Bound by a Mark, Eineen Murphy must save her pack before it finally tears itself apart.
With a guilt-ridden Alpha whose standards are hard to meet, she's been given far more than she's bargained for.
As she tries to bond for the sake of her pack wit...
(a/n) Sorry I missed last week's update! I'm in my last two weeks of this class and I'm working as hard as I can to keep these grades up so I'm very preoccupied. To apologize, you'll be getting TWO updates this week. Enjoy! xoxo
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Of course, my first thought was that Reece hadn't baked the cake himself. Reece may be able to knit and sew (a skill that his mother taught him when he was younger), but cooking was not his forte, and he wasn't afraid to admit that.
Reece had stolen a cake, and I wasn't sure if I should be grateful or concerned that this was one of the great lengths he would go to in order to make his best friend happy. But nonetheless, I smiled and moved toward the cake. Colin, who was born just a day after me, pointed toward the cake questioningly.
"You stole a cake?"
"Hey," Reece said, giving a little smirk. "This isn't my first rodeo. Nor is it the first cake I've stolen."
I tried to recall all the times that Reece had brought the cake over to my house late at night, but the thought left me when I saw the wax from the candle beginning to drop onto the cake. It didn't matter whether or not he'd retrieved the cake legally or not—he'd gotten us something for our birthdays, and that's what mattered to me.
He was giving us a birthday.
Using a small knife he'd hidden in his pocket Reece began to cut away a few slices after he blew the candle out himself with a broad grin that was smugger than ever before. If I had ever doubted our friendship before, I certainly didn't doubt it anymore.
He handed a flimsy plate in my direction, and then to Colin, and then one for himself.
"Sit down and eat."
As far as liveliness goes, we were all more interested in eating our cake than actually talking. It was really easy to tell that Reece hadn't baked the cake himself. I'd been a part of the Buckley family for some time; I could tell the difference between what Reece made and what his mother made.
It made absolute sense why he chose an abandoned shed as our venue—if his mother knew he'd stolen something from herkitchen, he'd be doomed.
By the time I finished my cake Colin had set down his own plate and was smiling—not in that, I'm-so-stuffed sort of way, but a real, sincere smile that was directed at Reece and I. He ran his hand through his blond hair, made messy by sleep (which only made me assume that Reece had woken him up, too, for this birthday surprise).
"I'm gonna be honest here," Colin said, his grin beaming at us. "I can totally see you stealing a cake, Reece; but I can't quite imagine you being totally okaywith this."
I was sure that it was coming—it was only a matter of time before it was eventually brought up. After all, there weren't many Retrievers our age. There were plenty in the younger years, but that would soon fade before they understood what complaining was.
