Page 34 of Lost and Bound
Calder scowled, and his eyes darkened, his face so ferocious that I almost shrank back against the head of the bed. “They’d better not.” Before I could come up with any answer to that, he said, “I’m going to do a little recon.”
And he vanished into the front room of the house, moving much more quickly and silently than anyone that big had the right to.
I got up and dressed as efficiently as possible, and slipped into the bathroom to take a piss. I’d just shaken off and decided against flushing the toilet, mindful of Calder’s caution about noise—maybe I wasn’t worried about Ian and whoever had come with him hearing me, but it seemed wisest to not irritate Calder too much when he was already on edge—when I heard a deep, guttural cry from the other end of the house.
Calder. Fuck. I yanked up my pants and ran, skidding through the living room and into the kitchen, where I thought the cry had come from. If I could’ve shifted, my claws would’ve been out and my fangs lengthening.
The loss of my wolf nearly had me howling, except that I couldn’t do that either.
I slid to a stop next to Calder, who’d opened the back door a few inches and had clearly been peering out and scenting. Except that he’d fallen against the doorframe, gripping it so hard his claws were half-buried in the wood, and he looked awful, his eyes wide and his whole face set in something between terrified joy and desperate, hopeless longing.
“Arik,” he gasped. “Arik.”
Arik? There was no one in our pack named Arik, and what the hell could’ve made him abandon his caution like that…I heard a shout from outside, a deep, familiar voice.
Calder yanked the door the rest of the way open, letting it crash into the wall, and I crowded in next to him, craning to see over his shoulder.
For a moment I couldn’t focus on anything specific. Too many scents hit my nose all at once: pine sap, sea salt, squirrels, damp earth, the faint fragrance of roses, rotting wood, a thread of car exhaust. And true outdoor light shone in my eyes, unfiltered by a window or any barrier at all. The sun, peeking through overcast.
Thesun.
It all set my senses reeling, setmereeling, and I bumped into Calder as I staggered.
Then the foreground caught up with me. The scent of pack—Ian and Matt, warm and familiar, hearth and home.
And a man running across the lawn behind the house, not someone I knew, slim and pretty and dressed all in black, with a long blond ponytail streaming out behind him and a look on his face to match Calder’s, hope and terror shining in his brilliant green eyes.
Behind him…Matt, chasing after him but without a hope of catching him before he reached the house, cursing and calling for him to stop, popping claws and with his face white and set.
Matt. Oh, gods. Matt. He looked almost the same, like the years hadn’t touched him much. Why should they have? He’d just turned thirty when I was taken. He’d only be thirty-two now, not much older at all. It felt like he should’ve been completely different, the way I was.
Calder wrenched his claws out of the doorframe and jumped down to meet the blond, bypassing the steps down from the door completely.
The blond barreled into him. I stood frozen. Calder would rip him to pieces.
Calder wrapped his arms around him and buried his face in that long blond hair. I could see his shoulders shaking even from the doorway, tremors running through his huge frame. The other—Arik?—wrapped his arms around Calder, his knuckles white with the force of his grip where his fingers dug into Calder’s bare back.
Matt skidded to a stop a couple of feet from them, his mouth open in shock. He’d obviously thought Calder was going to kill…who was this guy to Matt? And now he didn’t know how to react, now that the two of them were plastered together like they were never going to let go.
Calder’s reaction was anything but hostile. I was pretty sure I had the same expression on my face that Matt did.
But he still hadn’t looked at me.
“Matt,” I said hoarsely.
After a second, he tore his gaze away from the embrace.
We stared at each other, equally frozen. “Ian!” Matt shouted. “Get your ass around back.”
He looked back at Calder and presumed-Arik, like he couldn’t pay attention to anything else, even his long-lost cousin. There was a strong scent of magic on the air, now that I could focus enough to pick out details. From Arik? Yes, I thought so. Although Calder’s scent had intensified, along with Matt’s, thick alpha pheromones drowning out everything else.
I dared to venture out of the shelter of the door, putting a foot on the top step.
Pounding footsteps came from my right, and Ian popped around the side of the house, claws out and fangs bared. He stopped dead when he saw the tableau. “What the fuck is—” He looked up at me and went abruptly silent.
Calder and Arik still hadn’t moved.
Matt stared at them.
