Chapter 20
Junie
Everything hurts. I’ve lost a fair amount of blood, or at least I think so. How would I know? This is the first time I’ve been in danger, and of course it’s in the middle of a snowstorm.
I’m physically exhausted from fighting to get down over the past few minutes, and I’m mentally exhausted from watching Silas lose consciousness.
That’s not something I ever expected to see, nor do I want to see it again.
My heart can feel his, and I have no idea if that’s normal or makes any sense.
I wasn’t conscious when he first entered the clearing, but when I came to I felt so much.
There were waves of anger barreling toward me, and it took me a moment to open my eyes and see that I wasn’t having a dream. Silas was here.
He came for me.
It’s what I wanted, right? I would have liked him to come with others, but if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t stop to get back up.
Okay, maybe I would. But I’m special because I’m human with barely any muscle. He’s a goddamn wolf.
Why didn’t he shift? Couldn’t he have easily taken them while shifted?
Fuck.
My eyes are on the verge of closing again, tired of everything. I don’t have a lot left in me. All of my bones feel frozen, but at least the wind has died down around us. I’m still suspended, but I’m alive.
I’m alive.
Silas is here.
Jake fights my captors alongside a few other people. Fran isn’t here, but I’m assuming she’s communicating with people since that’s more her role for things like this.
It only takes Jake a few minutes to kill Henry, the rogue leader. If I’m right and there are no others, then I’m safe. We are safe.
My mind urges me to celebrate, to thank Jake and the others.
But every ounce of strength has vanished, and all I want is to curl up and sob for hours.
This is nothing like my usual life. My days are full of baking and smiling at customers, not dealing with wolves that want to use me as bait.
Still, if I can convince Silas to let me in, this is the life I’d choose.
I’ll need a long, deep sleep before I can accept that.
Jake stalks toward me, grabbing a knife from his hip and handing it to a man with golden blonde hair. “Cut her down but make sure she doesn’t drop. Lower her, and I’ll catch her. Got it?”
The man nods and walks to the other tree where the warder tied me up.
It takes a second before I’m momentarily falling through the freezing air. Jake catches me like he said he would, and smiles.
“Hi, beautiful. Need a rescue?”
I chuckle. “I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding from head to toe, Jake.”
“Eh, battle scars. Makes you one of us.”
“If I knew this was the initiation, I would have said no.”
It’s his turn to chuckle. “Fair enough. Come on, let’s get you back home.”
Home. I want to go home so bad.
And not to Starview.
That doesn’t feel like home anymore, knowing that when I head that way, Silas won’t be there. And you know what? I want to be where Silas is. I don’t care if I have to tie him to his bed and make a goddamn PowerPoint to give him all the reasons why we should be together.
He can’t reject me.
He won’t reject me.
If he wanted to, he would have done so this morning.
I’m on the verge of passing out again, but I have to know how he’s doing.
“Silas. How is he?” I ask Jake.
He grimaces, and I already hate that I was the cause of this. “Not good, but he will survive. He suffered a fairly deep gash on his stomach.”
I nod, blinking away tears. He’ll survive.
That means we get time to figure out what this mate bond is between us.
Or, I get to figure it out. Silas is privileged to know about the bond—what it entails, what happens when it breaks, and how to seal it.
I don’t know much, besides what I’ve read and what I’ve now experienced.
“Jake?”
“Hm?” he asks, carefully setting me down on a quad. I’m thankful to see I don’t have to walk or be carried all the way back.
“Do humans and wolves feel bonds differently?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? You don’t know? How?”
“We’ve never had a human bond with a wolf. Chosen bonds, yes. Fated bonds, though? Never to my knowledge.”
“Oh.”
Jake smiles softly, and I have a feeling it’s him apologizing for not being able to give me more answers.
I need to talk to Silas, I know that, and I will.
Will he want to talk to me, though? If he came for me, isn’t that a sign he wants to talk or something?
You’d think that with being nearly thirty, I’d be able to read men more.
But if anything, I’m worse at it than ever before.
And Silas has been the most moody of them all.
He’s temperamental and can go from happy to angry within moments.
But now that I’ve had time to learn and get to know him, I think he’s had a rough time the past few years, and I’m realizing it’s his way of guarding his heart.
He doesn’t want people to get too close.
Unfortunately, he can’t push me away anymore.
I’m too stubborn, and he’s going to learn that real quick.
The ride back to camp is cold and quiet. I do my best to hold on to Jake as we swerve back through the forest. My kidnappers took me only two miles from home.
As soon as I see smoke from the cabins, I breathe a sigh of relief. We are so close. The closer we are, the lighter my chest feels. I can’t wait to change out of these drenched clothes and get someone to take care of my wounds.
Fran is waiting for us on Silas’ porch. The Alpha rode with another wolf, but since he’s unable to sit up, it took some figuring out to get him get him steady enough to ride back.
He’s still unconscious, but they were able to carefully lay him down on the back of one of the quads and loosely tie him down.
His legs folded toward the driver, and they held on to them as they swerved around.
Silas wasn’t awake anyway, so his level of comfort didn’t matter.
What mattered was getting us home. We both need to heal and rest.