Blood Bound
B***d Bound Chapter 22

‘WHY DID YOU AGREE? I want to sleep with our mate,’ Xavier’s beast whined in his head.

‘We will be back. She cannot be gone from us for too long,’ he answered confidently.

Xavier had only acquiesced to Maya’s demands because he knew he’d be back in her room in very little time.

One of the perks of their current mate bond included the inability to leave each other for long periods.

Even though she was surrounded by his scent, it wasn’t enough to keep the mate bond satisfied. Skin-to-skin contact was a requirement until their souls completely accepted one another.

He wasn’t too sure what it would be like after it settled, but before then, he hoped it would close the distance between him and his little sorceress, enough for her to put down her barriers and love him as her mate.

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In extreme frustration, Maya huffed out a breath of air for the umpteenth time, shoving a pesky strand of hair off her heated cheeks. She turned back and forth, rolling from one side of the bed to the other until her face was entirely smothered by Xavier’s pillow.

Even though she was wearing his t-shirt and trying to cover her body and senses in him, the mating bond was still suffocating her around the throat. It was gnawing at her consciousness and eating away at her sanity. Maya was forced to lie wide awake on his bed while pushing down the ineffable instinct to join the Alpha in the guest room.

It’s so unfair, she thought to herself.

Why was she the only one suffering from this bond while the Alpha was completely immune to its effects? Was it because she was always trying to fight it and he wasn’t? So it wanted to punish her more?

Maya frowned deeply as her chest heated with exasperation. She raked a hand through her tangled hair and flopped back down on the other side of the bed, kicking the sheets away.

The time continued to tick in her head, trickling along, as Maya laid in the dark for who knew how long. After a moment, she lifted her head and conjured a wristwatch in the palm of her hand.

3:39 A.M.

Ugh

.

With a g***n, she tossed the contraption aside and slammed her head back on the pillow. Just when she was about to flip around on her back, light knocks sounded on the door and reverberated in the room, disturbing the silence.

Maya could smell the Alpha’s scent seeping into the room and straight to her nose. As her lungs filled to the brim with Xavier Thaeos, her eyelids immediately lowered and her stiff body sagged. She didn’t even want to breathe out because of how euphoric his fresh scent was compared to the stale one on his pillow.

Maya’s fingers danced on the silken sheets, leaking black magic from the tips, and the door unlocked from the inside before swinging open as if to invite the Alpha in. Then, she continued to play dead.

The Alpha entered the room in long, sweeping strides, and the heat of his aura licked across the surface of Maya’s skin, dousing her agitation in calming sweeps.

Still so stubborn, Xavier thought.

He had waited and waited for Maya to come to him, counting the minutes slowly trickling by like the little grains of sand in an hourglass.

But his patient waiting had been for nothing. Not even a peep from her, other than the sounds of her sighs and tossing and turning.

His little sorceress refused to go to him, refused to admit she needed him just as much as he needed her. It was driving him nuts; even though, it was one of the qualities he loved most about her.

But despite how stubborn she was, he couldn’t replace it in him to be upset at her.

Perhaps, he should take things one step at a time and gauge the level of which she was comfortable and try not to push the boundaries too far.

He figured that if his little sorceress didn’t bend for him, he’d have to bend himself for her.

“Can’t sleep?” Xavier took a seat on the edge of the bed, watching her body relax as their proximity increased.

“You either?” Maya lifted her head, brushing her hair off her flushed face, and glanced at him from the corner of her eye.

The Alpha was still half-naked. His black pants hung dangerously low on his h**s and his washboard abs were on full display.

Though his facial expression was calm and neutral, she noticed the droplets of sweat dripping down the sides of his face and collecting on his forehead, nose, and upper l*p. Even his breathing seemed more labored than before.

But as far as she knew, the house remained moderately cool throughout the day, and Xavier hadn’t been doing anything other than lying in his bed. Maya could hear every movement he made. So there was no reason for him to be sweating and breathing so heavily.

Upon closer inspection, Maya realized the bond did, indeed, affect him. He just had a better way of hiding his pain compared to her.

A wide grin spread across her rose-colored lips, and her eyes gleamed in the dark, watching as the tall Alpha untangled the covers from her long legs and repositioned her body on her side of the bed. He then climbed under the covers next to her and wrapped his left arm around her tapered waist before setting her delicate head onto his right arm.

In seconds, they laid on their sides, intimately pressed against each other.

The instant warmth and security swallowed her whole like a safety blanket of tranquility, and the bond calmed underneath her skin, purring in a type of contentment only Xavier Thaeos could give.

When Maya made a move to get up, he held her to him and ordered, “Sleep.”

His hot breath ruffled the fine hairs at the top of her head and his deep voice made gooseflesh form on her skin.

