Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)

With that, he takes the tiny green wolf totem out of his pocket and lays it carefully on my lap. One of the corners is chipped now, but it’s been carefully polished back to a shine.

This. This is what the wolf-girl ended up clamping down on.

This little totem bought me precious moments before these three arrived. It possibly saved my life.

“But how did you get me here?” I ask. “I’m sure three wolves bringing an injured girl into the hospital isn’t something these people see every day.”

Kaleb chuckles. Even in pain, I’m glad he can still find me at least a little humorous.

“We forced ourselves to shift back,” he says.

“You can do that?”

I think back to the girl. I don’t think she could have resisted the urge to shift if she’d wanted to.

“Depends. The full moon wasn’t at a high peak of power last night,” Kaleb explains. “Even if it was …”

He trails off, and it’s Marlowe who leans in next. He squeezes my hand again, lifting it up to press a soft kiss on the center of my palm.

“Even if it was, apparently that pesky little bond between us is more powerful than we thought. We never would’ve been able to let something like that get in the way of saving you.”

A lump rises in the back of my throat.

“How d’you know? Even after …” It’s my turn to trail off. They know what I mean. “After that fight, you followed me.”

“Like we’d let you wander off into the woods alone on the night of a full moon,” Rory says, not looking at me as he says it. There’s a surprising sharpness to his voice that fades when he glances back down to meet my gaze.

“Sabrina,” he says, his voice coming out more as a sigh now as he leans his chest over me and talks closely at my face. “We’ll never leave you alone again. Not for a second. All three of us will always be with you from now on, we promise.”

My breath catches.

I must still be delirious.

“What about that whole thing you said, before, about how I’ll never truly be one of you?” I ask. I’m afraid to believe them, afraid to get my hopes up and let them in again.

I’m afraid to trust them, even though I want to so badly that it hurts.

“You’re a part of us that we can’t live without,” he says. “I was a fool for imagining anything else, even for a second.”

“Rory’s right,” Kaleb says as he comes down to kiss the top of my still-aching forehead. “You’re one of us now. We’ll just have figure out a way to make it work.”

I can feel tears start to well in my eyes. This time, after everything, I don’t even try to hold them back.

Marlowe wipes the wet stream that starts to run over my cheek before laying down on the edge of the bed alongside me. He leans his forehead up against my shoulder.

“For you, Sabrina. We’d find a way to make the world stop turning.”

Kaleb lays down against my other side while Rory sits at the foot of my bed watching over us like a steadfast protector.

I’m not entirely sure what to think of it, all I know is that in that brief moment in the back of my father’s car, I saw the possibility of a future without them in it … and it was a future that I don’t want to live.

I don’t know what the future here holds, but I know one thing for sure.

I want them, all three of them. More than I have ever wanted anything before.

All I can do is hope that’s enough.