Page 73 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)

CYRUS

After I cleaned the bathroom, I got out of the cabin as fast as I could, before Audrey’s scent could make me uncomfortably hard again, and found Knox pacing a trench in the ground in front of the porch.

His posture was so tight, I was afraid he’d pull something, and when he wrenched around to march my way, I could see his eyes were wild — but thankfully not dark with his wolf.

By some miracle, the collar was holding. The question was, for how long?

“I should have known,” he snarled at me. “Everything else about her is fucked up. Of course her heat would be the worst-case scenario.”

“Bishop’s got it handled.” And just Bishop. No matter what my wolf wanted.

“Like he handled her heat before?” He clenched and unclenched his hands and his lips curled back in a snarl in an obvious challenge.

“We should have known, but we didn’t,” I told him, my wolf heaving to take control and put Knox in his place for daring to challenge us. He might be an alpha, but I was the alpha, and I had the strength to prove it.

But that wouldn’t help him calm down and I needed him calm to keep the collar intact. Because when it broke, his wolf would take over and not care if Knox wanted to be mated to Audrey or not.

“I’m going to find Rafe and let him know we’re here and that we need to stay. Then I’m going hunting. Come with me.” Maybe putting some distance between him and Audrey would help.

“I can’t hunt as a human.” His gaze jerked to the cabin door and the muscles in his jaw flexed. “And I can’t leave her.”

“You can’t fuck her, either,” I warned. “She won’t be lucid enough to say yes or no, and she has her hope set on Whil being able to transfer the bond.”

“I’m not going to ruin any chance she has of getting rid of me.” But he didn’t look away from the cabin.

How much of his feelings were because of the bond and how much because he actually cared for her? He didn’t like being around people, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have feelings. While he’d kept his distance from her and refused to talk to her, he’d spent the entire trip watching her.

Did he see what I saw? Did he see a shy, uncertain woman who’d been beaten down her entire life? And did he see how hard she was trying to keep up and be brave and face a realm filled with things she’d never experienced before?

Probably. He wasn’t dumb. He just couldn’t stand crowds or closed off spaces.

“Just hunt with me. Even if you stay in human form it’ll help control your wolf from breaking the collar.”

He turned his wild-eyed gaze back to me, his expression stricken. “The bond won’t let me leave her. Not when she’s like this.”

“Are you going to be able to stay away from her?” I didn’t want to force him to go with me, but we needed meat. I had to go hunting and I needed to know he wasn’t going to cause problems for Bishop.

“Yeah.” He huffed a bitter laugh and glance back at the cabin, his expression strained. “Never thought my condition would actually be good for something.”

He stormed to the far end of the porch, jerked around, and came back, resuming his pacing. It set my nerves on edge, but I knew it was the only thing burning off the angry energy building inside him.

“I won’t be gone long.”

He grunted his acknowledgment but didn’t look at me, and I headed down the path into Kelna.

The town was small, maybe five or six dozen houses, but the buildings were bigger than the average “village” house I’d seen in my travels on diplomatic missions with my parents and were well-maintained.

I found Rafe, his wife, Neera, and their daughter and her new husband, along with most of the villagers in the meadow behind the town. The wedding had been two nights ago, but it looked like the festivities were still going.

Both Rafe, the town magistrate, and his wife assured me we could stay as long as we needed and offered to send someone with food right away. I told her I’d collect everything after I’d gone hunting and take it to the cabin since I was positive Audrey didn’t want the townspeople hearing her having sex.

The next five days consisted of hunting and picking up baskets of fruit, vegetables, bread, and baked casseroles, and doing my damnedest to stay out of the cabin and the overwhelming scent of Audrey’s arousal.

As it was, I still had to jerk off multiple times in the day just to be able to focus. And I needed to focus because Knox was hanging on by a thread, Bishop was fully consumed with Audrey, and Audrey was getting worse. Not better.

A heat fever usually peaked at the end of the second day or the beginning of the third, then the need to mate slowly diminished over the next couple of days from every couple of hours to eventually a few times a day, and then the woman’s temperature returned to normal.

But Audrey’s temperature remained high — thankfully not dangerously high like it had been when it first started but still high — and the duration between matings was getting shorter and shorter.

It was mid-afternoon on the seventh day when I strode down the narrow path back to the cabin with a bundle of clean sheets and towels.

I was tired, having only managed sporadic sleep since we’d returned to Kelna, and the tension in my body made the headache I started two days ago pound behind my eyes. But I couldn’t give in and stop. I had to keep taking care of her, and we’d been at the cabin long enough for Audrey and Bishop to have gone through all the clean bedding and towels in the cabin.

It didn’t matter that Bishop said she was barely lucid with the biological drive to mate fully consuming her. She could have a moment of clarity at any time and I wanted her to know we were taking care of her.

It made my wolf furious that all we were doing was cooking and cleaning and keeping our gods damned distance so we didn’t do something stupid.

I rounded the rocky outcropping and climbed the half dozen shallow steps carved into the stone ground up to the glade and followed the narrow path through the thigh-high grass and wildflowers to the cabin.

Knox lay on the porch swing, his eyes closed, and his breathing slow and steady.

Thank the Sisters!

He’d finally passed out. He’d been pacing and snarling so much in the last few days, I was afraid that even if he didn’t manage to break the collar containing his wolf, I was going to have to chain him up. He’d even begged me to do it just before dawn this morning when Audrey was whining and begging and desperate.

When this mess had started, I’d been jealous of Bishop — and a very small part of me still was — but now I was worried for him. I was pretty sure I dozed at least a little last night but every time I jerked awake, he and Audrey had been going at it. Without a doubt, he was getting even less sleep than I was.

