Page 37 of Wolf Bound

Forrester sighs deeply, dropping his eyes and folding his arms in front of his chest. "Yes, Mom."

Fury and heartache swirl inside of me at his blasé response. How dare he treat this like an inconvenience while also arguing he deserves to be here. His hot and cold routine with his fellow pack brothersandwith me, his mate, has gone on for far too long. We just said war is coming and his immediate reaction is to be an asshole. No. Not anymore. This has tostop!

"No, Forrester. Enough," I snap sharply, done with all of the attitude from him. At my harsh tone, his eyes shoot right back up to mine, wide with surprise. "You're going to stop treating all of us this way. We're all tired of dealing with your constant bad attitude around here. If you want to leave, go pack your bags andleave, because this version of you? None of us want him around. You are either in with us, or you're out. No one is stopping you from rejecting the bond and walking away. It's time to make a goddess-damned choice."

Penn's eyes go wide, an awkward smile on his face that's part pride and part shock. Alaric smiles at me broadly, his eyes twinkling with so many emotions. Drayton and Wes both nod their heads, Drayton's expression is carefully neutral as to not provoke his brother any further.

There's a heavy silence in the room with all eyes on Forrester, waiting in anticipation for him to make his decision. My peryton is stomping in my mind, her uncomfortableness with the idea of rejection and her pain from the prolonged avoidance suffocating both of us with the intensity. My soul screams at the fading thread connecting Forrester to me. Every second that ticks by without a decision from him shreds the remains of our mate bond.

"I'm not leaving," he says after a moment, his eyes darting between me and the ground. Relief and unease settle in my heart. The shredded bond evens out, but doesn't grow any stronger because we can't trust his word even now. "I have every right to be here as much as any of these other assholes."

"Then be here," I whisper, the crack in my voice from the clog of emotions in my throat making it hard to talk. "You can't be here in body only. You need to actually be here, and part of that is dealing with your pain and your grief. You need to choose to heal from the past or we have no future."

Chapter Twenty-One

Talia

The house is tense as Forrester and I stare at each other in uncomfortable silence. I can see the fight in his eyes, between what he wants to do and what he thinks he should be doing. The magic in my soul wants to reach out to him, to take away all the pain, anger, and dark tendrils of manipulation that have been dragging him down to be this hateful person he never should have become.

“I, uh, I—” Forrester stutters out, shifting his eyes from me to the rest of the room then back to me nervously. “I don’t know how to, ah, do any of this. I don’t even know if it’s possible for me to heal.”

“If you let me in, I can help with that,” I offer, tears filling the corners of my eyes. “Healing is a specialty of mine, after all.”

The open vulnerability on his face feels like the first real glimpse of Forrester that I’ve seen. It’s not an angry man hiding his pain behind snarky remarks and cold aloofness. It’s the innermost parts of him that have been crying out in pain for far too long. For Forrester to finally embrace all of this, he needs those wounds to heal and allow his true self to come through.

Forrester steps towards me, and I stand up to meet him part way. His hand hesitantly reaches up to cup my cheek and I can feel the slight tremor of his fear against my cheek.

“I would appreciate that. I want to be the man that you deserve,” he whispers to me, his grey eyes shining with unshed tears. “Help me heal, Talia.”

Instead of answering aloud, I lean my cheek into his hand and nod my head. My lips graze against his palm softly before I look back up at my broken yet beautiful mate.

“Meet me out on the back deck tomorrow morning at sunrise. We can try then.”

“Sunrise,” Forrester repeats with a twitch of his lips.

Pulling away from him, I turn back to the rest of my mates who watch us with a mixture of happiness and uncertainty.

“We should get back to why we all came here. If you guys are okay with it, Wes and I can go over what we discovered and then Drayton and Alaric can fill us in on their news.”

All of my mates nod in agreement as Wes joins me standing up near the front of the living room. Wes takes over most of the explanation of the Champions of Adessa legend and what we believe that means for all of us now. I add in my own information as Wes explains, like how the goddess spoke to me in greater detail.

“Fuck,” Penn murmurs, rubbing the stubble on his jaw subconsciously. “That’s a fucking lot of pressure.”

I grimace and nod. “It is. I’m so sorry to have brought all of this on you guys. The truth is there’s still so much more we don’t know than we do. Everything we’re piecing together is from legends and wars long past.”

“It’s something, though.” Drayton walks over and pulls me into his arms. “We will figure this out together. If there’s a war coming and you need to be front and center for it, then we’ll be front and center with you. The goddess chose us to be your mates for a reason.”

Alaric pulls me from Dray’s arms and crushes me against his chest and chastely kisses the top of my head. “You are our mate and we will fight and protect you with every ounce of power given to us by the goddess. None of us are going anywhere and none of us hold your goddess-given destiny against you.”

I can almost feel the pointed look Alaric gives Forrester over my head. He will probably be one of the ones that takes the longest to forgive Forrester for what he’s put me and the rest of our group through.

Someone leans their cheek against the top of my head while I’m cuddled in Alaric’s arms. Penn’s scent mixes with Alaric’s and I breathe it in deeply, nearly groaning at the intoxicating scent it creates.

“I’m sorry, Talia. I didn’t mean it like that,” he murmurs, the sound vibrating through me. “I just meant that it’s a lot to take in and understand. When I had visions of you, I never imagined that this is where our path would lead us.”

“That’s okay, Penn. I know it’s a lot. I’m struggling with it all myself,” I assure him. “As long as we’re all together, we can do this. I know we can.”

Drayton clears his throat, effectively breaking up the hug between the three of us. “Thank you, Wes, for putting the time and research into the Adessa legends. Keep going with that so we can try and figure out what exactly is on the horizon for all ofus. Pull whatever resources you need from the pack in order to figure this out.”

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