Page 37 of Never Tamed (Bad Wolves #3)

Dax lies crumpled in the snow on his back. Blood pools dark around him. His chest is a mess of gaping holes with claw marks jagged and deep enough to pierce organs. His eyes are closed, and he’s too still for my liking. Deathly still.

No . The word becomes a whimper from my wolf’s throat. My legs threaten to give out beneath me, but before I can hit the ground, I’m shifting.

Pain lances through me, bones cracking, fur receding, until I’m nothing but bare skin against the cold. The snow burns against my naked knees as I scramble to him.

“Dax,” I whisper, voice breaking as my hands reach for him. I touch his face. His cheek is so cold that it makes me gasp. Sorrow and anger swirl and clash within me, tangling into a strange thing I can’t control. “No, no, no. Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare die on me.”

I press my ear to his chest. The silence echoing back nearly destroys me.

“Open your eyes, please. Please, Dax.” Tears blur my vision. Grabbing his face, I shake him lightly. “Look at me. Stay with me. I need you. Do you hear me? I need you.”

But his body stays limp.

“Gods,” I sob as I bend over him. “I can’t lose you.

Not after everything.” My tears fall onto his gaping hole in the center of his chest, mixing with his blood.

My throat feels raw but I scream at him anyway.

It’s the only thing I can think to do. “Wake up! You stubborn, reckless bastard. Fight! You always fight! Fight for me!”

My sobs shake me so violently, I almost don’t hear the snow crunching behind me.

“Ren.” It’s Torin, and I hate the pain coating his tone.

I glance over my shoulder, and they’re all there—Torin, Mathis, and Noble—looking somber. They’ve shifted back into their human forms, bloodied, bruised, and bare in the snow like me, but alive.

Face ashen, Mathis comes forward first. He kneels beside me, and his hand brushes over his best friend and brother’s blood-slicked shoulder before pulling back.

“Ren…” His voice cracks as he looks up at me. “I’m sorry, but he’s gone, sweetheart.”

“No,” I say and shake my head. “This is Dax we’re talking about. He can’t be. He’s not.”

Dax has always been the strongest of us. The best fighter, the most ruthless… He’s the last person I would’ve guessed to not make it. The very last.

Torin crouches on my other side, his expression carved from stone. But his eyes… his eyes betray him. They’re full of sympathy and pity. His hand reaches for me, hesitates, then closes over mine. “Ren…”

“It was a risk we all understood and were willing to take, baby.” Noble drops heavily into the snow behind me. His face is streaked with red. “Dax knew—”

“He wasn’t supposed to actually die.” I know it sounds stupid for me to say, but I don’t care. Just thinking about never hearing him all me Red again…

A sob chokes out of me, and I fold myself over Dax’s body. I can’t hold it back anymore. The tears come. And come. My whole body shakes as I press my face against his chest.

“I love you, Dax. Do you hear me? I love you,” I whisper. “You belong with me. With us. Life won’t be the same without you. Come back… Come back to me. Please.”

As the last plea leaves my lips, a sharp, brutal snap reverberates through me. The sensation is searing, tearing through my chest, but then it floods into fire, into light.

The mate bond.

I feel it lock into place with Dax. It threads into the core of me. The world erupts, and my heart slams against my ribs as if it’s been waiting for this moment all along. The bond surges with power, with heat, with a love so raw it takes my breath away.

And I’m not alone.

Torin jerks beside me, his hand gripping mine so tightly it hurts. Mathis’s head bows forward with a strangled gasp and his body trembles. And clutching his chest, Noble lets out a ragged groan.

They feel it too.

All of us. The final bond, the missing piece of our puzzle is finally in place.

Then, under me, Dax moves.

His body twitches in a shuddering convulsion, and before I can shriek with relief, his eyes fly open. He sucks in a giant breath, filling his lungs greedily.

I cry out. “Dax!”

His gaze finds mine, dazed and unfocused, and he smiles. His lips part, making a broken sound, that sounds a lot like my name. “Red…”

Now the tears are falling for a different reason.

He’s alive.

Thank the Moon Goddess.

The others move closer, touching him, touching me, while all shouting out their disbelief and excitement.

“Wow, man. We thought you were a goner,” Noble says.

“You bastard,” I kiss his scratched up face, his lips, his cheeks. “How dare you scare me like that.”

Mathis pats his unharmed shoulder. “It’s good to have you back, Dax.”

“Welcome to the bond,” Torin adds.

Dax’s eyes never leave mine. He blinks up at me. “Is that…what that was? The mate…mate bond?”

Nodding, I clutch his face. The bond buzzes through me. It burns so bright, it warms me from the inside out. Even in my nakedness, the cold can’t touch me.

“That’s right,” I whisper. “The bond saved you. It makes us stronger—all of us. Together.” I lower my mouth to his, brushing the softest kiss against his lips. “Now we share a heart… and a soul.”

As Dax reaches up to cup the side of my face, he gives me his typical wolfish smile. The one, for a moment, I thought I’d never see again. “The better to love you with, little Red.”