I tiptoed onto the porch and cracked open the cabin door. Audrey’s sweet fresh scent — a scent that made my wolf sit up, wag his tail, and yip with joy — wafted over me. Then the heady, rich scent of her arousal followed and my cock jerked to attention.

Fuck. Her scent was killing me. Every instinct I had screamed to satisfy her. By satisfying her, I’d be protecting her. And by protecting her, my wolf and I would prove to her that we were a worthy mate.

Because he had to have her. She’d do anything for pups who weren’t even her own. We wanted a mate like that, a mate who wanted— no needed to protect those too small to protect themselves.

Inside, everything was quiet and I prayed that meant Audrey and Bishop had managed to fall asleep.

But I’d only gotten a few steps inside when the bathroom door opened and Bishop stepped out. He looked tired and worried, and even with the air thick with her sweet scent and heady arousal, he was only at half-mast — which meant he was as exhausted as he looked.

“Tell me you have more of that broth,” he whispered.

“Did she drink it all?” Well, that was a miracle.

He hadn’t been able to get her to eat anything and she was barely drinking water. And while the heat put her body in a state of conservation, that was only supposed to be for a few days and even a normal shifter with a normal fever came out weak and dehydrated. Which was why the pack tried to avoid letting a heat get to the fever stage and why Wilder and Nova had set up the heat clinic.

“Unless there’s a pot in the cold cupboard I can’t see, she’s had it all.” Bishop’s expression darkened and he glanced at the partially open bedroom door. “But even if you make another batch, she’s not going to be able to last much longer.”

“Maybe that means the fever is almost over.”

He shot me a hard look. Yeah, I didn’t really believe that, either, but I couldn’t let Bishop lose hope. He was the one who had to hold it together. Without him, Audrey’s heat would never break.

He shuffled to the couch and sagged onto the worn seat cushion. “I have no idea how Wilder does it. I think I’ve gotten two hours of decent sleep in the last three days, and now it takes half a dozen orgasms to ease the fever long enough to give her ten minutes of peace.”

“Wilder doesn’t do it alone,” I reminded him even as my wolf strained against my control. Bishop wasn’t enough. Audrey needed us, too. “And this should have been over at least two days ago.”

“I know.” He raked his fingers through his hair, pushing it away from his face. “Whatever we’re doing? It’s not working.”

I’d been thinking the same thing all day but couldn’t figure out what we were doing wrong. The only thing I could think of that might possibly influence a heat and made Audrey’s different from any other heat I’d heard about was her incomplete mating bond.

“It has to be the bond,” I said and Bishop nodded his agreement.

“That’s what I’m thinking and why the fever isn’t breaking.” He swiped his hand through his hair again. “What are we going to do? Knox refuses to accept her.”

“He’s still adamant that she shouldn’t be stuck with him.” I dropped the towels and sheets on the couch beside Bishop and headed to the kitchen to pull out what I needed to make another batch of bone broth. Because I had to do something.

“You know, sometimes she cries for him when the fever is riding her hard.”

I knew. I heard her through the open windows. Knox knew it, too, and he usually retreated to the far side of the glade.

But as much as Audrey begged for Knox, that was the fever talking. She’d walked until her feet bled just to try a slim-chance spell to break their bond.

“I’ll talk with the village healer about the sedative this town makes.”

“Right,” he said. “The moss in the nearby cave that absorbs the death god’s power that they harvest and turn into a sedative. You said it even works on shifters.”

Which was a miracle in and of itself. So far none of our doctors or researchers had been able to find a sedative that worked with our physiology. Not even Whil had found anything.

Bishop frowned at me. “Sedating her will help me get some rest, but I don’t know if it’ll break her fever.”

“I’m not betting on that. I want to sedate her so we can take her home. If anyone knows what to do with her, it’ll be Nova.” As much as Nova had always been like a bratty little sister to me, she was a brilliant physician. Between her and Wilder’s experience with hundreds of heats, surely they’d be able to figure out something that didn’t involve her sealing her bond with Knox.

“Do you think sedating her will be enough?” he asked as a soft gasp and pained mewling came from the bedroom. His expression tighten, the worry in his eyes deepening, and he shoved up to his feet. “I don’t know how many days she has left. She’s already so weak.”

“Neither of them wants the bond,” I insisted even though we all knew the odds of Whil being able to transfer the bond to Bishop were just as slim as the spell that had failed. We had to try. That was what she wanted. “Sealing it has to be our last resort.”

“If we can catch her in a moment of lucidity, I can ask her to bond with me,” Bishop said. “Maybe that?—”

“There’s no guarantee she’d have the strength to form a mating bond and no guarantee that a new bond would break her fever,” I said stopping him before he finished, knowing exactly where his train of thought was taking him… because I’d thought the same thing half a dozen times already.

But if a shifter was too close to death, it didn’t matter if he or she said the words, the magic for a bond would never spark to life.

The only reason Audrey had been able to bond with Knox, even while she’d been on death’s door, was because the mating magic had already been awakened and had been looking for someone to latch on to.

“We’ll see how tonight goes and if she doesn’t improve, we leave in the morning,” I told him. I didn’t want to sedate Audrey for seven or eight days, but I would if that was the only way to get her the help she needed.

The mewls turned to whimpering and my chest tightened with worry.

With a groan, Bishop hurried to the bedroom and I caught a glimpse of Audrey writhing on the bed. Her eyes were glassy, staring off into space, her hair was plastered to her forehead and neck, and she panted, short, shallow gasps as if she couldn’t catch her breath.

In her consuming need, she’d pushed the sheet down to her hips, and her slight frame looked thinner, frailer. She’d lost some weight with all the physical exertion to walk to the death god’s temple and it looked like she’d lost even more. She might not make it to Stonehaven. Not even if we sedated her.