Page 10 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)

CYRUS

I stripped out of my wet clothes and took her from Bishop.

“I’ll get some fresh water,” Bishop said, but Knox pushed past him, reaching for the bucket by the door before Bishop could grab it.

“I’ll go,” Knox growled not bothering to look at us, and he march back out into the storm.

“We’re not going to be able to convince him to hold her to warm her up,” Bishop said as he stripped out of his wet clothes as well and opened one of the many waterproof trunks at the back of the small room.

I laid the woman on the floor by the hearth as close to the fire Knox had started as was safe and sliced open the rest of her dress with a claw. “You honestly thought we might? I doubt we’d be able to convince him to do it even if we were in a room ten times this size.”

“We both know he’s not an asshole. I thought he’d be concerned enough to use their bond to help comfort her,” Bishop replied, pulling on a dry pair of pants then grabbing another pair for me along with the pack with our non-magical healing supplies. “If she wakes, she’ll be in pain and probably confused. The bond is new, but his presence will still help keep her calm.”

The door flew open, and Knox stormed in with a bucket filled with water from the well. His gaze instantly locked on the woman, her battered body now fully exposed, the scrapes and bruises and bleeding gashes on her chest bright against her pale skin.

His eyes, which were almost perpetually dark with his wolf not the brown with green flecks he’d been born with, narrowed and the muscles in his jaw tightened. “I’ll keep watch.” He set the bucket beside me and stormed back outside.

Yeah, wishful thinking to hope he’d want to hold her. He wasn’t purposely cruel, but this went so far beyond what he was comfortable with, I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed in his wolf form for days.

“Let’s get her wounds cleaned and dressed. With luck the clothes in his pack aren’t too wet and they’ll dry before she wakes. We can at least give her his scent.”

We used up all our clean gauze and linen packing the stab wounds and gashes on her front and the stab wounds on her back and then binding it down with strips wrapped around her chest. Bishop set down a blanket, laid down, and, mindful of her injuries, drew her close, his bare chest to her mostly bare back in the hopes that any flesh-to-flesh contact from him and not just her mate would help her. In the very least, his body — along with a second blanket that I set over both of them — would help warm her.

I pulled Knox’s damp, but thankfully not drenched, shirt from the bottom of his travel pack and set it on the floor by the fire to dry then dug through the supply trunks for rations. We hadn’t eaten breakfast, choosing to chase after whatever had brought the lightning, and if we were going to have to wait out the storm, we might as well eat something.

The trunks were maintained on a seasonal basis, kept fully stocked for those rare occasions, like now, when a patrol didn’t have time to hunt and needed shelter. Something I was grateful for since there was no way of telling how long the storm would last. It could be a few hours or, if it had originated over the lands where a few of the storm gods slept, it could be days and we’d need the dried food supplies for our meals.

For the woman’s sake, I hoped it blew over quickly. I could still barely hear her pulse even with two ampuls of elixir in her, and while it took time for the elixir to work, the fact that she hadn’t responded yet wasn’t good.

Giving her a third one would have better increased her chances of survival. Except we didn’t have a third one. And if we did and it was already too late for her then I’d just be throwing away valuable elixir.

I found a bag of dried oats and set them simmering in a pot of water over the fire then sat by Bishop and the woman to mind our meal and monitor the dryness of Knox’s shirt. I didn’t know how Knox would react to Bishop holding his mate while she was naked and injured, and while flesh to flesh contact might be better for her, it would be safer for Bishop if she were dressed.

Being possessive wasn’t common for our pack, not like some of the other shifter species and packs, but it wasn’t completely unheard of, either. Even if Knox didn’t have the possessive trait, it was still common for newly mated males to be overprotective of their females, and just looking at this woman made all my protective instincts rise up and howl. And I wasn’t soul bonded to her.

“Where do you think she came from?” Bishop asked his voice low, barely carrying over the storm howling outside.

“I don’t know.” I brushed a dark blond strand of wet hair away from her swollen and purple cheek. Shining sisters, it hurt just looking at her. “Even if she didn’t come from one of the other packs, I doubt she’d have come from the north. There isn’t a town within a five day’s journey from the north side of Darkweald, if there’s a town out there at all.”

And she certainly wouldn’t have been alone. She’d have been with at least a dozen others regardless of where she’d come from. Even if she’d come by sea — the safest way to reach pack lands — and landed in Savaria, the port city four days west from our town, she still wouldn’t have been traveling alone.

As much as we and the other sentient races had spent generations trying to tame these lands, the power seeping from the sleeping gods was too strong. The beast and spirit population never diminished, it could only be kept back, and that meant traveling between civilized lands was dangerous even for a group of armed warriors.

“Whatever her situation, it can’t be good,” I mused. “Spirits don’t usually do this kind of damage and a beast would have finished her off and eaten her.”

“Unless she managed to escape and got swept down river,” Bishop suggested, but he didn’t sound as if he believed that.

A lot of her scratches and bruises could be explained by her fleeing through the forest and being tossed down a rushing river, but the puncture marks in her back and front and the claw cuts across her breasts without any other mauling injuries suggested it hadn’t been a beast. She would have had more claw and teeth marks on her arms. People almost always raised their arms to defend themselves and beasts always slashed and bit those easy targets.

“That still doesn’t explain why she was in Darkweald in the first place,” I said. “She has no power, she’s barely a wolf, and I doubt she’ll have much more when she recovers.”

If she recovers , a worried little voice whispered to me.

And if that happened, there was a chance we’d lose Knox to his wolf again. Permanently this time.