The Soul Bond (Werewolf High Book 4)

by Anita Oh

  I nodded, amused by his bossiness.

  "You know where I am if you need me," he said, giving me one last look before he left. He was worried, and I didn't blame him.

  "So…" Sam said.

  "So," I said back.

  He nodded toward the armchairs, and we went to sit down. As I sank into the soft cushions, I realized exactly how tired I was. It seemed as if Sam was angling toward a serious conversation, and I wasn't sure that was something I could deal with.

  "Nikolai talked to your history teacher and Fatima, and everyone has agreed to just forget about what happened," he told me. "There won't be any disciplinary action."

  I nodded. With everything else going on, it hadn't even occurred to me, but attacking another student should definitely warrant a suspension, at the very least.

  "And Fatima's definitely okay?"

  "She's got a broken arm," Sam said. "But she's otherwise fine."

  Guilt flooded through me, but before it could take hold, a strong feeling of reassurance replaced it, tinged with that slightly different shade of feeling that I now knew came from Tennyson.

  Guilt is pointless, he told me. You can't change what happened, so instead of feeling bad, just try not to make the same mistakes in the future.

  "Lucy, you're going to be okay." Sam reached over and took my hand.

  My immediate reaction was disappointment. Sam's hand was warm, but that was it. No flood of serenity washed through me, no tendrils of calm. Nothing extraordinary at all. It was only for the most fleeting moment, but it was enough to give me a jolt. This was Sam. This was what I wanted. I turned around my hand and linked our fingers together.

  "You can't know that," I told him. "It doesn't feel like it."

  It felt melodramatic to say it, but I didn't know how much longer I could hold on. Everything was spiraling out of control, and all my options seemed bad.

  "I can't just keep holding it back — this power, this Becoming, whatever it is. I can't keep leeching whatever sanity I can get from Tennyson Wilde like some sort of addict."

  He squeezed my hand. "But if get gets too bad, you can always seal the bond. I can sense your feelings for Tennyson, and they're not dislike."

  I pulled my hand away from him. "What, because we don't hate each other anymore, we should just take the easy way and give up our independence? Do you have any idea what that would mean? For either of us?"

  Sam shook his head, something sparking in his eyes that wasn't nice. "No, of course I have no idea. I'm not the one with the bond."

  I took a deep breath. "Seriously? That's how this is going to go?"

  He grabbed for my hand again. "No, Lucy. I'm sorry. That was wrong of me. I want to understand, I do. Explain it to me."

  I shook my head but didn't pull my hand away. How could I explain it to him? There was no way he'd understand, and even if he did, he wouldn't like it.

  "If we were bonded for real, even though we don't love each other, I don't know if we could love anyone else either," I whispered, hoping Sam would get what I meant. "It's a really personal thing, the bond. It would feel strange, wrong, to be with someone else and share those feelings through the bond. It wouldn't be fair to Tennyson, and it wouldn't be fair to the person I loved, either. It would be an invasion."

  Sam nodded, and I could see from the look on his face that he understood, as much as he could.

  "At any rate, after the full moon it won't matter," he said, giving me a smile that looked as if it might crack his face. "Everything will be fine after the full moon."

  Chapter 12

  The full moon was still a week away. I only had to last that long. Everything would be fine after the full moon. I took Sam's words to heart and willed them to be true.

  I wanted to hide myself away for the week, to stay away from anything that might bring on a freakout, but my grades weren't good enough to risk it. Tennyson stayed close to me, but that wasn't even what I was worried about, so much as having to face up to what I'd done. I found Fatima in the dining hall as soon as I could to apologize.

  She was sitting with Milo and some girls that I didn't really know from the Green House, and their conversation stopped dead as I approached the table. Fatima's arm was in a plaster cast, held up by a sling around her neck.

  "Fatima," I said, standing a few steps away from the table so she wouldn't feel threatened. "I'm so sorry about what happened. There's no excuse for it."

