Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1)

Chapter 1

Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. I knew it as soon as the words hit the air. Jasmin probably knew it even before she opened her mouth, but that didn't stop her from saying it.

"Oh, yeah? Well, better a second-rate wolf than a third-rate hybrid who exists solely to serve as Brandon's whipping boy."

It was exactly the opening that Vincent had been looking for. He'd been riding Jasmin for days trying to get enough of a rise out of her to justify putting her in her place, but she'd been unusually calm—at least right up until that point.

Jasmin and I had slipped out to nearly the outer reaches of the estate in an effort to get away from the constant dominance games that were an inherent part of pack life. We'd found a quiet spot out by the mountain that overlooked Graves Manor from the north and hunkered down to do some homework.

Once upon a time just getting away from the house would have been enough to guarantee ourselves some privacy, but ever since Brandon had manifested his full hybrid ability Kaleb, my father—although I didn't like to think of him as such—had been giving him and his lackeys a much greater run of the estate.

Vincent backhanded Jasmin into a scrubby tree with enough force that she would have at the very least had a concussion if she'd been merely human. As it was she still hit hard enough to see stars, and her knees buckled as soon as her feet touched the ground, but she still managed to glare up at him from the ground.

"I'd tell you what I really think of you, you illiterate piece of crap, but I'd have to use words bigger than two syllables, which you wouldn't understand. Not even your own mother could put up with you long enough to teach you basic manners."

If Jasmin's first comment had been the spark that started a fire, this was pouring gas on the flame. Vincent had the incident he'd been angling for, but her comment must have actually upset him. Rather than playing things cool and using the opportunity to abuse her without actually triggering a full challenge, instead he screamed and shifted.

Jasmin had to be at least a little unsteady on her feet, but she likewise changed forms in an explosion of clothing that left fragments of material fluttering in a circle around her. As Vincent stalked towards Jasmin in his hulking hybrid form my pulse sped up.

A hybrid has a head, two arms and two legs, but that's about where the resemblance to a human being ends. Humans are tool users, hybrids are six-foot plus tall mountains of muscle and fur that were designed with only one purpose in mind.

Everything from the backwards-articulating knees, to the talons on their feet and the eight-inch semi-retractable claws at the end of each finger, spoke to the ability of a hybrid to explode into motion without warning and rend flesh as though it was nothing more than wet paper.

Jasmin hadn't ever manifested a third shape. She was a wolf now, sleek, fast, and deadly in her own way, but she wasn't a match for Vincent, not today, not as shaken up as she was after being thrown into a tree like that. There were things that were even bigger and nastier than a hybrid, but even if one of them had been close at hand it would have been just as likely to kill Jasmin as help her face down Vincent.

I knew Vincent wasn't going to be satisfied with just roughing Jasmin up. He might even be far enough gone to kill her despite the hot water that it would get him into with Kaleb. It was one of those times where nearly every part of me was screaming that it was time to panic, but I'd learned that these kinds of situations are usually when it's most important to take a second and calmly analyze my options.

The breeze played across my face and I took a deep breath, reveling for the briefest of moments in the smell of cedar trees and sage. There were a thousand other scents, some of them only just detectible to me in this form, but it was the cedar and sagebrush that formed the bulwark upon which all of the other scents rested.