Soul Bound

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

"Am I the only one that thinks it's weird you bark in your sleep?"

My eyes pop open and I nearly fall out of my hammock. I hadn't heard them, hadn't smelt them. Even Wolf, who is now in a panic over our carelessness, was in a dead sleep, both of us exhausted after the night's incident.

But then the intruder's voice matches to a face and the scents lingering about the room come together in my slow, sleepy mind.

Aftershave, hair gel, laundry starch, and some nasty kind of cologne.

Dunn and Hicks.

I lean over the side of the hammock, blinking away the sleepiness, to peer at the two blurry figures. Dunn lounges in my chair and Hicks is silent and cemented in place near the sink, big arms crossed over his large chest.

I strain to look out the window behind me. The sun's barely up. Can't be past 6:30 a.m. Which means they're waking me up an hour ahead of time. And here I'd been so hopeful that getting back into a routine would make things easier.

"Go away," I say, flopping back into the hammock, yanking the covers over my head.

"No can do, mutt face," Dunn says, swiping the pillow from under my head. "We're on babysitting duty."

I curl into myself, fending off the light and the smell of the cheap cologne that Dunn wears. "Bull, who said?" I growl.

Just as I start to fling myself upward to challenge him, I suddenly remember I'm buck-naked and wrench the blankets around my body like a toga.

"Who do you think?" Dunn jabs back. He runs a hand through his spiky black hair. "Give you one guess."

Finn, Wolf rumbles, though I can feel she's actually happy to have them both here. They may not be family, but they're Wolf and my pack no matter how I look at it.

"No, no. I'm nineteen, remember? I don't do nannies anymore. So make like a bird and flock off." I flip him the bird and snatch my pillow back from him.

"Charming," Dunn says. He stands up straight and puffs out his chest like a tom turkey. Then he leans back down to add, "Finn's gone and he asked us to watch you until he got back. So here we are. And we're not leaving."

Cheers for the vote of confidence, Finn.

I guess he doesn't believe I'll be able to keep my promise either.

Dunn's bright green irises dare me to disagree with him. I peer at him through squinted eyes. I haven't seen him in a while. And I always seem to forget how good-looking he is. Like a Hawaiian demi-god. But I know him, so I know better than to romanticize him as such.

When he isn't covered in cologne, he smells like the ocean. Saltwater probably runs through his veins, like his mother and the generations of people before her. But that's where the romanticized impression ends. Dunn is a smart-mouthed pain in the ass. He's five years older than me, but Finn likes to joke that we were separated at birth.

Finn thinks he's funny.

Satisfied that I have no rebuttal, Dunn goes to stand next to his partner, Henry Hicks, who is perfectly satisfied being an enormous, intimidating, bald-headed black man in the background. His black suit is as immaculate as always, with not a single wrinkle in it. And, like his suits, he's relatively wrinkle-free for a forty-two year old, which probably has a lot to do with his Barbadian roots. Dunn does the talking, Hicks makes you listen.

"Hey, Hicks," I greet.

In typical Hicks form, I receive a head nod in reply.

"Chatty as ever." It's rare I get more than two words out of this guy. A year.