  She didn't respond. She didn't even look at me. She speared a lettuce leaf onto her fork and ate it, completely ignoring me. The others all stared at me with narrowed eyes. I kept standing there, though I don't know why. Maybe in case she changed her mind and spoke to me, or so she knew how bad I felt; I don't know. But she wasn't going to speak to me. She probably never would again. And I didn't deserve her forgiveness.

  Eventually, I turned and walked away. All through the dining hall, whispers followed me as I walked past. "Unstable," they said, and "violent" and "common". They'd said worse things about me before, but this time I worried that it was true.

  I wasn't really hungry, but I made my way up to the Golden table so I could see Tennyson. He shrugged at me as I sat down, then caught hold of my wrist.

  "You did break her arm," he said, which wasn't all that reassuring. "Plus, you don't even like her very much. Why does her opinion matter to you?"

  "I just wanted her to know that I was sorry," I said.

  "Well, don't bother about her any longer," he told me. "Of all the problems we're facing, how some girl feels about you isn't a high priority."

  But she wasn't just some girl; she was my link to Hannah. Tennyson knew how I felt, but he didn't understand. He'd never lost someone like that before, had never been to blame for something terrible.

  Because I was dreading the full moon, the week passed too quickly. Althea came back, I failed my history presentation, and nearly everyone in the school avoided me — except for Katie, but I was avoiding her. I spent more and more time at the Golden House.

  I woke up early on the day of the full moon with a ball of nervous tension in my stomach. When I entered the Golden House common room, everyone else was awake already too, eyes wide and bleary.

  "We need to discuss what to do tonight," Tennyson said as I poured myself a coffee. "I think we need some strategies in place so we'll be prepared for any eventuality."

  I sat down at the table beside him, close enough for our wrists to touch. We probably should've discussed our game plan before, but we'd all been avoiding the subject, talking around it.

  "Okay, so worst case scenario is that I go nuclear, right? I implode and take everybody with me? We should probably think of a way to avoid that."

  I looked around the table, but nobody spoke up with any suggestions.

  "You haven't heard from your cousin's friend yet, I guess?" I asked Nikolai.

  He rolled his eyes. "Oh, sorry. I forgot. He messaged me with a handy solution to this whole thing, but it slipped my mind."

  I wrinkled my nose at him, but to be honest, it was a fair point.

  The book with the passage about the Becoming lay open in the middle of the table, bright Post-its full of handwritten notes stuck all over it. I pulled the book toward me to read the passage. We hadn't been able to find anything else about the Becoming anywhere.

  "You could contact your father," Sam suggested quietly.

  "I don't want him to know this is an issue," I said. "I don't trust him."

  The way he’d said the word “sub-human” still echoed in my mind.

  "I agree," said Tennyson. "The fewer people who know about this, the better for all of us. We can manage this ourselves."

  "Can we?" asked Nikolai. "We haven't been doing such a great job of it so far."

  "The book says, ‘If they master the power within, the Rebirth shall be achieved during a transformative event, and thus the Becoming is complete.' If they master the power within, you guys."

  "I thought you wanted to stop the Rebirth," said
Althea. "I thought that's why you haven't been trying to master the power already. If you master the power, it sounds as if the whole thing will go ahead."

  I sighed. "I do want to stop it. But if it's a choice between going ahead with it or going kaboom, it's not really much of a choice."

  She nodded. "Well, in that case, we need to work on how you'll master the power. I actually have a few ideas about that." She ran her finger down the spines of a pile of books and pulled one out of the middle. She chewed on her lip as she flicked through the pages. "'The power is a river that rushes from the source of life inside the soul. To control the flow of the river, it must be dammed.'"

  That made sense in theory, but I had no idea how to put it into practice.

  "Have you ever done any meditation?" Althea asked me.

  "Um," I said. "No, not really." Not unless she counted the deep and serious contemplation over which cake to eat first, which seemed unlikely.

