Page 97 of Wolf Bound

I smile at them and then up at Ryker. “I’m still mad at you for putting your life at risk to find me… but thank you.”

“I’ll always find you.” He presses a kiss onto my forehead. “Let’s go home.”

45

Pruitt

I’ve been home for a week now and have been splitting my time between the Weylyns’ house and Addison’s. But no matter where I decide to spend the night, Ryker is there. He made it clear when we got back he wasn’t letting me spend the night away from him again. And after spending a couple nights chained to a metal table, the idea of sleeping curled up against him sounded great to me.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares of Nicolai killing Ryker, and having nightmares is something I’ve never experienced before. Sure I’ve seen some scary movies that caused some unpleasant dreams, but the ones I’ve been having since I’ve been home have felt so real. Similar to when I was dreaming about the black wolf that ended up being Ryker, I feel like I’m truly living these dreams. I wake up yelling and drenched in sweat, but every time it happens, Ryker calms me down and holds me close until I fall asleep again. I feel terrible I’m waking him up every night, but I’m thankful he’s there.

Right now, I’m standing in the middle of the empty living room of my childhood home, and in a few short weeks, it will be my home again.

Ryker didn’t skip a beat when we got back. He jumped right into making plans with the contractors, and he even handed me his credit card and made the mistake of saying, “Buy whatever you want.”After he sees his billing statement, I’m sure he’ll never say that again.

Oops.

This is also the first time I’ve been alone since we got back. Ryker is with Sawyer, apologizing for how he behaved after his best friend helped me. It took some convincing, but Ryker finally agreed with me and gave his friend a call. From what I’ve heard, Ryker is lucky his friend is willing to even sit down with him right now. If I had been talked to the way I hear Sawyer was, I would be a little hesitant to agree to it. I feel guilty I came between them, but I’m optimistic they will recover from all of this.

Ryker promised he would be back soon since we both agreed tonight was when we wanted to complete the mating ceremony. The full moon is tonight, and we don’t want to have to wait another month. I’m excited but also a little nervous as well since I still don’t have complete control over my wolf. Ryker convinced me to shift a couple nights ago so we could show Addison and Margot. But it took me over an hour to be able to shift back.

Margot was absolutely ecstatic when she saw I had a pure white coat. She, of course, believes it means I’m the wolf from the prophecy, but I’m still not convinced it’s the case. The more we talked about the prophecy, the more we realized we don’t really understand it. It says, “so will the rest of us,”but we aren’t clear on what that means.

I’m walking across the room to measure the fireplace mantel when I hear a car pull up and footsteps make their way to the front door. I know by the sound of the steps it isn’t Ryker. I meet the person at the door and swing it open before they have time to knock.

“Esme!” I’m shocked to see the high priestess standing there. “What are you doing here?”

“I found it!” she cheers as she pushes past me and hurries into the house. “It took some digging and a pretty powerful locator spell, but I finally found it!”

“Found what?” I question, following behind her as quickly as I can. She moves around the house and finds her way into the kitchen. It dawns on me she’s been here before when my parents lived here.

She pulls a small, old book from her bag and carefully places it on the counter. The binding is torn and beat up, and the writing embossed on the leather cover is almost worn off at this point. “It’s a book written by one of the oldest known wolf shifters. It’s a brief history of how your species came to be. It’s actually a very interesting read, but that’s not what’s important.” She flips through the pages looking for something specific. “The important part is where they discuss the White Wolf. This book—the prophecy originated from thisverybook.”

“What does it say?” I look between the book and Esme’s obsidian eyes.

“Over the past three hundred years, this whole book has been reduced to a single sentence:‘When the white wolf walks this Earth once more and finds her mate, so will the rest of us.’ Generation after generation forgot what it really meant, and we were left to speculate and guess as to what the actual meaning was. And we did get some of it right, but it’s so much more than we thought,” she rambles with excitement.

“Esme, stop!” I put my hands on her shoulders, hoping she’ll pause long enough to take a breath. “Just tell me what it says.”

“It’s in a different language, but I was finally able to figure it out. Basically, it recalls a time when mates weren’t strictly based on fate like they are now. Instead mate bonds were created when two people,regardlessof what species they were, truly fell in love. The writer talks about a demon and a wolf shifter falling in love and mating with each other.” She pauses and looks at me, her face softening. “Pru, they were able to have children together.”

“What happened then? Because that’s not possible anymore.” I shake my head. The whole point of Nicolai’s breeding program was because all of this isn’t possible.

“A curse happened,” Esme explains, a look of awe and wonder on her face.

“A curse?”

“Yes. One of the first and most powerful witches to ever exist created a curse when her son fell in love with a wolf shifter, awhitewolf shifter. She was all about keeping the bloodline pure, and when she heard they were going to mate with each other, she—for lack of a better saying—freaked out.She didn’t want her grandchildren to be crossbreeds and found a way to make it impossible.”

“By creating a curse that would only allow mating between the same species?”

“Exactly.” Esme nods.

“Okay…” I ponder what she’s saying. “I’m still confused about what this means for me or the whole white wolf thing?”

“You weren’t randomly selected to be the white wolf, Pruitt, this goes back generations. The curse requires that for the white wolf to exist again, the bloodline of the original white wolf had to be recreated, and by your grandparents meeting up, and subsequently, your parents, and then them creating you, recreated the bloodline.”

“So what you’re saying is, I can blame all of them for this?” I bite my lip to keep from laughing at the expression on Esme’s face. “Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t make a joke again.”

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