Bound

Chapter 20

"So wanting to prove them wrong, I went in." Dean paused his story, holding up the coffee pot to offer Nyah a top-up.

"Thanks," she slid her mug towards him. Pale evening light slid closer to twilight as they dawdled over dinner, another relaxing dinner uninterrupted by interrogations. Dean's promise had held firm, and Nyah was impressed.

Today was her fifth day in Carter Plains. The elusive Escape Plan hadn't presented itself to her yet, and with Dean's freak-out over the voodoo revelation being the one and only time he'd ever left her by herself, she wasn't sure what to do. Nick had been drafted in as her official babysitter and in his absence, Kyle, Dean's delta, took over. It was frustrating to be followed so closely, but she had to admit both Nick and Kyle were nice guys, Nick especially. He had a wicked sense of humour, making it difficult to resent him when he arrived every evening to hang out/make sure she didn't try to escape, while Dean took a run. But no matter how hard she sought for a chink, she couldn't find a sliver of moment when patrols around the house were at a minimum, or attention wasn't subtly trained on her every move.

'You're not trying hard enough', a little voice reminded her; Narky Nyah, the Nyah who wanted her gone from Carter Plains before Simon could come and do his worst. Narky Nyah was right of course, she knew damn well that every day spent in Dean's house was a day closer to trouble, and her snipped comments were becoming more frequent and less easy to ignore. Narky Nyah had her number; she knew Naïve Nyah's desperation to leave had started to wane.

Dean nudged her mug back over. Meal times were fast becoming her favourite. Dean had busy days. He spent hours in his office with his alpha duties, meaning it was only when they sat to eat when they got to talk. And boy, did they talk—about everything that wasn't her screwed up life of course, but everything else was fair game. Like the story he'd started to tell her, about when he was younger and his friends had dared him to have his palm read by a fortune teller at a fair. Guessing the outcome of the childhood dare was a funny one, Nyah blocked out the thought of how she'd miss their chatter, picked up her cup and focused.

"I had no idea she was the real thing," he continued, now filling his own mug. "I was so sure she was going to feed me some nonsense about marriage, kids and travel, you know, the usual stuff."

Nyah nodded, watching as his face softened with a growing smile. He looked up at her and she found herself smiling back.

"She told me to sit opposite her," he grinned, resting his forearms on the table, "and asked for my hands, so—."

He gestured to where hers were occupied with cradling the coffee, but intrigued by his story, she quickly put it down and slid her hands, palms up, across the table towards him.

"I let her take hold of them," he slid one hand under each of hers. "At first, she held them loosely, like this."

He demonstrated the gentle hold the palm-reader had used that day, and although still caught up in the story, Nyah registered the heat from him, and how her own smaller hands nestled so comfortably inside of his.

"But she obviously got a sense of something, because—."

He started to laugh and she joined him, giggling as his grip increased and he mimicked the shocked expression the unsuspecting fortune teller had worn.

"Her face," he chuckled, "she couldn't speak, she just—." Hilarity took hold, and although he wanted to carry on, and Nyah wanted to know what had happened, their joint laughter put an end to coherent speech.

Without warning, Nyah felt an abrupt shift. From within, an unfolding began, a sudden and breath-catching alteration. Heat grew, and with it, a sense of her wolf, a trace of her presence uncurling. Before Nyah could marvel at the phenomenon, a force even more incredibly powerful hit.