  Althea glanced over at Sam. "You might be the best one to help with this. It should be similar to what you've been doing for your control."

  "Isn't it better for Tennyson to help her?" Sam said. "It would be easier through their bond."

  Althea shrugged. "Well, the both of you, then. Take the day off classes and work on that."

  It seemed as good an idea as any, but after an hour of Sam talking to me about chakras, I started to nod off.

  "She's not taking this seriously," said Tennyson, who was being totally unhelpful by sitting there eating a blueberry muffin while I was trying to open my crown chakra. "You know she's a kinesthetic learner." He set his muffin aside and stood up. "Follow me."

  Sam and I followed him outside and around to the clearing at the back of the house. It was a cool, clear morning, with no sound but the chirping of birds. The clearing always seemed to hold a special kind of magic, and when I entered, I automatically began to relax.

  "Right," said Tennyson, settling himself down on the ground cross-legged. "Sit down opposite me."

  I did as he said, and he took me by the hands. Warmth and comfort spiraled through me.

  He nodded at Sam. "Proceed."

  Sam sat on the wooden bench between the trees and began where he'd left off about chakras, but I wasn't really listening.

  Just copy me, Tennyson said. This is easy.

  I let my eyes fall closed and reached out for him. Now that I knew what he felt like, what to look for, it was easy. He opened up to me completely, and I didn't know if it was chakras or what, but with him as an example, it was easy to understand what I needed to do. It felt like a bright stream of energy running between us, so clear that I could almost see it with my naked eye. It purified, cleansed, made anything seem possible. Although the pathway between us wasn't properly formed, the energy surged through steadily. But then it became too much. I could feel it trying to break through in new directions, like a wrecking ball destroying anything in its way.

  We both pulled back at the same time, coming back to ourselves with so much force that our bodies were thrown backwards.

  "Woah!" I said. "What was that?"

  Sam sighed. "You guys didn't listen to a word I said, did you?"

  We practiced all morning and late into the afternoon, until we were able to maintain that flow of energy to a manageable degree, still aware of everything around us, even able to have a conversation with Sam at the same time. It should have been exhausting, but by the time Althea and Nikolai found us in the clearing, I was full of beans and raring to go.

  "We should get as far from the school as we can," said Althea. "Just in case."

  We took a picnic dinner and set out for the lighthouse.

  "Just so you know," Nikolai told me. "I have a tranq gun. If you get out of control, I will not hesitate to put you down."

  "Thanks," I told him, not even being sarcastic.

  It was a clear night as we sat on the grass below the lighthouse, having our picnic and watching the sun set over the water. If things were going to go bad, I thought, if this was the last meal I'd ever eat, it wasn't such a bad way to go. Though, obviously, I'd prefer it not to be. There were still many foods in this world I had yet to try, and this meal being the last of those foods was too sad to even think about.

  The sun dipped below the horizon, and the entire world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen. Waiting and waiting. It seemed unbearable, like the cruelest form of torture.

  We knew it was time by Sam's reaction. Although he could control himself now, it was still a struggle for him. His eyes screwed up tightly closed and his hands were balled into fists as he tried to hold the wolf inside. The other three had been born with lycanthropy, so they got power from the moon. Their control was better at the full moon than at any other time; they were stronger, their senses more heightened. I wondered if the transformation completed with me, would I be like Sam? Would every full moon be a nightmare?

  But I didn't feel anything. The power was always present, I could always feel it, but it remained calm, bubbling just below the surface. Maybe all that meditating had paid off, I thought.

  Then I heard the growl.

  I thought it had come from Sam, but when I looked at his face, he was human and as surprised as any of us.

  The growl came again, lower and more aggressive. I turned to my right, to Tennyson. His eyes were glowing with a red fury that seemed alien on him. He was always so composed, so detached. His lips curled back in a sneer that showed off his long, sharp teeth. He looked terrifying, but his rage wasn't directed at me.

