Frank removed a wicker chair from a short stack and propped it on the stone floor. The chair groaned as he took a seat. He looked from August to me and then back at August, who’d crossed his arms, tendons pinching underneath his burnished skin. He’d never disclosed the location of where he’d been stationed these past few weeks, but I suspected he’d acquired his deeper-brown hue somewhere in the Middle East. Few regions were as contentious. Well, besides Colorado. Our state was chock-full of contention thanks to feuding packs.
At the elder’s sigh, my stomach cramped again. Maybe it wasn’t hunger. Maybe it was stress. Stress brought on by August’s strange behavior.
“Your abdomen is spasming, isn’t it, Ness?” Frank asked.
Blinking at Frank, I whipped my hand off my middle and clasped my knee.
“It’s normal.”
“Normal?” I croaked.
“A symptom of what you’ve contracted.”
“What I’ve contracted? What have I contracted?”
Frank’s gaze slid toward August. “How’s your stomach, son?”
“Fine,” he replied gruffly.
“What did I contract, Frank?” I was scared now. I wasn’t in pain but definitely in discomfort.
“A mating bond,” Frank said. “That’s what.”
“What?” My brain felt as though it were pirouetting inside my skull. “A what?” I looked toward August.
The color had leached from his skin, and his full lips parted with an inaudible gasp. “No… ”
“Yes,” Frank said. “I’m sorry, son. I imagine this isn’t what you or Ness want to hear, but your wolves decided they were meant for each other.”
Our wolves?
A mating bond?
I sucked in a breath. “What?” I whispered, not because I was dumb or dense-I’d gotten what Frank had just thrown at us-but because I was shocked. Beyond shocked. I was probably experiencing what my mother had felt the night I’d barreled out of my bedroom on four paws and white fur.
While Frank explained the technicalities of a mating bond, I zoned out. I didn’t want a preordained fate. I wanted the freedom to fall in love with the person of my choice. And that person wasn’t August. I mean, I loved August, but as an older brother.
I didn’t love him as more.
I could never love him as more.
“This has nothing to do with love,” Frank said.
Had he heard my thoughts? Had I spoken them out loud?
I scrutinized the beige grout between the slabs of gray stones on the floor. The lines blurred and intersected at wrong angles. This couldn’t be happening… I’d just become part of the pack. I’d just kissed Liam Kolane. I didn’t want a mating bond.
“Mating bonds are evolutionary-”
I cut Frank off. “Like eradicating females?” I was still bitter about this. I think I would always be bitter about my pack ingesting a fossilized tree root to ensure only boys were born to the pack.
“No, Ness.”
A hush fell over the room. Since Frank wasn’t launching into an explanation, and August wasn’t asking any questions, I deduced he’d been brought up to speed about the Boulder Wolves’ selection tool.
“Not to sound pedantic, but let me give you a little history lesson. As you may already know, werewolves began existing when men and women settled around these parts. To survive, our ancestors were given the gift of claws and fur. They used their gifts to protect those who walked the earth only in skin.” Frank scraped in a breath. “To make sure our species endured the test of time, each one of our ancestors was drawn to a particular mate, someone who complemented their skillset, whose genes would ensure the making of a better, stronger wolf.
“Now, with the advent of modernity, the world became less hostile to the settlers, and so our numbers dwindled, but thanks to generations of mating, we never stopped existing. Sadly, with our people being killed off by hunters-”
“Or by tree roots,” I interjected, my gaze wandering over the tiny clumps of earth left behind by dirty boots, clumps that led all the way to a padlocked fridge.
What could possibly be kept in there that merited a lock and chain? The pack artifact? I hoped Liam would destroy it tonight.
“Or by tree roots,” Frank conceded, “mates have become rarer. It still happens, though. Some werewolves will even experience this with humans, a rare occurrence, but still an occurrence.”
“Can we… oosed a rough sigh. This situation was so unfair. “Can we break it?”
“Break it?” Frank rasped.
My navel felt as though it had been filled with gasoline and set on fire. Was that a result of our link? I didn’t press my palm against my abdomen, afraid to bring attention to my duplicitous body.
“Why would you want to break it, Ness?” Frank asked.
I looked at August, who was studying the humming refrigerator in the corner with such intensity that if he’d been a warlock instead of a werewolf, I was pretty sure the fridge would’ve melted into a puddle of steel.
“So few of us are bequeathed such a gift-”
“Gift?” I yelped, cutting off Frank. “The theft of our freewill isn’t a gift. If anything, it’s a curse! Clearly, neither August or I want this.”
August’s gaze zipped off the fridge and landed on me.
My pulse throbbed everywhere. “Right, August?”
After a beat, he said, “Right.”
Frank’s bushy white eyebrows knit on his forehead. “August hasn’t been back for a day. Maybe if you give yourselves some time.”
I shook my head, and my long blonde hair unraveled from the knot I’d wound it in and slipped over my bare arms. “Frank, with all due respect, August and I know each other, but it’s not like that between us. It can never be like that between us.”
“Why not?” the elder asked.
I startled. Why was Frank being so pigheaded about this? Because pack traditions were sacred to him? Well, they weren’t sacred to me.
“What if I left long enough? Will it fade?” August asked.
“Distance dims the strength of the tether, but it won’t make it magically snap. This isn’t like an Alpha bond, children.”
“So only death will stop it?” I mused. “I’m not contemplating dying or killing August,” I added, so they wouldn’t lock me up. I couldn’t lose all my freewill in one night.