by Tasha Black
His feelings about her are complex, threaded with a resentment I cannot understand.
Mine are simple: This is our mate. She will love us, and we will protect her. Together, we will make a pack.
In the back of my mind I can sense that my human is listening, and I feel at peace. I have done all I can to help us.
17
Luke
I slid back into my human form as soon as I awoke.
We were lying in a circle of pink dawn light. The vines blocking the entrance to the cave had relaxed out of their tangle during the night and hung loosely now, forming a loose curtain rather than a blockade.
I wondered if Bella had done that on purpose, or if it had happened as she slept, unwinding as she did.
She stirred, and the movement of her hips against me brought my whole body to attention.
“Bella,” I whispered into her hair, imagining for just a moment that I was about to claim her. “It’s morning, little one.”
She stretched luxuriously, her soft curves sliding against me, pushing my restraint to the breaking point.
“Oh,” she said suddenly, leaping up. “I have to get to school.”
She wasn’t going to be going to school very much longer. It seemed silly to worry about being late.
“They’ll probably be surprised to see you at all,” I said quietly, getting to my feet.
She pretended to be busy dusting herself off.
“You don’t think you’re actually going to resist this mating, do you?” I asked her, my voice sharper than I intended.
“It’s not personal, Luke, I hope you know that,” she said. “But I have plans for my life. And they don’t include starting a family when I’m barely twenty.”
“Sometimes plans change,” I told her, trying not to let my temper get the best of me. The beast roared in my chest.
She shrugged again and headed for the opening of the cave. As she passed through the dangling greenery, a single purple flower burst into bloom in the place where she touched the vine, but she took no notice.
I followed her out into the dawn.
The world seemed like it was holding its breath at this hour. The rocks and trees and the glassy surface of the creeks and puddles were all tinted pink by the rising sun, so that they seemed to be hiding themselves.
Bella was hiding herself from me the same way, eyes cast down at the path, shoulders slightly hunched.
I hated myself for loving her determination, even if she had no right to buck her fate. Hadn’t I submitted to mine all my life?
Every step of our journey back to the castle was torturing me. By the time we reached the grounds of the school, I was determined she would be tormented, too.
“Here we are,” she said awkwardly when we reached the edge of the labyrinth.
“Here we are,” I agreed, making no move to touch her, though my body screamed to hold her before letting her go.
I was convinced that she felt the same hollow ache. I wanted it to burn her to the ground.
“I guess I’ll see you tonight,” she said. “Only two more nights.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as coldly as I could.
“It’s three nights,” she said. “And then I get to choose.”
“Three nights in my bed,” I told her. “Last night doesn’t count.”
Her eyes widened in horror.
I was pretty sure last night did count. There was no way the council would back me on such a technicality.
But I wanted her to engage with me. I wanted her to yell at me, talk to me, hammer my chest with her little fists.
Instead, she turned and walked into the labyrinth without another word.
18
Bella
I stomped away through the labyrinth, nearly shaking with fury.
How dare he trick me into sleeping in a cave just to get an extra night? How dare he pretend my plans didn’t matter?
He kept saying our kind. Well, his kind was chauvinistic and horrible.
But his hands, oh, his hands and that hard, hot body…
But I was determined not to let my desires run away with me, especially since I knew they were mostly due to whatever spell he had me under with the whole mate bond thing.
That was hardly fair.
I walked faster, focusing my eyes on the path ahead as the upper floors of the castle came into sight.
The lights were already on in the turret and several other rooms, though by the sun’s progress, it had to be very, very early in the morning.
As I stepped out of the labyrinth and into the courtyard, I was surprised to see Anya running toward me.
“Oh, Bella, thank God,” she cried. “We have to get to the library, hurry!”
“What’s going on?” I asked, allowing her to grab my hand, and jogging alongside her.
“There was a break-in last night,” she said.
“A break-in?”
“Someone tried to break into the library,” she panted. “It sounds like it was a sloppy job, since they tripped the wards. And…”
“And what?” I asked.
“There were muddy paw prints all around the window.”
I thought back to last night, to Luke and his wolf form.
He was with me all night.
At least, I thought he was. But I also knew that he was only one guardian. There had to be more out there.
“Some of the students are whispering about the guardians,” Anya said, as if reading my thoughts. “But you were with yours all night, right?”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation.
“Well, I’m glad I came out here,” she panted. “The others assumed you would stay with him. Very few come back after the first night.”
I chose not to answer her. My heart already felt like it was stretching thinner with every inch I ran from him. But I still intended to refuse the bond with Luke.
“Why are we running?” I asked.
“We’re recasting the wards,” she told me as we reached the end of the courtyard and the doors to the school. “Resetting them to be more secure than before.”
