.

So instead, I just smile and am relieved when I see the boys rushing down the massive staircase toward us. Kaleb throws an arm around me and all three of them encircle my stool as if I am the sun and they’re my orbiting planets.

“Mind your thoughts now,” Lydia says as they start tugging me off the stool and out of the kitchen. She waggles a finger at them playfully, but fixes Rory with a serious stare for just a second. No one’s said as much, but I’ve come to understand that Lydia actually does have some understanding of their thoughts—all of ours. It’s not just a turn of phrase she uses.

As far as I can tell, it’s not a feature shared by the rest of them. And, like the rest of them, no one seems too anxious to tell me the details. They must hate how she can tell what they’re thinking most of the time. I know I do. Even though she can’t seem to tell the details of my thoughts as well as she can Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb, it still leaves me feeling unsettled.

But the boys just scoff at her now before heading out the door this time, which is somehow ever more unsettling.

“Come on,” Rory says, with a wave of his hand, “we should get out of here before it gets much later. I think we still have time to hike up to the ridge.”

“Unless, of course,” Marlowe says, his breath growing hot on the back of my neck as he draws close, one arm wrapped around my waist, “you’d rather stick around here. We could always call a car to take you home.”

As much as the heat rising in my face and pooling between my thighs makes me want to stay, to look for some dark nook here in the house where we won’t be disturbed, it’s quelled by the fact that Lydia is standing just a couple feet away. She doesn’t look away until she catches me glancing her way.

I know these shifters have a different idea of intimacy than humans do, but it’s still enough to send me leaping up to my feet and heading to the door alongside Rory.

I glance back once at her as we leave and see the same crease between her eyebrows mirroring mine. I haven’t seen the boys act with such disregard to her before and it’s a bit troublesome to be honest. I know there’s a growing tension between all three of them and their parents, but I thought it’d started getting better. I’ve come to like Lydia, as odd as she may be, and even Romulus has been growing on me lately. We, at least, have come to something of an understanding.

Or so I thought.

We’re supposed to work on the school project after school today, but lately I’ve been caring less, and seeing as Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb have literal centuries to finish high school if they want; they don’t seem too worried about it either.

My feelings must be visible on my face, because we’ve barely reached the forest’s edge when Kaleb slips up beside me and jabs me in the side with his elbow.

“What is it? Why the long face?”

I roll my eyes and wriggle free of the elbow trying to jab into me a second time, this time looking for that spot in my ribcage that makes me squeal when poked.

“It’s something I don’t understand,” I say. The three boys exchange a quick look, which only serves to make me talk faster. I have to get this out before one of them finds a way to distract me again. “What I don’t understand,” I say again, “Is that if there are some of you that accept and protect turned wolves, and some of you that don’t; what’s to keep all the packs from getting into fights with each other?”

“There’s a treatise,” Marlowe says, glancing back from up ahead. “About a century or so ago, the packs entered into treatise with each other to follow a certain set of rules that made sure we didn’t encroach on each other’s territories. Most of the packs have human neighbors, and something needed to be laid down so that humans weren’t turned recklessly.”

Kaleb squeezes my hand. “Once the treatise was enacted, it became forbidden for humans to be turned. It was always kind of frowned upon before that … but it was more of an unspoken taboo.”

“And if a human was accidentally turned,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “What would happen?”

Up ahead, Rory stops in his tracks. The lighting here under the trees is dim, but I can still make out the look on his face. He’s distracted today.

“It depends on the pack. On the circumstances,” he answers. “It’s not looked on kindly, that’s for sure. Humans tend not to feel the same allegiance to pack rule that full-blood shifters do.”

I wanted to ask another question; I want to ask what about if a human wanted to be turned. But I kept that question to myself for fear of the reaction it would cause. Instead, I ask about something else that has been burning in my mind for days.

“I want to come,” I say suddenly, glancing down at my feet so as to not see their faces.