Page 23 of Bond & Protect

So I roll up my sleeves and I get to it. I focus on everything, one task at a time. The manual labor isn’t something my body is used to, but I get into a real rhythm as I work.

It’s a surprisingly cleansing task, inside of me as well as out. I feel good about everything. I’m doing this for Mila, and doing something to make her feel better is nice. Plus, it’s like scrubbing all the fuzziness out of my brain, making it easier for me to think straight. I’m starting to gather up a sense that I can cope with whatever I’m going to read now once I finally sit down and tackle my grandfather’s journal. I even become excited by what I might discover.

Who knows, the answer might have been at our feet the whole time. The irony would be funny if I weren’t in the middle of something terrifying and dangerous for us all.

‘I miss Eva very much,’ my grandfather writes on the first page, talking about my grandmother. I don’t have as many memories about her as I do him because I spent far more time with him, but I know she was a very sweet lady, and the love of his life. ‘But I have to hide out here to keep her safe. Knowing that the stories of The Rift are real is really scary for all of us. I have always hated those stories. They are so grim. And now I need to protect everyone from them. Especially Eva. I mean, what if the monster uses her to get to me? No way!’

That causes me to panic a little. We really do need to protect Mila, don’t we? Even more so now. If this monster uses people, then she will be the main target. Maybe the monster even detected that right in the beginning, which is why she was attacked so early on…

I swallow hard and keep reading. ‘It’s getting ugly in here. No one wants to be hiding out like this. I really don’t know how we can all keep this up.’

Luckily we haven’t had to face that yet. I wonder if that will come or if the mating round will help us. There hasn’t been a scrap of resentment as far as I know. It could have gotten a little problematic if Liam hadn’t stepped in and clued us in on the solution, then perhaps… but maybe…

‘It’s been days now, and I’m not happy at all. I don’t know what we can do. Learning that the monster feeds on flesh has been one of the hardest discoveries for all of us…’

“What?” I gasp in shock. “What the hell? It feeds on flesh?”

Immediately, my insides coil. I think about the people in the town who are now in danger. People must have died in my grandfather’s time for him to find this out. I dread to even think about what that might look like. It’s absolutely horrific. It makes me sick to my stomach.

I press my hand to my belly, trying my hardest not to throw up. I like a lot of people in the town, no one deserves to have their flesh torn from their body. That’s horrific.

‘More people are dying. I don’t know how much longer we can keep doing this. We’re supposed to be protecting the town, but this is getting increasingly hard. Plenty of people have now upped and left. Fled the town to try and save themselves, and I can’t blame them. I don’t want to lose Eva, but I want her to go as well so she doesn’t end up dead. I’m torn.’

Is that when Mila’s family left town? I don’t know, but it’s something to think about. It makes sense. I would probably want to leave too, if given half the chance. But I can’t leave. I have to fight. If me and my pack don’t tackle this monster, the blood will be on our hands.

I flip a few pages, skimming over the words. It’s hard to read about my grandfather’s emotions because he was never a very expressive man. This must have been so very hard on him.

‘We are going to lose the town. But if we do, we won’t lose the monster. It will spread.’

That’s what I don’t like. It causes a thick ball of emotion to lodge in the base of my throat––knowing that The Rift and whatever comes out of it will just keep on growing and blooming. It will just keep causing pain and destruction. Of course I’m glad to have things with Mila on an even keel now. My brain is a lot clearer now, but still…

This is a nightmare, and we really need to tackle it. Sooner rather than later.

I don’t want to get too lost in the emotion that my grandfather felt because that’s really hard for me to swallow down. So I move a few more pages ahead again, just trying to see if I can spot anything that jumps out––anything about how to take the fucker down. Because right now I have so much anger careering through my veins… it’s all I can think about. Tearing him apart, limb from limb. Killing that bastard in the way that he killed people before.

‘Eva was hurt…’ Those words stop me because they are absolutely terrifying. Obviously I know that my grandmother survived whatever happened here, but I’m not so much thinking about her in all of this. I’m concentrating on Mila and what might happen to her. ‘She had to visit the wolf elders to recover. They say it might take a long time. Weeks. I don’t know if I can cope for weeks knowing that the love of my life is hurt. That feels really messed up for me. My heart isn’t whole without her. I guess the only thing I can do is concentrate on making sure that the monster is long gone by the time Eva comes back to me. I need her to return to a peaceful life, just like the one we have talked about having. A picket fence peaceful sort of life, with me and her against the world. I have to give that to her because she deserves it. She deserves the whole world.’

Oh God, this is so difficult. I have to now check what happened to my grandmother. I need to skip to the end… to see if anything is written there. To see how quickly my grandfather got his happy ever after in the way that he wanted it. Now it makes me realize how little I knew of his life. I thought that I knew everything, but that isn’t the case. He had a whole secret life before I came along. One he tried to warn me about endlessly with his tales of The Rift when I was young.

But that isn’t what I get. I don’t find anything out about Eva. It’s all about the beast…

“Oh fuck.” Words jump out at me. Words I’m not expecting to see, but that might be just what I’m searching for. Words about getting that monster back in The Rift. I don’t know if we can close The Rift yet, that’s something I want to work on as well, but this is a start. “Wow.”

I read the words over and over again. I make sure that I commit them to memory completely. At least now, I feel like I’ve been incredibly useful while Sydney and Amos have been out, hunting the monster down, and Liam has been at work. Mila will be pleased when she wakes up too… at least, I hope so. This might not be something she likes. It may well scare her.

In fact, I’m sure she won’t like what I have to say because it’s going to be dangerous. It might be better not to tell her anything in advance. We can just solve this problem without her finding out, in the same way that my grandfather did while my grandmother was recovering. It seems to me like he just made this work and then my grandmother did wake up to her dream life. That’s what I want too.

As I hear Mila descending down the stairs, I snap the book closed instinctively, and hide it back under the table leg. I don’t like deceiving her, but this might be the best thing for all of us. I mean, she might even want to stop us from doing what we need to do.

“Hey,” I say with a smile as she comes into view, making my heart freaking melt. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? No wonder we’re all absolutely obsessed with her. “How are you doing?”

She smiles and runs her fingers a little sheepishly through her hair. I can see a pinkness staining in her cheeks as she thinks about what happened before. Us all sealing the deal and taking our mating round to another level. God, she’s adorable. I can’t help going over to her.

I wrap my arms around her and slide my eyes closed as we embrace for a little while.

“It’s been a long time since it’s just been me and you,” she murmurs against my chest. “It’s a little strange, isn’t it? I don’t think either of us thought our first meeting would end up here.”

It’s a little hard to think about our first meeting now because it seems like Mila has been in my life forever, but I let out a little laugh because I get what she means. “Yeah, I just thought that you were a beautiful woman who I would walk home and probably never see again.”

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