  It surprised me that I couldn't sense what he was feeling, that I hadn't been able to tell when he changed. Perhaps it was because he wasn't completely Tennyson anymore, but I found that the most disturbing thing of all.

  "Tennyson," I whispered, reaching out to touch him. He wouldn't hurt me; I was certain of it. My fingers brushed his cheek, and I was filled with everything within him. There was only one thought, one emotion. He wanted to protect me.

  Nikolai moved, maybe to get his tranq gun, and Tennyson snarled. He moved in front of me, blocking me from the others.

  "Tennyson, it's okay. They won't hurt me."

  I tried to get to my feet, but he caught hold of my arm.

  "Lucy, try to back away from him," said Althea.

  Tennyson snarled at her.

  "I'm okay," I told her. "He won't hurt me. But I think you guys should get out of here."

  "We can't leave you here with him," Sam said. "He's out of control."

  I shook my head. "He thinks you're threatening to me. This isn't anything to do with the Becoming. It's the bond. The bond and the moon." I didn't realize until I said it, but that was exactly what it was. I knew it in the same way that I knew Tennyson wouldn't hurt me. "I'm sorry, but you need to leave."

  Althea nodded. I guess because she knew the most about paranormal stuff, it made sense to her. Sam and Nikolai didn't look so convinced.

  "You'd better be right about this, Lucy," Sam said.

  "I'll leave the tranq gun here, just in case," Nikolai said.

  "Thanks," I said. "Now, I'll distract him, and you guys get out of here."

  Before they could argue any more, I moved around to kneel in front of Tennyson, putting myself between him and them. I put my hands on his face and opened up to him, just as we'd been doing all day. It was different now, though, more raw. Instead of a stream of energy, it felt like a trail of fire.

  It's okay, I told him. I'm safe. We're safe.

  I said it over and over until that fire burnt itself out. It felt like an eternity. It felt as if we were no longer two separate beings, no longer a girl and a werewolf but one thing entirely different. Something new. Something strong.

  When the fire burnt out, it was almost bittersweet, as if separating from him was an unbearable loss. I pulled back from him, and when I became aware of our surroundings again, I found that we were lying on the picnic blanket below the lighthouse, tangled up in each other. His eyes were human agai
n, but wide and startled. We stared at each other but didn't speak, not even in our minds. Something had changed between us forever, but it wasn't something we could put a name to.

  We lay there until morning and didn't move away from each other.

  Chapter 13

  We were both relieved to find that everyone else had already gone to class when we got back to the Golden House. Tennyson was embarrassed about losing control, and I felt bad about sending everyone away when they were all much closer to Tennyson than I was and they'd only been trying to help.

  "I should get to class," I said as Tennyson headed inside. "I've missed a lot of classes lately."

  He stopped on the top step, turning to look down at me. "You don't need to worry about that. I'll take care of it."

  That was all well and good for him to say, but I had a scholarship to keep up. I didn't say anything. I didn't need to.

  "We need to research," he said, looming over me. "Something should have happened to you last night, and we need to understand why it didn’t. Classes can wait."

  It felt as if we'd scoured every book that had ever been written on anything remotely magical, but there were always more. Some were handwritten in careful calligraphy, so old it felt as if the pages would turn to dust if I touched them. There was all sorts of messed-up stuff in this world, magic and creatures and potions and prophecies, everything imaginable. And everything had dozens of books written on it. Everything except what we needed.

  "They're coming," Tennyson said.

  I didn't even realize he'd been holding my hand until he pulled it away.

  Nobody blames you, I told him.

  He didn't respond.

  They approached us warily, even Nikolai not saying anything as they took their seats around the table. Tennyson stared down at the book in front of him, so hunched and timid that he looked like a stranger.

  "How are you feeling? Althea asked, breaking the silence, but I couldn't tell if she was asking me or Tennyson because she didn't look at either of us.

  "We're both fine," I said.

  I wanted to explain, to apologize for both of us, but I knew Tennyson would hate that. Anyway, they probably already knew.