Page 87 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)

AUDREY

Cyrus led us deeper into Darkweald, following what looked like a game trail — and at times no trail at all — and we passed through the forest without incident.

We also, thankfully, avoided Anakar, the temple complex where I’d first arrived in the realm. I didn’t want another run in with Sterling or Royce since they’d already proven they didn’t need to be in the same realm as me to control me and threaten my life, and I didn’t need another reminder.

And while it would have been nice to know the rip between this realm and mine was gone, I was sure someone would report what was going on with it sometime soon to Cyrus. I could ask him about it later.

We walked all day and reached the patrol shed just after the sun had set. It surprised me that there was no one around. If they were investigating the rip, the shed was the most logical place to make camp. It had a well for clean water, was guaranteed shelter against the elements and any beasts in the area, and was out of Tzanagoth’s influence where his spirits couldn’t reach them.

Of course, if the rip was closed, there’d be nothing left to study and everyone would have returned to Stonehaven. Either that, or after the flying snake spirit incident, they decided it was too dangerous to stick around.

Cyrus and Bishop got to work building a campfire with the wood piled against the side of the shed, while Knox, much to my surprise, took my Cyrus-assigned duty for the night and filled up the water bucket.

I didn’t argue like I would have, like a part of me screamed I had to so I could prove I wasn’t worthless. I might have shrugged off my near-death experience in the ravine when talking with Bishop, but my aches had only gotten worse the longer we’d walked, and I was grateful for Knox helping me with anything. I also didn’t have high hopes I’d feel better tomorrow.

Tomorrow night, however, I’d sleep in a real bed, be able to have a real shower, and not have to walk any great distance ever again. Hopefully the day after tomorrow, or the day after that, I get back to feeling like myself.

Just one more day to go and this whole, horrible ordeal would be over.

Except it wouldn’t be because I was now permanently mate bonded with Knox.

I bit back a sigh, wrapped my thin blanket around me, and snuggled closer to Bishop. One more day and then, good or bad, the rest of my life would begin.

The next morning, Knox took my pack without saying anything, and he and Cyrus led the way back to Stonehaven. I stayed about fifty feet behind them with Bishop even though my heat was over and I no longer needed to keep my distance from them.

“I can’t decide if I want to spend a week soaking in a bath or sleeping,” I said as I finished my lunch of more dried rations and heaved myself to my feet.

Bishop chuckled. “You could do both, but I don’t recommend it without supervision.”

I glanced at him, but his back was turned to me and I couldn’t tell if he was being literal and serious or flirting with me.

It had to be flirting, right?

“Is that an offer?” I asked, my voice suddenly husky and my cheeks burning with the embarrassed fear that I was wrong.

“Absolutely,” he replied, flashing me a smile that made my pulse stall for a breathtaking moment. But then his smile quickly faded. “We’re going to have to wait a few days for that though. Even with Nova and Deacon running things, work will still have piled up.” His gaze jumped to Knox who was already on the road headed to Stonehaven.

My mate hadn’t said anything to me today, but I hadn’t gotten the sense he was avoiding me or angry with me like he’d been for most of our journey. It felt more like he didn’t know what to say. And while I could sympathize with him, I wasn’t going to let him off the hook.

I’d vowed I wouldn’t break first and I wasn’t going to. No matter how uncomfortable it felt to make an alpha apologize to me.

“I’m going to be busy for the next few days, maybe a week,” Bishop added. “But you should take it easy and stay close to the Residence. You’ve been through an ordeal. You deserve time to recover.”

“Yeah.” Sour disappointment oozed through me and I pushed it back. Bishop wasn’t brushing me off. He was saying he just needed time to take care of pack business.

Besides, I had my relationship with Knox that I had to figure out, along with what I was going to do with the rest of my life. If Cyrus was also busy with pack stuff and didn’t demand I make myself useful right away, I could take a few days to decide some things. Things like if I wanted to stay in the Residence, what job I wanted to do, and what I needed to do to become literate — since the magic of this realm let me speak and understand their language but didn’t let me read it.

