Page 47 of Accidentally Wedded To A Werewolf

Another pulse of pain rushed through the bond. Something was very wrong.

It took her several minutes to rush back down the path. Her cell phone signal never went higher than one bar, flickering in and out of service and not sending one of her emergency texts.

When she finally reached the spot where Oliver had fallen, she found him sitting up against a tree clutching his phone morosely. The backpack was resting beside him.

She dropped to her knees next to him. “Are you okay? Did I go too far?”

“Nope,” he said through gritted teeth, arms curled protectively around his legs. “Are you getting any signal?”

She shook her head, looking him over. She couldn’t see any broken bones.

“Where are you hurt? I felt something when you hit the ground.”

“Wolves heal fast,” Oliver said.

Another jolt of pain through the bond. Luna thought about jabbing him in random places until he howled. Then she remembered they were stuck on a mountain together and decided against it.

“Show me,” she demanded.

Oliver sighed. Then he lifted his arms to reveal his ankle, which was swollen to the size of a grapefruit.

Luna shriekedagain.

“Calm down,” he told her. “Last time I broke an ankle, I could walk on it after a day.”

“A day?” Luna laughed, incredulous. “You said we’d be back by dinner!”

Oliver tipped his head back against the tree, wincing when it jostled his leg. “We have supplies.”

“So? I’m not sleeping out here!”

“There’s a cave down that way.” Oliver pointed down the path. Luna vaguely remembered him pointing it out and saying that Vida veered off the path to smoke in it during her first and only hike last year.

Luna snorted in disbelief. “You wantmeto stay in acave?”

She gestured at herself: peppy ponytail, stylish jeans, cute yet durable boots that werekillingher.

“We have blankets,” he reminded her. “And I’m a furnace, remember? I can spare some body heat.”

Luna scoffed. She thought about making a joke about how this was all a ploy to get her to snuggle, but they’d slept together enough times by now that he could’ve done that anytime he wanted. She didn’t want to endure his flat look that let her know how much hedidn’twant to sleep next to her, even if their bond howled for it.

“Your family will send someone to find us,” she tried weakly.

“My family knows I pack like this.” He slapped the backpack sitting beside him. “And it’s not long until dark. If theydosend somebody up before I can make it back on foot, they’ll be able to smell us from the path.”

Luna glared at him.

Oliver sighed. Suddenly, he looked exhausted, all the fight going out of him.

“You can keep walking if you want. Another hour, maybe two, and you’ll find a flower somewhere less dangerous. Then you can come back for me. But I’ll still need somewhere to stay tonight. And unless you’ve seen a hotel behind a tree somewhere…”

He trailed off, staring up at her expectantly. He expected her to leave him, she realized. Leave him injured and helpless in the middle of some hiking track for a few hours while her distance put him in even more pain than he already was.

“It would hurt,” she said. “A few hours of me walking away, you’d pass out again.”

“And I’d be fine once you got back,” he argued. “This trip can’t be for nothing.”

She went cold, imagining it: walking back and finding him limp and unconscious, his ankle still swollen. Alone, just like he insisted he wanted.

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