Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)
“Strange,” I say, squinting up at him. The aching pain is gone, but the emptiness it’s left behind …
It’s like the silence before.
It feels wrong.
It feels somehow worse.
All three boys seem to simultaneously share a look of pain, not physical pain … more of a heartache.
“What’s going on?” I ask, trying to sit up as panic starts to sweep over me. “What’s happened?” I feel myself starting to get hysterical, which only intensifies as I notice Kaleb look away with an expression as if he’s just been shot in the gut.
Something is wrong.
That emptiness, that lack of something …
“It’s our bond, isn’t it?” I say, finally struggling up into a sitting position. I’m almost at the point of screaming, now. “I can feel it. It’s different. What’s wrong?” I ask again, turning to Rory, who’s sitting the closest to me, in hopes that he’ll give me an answer.
“Calm down,” he says as he wraps both his hands around mine in a way that isn’t comforting at all. “The bond is still there, it’s just … changed.”
I search for the bond, and though it’s there … it’s hard to grasp around my spinning mind.
“Changed, how?” I ask, even more panicked. “You can feel it too, can’t you?”
“Of course, we can feel it,” Marlowe says gently. “But it’s been altered.” He shares another one of those looks with his brothers. “All three of us can tell that the bond feels differently, smells differently.”
It isn’t until he glances away again that I notice something behind him, out the window. The light has changed. It’s dark … but not as if sunset is approaching. It’s as if it’s already come and gone.
It’ll soon be morning again.
The day after I was supposed to shift for the first time. The morning after my first full moon.
The shift. It was supposed to be the night of my first shift.
“How?” I choke out, tears starting to stream down my face as all the pent-up emotion in me spills over. I don’t know how to ask them about the bond. I don’t know what to. Ask. So, instead, I ask the first other thing that comes to mind. “Did I shift last night?”
Everyone glances at each other again, and I fear for the worst.
Kaleb turns back around to look at me and I notice that he has tears in his eyes too. I’ve never seen Kaleb cry before, and it scares me.
“Sabrina,” Lydia says at my side. “You were much too ill to shift last week.”
My stomach sinks like lead.
“Last week? How long have I been asleep for?”
Her response, given after a slight pause, does nothing to soothe my racing pulse.
“Eight days.”
I know I’ve been ill before. I’ve missed nights. Multiple days. But never a week.
And never like this. Even Romulus looks indescribably pained. It’s not a look I’ve seen on him before.
“Honestly,” Romulus says, reaching for Lydia’s hand beside him. “We weren’t sure if you were going to survive at all.”
I look to Lydia. I know that she’ll tell me the truth.
“Lydia, please tell me what’s going on,” I plead, keeping my eyes glued to hers. “What is it that no one wants to tell me?”