Page 80 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)
AUDREY
With a gasp, I jerked awake. A soft, warm throbbing radiated from my core and for a sudden, fearful heartbeat, I was afraid my heat wasn’t over.
But the throbbing was a whisper of what my heat had been before, even when I’d first thought my heat was over. The throbbing now was more like my body remembering what had happened, the sensation spurred on by my dreams.
I didn’t know if I should be grateful that those were my only dreams and I hadn’t had a repeat of the nightmare or not.
Before me, the fire had burned down to embers and a pot now hung on the spit. Cyrus sat on the other side from me, packing his blanket and three of our four eating bowls into his pack, while Bishop crouched by the fire, stirring our breakfast.
Hints of pink still edged the horizon, indicating dawn hadn’t been that long ago, but I was still a little surprised we hadn’t broken camp and headed out already.
Whatever the reason, I was grateful I wasn’t going to have to eat breakfast in the early dawn gray, although given that Cyrus was just about ready to go, I was still going to have to rush.
Groaning, I sat up, my muscles still weak and achy from whatever it was that I’d gone through.
“I was hoping you’d wake for breakfast,” Bishop said with a heart-melting smile.
He scooped oatmeal from the pot into the last of our eating bowls and handed it to me along with a spoon.
“Thanks,” I replied, taking it just as my stomach let out a loud, long growl.
Cyrus sighed at the noise, but it didn’t sound like a huff of frustration, more like one of relief, which was very un-Cyrus like.
As I ate — oatmeal with last night’s leftover meat and spinach — Knox returned to camp with our canteens, the outsides wet from having just been refilled.
Once again our gazes locked, the moment stealing my breath, and I was falling into eyes so much like Bishop’s and yet so very different. Where Bishop’s brown depths were warm and inviting, Knox’s were filled with something deeper and darker. Longing? Confusion? Frustration?
He opened his mouth and his eyes narrowed. I could tell he wanted to say something and prayed it wouldn’t be more rejection. We needed to figure out what was next because whatever it was, we had to do it together.
And as much as that broke a piece of my heart and made me want to scream, it was our inescapable reality.
I didn’t want to be mated to someone who didn’t want me and would forever hate me for trapping him, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about it. We just needed to suck it up and move forward.
And I wasn’t going to acknowledge my deepest fear that my nightmare was correct and they were just using me.
The strange look in Knox’s eyes deepened and he jerked his attention to Cyrus. “Are you done with the pot?” he asked, setting the canteens beside Cyrus’s pack.
“Yes.” Cyrus dumped one of the canteens on the fire then handed it back to Knox who took it and the pot and disappeared around a large, rocky outcropping.
“He should have waited until you were done,” Bishop said with a sigh and he unwrapped the blanket from around me and shoved it into his pack.
“I’ll clean her bowl,” Cyrus replied. “You get started, and Knox and I will catch up.”
Right. Because I was going to be painfully slow getting moving this morning. I scraped my bowl clean and handed it over to Cyrus, trying hard to not think about the fantasies I’d had about him while in that strange dream-state for the last few days.
I didn’t know how long the images were going to be dancing in my head, but I sure hoped they would stop soon. I was already mated to Knox and soon to be mated to Bishop. I didn’t need all three brothers. Two was more than enough.
And if I really thought about it. I should focus on figuring things out with my first mate before adding another one.
Bishop slung his pack over his shoulders, and with a groan, I staggered to my feet. The world lurched with the movement, and I clung to the boulder to steady myself, not to mention keep myself standing on my shaky legs.
What the hell had happened to me? Why was I so weak?
“If you’re feeling up to it,” Bishop said, sweeping me into his arms. “We’ll get you walking for a bit after lunch.”
“Yeah,” I replied, grateful I wasn’t expected to start hiking right away. Walking after lunch sounded like a good idea, although I had no idea if I’d feel stronger in a few hours or not.
Even just waking up, eating, and now standing seemed to have sapped all my strength.
“Weakness and exhaustion is a side effect of a heat fever,” Bishop said. “It doesn’t let you sleep or eat much until the fever is broken.”
“And my fever only broke when Knox and I sealed the bond.”
He’d said my heat had lasted nine days and I’d been unconscious or out of it for all of that. How many of those days had I been suffering with the fever? I doubt Knox would have jumped on the idea of sealing our bond right away. Hell, had they even known that was the only way to break the fever?
“Your fever went on longer than normal,” Bishop said, answering my unspoken question as he quickly picked his way over the uneven ground. “We didn’t know the mating bond was affecting the fever until it should have been over and wasn’t. But it’s done now and you’re safe. I’m sure you’ll be back to normal by the time we get to Stonehaven.”
Given how weak I felt, I wasn’t sure about that, especially since I didn’t heal like a regular shifter. But that wasn’t my greatest worry.
“So what now?” I asked, my voice frustratingly small.
Except that was how I felt. Small and weak and frustrated.
We’d suffered walking for ten days for nothing, and while I wanted to cry and yell at Knox and tell him how much he hurt me and how much it hurt that he didn’t really want me — even though we didn’t know each other — I was far too weak even at my strongest to make demands of an alpha. I was going to have to submit and accept whatever Knox decided.
A growl bubbled in my throat. I was tired of submitting, of trying to go unnoticed for fear of retribution.
“Now?” Bishop said. “I bond with you and we return home.”
“Just like that?” I asked unable to keep my disappointment from my voice. We weren’t going to bond because we were in love, but because we had to.
“Hey. I choose to bond with you because I want to, but if you aren’t ready?—”
“We don’t really know each other and I—” My throat tightened. “I—” How could I say what I felt without sounding ungrateful?
“You wanted to be courted,” Bishop finished for me as if he could see into my heart and knew how disappointed I was that he wasn’t going to court me like he’d promised.
“Yeah,” I confessed. “I never had a boyfriend. No one was ever interested in me and I never got… you know.” God, it felt so selfish to say it.
“You never got the courtship gifts? The fancy dinners? The romance?” Bishop asked. He set me on my feet and cupped my cheeks in his palms to make me meet his gaze.
“You’re allowed to ask for things,” he said, his voice tender, his soft expression making my heart flutter with a mix of hope and fear. “Which would you like?”
“Well… I…?” I tried to look at my feet, my cheeks heating with embarrassment, but Bishop kept a firm grip on my face.
“You can say it,” he urged. “You want all of it?”
“Yeah,” I forced out. “I want to know what those first magical days of being in love feel like. I want to feel…” Like I mattered, like someone loved me for me not because an accidental bond was making them. And I felt like Bishop did, but I also felt like if we rushed our mating I’d miss out on all those romantic dreams and jump straight into the real life of being mates. “I want to feel like you want to mate with me because of me, not because you have to.”
“I do, beautiful. I swear I do.” He brushed his lips against mine, a whisper of a kiss that sent teasing sensual warmth sliding through my body. The kiss wasn’t hungry with desire, not like his kisses when we’d first had sex or like the kisses floating around my foggy memory from my heat, but it still sent my heart soaring because it was a promise. A promise that I did deserve to be loved and that he’d prove it to me.