I didn’t like the idea of being all on my own, especially when some of Cyrus’s and Bishop’s betas didn’t like me, but I doubted they’d do anything to outright hurt me. This wasn’t my old pack after all. If I kept to myself and didn’t draw anyone’s attention, I’d be fine.

I huffed a bitter laugh.

That plan hadn’t worked with my last pack. Was I foolish enough to think it would work with this one?

“But I’ll still see you at dinner every night,” Bishop continued, his words reigniting the warmth around my heart from our shifter connection even though he wasn’t holding me. “Even if you weren’t Knox’s mate, you’d be welcome at dinner.”

Yeah, I thought to myself. I was foolish enough to hope everything would work out. I might even be right this time.

Stonehaven came into sight just after dinnertime, and I took in the buildings sprawling down the mountainside, those closest looking like modern buildings and those farther away surrounded by a thick, Medieval-looking stone wall.

If I pretended the older buildings didn’t exist, I could have been back home in Oregon. At least until I tilted my gaze up and looked at the two moons, one that looked like the regular moon and one smaller and pinker, reminding me I wasn’t in my realm.

As much as I was grateful to be here with an alpha who wanted to protect me and not own me, I still had a lot of confusing emotions about not being on Earth. Emotions that I’d been ignoring because they were insignificant compared to everything else that was going on.

And in reality, even though I was now more or less safe, and my mate bond with Knox had been dealt with — even if the outcome had been disappointing — how I felt about being in this new realm still didn’t matter. I couldn’t do anything about it and wouldn’t go back to Sterling and Royce even if I could.

Although if those two psychopaths weren’t a part of the equation, would I feel differently?

There were things I really missed from my realm, like cars and coffee, and my realm had so many things that I wanted to show Bishop. He’d been excited to learn that I’d seen a real angel. How would he react to TV or cell phones? The internet would probably blow his mind.

Hunh.

I didn’t know exactly how most things worked, but I knew of things that didn’t exist in this world. Perhaps with Whil and some of the pack’s inventors and engineers I could share some of humanity’s ingenuity and they could figure out an equivalent for their realm. There wasn’t electricity here — that I knew of — and I wasn’t going to introduce them to fossil fuels, but they had a lot more magic than my realm did. It was literally sleeping in the ground around us.

Maybe I wasn’t so useless.

Once Bishop had taken care of his piled-up work, I’d talk to him about sharing what I knew.

Cyrus and Knox — who was still, much to my surprise, in his human form — left the road before we’d made the final turn and crested the last hill to reach the town.

I raised my eyebrows at Bishop once they were out of earshot and he just shrugged.

“Pack business,” he said. “We’ve been gone long enough that once word gets out that we’ve returned, we might get swarmed, and there are few things they need to take care of before that happens.”

I shrugged back. I didn’t know what that could possibly be, but then I’d never been an alpha or privy to any of my previous alpha’s business.

I pondered Bishop’s words as we walked the rest of the way, doing the math on how long it had actually been. When I woke from my heat, the guys had said there were five days left to reach Stonehaven, and yep, we’d walked for five days.

Before that, I’d been unconscious for three days of walking and nine days with my heat. That was seventeen days just to get home, plus the ten it took us to get to the death god’s temple.

My pulse lurched. I’d been traveling for almost a month.

I’d been in this realm for a whole month.

Which meant my birthday was in a month. I’d turn twenty-three, and my wolf would still be asleep. If I even had a wolf.

My shock at having been in this realm for a month along with all my fears and uncertainties soured the thought of my upcoming birthday. Not that birthdays had ever been a time for celebration. They were always a reminder that I was lacking, and Merrick and Sterling made sure I was aware of that.

Of course, since I’d only had Mila and no other friends or family, it hadn’t really mattered if I’d been able to celebrate my birthday or not.

But shockingly, a part of me had hoped that being away from my old pack this year might be different, that there might be a few people who’d want to help me celebrate the way I’d seen everyone else celebrate.

I glanced at Bishop through my lashes, wondering if I should tell him? Were birthdays something celebrated in this realm? Did I want to draw attention to myself like that?