Page 19 of Bond & Protect

But funnily enough, the monster doesn’t feel quite as important as Mila. It did, not so long ago, but my mind has been all twisted up in knots. I keep thinking about the feelings I got when I was staring at her, when I was healing her wounds recently. It was overwhelming and intense. It was powerful and fascinating. I knew in that moment that the earth had shifted underneath my feet, and the foundation had been replaced with something new.

“Okay,” Sydney finally says, embracing what needs to be done. “Right, well then, that’s what we’ll do. We'll do this when Amos is feeling better and Mila is awake.”

Elias nods too. “Right, I see. Yes. We’ll do that.”

I don’t think that our alpha has ever sounded so unsure of himself in his life. I reach across and rest my hand on his to let him know that we’re all in this together. This isn’t something that he’s doing on his own. We are all here for him.

“It’s going to be okay,” I promise him, desperately hoping that I’m right. Because much as I want to reassure him of this, I’m not one hundred percent sure. “It will. Honest.”

Me, Elias, and Sydney share a smile, all bonded a little tighter now. I didn’t think it was possible for us to get any closer than we already were, but we are––right here and now, and we haven’t even talked to Mila yet. What a crazy day.

Now, we have to wait. I don’t know how long this will take. It could be minutes, it could be hours, but we can’t make any step in either direction until everyone else is on board. I do rise to my feet, though, to make us all hot drinks. I need something to do with my hands, and take my mind off of what’s to come before I’m driven stir-crazy by all of this…

Amos stirs first. He shakes and slowly stirs until his eyes have propped open wide. We all react to him, racing to his side so we can be there for him when he wakes up, but it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the brightness of the lights surrounding him.

“What’s going on?” he asks, with a thickness to his tone. “Where am I?”

“Back at the cabin,” I tell him calmly. “I don’t know what you remember, but you were attacked. You were hurt by the monster, but you don’t need to worry. You’re doing much better now.”

He nods, but I don’t think he fully understands what’s happening. I help him get up into a sitting position, though, so he can adjust to everything and maybe process a little.

“Is Mila okay? She was caught up by the monster as well, wasn’t she?”

“Mila is fine,” Sydney interjects. “She’s sleeping. You don’t need to worry.”

Amos touches where he is hurt, grateful to see that there’s nothing there anymore. He smiles at me, knowing that I helped him out.

“Thank you for whatever you did. I feel much better, thank you. That was horrible, though. I don’t know what the monster did to me, but the effect on my body was awful. I don’t know if I feel right. I don’t know if I’ve quite adjusted as yet.”

“You will. Don’t you worry,” I reassure him. “You’re going to be just fine.”

He nods, trusting me, which is really sweet. My heart warms up, just as it does every time someone puts their faith in me. This is why I love working at the hospital so much because I get to make such a positive difference in the world.

“So, what’s going on here?” he asks as he darts his eyes around at us all. “There’s like… a weird tension here. Has something happened? Have I missed something?”

I look to Elias and Sydney, but I think they’re waiting for me to explain. I guess because I already have the trust of Amos and I can explain it better than them. With a sigh, I begin.

“Okay, so I don’t know how much you know about our bonding to Mila…”

“It’s all of us, right?” Amos asks, sounding like he understands everything. As the youngest of all of us, he seems far more understanding. “Does that work?”

“It can work as a mating round, a mating of an all male pack to one female. Not so rare in small packs living together.” I continue. “Downright natural in fact. It’s a good way to keep the pack alive if there’s no jealousy over mating a female, no fights between the males when pups are born either, as all male wolves in the mating round act as fathers to them.”

Amos seems like he was expecting something like this. His youth really is helping him here because he doesn’t have any expectations.

“That makes a lot of sense,” he confirms with a small nod. “That already makes me feel a lot better. Knowing that there’s something we can do here. Something that makes us all happy. Is that what everyone else wants too? I don’t want to make assumptions…”

“The only person we haven’t asked is Mila,” Sydney jumps in. “But as soon as she wakes up, we will. We can talk to her and see if this is something that she wants. She might not even know what she wants at the moment. She might not even be sure she wants to stay in town…”

“She has connections here,” Elias rasps. It sounds like every word is hard for him to get out, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. “Her family is from this town. That’s why she came here to hide out. She came here without knowing anyone because she felt something.” He looks around at all of us expectantly. “What if we drew her here? She could feel us?”

I’m left speechless at this suggestion because I haven’t got a clue. Much as I know about the human body, I don’t know anything about how humans mate, and meet their mates. It’s the one aspect of humanity I don’t have any clue about, so as all the other guys look to me for answers, all I can do is shrug helplessly. “I don’t know. I guess we have to wait.”

“Wait for what?” All of us twist around in shock as we turn to face Mila. None of us sensed her approach, never mind that she heard us. “What’s going on?”

She’s painfully adorable to look at as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes. It’s damn near impossible to keep away from her. It takes every scrap of self-restraint not to race to her right away and envelop her in a tight hug.

Mila doesn’t need physical contact from me right now. Just like everyone else, she needs an explanation. All of a sudden, I’m not on the outside looking in. I’m right at the center of it all––important and needed by everyone surrounding me. I have to admit. I like that feeling.

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