Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Delainey was slumped on top of him. For half a second, Reece considered this good fortune.
Then the memory of the last hour came rushing back: the circle, the sick witch magic that had suffused him, the feeling of being torn apart bit by little bit, drained of everything he was until there was nothing but the connection to Delainey and the manacles that held them together.
His limbs felt hollow, like someone had scooped out everything solid inside him and left only the shell, and a deep ache radiated from his chest outward as though his ribs had been pried apart and put back wrong.
He sat up and found Mark at his side. Mark had his healer’s bag open on the grass beside him, a penlight in one hand and his other palm hovering an inch above Reece’s chest, not quite touching, warm energy already radiating from his fingers.
Briana, Emerson, and Aya had their heads together, while Elise had one hand on Delainey’s, and Serena stood alone, looking bereft.
Serena’s arms were wrapped around herself, her pink-streaked brown hair falling loose around her face, and the oversized university sweatshirt she wore seemed to swallow her as she stood apart from the huddle, her gaze fixed on Delainey’s still form.
Reece tried to make sense of it, but his mind was still hazy. He had no idea what the fuck had happened.
Elise tried to pull Delainey away, and Reece growled. He didn’t want anyone close to her, touching her.
He needed to protect her.
He could still feel some semblance of her deep inside him and knew that whatever they had tried, it had gone wrong.
Next to Delainey were broken pieces of metal; he realized must have been the manacles that had been circling both of their wrists.
The brass had fractured into jagged shards, each piece blackened along the break line as though the metal had been burned from the inside out, and the etchings that had once covered their surfaces were barely visible under the scorch marks.
He brushed his fingers over one of them and felt nothing. Not that he had expected to. It wasn’t like he had any magic of his own. He’d never had that.
But something like magic, something like a connection, burned deep inside of him, and when he followed the tug of that chain, it ended right at Delainey. It was foreign and hot and alive inside him in a way that nothing else ever had been.
It wasn’t his wolf, but it felt as strong.
“You need to let the healer see her,” Mark told him in his strong healer’s voice, the kind that generals wielded on the battlefield.
But Reece couldn’t make himself let go. His wolf was amped up, and it was a surprise he hadn’t shifted, because he felt more animal than man.
He could feel his eyes burning, knew they must be glowing gold, and the bones in his hands ached with the half-urge to shift, his knuckles stretching and the nails thickening at the tips before he forced them back.
He wanted to bare his teeth.
Then Delainey groaned, and the wolf didn’t back up, but he forced himself to give her room to breathe.
“What the fuck happened?” she said.
He felt her reach out with her magic. It wasn’t the scent of witch magic, which he was used to well enough. This was a burn deep in his chest as she reached for her own power and spread it out around them. He felt it like a second heartbeat.
“Are they okay?” Aya asked, stepping forward with the grimoire still clutched against her chest, her ink-stained fingers pressed white against its leather cover.
She had left the group and was looking at them with an incredibly worried expression.
Emerson joined her, and Reece did his best to put his body between him and Delainey.
Absolutely not.
“Stay the fuck back,” Delainey mumbled.
At least they agreed on that. He didn’t know what had gone wrong, but he was more than happy to blame Emerson.
Delainey sat up further, held her hands up, and seemed to realize the manacles were gone.
She grinned. “Well, that’s one thing,” she said, turning her wrists over in the morning light, examining the raw red bands the brass had left behind on her rich brown skin, the marks still faintly warm to the touch.
She met Reece’s eyes, and they both carefully got to their feet. He felt wobbly, like he might have run a marathon and forgotten, though his body certainly hadn’t. His legs shook under him, quads trembling, and the grass beneath his bare feet was cold and wet with dew.
Delainey quirked up an eyebrow and tilted her head to one side, and Reece knew exactly what she planned to do.
He agreed.
Without giving anyone a chance to stop them, he took off running in one direction and she sprinted the other way, just as fast, eating up the ground under his feet, gleeful when he passed that six-foot barrier and didn’t feel pain riding up his arm or a yank pulling him back.
The fence at the far end of the yard was coming up fast, the blue-painted boards rushing toward him, and the grass was slick under his feet but he didn’t care—ten feet, fifteen, twenty—and nothing burned, nothing pulled, nothing screamed.
He made it several more paces before he felt a tug deep in his chest, stronger than the pull he had felt from the manacles, and he forced himself to stop.
He turned around and saw Delainey frozen on the opposite side of the yard, not quite to the fence, looking at him with the same curious expression. She turned around, backed up one step, and Reece felt the pain deep inside him even as he saw her grimace.
It wasn’t the sharp burn of the cuffs; this was deeper, a heavy wrongness in his sternum like a hook embedded in the muscle between his ribs, and each inch of distance pulled it tighter.
He took his own step back, and his wolf surged within him as he fought the urge to fall to his knees and crawl back to her.
He tried to take another step before Cole’s unyielding yell crossed the yard.
“Cut it out,” he demanded. “Whatever’s going on, we need to figure this out. Get your ass back over here.”
Reece grumbled, but was secretly relieved to have an excuse to step closer to Delainey. Still, he scowled at his alpha.
Cole did not appreciate the scientific method.