“I don’t know anything about setting wards,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ll be much help.”
“No, that’s not it,” she said. “Only people who are part of the circle when the wards are set will be able to come in and out of the library from now on. Anyone who is not part of the ward-setting circle won’t be able to access the library at all.”
My heart pounded as we climbed the stairs and headed down the east hall to where the library must be.
I had been that close to missing out on my chance to study healing. I felt a begrudging gratitude to Luke for waking me up so early. Obviously, the faculty hadn’t felt it was worth waiting for me since I was only going to be someone’s mate.
Breeder.
I fought back the bitterness, not wanting to give the other students the satisfaction.
“Here,” she said, stopping at a massive pair of chestnut doors.
I followed her into a space so airy, so bright, so enormous it seemed impossible that it could be part of the imposing stone castle that housed it.
The scale of it reminded me of 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, and how small I had felt the first time I stepped inside, clinging to my mother’s hand, Jon holding her other one, his face tilted upward in awe so that I knew what my own expression must look like.
But this room was round and more peaceful than imposing. The ceiling soared in elegant arches, with a glass dome in the center and bright ring of high windows around the circular library, allowing the pale light of dawn to pour inside. Antique rugs even more beautiful than the ones in the halls of our living quarters swallowed up the sound of our footsteps on the snowy white marble floors.
But the most amazing part was the giant oak tree that grew right in the center of the big room, the base of its enormous trunk so wide that I guessed it would take a half-dozen students to encircle it hand to hand. The massive b
oughs reached up toward the ceiling, branching smaller and smaller as they rose. Bright green leaves that showed no sign of autumn drank in the morning sunlight that bathed the room.
All around the tree, an orchard of bookshelves spoked out from the center of the library in neat rows. But there were statues too, and display tables covered over in glass, and even a few smaller, potted fig trees, and a fountain.
The walls that weren’t covered in books were adorned with paintings of stern looking women and framed scrolls.
“My God,” I whispered.
There were enough volumes in here that I could lose myself, forever if I wanted. And somewhere in this room, was the key to my brother’s happiness. I was sure of it.
“Come on,” she whispered, half-dragging me further inside.
“Ah, Miss Hawthorne, you’re back,” Headmistress Hart said in a way that made it sound like she was more than a little surprised. “We’re glad to see you.”
I resisted the impulse to roll my eyes.
“Where should we go, Headmistress?” Anya asked politely.
“Go with the other first-years, over by Divination,” she replied.
I realized then that while my eyes had been drawn upward to the ceiling and the tree, I had missed the fact that groups of students surrounded the perimeter of the space.
Anya and I jogged over to the place the headmistress had pointed to. Two other women were already standing there. They moved over slightly to give us more space, and I recognized one from yesterday.
“Nina, Lark, this is Bella,” Anya said, pointing to the young Black woman with the puffy ponytail who did the notebook trick during my Price of Magic lecture, and another girl I hadn’t met before, a white girl with mousy brown hair and purple cats-eye glasses.
“Nice to meet you,” I murmured.
From where we stood, I could see the broken glass from one of the high windows and the muddy footprints on the pristine marble floor. Whoever had broken in had been lucky not to break their neck in the process. There were books on the floor in that section as well, as if they had used the high shelves as a ladder and knocked them off on their way down.
Before I could ask about it, the headmistress lifted her arms and everyone around the library did the same, palms up.
I lifted my hands and closed my eyes to clear my mind. It was hard not to look around. Wards were all fine and well, but all I really wanted to do was to find the section with books on healing.
I was expecting some kind of monotonous chant, but surprisingly, the headmistress began to sing, her voice deep and lovely. The language of the song wasn’t familiar to me, but as I listened, its meaning seemed to appear behind my eyes.
I saw a constellation of radiant stars, sliding out into a line and then tightening together in a circle, like pearls around a dowager’s neck.
The air around me seemed to fill with the scent of cinnamon. It slammed me into a memory of baking oatmeal cookies with Jon in our old apartment.
I could see the light bleeding in around the blinds. Jon had a serious expression on his face and flecks of flour in his dark hair.
I snuck a bite of cookie dough while his back was turned. As it melted in my mouth, I watched as he opened the oven, releasing a wave of deliciously warm air into our drafty little kitchen.
Christmas music was playing on the tinny little radio we kept on the counter. Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker came on.
When Jon straightened, he was smiling. He grabbed me and we pretend ballet-danced all over the kitchen, laughing our heads off.
The headmistress’s song grew quieter and the vision faded.
Naked emotion had tears streaming down my cheeks.
Her song changed, growing stronger, less sentimental, and I managed to stem the flow of my weeping.
Embarrassment set in. How was I going to hold my head high when I had been bawling my eyes out in the library in front of everyone?
