Page 16 of Bound

He frowns and shakes his head. “Although her wolf’shealing ability should make those impossible.” He tilts his head, staring into the fire as he continues his train of thought.

“It could be a learned preference from prolonged exposure to only cooked food. If someone fed her only cooked meat, she could have come to prefer it. And lastly,” he glances at Maddox before finishing, “It could be from some sort of emotional trauma that has put her off the taste of raw meat.”

I blink at him, my mind trying to process what he just said. Luckily, Hunter saves me from having to ask.

“So what you’re saying is… you have no idea.”

“It could be any of those things,” Gage replies with a shrug.

“But if you had to choose one as being more likely?” Maddox asks, watching him carefully.

Gage pushes his black hair back from his face as his shoulders drop. “Emotional trauma.”

“Fuck,” I swear, staring into the fire with a frown. I might not know how to fix that right now, but what I can do is feed her. “That settles it,” I say, jumping to my feet as I start removing my clothes.

“What are you doing now?” Maddox asks with a sigh.

“I’m going to hunt down another rabbit for our little wolf. There’s nothing left of the two we just caught, since we didn’t think she ate meat. I’ll get a whole one just for her.”

“Good idea, then I’ll cook it for her,” Gage says with a nod, making me freeze.

My eyes bounce to Bain’s as I stumble over a response, not wanting to hurt his feelings. “Uhh… maybe leave the cooking to Bain, yeah?”

Gage frowns, and I take the coward’s way out, quickly shifting into my wolf form and bounding off into the forest.

Considering he’s basically a genius, it’s shocking how bad he is at cooking. The worst part is that he somehow doesn’t see it, and even after all these years together, he is still constantlytrying to cook for us. When we try to tell him he’s horrible at it, he gets upset, and a miserable Gage is not one that any of us want to be around.

I try to forget about Gage’s lack of cooking skills for now and focus on my task: hunting.

I’m not doing this for just anyone; this is for my mate. I know it in my bones. Even if Hunter and the others think they feel a pull too, it doesn’t matter. She’s mine. They don’t feel what I do. And even though I know we aren’t supposed to be able to feel the bond before seeing each other in human form, I know it to be true. She belongs to me, even if I have to share her with the others.

It’s rare, almost unheard of, for multiple men to be bonded to the same woman. I don’t think I’ve ever come across more than a set of triplets sharing a mate, and definitely never men born from different parents. But the bond is here, a faint hum moving through me as if she’s already making a home within me. She’s tied to me, to us. I can feel it. I’m sure of it, even if it technically hasn’t been proven yet.

If I can just get her healthy and strong enough to shift back to human, then we’ll know for sure the moment our eyes meet. I can’t wait to see those beautiful blue eyes in her human face.

That thought keeps me awake and restless at night. It’s killing me to wait. In every story I’ve ever heard, mates who meet in wolf form shift within seconds, eager and desperate to confirm the truth. Nobody drags it out this long. Nobody sits in this agony of not knowing.

Maybe it’s possible she’s only meant to be a true mate to one of us, and the rest of us are just pulled along by the pack bond. But it doesn’t feel like that to me. The connection is too powerful. Too undeniable. Already stronger than my bond with my pack mates.

When I look at her, all I want is to wrap her in my arms,shield her from everything, and never let go. That isn’t how it feels with other women in the Westgrove Pack. Yes, I want to protect them. But this? Thisburns.This consumes me.

The scent rolling off her, a sweet, smoky, dark cherry with a hint of vanilla, makes my wolf howl inside my head, demanding I claim her. But I can see her fragility, the shadows haunting her. She’s been through something brutal, more than I can even imagine. The thought of someone muzzling her like they had has my blood boiling, my wolf pushing me to find the one who did that and end them.

And the thought of anyone harming her again, ever laying a hand on her, has me shaking with rage. My wolf is ready to tear apart the world, to drag every last one of her ghosts into the open and rip them to pieces. Whoever hurt her… they’ll pay. I’ll make sure they suffer for every scar she carries.

After catching a rabbit and returning it to camp, I make sure to drop it in front of Bain, not Gage, then I shift back and pull on my discarded clothes.

I take a peek into the cave to check on her and see she’s lying at the back again, but her eyes are open, watching me, and I get caught in her gaze. I take a few slow steps into the cave and give her a little wave.

“Hey there, blue eyes,” I say, the nickname coming out as I stare into those gorgeous eyes of hers. “I caught a rabbit for you. Bain’s just cooking it up now, then we’ll bring it in here for you to eat. Sound good?”

She doesn’t respond. I glance at her water dish, set toward the side. “Do you need more water?”

When I walk over and glance at it, I see it’s still half full, but I pick it up so I can refill it with fresh water while the rabbit finishes cooking.

Outside the cave, set against the wall of the boulder, we have somesupplies, including a few jugs of water. I use one to fill the bowl and return it to her.

The first day we found her, Bain and I went back to our pack house for supplies. We loaded up on empty water jugs, which we filled at a nearby pond, cooking supplies, some spices, a few blankets, pillows, clothing, first-aid supplies, several knives, and a couple of other essentials.