Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 151489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
“Don’t be a goof. Of course I’m going to use it. I wouldn’t be much of a healer if I didn’t.”
“You look like a corpse.”
“I’ll be fine. Just plonk me on that monstrosity of a sofa and let me have a twenty minute nap and I’ll be just as lively as I was before.” She wouldn’t have even needed the nap if Trey hadn’t had so many bruises and wounds. “Just a little power nap and I’ll be fine.”
Trey couldn’t help smiling at the way she curled up on the bulky sofa in a fetal position five minutes later. She looked even tinier than usual, but still not fragile. There was too much steel in her for that.
“Ryan just called,” Tao informed him. “They’ve gone.”
Trey nodded and then watched in surprise as some of his pack gathered around her. Dante, Grace and Rhett sat on her left while Lydia, Marcus and Cam sat on her right. Trick, Dominic and Tao then all sat on the floor with the back of their heads resting against her legs. It was a gesture of support, comfort and acceptance as well as an indication that they intended to guard her as she slept. She had earned the respect of each of them in the short time that she had been here.
A strange pang struck his chest – unfamiliar and unnerving. “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” They nodded but were focused on Taryn who had gone out like a light. He and his wolf were comforted by the knowledge that they would stay with her while Trey removed the streaks of blood and the lingering scent of the dead wolf from his body. The dead wolf who was now no longer a threat to his mate or their mating.
It was as Trey was showering that he thought back to how he had felt when, forced to be nothing but an observer, he saw Taryn tentatively trying to gain his wolf’s attention. The anger, the frustration and the anxiety rushed back. There had been something else in that cocktail of emotions. Fear. Trey had actually felt fear.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t experienced that emotion before. Of course he had. Having an underdeveloped conscience and an explosive temper didn’t mean he didn’t know fear. What was bothering him right now was that he had felt such fear for Taryn, had feared she would be seriously hurt and feared she would be taken from him just like that – and at his own hands. He couldn’t even say it was his wolf’s fear. His wolf had been going through his own shit right then. No, that had been all Trey.
It had to have been a direct consequence of the natural crazy-possessiveness and crazy-protectiveness that came with mating. It was obviously age-old instincts pushing to the forefront, taking over. Trey understood that the mating would be temporary, but his instincts to protect his mate were obviously going to override his thoughts. Obviously. Just like his instinct to mark his mate and make her submit to him had overridden his true indifference to those things.
Yeah, that was all it was, all it could be. Obviously. That didn’t improve his mood any because there was another issue that was bothering him. Taryn shouldn’t have been able to calm his wolf.
When a wolf shifter went into feral mode they behaved a lot like a rabid animal. They attacked senselessly, they felt no emotional attachments, they lost all sense of reason and logic. And yet her scent and voice had reached his wolf even through that fog.
Trey had felt how quickly his wolf had recognised her as his mate, how quickly he had switched from wanting to kill to wanting to protect. The only reason his wolf had been reluctant to leave the carcass was because he still hadn’t been stable enough to understand that the sandy wolf was dead and no longer a danger to Taryn.
If his wolf was this attached to Taryn now, what would he be like in three months? What would happen when she left? Trey’s wolf growled his objection, confirming Trey’s suspicion that his eventual separation from her could be more problematic and uncomfortable than he had anticipated even though they hadn’t imprinted.
Unlike with true mates, a relationship between imprinted mates could wither over time. For an unhappy imprinted couple it wasn’t simple for them to shake hands and go their separate ways because of the metaphysical bond that existed between them. The pain of that kind of separation was on a psychic level just as much as a physical one.
For most wolves, it meant constant migraines, a lingering sense of emptiness, and slipping in and out of depressive states for a few years, if not longer. Some wolves even retreated within their human half completely, unable to function without their mate. The worst case scenario for any wolf separated from their mate was that they turned rogue, remaining in wolf form and turning completely feral, attacking anyone they came into contact with – like his mother had.