I stole a glance at the girls beside me to see if they had noticed and was shocked to see their cheeks were wet with tears, too.
The older girls added their voices to the song now, and I could feel a strange energy in the room buzzing faintly around us. More voices joined the chorus, then more, including Cori’s. I could see her across the library with some of the second-years.
At last Nina, Lark and Anya were singing too, and I could feel the melody bubbling up in my chest, even though I didn’t know the words.
I opened my mouth anyway, and let the sound cascade from me. The tune was wordless, but the notes were there. Whatever magic I had I would gladly lend itself to the library.
For a moment, the whole room seemed to glow with more than sunlight.
Then the song was done.
We stood still, panting from the effort, though all we had done was sing.
Of course it had been more than that. Something had been drawn from us. I knew because the room had transformed to a black and white cartoon in front of me.
I closed my eyes and breathed in and out slowly.
“Bella, are you okay?” Anya asked.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “I’m just not used to using my magic.”
“Is it your vision?” she asked, with concern. “I should have warned you not to try. The rest of us were meditating all morning to pay it forward.”
“It’s just the colors are missing,” I told her. “They’ll be back soon, if this is like the other times.”
She nodded, but there was still a furrow on her brow.
“Thank you, students,” Headmaster Hart called out from inside the circle. “Everyone is dismissed to go to class, except first-year students. First-years, you will be cleaning this up.”
“Do we all have to clean up?” Lark grumbled, not realizing the headmistress was marching our way instead of out to the hall.
We all took an involuntary step backward as she turned to us.
“Good point, Lark,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “Just your group will be fine. All other first-years may be dismissed to class.”
She continued into the stacks as the rest of the students headed out.
Nina elbowed Lark in the ribs and Lark muttered and apology.
Luckily, it didn’t look like it would take the four of us too long to clean up. And maybe I could get a good look around the place while we were at it.
Kendall headed our way, with two of her third-year friends. One was short and blonde, the other tall and dark-haired. I remembered them from the cafeteria. The short blonde had called me a breeder.
“Oops,” the shorter one said, deliberately knocking half a shelf of books on the floor and arching a delicate brow at Lark.
She laughed, it was an annoying high-pitched sound, and one of her friends laughed with her. They both turned to Kendall.
Belatedly, Kendall laughed, too.
Then the three headed out of the library.
“What the hell?” Lark said.
“They’re just jerks,” Nina said, patting her back.
“I know Kendall, but who were the others?” I asked.
“The short one is Esme and the tall one is Theodosia, but everyone calls her Dozie,” Anya explained.
“They think because they’re legs that they’re better than the rest of us,” Nina said.
“Legs?” I echoed.
“Legacies,” Anya explained. “Their mothers went here too, grandmothers as well, for some of them.”
“Does that give them stronger magic?” I asked, fascinated.
“They seem to think so,” Lark said, rolling her eyes.
“Does magic run in families?” I asked.
“Probably,” Anya said, bending to pick up the books that Esme had knocked over. “Though there are plenty of us who are the first in our families to come to Primrose.”
“But it’s also possible that some people have magic in their families and they just don’t know about it,” Nina said. “In my family, something like that would have been frowned on.”
; I nodded and thought about my own extended family. I couldn’t imagine any of them setting wards around things, but I supposed it was possible I could have gone the rest of my own life without recognizing that the weird coincidence of my fall was anything more than that.
If Eve hadn’t come to me…
“Don’t dillydally girls,” the headmistress said as she marched past us again. “Finish up and get back to class.”
“Yes, headmistress,” the others said in unison. I joined in just late enough to make all of us sound ridiculous.
Her eyes rested on mine for a moment and there was something there - sympathy, fear? - some flash of emotion before the gates crashed down and she gave me that professional half-smile before continuing to the double doors that led out of the library.
19
Bella
Anya handed me a mop and I began swirling it over the muddy paw prints on the marble floor. They were huge - much bigger than any dog.
It made me think of Luke in his wolf form, so massive, with those glowing eyes - both terrifying and beautiful. His fur had been warm and smooth with muscles sliding underneath - all that power under my hand.
“So what’s he like?” Anya asked quietly.
I looked up to see the others had stopped what they were doing to hear.
I shrugged, feeling my cheeks get hot. It was hard to talk about him without thinking about the bond and the cravings it inspired.
“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” Lark teased.
“We didn’t even kiss,” I heard myself admitting.
“What?” Nina asked, clutching the book she had just picked up.
“I’m, um, I’m going to say no,” I told them. “To him, I mean. After the third night, I get to choose. And I choose to stay here.”
The other three exchanged looks.
“What?” I asked.
“Look, I honestly don’t know how you made it this far,” Lark said. “But no one makes it all three nights. It’s, like, not physically possible.”