The Love Potion (Werewolf High Book 5)

by Anita Oh

  The Love Potion

  Werewolf High #5

  Anita Oh

  Contents

  Copyright

  Werewolf High series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Werewolf High #5: The Love Potion

  © Anita Oh 2017

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places or events, is purely coincidental.

  This book, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  Werewolf High series

  Book 1: The Truth Spell

  A dastardly spell. Mysterious billionaires. An ordinary girl thrust into an extraordinary world.

  Lucy O’Connor is more IT girl than “it girl” but even though she’ll never fit in, the scholarship to elite Amaris High is an opportunity she can’t refuse.

  The day Lucy arrives at Amaris, she sees her best friend, Sam Spencer. But Sam had died three years ago, on the night that had changed Lucy’s life forever. The more Lucy looks for answers, the worse things get for her, as she makes an enemy of the richest, most popular boy in school, Tennyson Wilde.

  When the entire school is hit by a truth spell, it seems like the perfect chance to find out what Sam and Tennyson are hiding, but the closer Lucy gets, the more she realizes that the truth is stranger than she ever imagined.

  A Very Werey Christmas: A Werewolf High Short

  When Lucy is kidnapped by a creepy old man in a red suit and transformed into a reindeer, it will take a Christmas miracle to sort things out.

  Book 2: The Tiny Curse

  A powerful enemy. An estranged love. And only one tiny girl to make things right.

  Life isn’t going so well for Lucy at elite boarding school, Amaris High. Classes are a struggle. She has no leads on the evil magic user. Sam’s avoiding her, and the entire student population hates her.

  But someone hates her more than the rest. Rumors start spreading that lead to Lucy being bullied worse than ever before. Just when she thinks she couldn’t feel smaller, she’s hit with a spell that shrinks her down to only two inches tall.

  Forced to rely on Sam, Tennyson and the other Golden to survive, Lucy is determined to get to the bottom of things once and for all. But the more she learns, she finds that being tiny might not be her biggest problem.

  Book 3: The Body Swap

  A shocking betrayal. An impossible deadline. Everything is about to change.

  Lucy's world is turned upside down when she learns that her enemy is the one person she never suspected.

  Although she has Sam and the Golden on her side, she no longer knows who to trust. Then, when she's hit with one final spell, she has no choice but to put her faith in the person the she despises the most.

  Stuck in Tennyson Wilde's body, Lucy and Tennyson must work together to break the curse or risk becoming each other for real. But in order to fix things, Lucy will face the greatest betrayal of all.

  Book 4: The Soul Bond

  A new threat. An unexpected ally. And a spark of unwanted power.

  Sophomore year isn’t shaping up to be the cake walk that Lucy had hoped. Everyone still hates her. She can’t forgive Sam for his secrets. Her father is back and she can’t forgive him either. There’s been no sign of Hannah, and Lucy can’t help but resent her new roommate because of it.

  And Tennyson Wilde is everywhere. In the dining room. In her dorm. In class. Even inside her head. She thinks it’s just a residual effect of being in his body, the fact that she can hear his thoughts, feel his feelings. But the more it happens, the worse it becomes and it seems to be awakening something inside her.

  Lucy never wanted powers. She never wanted to be anything but a normal girl, but the longer she stays at Amaris, the more impossible that seems.

  Book 5: The Love Potion

  A lurking danger. Untamed powers. And a tangled mess of feelings.

  Being a werewolf is hard work. Lucy just wants to frolic in the forest chasing butterflies, but real life won’t give her a break. Classes are a drag, classmates even worse. Her dad is trying to kill Tennyson again and being part of a pack has its own problems.

  Sam is complicated, Tennyson is a jerk, and her new alpha has no time for her. When a threat on Tennyson’s life goes wildly wrong, Lucy ends up the victim of a love potion, and that’s when things get really messy.

  Chapter 1

  I crouched in the shadows of the forest, holding my breath. I tried to make myself as small as possible. They were hunting me, and I couldn’t let them find me, not when I was alone and vulnerable out here. My heartbeat sounded so loud, it seemed like an alarm, broadcasting my position. It made it hard to hear anything else, but I strained to listen. All these new powers, new senses, made it difficult to focus on just one thing, but as one of the predators got closer, I narrowed in on it. Its breath, its footsteps, its scent. It drew closer and closer. I screwed my eyes tightly shut, as if that could ward it off. Everything went still. I could no longer sense the beast at all. I cracked open an eye to see where it had gone. It was right in front of me, its face barely an inch away.

  It was a monster.

  I couldn’t hold it in. I let out a piercing scream.

  “Cripes, Lucy, put a sock in it, will you?” said Nikolai, rolling away from me. He wasn’t even in wolf-mode, just his usual jerkface self. Which was plenty monstrous enough for me.

