Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Delainey was glaring at a dead rabbit.
There was a bit of blood on its brown fur, and it was tiny and limp. It had been incredibly fast. She had gotten a stitch in her side being forced to chase after Reece as he bounded after it.
“I’m sorry, Bun Bun. Reece wanted to play fetch.”
It was one of those times he took off sprinting and didn’t give her a chance to stop him. The manacles were doing wonders for her cardio, because Delainey was not a runner and Reece didn’t seem to care.
They were going to have to have a discussion about that, because pretty soon she was going to start putting up with the massive pain from the manacles rather than dealing with the man-wolf who kept thinking he got to control their direction and speed just because he was bigger and faster.
Reece was next to a tree now, shoulders tight with tension. He was breathing slow and steady, almost like he was counting each breath to make sure he didn’t forget.
She was pretty sure he was trying to let the man come closer to the surface. The wolf had been in control for the past several hours. He still looked annoyingly good doing it.
His hair was slicked back from his face with sweat, and though his clothes were dirty with dust from the room they’d woken up in, dirt from the forest, and even a bit of blood from the poor bunny, he looked good.
His shirt had a fresh tear along the left sleeve where a branch had caught him during the chase, and the freckles on his cheekbones stood out sharply against skin that had gone pale from exertion.
She had to tear her gaze away and look toward the small pit that would hopefully be holding a fire pretty soon.
They had to camp for the night. It was getting dark, and already Delainey was having trouble seeing.
The darkness seemed to bloom under the trees and creep out further and further. She could still catch glimpses of the sun through the canopy, but that was becoming harder by the minute.
Their pursuers, if they existed, would be able to use flashlights—they’d be stuck on foot, possibly on four feet if they were werewolves—but there was nothing to be done about it.
If Delainey could control her magic well enough, she would put a ward circle up that might protect them overnight. But she was going to need to do some meditation before she was willing to even try. She didn’t want to accidentally knock down a tree or three setting up a protective circle.
Reece came to sit beside her on a log, as far away as was possible at the moment, and gestured at the firewood in the little pit in front of them.
The log was stripped of its bark on top and worn smooth by weather, wide enough for both of them to sit with about three feet of space between their hips, the maximum the manacles would comfortably allow.
He had gathered it, though she had been forced to follow behind him every step, and she was thankful when she saw him dip his hands in a small stream and wash off most of the bunny guts.
The pit was shallow, barely a hand’s depth, scraped into the dirt between two exposed roots. Reece had stacked the kindling in a rough teepee of dry sticks and stripped bark, with thicker branches leaning against them.
This was a test. She had to control her power when it was still roiling like a hurricane.
She could do it.
Delainey was an experienced witch, and fire was one of her specialties—a hard element to control, and she took pride in the way she wielded it.
She reached inside herself for the tiniest pinch of power, the equivalent of a single match if she could manage it.
She kept her eyes closed, held her hand out, fingers pinched over the firewood, then opened them and let the magic go.
The wood went up like it had been doused in gasoline. The heat hit her face like opening an oven door, and the flames leapt three feet high in a roar that sent sparks spiraling into the canopy, each one winking out against the dark leaves above.
The whoosh of it made her jerk back, hoping she didn’t catch her hair on fire. Reece flinched. He threw one arm up in front of his face, and she felt the log shift beneath them as his weight lurched sideways.
“Damn it.” That was supposed to be a flicker. Just a candle’s worth of flame.
Instead, she had created a bonfire.
But she hadn’t burned down the forest around them, so maybe it was a win. She could have killed Reece with that flick of magic she had sent his way in the shack; that had been obvious when she launched him into the wall. It was only supposed to be a nudge.
All she had wanted was to create a little space, make him step back. It was a normal way to use magic. She used it on her coven sisters all the time and expected it right back from them. But never anything that could cause true violence or harm.
She didn’t like Reece.
Liar, a voice deep in her head said, and she ignored that as hard as she could.
She didn’t like Reece. But that didn’t mean she wanted to kill him. And if she was going to kill him, she wanted to do it on purpose, not because her magic was going haywire.
Reece picked up the bunny and started to peel off the skin with fingers that were too sharp to be considered human.
His nails had lengthened into thick, curved points, not quite full claws but far past anything human, and they slid through the rabbit’s hide with a wet tearing sound that Delainey felt in the back of her teeth.
Delainey looked away.
Reece grunted but didn’t say anything. A few minutes later he had the rabbit on a spit over the fire, rotating it in one hand.
The smell of cooking meat hit her nose, and her stomach growled. It had to be close to dinner time, or the magic she had expended and the hike through the woods had burned so many calories that she would have been hungry, regardless.
Delainey tried to be grossed out by the realities of hunting, but she didn’t have the energy. They needed to eat, and she couldn’t exactly identify which berries were safe and which would make them trip, or which one’s might send them to the hospital.
Not that an ambulance would be coming anytime soon.
While Reece cooked the rabbit, Delainey focused on the manacles.
He could hunt for them, which meant it was her job to figure out the magical problem and try to solve it.
If they could get more than six feet apart, it would probably be a lot easier to fight their kidnappers whenever they caught up.
Because she was sure they would catch up, and soon.
They had been sloppy not to leave a guard on the shack.
Maybe they had assumed the manacles would do more than they were doing, or expected her and Reece to be unconscious for longer. The maybes could pile up forever, but there were no answers to be had, only more speculation.
She turned one wrist over in the firelight, tracing a fingertip along the etchings cut into the metal.
The symbols were layered, one set carved deep, another scratched finer on top, like two different hands had worked the metal at different times.
Where the cuff met her skin, the brass had warmed to match her body temperature, and the edges had already left raw pink indentations around her wrists.
Delainey closed her eyes and let her consciousness seep into her magic. She didn’t reach for any of it this time—she was just sitting in it, trying to find whatever mystical force was linking her to the manacles. Something had to be. That was the only way she and Reece could be so bound together.
She found a thread and followed it, searching inside herself until it met with Reece. She got in deep and—
“Fuck!”
“What?” Reece asked, the firelight carving deep shadows under his brow and along the hard line of his jaw.
Delainey realized she must have said something aloud. “Nothing.” She pressed her palms flat against her thighs and stared into the fire.
But it was very not nothing.
Their lifelines were connected to the restraints. It was a very intense way of binding them together, and there was no way she could undo this connection short of killing him.
Delainey studied the bond as closely as she could and came to the sickening realization that killing him would definitely free her. She wouldn’t need to lug his body around, and she was pretty sure the lock on the manacles would break.
They were tied in a knot, bound to both their life forces, but death would sever that bond. She would be free. And so would he if he killed her.
Delainey clawed her way back out of the magic and stared at Reece. A few minutes later he handed her pieces of rabbit that were a little bit burnt, gamey and unseasoned. The meat was stringy and dry at the edges, charred black where it had sat too close to the flame.
She stuffed the meat into her mouth like the rabbit had deserved a wolfish murder and tried to wrap her head around the situation.
She couldn’t tell Reece, she decided.
She wasn’t about to kill him, but she wasn’t sure it was the same for him. Not one hundred percent.
She was ninety-three point seven percent sure he wouldn’t kill her.
But that left just enough wiggle room that she couldn’t say the words out loud. He didn’t need to know, because murder, other than of innocent rabbits, was not going to happen.
She just had to make sure he didn’t find out there was a way out of this mess for him.