Page 10 of Wretched Thorns

Quiet, not as in absent. Quiet, as in muffled. Wrapped. Smothered. The way you can hear a heart through a wall but cannot tell whose it is or how fast it is beating, only that something on the other side of the wall is alive.

A binding, he assumed; or Sigil work, maybe. Jasper had never seen sigils strong enough to reach into a pack bond from outside, let alone the familial bond between brothers. Eli would have a term for whatever it was. A term wouldn’t bring Callum back.

Eli had not asked what they would do if Bodie came back empty-handed.

The question sat between them anyway, heavy and waiting.

The answer lived in the part of Eli that knew the rune journals by heart, the part that had been quietly preparing for the day the pack would need something no wolf was supposed to ask for.

Jasper wasn’t ready to hear that answer yet. Not yet.

Serena was a different kind of quiet.

They had an incomplete bond with her. Hell, as far as they could tell, Serena didn’t even know what bonds were. She hadn’t grown up exposed to the supernatural world. That had been clear from day one. It was a complication. A big one. The mating recognition had hit them on the back porch the night she’d arrived, the three of them undone by her scent in a single shared second. The weeks since had been weeks of careful distance and slow approach, of letting her come to them in her own time. A bond that took months to root and had only just begun to grow.

Then she had left them.

Callum had been tracking Marcus since the night he had walked into The Muddy Boot intent on harassing and intimidating Serena. They had set up a town watch on him after that, with Callum personally verifying reports and tracking Marcus’ movements in the area.

The morning Serena drove out, Callum had suspected Marcus would be on the move, and he was right.

The last pin Jasper had gotten from him was somewhere just outside of Tuscaloosa.

Jasper should have gone with him. He couldn’t let go of the thought. But it had never occurred to him that Callum might need backup. Callum was the strongest of the three of them by a long shot. Hell, even Dex couldn’t take Callum in a wrestle, and Dex didn’t lose to anyone.

The familial bond had gone wrong in the afternoon, somewhere east, not long after Callum’s last check-in. The mating threads, the ones that held the potential for the most sacred of bonds, had flared and gone numb in the same moment. That they’d flared at all was the only proof Jasper had that Serena was still alive. He held onto it. The gap in his world where she should be a hollow void beneath his ribs.

The Beaumonts. The Thornwoods. The Devereauxs.

Bodie hadn’t said any names on the phone, but Jasper had learned to read between the lines a long time ago. Supernatural politics were never a straightforward thing. The Vosses had a strained alliance with the Thornwoods. The Beaumonts had been gunning for the Thornwood seat for centuries. The Devereaux played a careful game, walking whatever line they needed to walk to stay in favor with whoever the current powers were. They’d all somehow missed the part where the triplets were bastards unclaimed by any pack. Still. Jasper had grown up listening for the names in every silence his mother left in a sentence. He’d grown fairly adept at it. Eli was better.

Jasper rolled his neck. The wolf rolled with it.

“Bodie called back,” Eli said. He had not looked up.

“When.”

“While you were trying to destroy the sink.”

“What did he say.”

“The same.”

“Wait.”

“Wait.”

A silence.

“He didn’t give you anything.”

“He gave me wait.”

“Eli.”

Eli looked up. The eyes were the gray-silver they went when he had been in the journals long enough that the line between archivist and wolf had gotten thin.

“Don’t,” Eli said. “Not yet.”