  “Well, don’t be so creepy, then,” I told him, standing up to dust off my butt. I reached down to give him a hand up.

  “That’s kind of the point of this whole thing.”

  You do realize that this is an exercise in stealth, said a voice inside my head.

  I scrunched up my nose. Thanks, Tennyson. Your input is so helpful.

  I trudged off into the forest, where I could sense him lurking, his presence like a cloud of gloom in my consciousness. I’d half-expected the link in our minds to fade away after our soul bond was completed, but it hadn’t changed at all. The only thing that was different between us was that now it was enhanced by the stupid wolf pack bond as well. I would never be alone again.

  “Are you even trying?” Nikolai asked, following along at my heels. “We’ve been practicing this exercise for a week, and it’s not really that difficult. Even four-year-olds can do it. You know what that means? It means that four-year-olds are smarter than you.”

  I let go of the branch I’d pushed out of my way so that it snapped back in his face. “You’ve been a werewolf for sixteen years. It’s barely been six weeks for me. Of course I’m not going to have the hang of all the finer points yet.”

  Even though he was behind me, my werewolfing skills were good enough to sense him rolling his eyes.

  “You were fine the whole time you were in Tennyson’s body,” Nikolai continued. “It can’t be so
very different.”

  “Sure,” I said, hurrying my pace so I could reach the others and make them take their share of Nikolai’s complaining. “I mean, beside the fact that my problem is controlling my powers and Tennyson was under a curse that restricted his powers, it’s totally, absolutely the same. Silly me.”

  “Sarcasm isn’t an attractive trait,” he said, poking my back.

  “Your face isn’t attractive,” I muttered as I broke into the clearing where the others were waiting.

  “Lies,” he said. He nudged past me, almost knocking me into a tree as he went to stand between Althea and Sam.

  The four of them stood in a pool of moonlight, looking ethereal and perfect, like a billboard ad for an incredibly broody skincare range or something. I’d always thought they looked like that because of their supernatural powers, but that part of it obviously hadn’t kicked in for me yet.

  “This isn’t working,” said Tennyson.

  I shrugged, glancing around the clearing for somewhere to hide from his baleful glare.

  “I don’t see the problem,” I said. “It’s not as if I’ve hurt anyone. As long as I don’t transform in the middle of math class and eat Mrs. Godinski, why is it an issue?”

  Nikolai snorted. “Right, because last week when that girl tripped you in the hallway, you were totally fine. Or yesterday, when Troy Hathaway called you a turdface, you totally wouldn’t have gutted him with your claws if Althea hadn’t been there to get you out of the room. Or, hey, how about the full moon when you were all like, ‘I’ll be fine. Tennyson said we have more control on the full moon,’ and then you went absolutely feral. Fun times.”

  He’s right, Tennyson said inside my head. You know he’s right.

  They both were, but that only made it worse. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t trying.

  “I don’t see you changing,” I said to Tennyson. “Why are we all so focused on my problems and ignoring the fact that you’ve been able to change for weeks now and haven’t even bothered trying?”

  He wasn’t like Sam and me, science experiments gone wrong or aberrations of nature or whatever we were. If Tennyson changed, he’d be in control. It was his literal second nature. I could sense his reluctance to change, but not the reason for it, and that bothered me. I hated that he could hide something like that from me when all of my thoughts and feelings were laid out for him like a buffet. More than anything else, that motivated me to learn to control my powers better, but it still wasn’t enough. When the wolf part of me took over, it completely eclipsed the human part. Finding some sort of balance between the two seemed impossible.

  “Whether I change or not, nobody will be in danger,” Tennyson said, his voice icy cold. “My transformation isn’t necessary for the wellbeing of the pack. It’s not a priority.” His face was unreadable as he turned away, and I felt a wall go up in our bond. “If you don’t learn some control, you’ll hurt someone. You need to start taking this seriously.”

  “I don’t need to be told that by you,” I said.

  “At any rate, this method is obviously not working,” said Althea. “We’ll try something different next time, but we should head back to school now. It’s almost sunrise.”

  But Tennyson had already vanished into the shadows.

  The rest of us followed him, even though he was long gone. It wasn’t as if I cared. Let him flounce off in a tantrum like a princess. It was none of my business. Tennyson and I weren’t even friends. I didn’t even like him. The only reason I spent time with him was because we were mutual victims of circumstance and had been forced together. If I did lose control of my werewolf powers and eat someone’s face off, I hoped it would be his. It would serve him right for being a jerk.

  When we reached the forest path, Sam fell into step beside me. Just having him there felt like taking a deep, soothing breath, and as the back of his hand brushed against my arm, I immediately felt much calmer. I could sense Sam through the pack bond much more strongly than I could either Althea or Nikolai. It made sense because I’d known Sam the longest, and I wondered if it was also because of my feelings for him.