“I thought we were sleeping in different beds,” she tried to mock, suddenly replaceing her eyes too heavy to keep open.

“Let’s not argue about this. You need the rest.” He pressed a delicate k**s on the crown of her head and murmured into her ear, “Sleep.”

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Light rain sprinkled down upon a forest of shadowed trees, trickling slowly like morning dew on yellow leaves.

The constant flutter of struggling wings echoed in Everette’s ears as she tried to avoid the drops of rain pelting her body. Most of her feathers were gathering liquid and becoming too heavy to continue flight, but she pushed forward with all she had.

After another thirty minutes of piteous flying, she quickly transformed back into her humanoid body.

Her white hair seemed almost silver now that it was wet, sticking to the contours of her face and flattening against her skull. Her red eyes gleamed eerily in the dark and her lashes danced upon her frozen cheeks, collecting rain droplets at every chance it got.

“Damn it,” she muttered lowly, pulling her sopping foot from a deep hole in the muddy ground. Her white knee-length dress had long become waterlogged, clinging to her thin and frail frame in wrinkled abundance. “Why am I even going to such lengths?”

Ever since Maya had disappeared from the apartment, Everette had spent quite some time moping in the dark sorceress’s home and contemplating if she should come to the rescue.

The dove shifter didn’t know if it was even necessary.

What if the dark sorceress wanted to stay with the Alpha? What if she ruined whatever devious plan the sorceress had concocted by showing up?

There were too many “what if’s” she had created as an excuse to keep herself from going.

Eventually, Everette had scrapped all her excuses and decided it was best to go see if the sorceress needed help. If Maya didn’t, Everette would head back home and get a good shot of whiskey from her grandpa’s collection. If she did, Everette would replace a way to help, even if it’d be damned near impossible.

Since she deemed herself to be a good friend, she had to stick to the code of honor.

Another mile of walking in the rain was enough to calm Everette’s frazzled nerves. She had been hyperventilating earlier at Maya’s apartment before she drank a cup of whiskey and decided to hell with it all. Now, her anxiety had eased up and she was calmer than a clam in the big wide ocean—a little drunk, even.

Within minutes, Everette spotted the borders of the Southern Land. Her red eyes glanced past a grove of tall trees to her left, and she noted the empty expanse.

With a pair of binoculars, the dove shifter had surveyed the borders of the Southern Land earlier this morning, trekking mile after mile at a far distance. This particular side of the woods seemed to be a blind spot and didn’t have any border patrol guarding. It was the only opening she’d found mighty plausible.

Although Everette could start a fire to distract the guards, she knew their defenses would not falter with her simple ruse. And if she were to try to poison or drug them, her sentence would be far from kind and gentle when they caught her.

Everette was too scared to do anything stupid.

She had no help.

No magic.

Nothing.

She was a one-woman army, and the odds were against her. So, she chose a rainy night to try to sneak past the borders, hoping the rain would wash away her scent before the werewolves would notice her.

Perhaps, this was a bad idea, after all, Everette mulled.

Her hands curled into fists and bony fingers stabbed into the thin flesh of her palms. She immediately reverted into her bird form to make it harder for the werewolves to spot her.

As Everette tried to keep herself above ground, her little body moved to and fro as flying became extremely difficult with the wind and rain growing stronger and stronger by the minute.

Just when Everette flew past the barrier between heaven and monstrosity, a hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed her entire body.

The dove shifter’s eyes bulged from their sockets, and her heart constricted in her chest. She squawked and squeaked, pecking at the hand twice her size, to no avail.

“Caught a pretty little bird, Dan,” the male holding her announced to his partner, waving poor Everette around like a dripping white flag of victory.

“Pretty, but not enough meat to spit roast,” Dan commented flatly.

The men were drenched from head to toe, standing guard several miles away, when they saw the dot of white wiggle around through the heavy downpour. It didn’t take but a couple of seconds for Carl, the brawny brute, to launch himself in the air and catch Everette in the palms of his hands.

Carl shook the still bird. “Well, are you going to shift, or do we have to make you?”

His fingers tightened around Everette’s tiny form, squeezing moderately around the ring of her spindly neck. When Everette’s body expanded, he opened his fingers and dropped her on the ground.

A wet thwack rang in the clearing, and Everette knew she was done for.

“Please don’t eat me. I-I-I’m looking for m-my friend,” she tried to explain.

Her beady red eyes glistened from the rain and her frail body trembled pitifully on the ground.

Carl’s deep blue eyes leered down at her, a canine-filled grin adorning his lips. “It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for. You’ll have to check yourself into our dungeon until Alpha Xavier has the time to deal with you.”

Everette gulped.