Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)

“Where?” Rory asks.

“I want to come with you tonight. I want to see what a full transformation is like.”

“You can’t,” Rory says so suddenly, and so sharply, that I freeze in place. “You can never come with us for that.”

I expected some resistance, but I don’t expect this.

“Why not?” I can’t hide my disappointment when I look back up, forcing myself to meet his eye.

“It’s not safe.”

Not safe.

I have to stop myself from letting out a bitter bark of a laugh myself. Not safe?

I’ve spent the last year running, looking for safety. Now that I’ve found it, they want to try to tell me they’re worse than the danger I’ve been running from?

It’s a good thing Lydia isn’t here to listen to my thoughts, or she might be shocked.

“Come on,” I say, my frustration seeping into my voice, “I know what I’m asking. None of the three of you will hurt me, not even while you’re a wolf.”

“You don’t know that,” Marlowe says, my pleading eyes having no effect on him. “Shifting is unpredictable, even for us.”

I feel betrayed. Et tu, Marlowe?

For once I wish he’d just take my side instead of playing along with Rory or Kaleb.

“I know that you won’t hurt me,” I say again. “I want to come. Please. I want to understand you better.”

“You can’t come,” Rory says, not even trying to hide the sharp edge of his voice. “You can never come, so you’re just going to have to put it out of your mind.”

Kaleb starts to interrupt him, but Rory flips around and gets in his face with a dominant posture that looks as if it is meant to quiet Kaleb down. It has its intended effect.

What did Romulus say to them this morning? Whatever it is, it’s put Rory in a mood—arrogant, short-tempered, stubborn—just like when we first met. I knew I’d see this time of him eventually, I just didn’t expect it to come so soon.

And I didn’t think he’d treat me like this again. Like a nuisance. Like a silly girl who doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into.

Though he doesn’t say as much, it’s as if I can hear their thoughts in my own head. I know what they’re thinking, because it’s what I’ve been thinking too.

No matter how close they get to me, no matter how much they fall for me, or even if they discover the way I’m falling for them in return; I will never truly be a part of them. It’s the same truth I’ve been trying to avoid for weeks now.

They’ll go to pack rituals that I won’t be able to attend, and in turn, I’ll be left out of all their family protects and holds sacred.

No matter how I feel for them, so long as I’m here with them, I’ll be forced to live a double life.

I don’t know why it hits me here, in the dark cool of the forest just before sunset.

I don’t know why it didn’t fully dawn on me in all the weeks before—when I first discovered their wolfish nature, when I was told I couldn’t be turned, or even when I was first told we could never be together.

It doesn’t get any plainer than that.

But it’s here, now, with trembling lips and vision that’s started to grow dark at the edges, that it finally crashes down on me.

And Rory, and Marlowe, and Kaleb … none of them see it.

I felt the start of this realization weeks ago. I knew this wouldn’t work, that it would be better to end it then, before we became more attached. I never should have let Marlowe convince me otherwise.

Rory checks his watch and looks back up into the forest, his eyes scanning the deepening colors without a single sign that he’s sensed the way my world is crumbling in around me. It’s never been so painfully obvious that he definitely didn’t inherit Lydia’s gift.