  “Maybe we could do some work on control by ourselves for a while?” he suggested.

  I smiled at him. “That’d be nice.” Then I shrugged. Nice was totally the wrong word. “Well, at least, less sucky.”

  Sam had had his own problems with control, but he seemed much better now. Part of me felt bad that I hadn’t been there for him through it all, but it wasn’t as if he’d wanted me there. He’d pushed me away on purpose, trying to keep me safe, but I couldn’t help but think that it would be safer now if I knew what he’d been through. At least I’d have some concept of what I should do.

  “You know he means well,” Sam said softly.

  I shrugged again. Althea was walking a bit ahead of us and Nikolai just behind, and my thoughts on stupid Tennyson and his butthead opinions weren’t something I wanted to share. My feelings were probably leaking out all over them both anyway, so I tried to think of something else.

  “Is it okay if it’s just the two of us?” I asked Sam. “What if we go on a crazed wolfy rampage?”

  He laughed. “We can keep each other in check.” He smiled at me, the first light from the sunrise catching in his eyes. “Unless you want to go on a rampage?”

  I smiled back at him but didn’t answer. Did I? Was that the reason I was having so much trouble? There was a certain freedom in letting the wolf take over, as if all the strings that held me down were suddenly cut loose. Maybe part of me liked it.

  As we left the forest, I noticed Tennyson waiting for us just beyond the tree line. I hung back as the others went to join him. There was no reason for me to head back with them; they were going to the Golden House, and I wanted to go to breakfast before it got too busy, but it would look kind of petty not to walk with them. Even though Tennyson was the one who’d flounced off.

  Before I could decide, I heard a rustling in the bushes off to the left of the path.

  “Pssst,” said a voice. “Hey, Lucy!”

  I jumped in surprise, but the other four didn’t even flinch. Obviously, they’d realized someone was lurking around, but I’d been too focused on my thoughts. I didn’t need super senses to know what Tennyson thought about my lack of awareness.

  “I need to talk to you,” the bushes hissed at me. “Alone.”

  I moved closer and saw the top of my roommate Katie’s head poking out of the bushes.

  “I’m not sure we’re comfortable with that,” Tennyson called over. “We don’t trust her. She’s affiliated with the enemy.”

  “So am I,” I said. “So is Sam. She’s my roommate. If she wanted to do something to me, she’d do it when I was asleep or in the shower or something.”

  I turned my back on him to face Katie. “You can probably come out,” I told her.

  She climbed out of the bushes with way more energy than seemed normal at that hour of the morning. “You heading to breakfast?” she asked.

  I nodded. Katie linked her arm with mine as we headed toward the school, but as soon as we started walking, the others began to follow.

  “I’m fine, you guys,” I called over my shoulder.

  They ignored me.

  Katie quickened her pace until we had a bit of distance from them. I knew they’d still be able to hear, but she leaned in conspiratorially to talk quietly in my ear. She was taking her role as a double agent super-seriously.

  “One of my contacts has uncovered some intel about your father.”

  At the mention of my father, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  “He’s plotting something,” Katie continued.

  “He’s always plotting,” I said, though my stomach started to churn.

  “This is something big,” Katie said. “He knows what happened to you, with the Becoming. He knows you’re bonded to Tennyson, and he’s furious. He wants you on his side.”

  I nodded. That much, I could’ve guessed. He hated Tennyson. All we
rewolves, for that matter. Anything not human. And he knew the Becoming would mean I’d never be fully human again.

  “He wants me for his work,” I said quietly.

  Katie gave me a big smile that was totally fake. “Maybe he just wants to hang out. I mean, you’re his daughter, right?”

  I tried to smile back but couldn’t do it.

  “At any rate, he wants you back in the fold, and he thinks that to do that, he has to get Tennyson out of the picture. That’s the word on the street.”

  Her words froze my heart.

  “What do you mean by ‘out of the picture’?”

  She drew her finger across her throat and stuck her tongue out to the side in what I assumed was meant to imply a dead guy.

  “He has to know that Tennyson’s closely guarded, though.”

  I assumed Tennyson was closely guarded, though I never saw bodyguards hanging around, and nobody ever bothered to step in when we got ourselves into a pickle. My theory was that they were ninjas, so I obviously would never see them.

  “I don’t know any details yet,” said Katie. “I’ll try to find out more, but all I know is that he has a plan and that it’s going to happen soon. That’s why I came to find you right away. My contact was worried that it was already too late.”

  Her words made my blood run cold. We’d walked a bit ahead and gotten out of sight of the others, so when I turned back, there was nobody there. I reached out for Tennyson with my mind, frantically searching for his presence so I’d know he was all right. Even though he’d put up the wall between us earlier, I could always still sense that he was there. But now, there was nothing.