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“No, it’s okay,” I told her.
“It’s not. I haven’t felt like myself since…” She shook her head again. “Never mind. I should have kept my head at the beginning. Maybe we wouldn’t have been separated.” She released a long sigh. “How’s your neck, Bryn? Does it burn?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Feels like someone’s hitting me in the neck with a blowtorch.”
“Wolves who have been claimed have a slightly easier time with Alpha bites. The wound doesn’t burn for them, but your soulmate was a fucking idiot and didn’t claim you in time.”
Tavi’s sudden mention of Night made my wolf bristle. I was tempted to defend my man, but the word Tavi used distracted me. “Soulmates?”
Tavi snorted, and for a precious moment, it was like she’d returned to her old self. “What? All those romance novels you read, and you’ve never heard the term?”
I chuckled but cut myself off with a wince. Laughing made my wounds even more painful. “No, I’ve heard it before. I just…do you think that’s what Night and I are?”
“It’s obvious. The way you two were around each other was so different from other mated wolves. If I’m right, it means that the bond you have with Night is an even tighter and stronger connection than any other mate bond. It’s something rare and precious, but if it’s not claimed, you’ll get increasingly weaker and weaker the longer you go without it. Until one of you eventually…”
“…Dies?” I finished with a shiver.
“Yes. Until that point, it’ll get so bad that you’ll hardly be able to move. That’s why we need to get out of this place asap.”
“Oh…”
That meant the window of my usefulness to Tavi was closing. I already felt so powerless, so defenseless, but with the Alpha wound on top of my unclaimed bond with Night, I would be more of a liability to Tavi than an asset. I could only imagine how awful it must be for Night...
With a sharp shudder, I realized that Night would eventually fight Troy, but if he was getting weaker each day, he might not survive the encounter. I couldn’t fathom losing him.
I had no idea why he hadn’t claimed me. There was a needling voice in the back of my mind telling me that it was because he didn’t love me the way that I loved him, and even my wolf still felt uncertain. I knew that he cared about me, but I wasn’t very strong or brave like Tavi or Night. Maybe there was some hidden code to soulmate bonds that even Tavi didn’t know? Maybe I needed to prove myself to him to show him that I was worthy of the bite? Or maybe there was a specific day that would work better for soulmate claimings?
If either was the case, then why hadn’t anyone told me? I closed my eyes again and tried to breathe through the frustration that had begun to worm its way through my mind. My wolf whined at me and paced. She was uneasy about the places my line of thinking was taking me. I couldn’t be sure what exactly bothered her about it, but I knew she wanted me to stop.
And she was right. Wondering about all this was ultimately pointless. Whether I needed to prove myself or Night had been waiting for a certain date, neither would help me or Tavi right now. I needed to focus on the facts: I was in Troy’s clutches, I was badly wounded, and there was no easy way of escape. I also knew that I loved Night. No amount of self-doubt or uncertainty could change that.
And I needed to believe in Night and in the certainty of the love we shared if I wanted to last another day.
I wasn’t so naïve to think that I was going to walk away from this, especially with all of my injuries. One of the few silver linings to this situation was that I would probably die before Troy got what he wanted from me. But there was still hope for Tavi. I didn’t know what had happened to her in the days since we’d been apart, but it was clear that she still had the energy and will to fight. I wasn’t planning on dying until I made sure she could get away safely.
“Where did Troy’s men take you, Tavi?” I asked.
Tavi hesitated, and then slid her gaze away. “I was moved to another space in the cave. I think I was pretty close to the entrance.”
“Do you know how many wolves were around?”
“Besides Troy and the other two wolves, I know of one other wolf.”
So that meant there were four wolves total that we had to contend with. All of them were healthy males, and one was an unhinged Alpha. That didn’t bode well for us.
“Could you see outside?”
“No, but I could smell the grass, and the Kootenai, and I could hear the birds.”
“Do you know how long we’ve been here?” I’d tried to gauge the time by the amount of light shining through the small hole in the roof of the cave, but after Troy’s beatings, I knew my timing was off because of how long I’d spent asleep and recovering.
“Four days,” Tavi said quietly. “Bryn, I don’t think we’ll be able to last another one.”
“Neither do I.” I forced myself to think. Tavi had suggested we make Troy mad enough to unshackle us. Maybe we could do something a bit different. “Tavi, let’s go back to your plan.”
“What? Oh! You think it could work?”
“I think trying to get Troy to beat us might send him over the edge. I really thought he was going to kill me this most recent time. Why don’t we scare him instead? You could pretend to have a seizure or something, and when he unchains you, you can run away.”
