Chapter 5

SOREL

~•~

“Let’s talk about what happens to you,” he said.

I didn’t want him talking about me. I wanted to be home. I wanted my desk and my unfinished commission and my cheap apartment that smelled like turpentine, and instead I was standing in a marble hall while a man who could shake glass with his voice smiled at me like I was a problem he already knew how to solve.

“Come here, girl,” he said.

I didn’t move. Ramiel’s hand came back and touched my arm, just barely, stay.

“She doesn’t need to come anywhere,” Ramiel said. “Say it from there.”

“Fine.” His father folded his hands. “If she’s to live, and that’s still an if, she lives by our terms. She doesn’t leave this estate. She doesn’t speak to a single human from her old life, not one, not a friend, not family, no one. That world is closed to her now.”

“You can’t do that,” I said. My voice came out thin. “I have people. I have a roommate, I have—”

“She severs all of it by tonight,” he went on, like I hadn’t spoken at all. “And she submits to a binding before the full house, so the clan can confirm what my son claims she is. If the binding fails, if she’s lying, if she’s ordinary—” he smiled wider, “—then she’s seen too much, and you know our law as well as I do, Ramiel.”

The room went quiet.

“Father.” Ramiel’s voice dropped low, that growl back under it. “You’re talking about killing her if she doesn’t pass a test she doesn’t even understand.”

“I’m talking about cleaning up your mess.”

“She passes,” Ramiel said. “I’d stake my own blood on it.”

“You may have to.”

And they kept going, the two of them, back and forth over my head, her this and the binding that, my whole life getting carved up between two men who hadn’t once asked me a single question, and something in my chest just snapped clean in half.

“STOP!”

It came out of me louder than I’ve ever yelled anything. The whole hall went still. Every monster in that room turned and looked at me, and I didn’t care, I was past caring.

“Stop it, all of you, just stop talking!” My hands were shaking. “I’m standing right here! You’re all standing there deciding if I live or die like I’m a, a piece of furniture, and not one of you has looked at me, not one of you has asked me what I want!”

“Sorel,” Ramiel started.

“No!” I rounded on him. “No, you don’t get to say my name like that, like we know each other, I met you an hour ago! I don’t want any of this! I don’t want to be a resonator, I don’t want your binding, I don’t want to be claimed, I just wanted to graduate and draw and be left alone!”

Nobody said anything. The mother watched me with that stone face. The sister almost looked amused.

“This isn’t real,” I said, and I heard how my voice climbed, heard the crazy in it, and I couldn’t stop it. “This isn’t real, this is a dream, I hit my head in the courtyard or I’m asleep, that’s all this is.”

And I started slapping myself. Hard, across my own cheek, again, again, trying to feel the sting that would wake me up in my own bed with my own ceiling above me.

“Wake up,” I said, hitting myself. “Wake up, wake up, wake—”

Ramiel caught both my wrists.

“Stop.” He held them still, gentle, careful, and his face was right in front of mine and his eyes weren’t bright now, they were just looking at me, steady, almost soft. “Stop hurting yourself. It’s real, Sorel. All of it. You’re not asleep. There’s no waking up from this.”

“Then let me go.” My eyes were burning. “Please. Just let me go home.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? Why does it have to be me? Why did you have to walk over today, out of everybody, why—”

“Because I’ve been looking for you my whole life.”

I stopped. My wrists went still in his hands.

“What?” I whispered.

“You don’t have a scent. You quiet the noise in my head, the noise that’s been there since I was born, the thing no one and nothing has ever been able to touch.” He said it quietly, just to me, like the room had emptied out. “You’re not just a resonator, Sorel. Not to me. There’s a word for what you are to me, and every wolf in this hall just heard me claim it in a courtyard. You’re my mate. My other half. I don’t care that you’re human. I don’t care what it costs.”

“That’s—” I shook my head, lost, the words not landing. “I don’t even know you. What does any of that have to do with me? Why does that change anything about my actual life?”

He let go of my wrists. He looked at me for a long second, and something moved across his face, something he hadn’t said yet, the thing under all the other things.

“Because a mate bond goes both ways,” he said. “What I feel, you’ll start to feel. And once it sets in, if anything happens to me, it happens to you too.” He paused. “You’re already dying, Sorel. The bond started the second I claimed you. We have until it finishes.”

“Dying.” The word didn’t feel like mine. “You’re telling me I’m dying. Because of something you did to me in a courtyard.”

“Because of what we are to each other. I didn’t choose it any more than you did.”

“That’s not—” I backed up a step, and my legs hit a chair, and I grabbed it to stay standing. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to drag me in here and tell me I’m dying like you’re telling me the time.”

“Would you rather I lied?”

“Yes!” It tore out of me. “Yes, lie to me, anything’s better than this!”

“He won’t lie to you.” His father’s voice cut across the hall, smooth now, almost pleased. “That’s the one thing my son doesn’t do. So believe him. The bond is set. You’ll feel it soon, the pull, the sickness when he’s not near. And here’s what he hasn’t told you yet.”

“Father.” Ramiel turned, and the growl was back. “Don’t.”

“She should know what she’s worth.” His father walked closer, slow, watching me the whole way. “A completed bond can be broken, girl. There’s a way. It’s old and it’s ugly and it would free my son to honor his promise to the Cross house like he should have.” He smiled. “It would also kill you. But you were halfway there already, so.”

“Stop talking to her,” Ramiel said as he stepped between us, his shoulders tense, blocking his father from getting any closer.

“Or the bond completes, and a human, a nobody, becomes Luna of this house one day.” His father said Luna like it was a curse. “You see my problem. Either way, you’re a stone around my son’s neck. The only question is which way we cut you loose.”

I looked at Ramiel. I don’t know why. He was a stranger and a monster and the reason my whole life had just ended, but he was the only face in that room that wasn’t looking at me like meat.

“Is that true?” I asked him. “There’s a way to break it. That kills me.”

He didn’t answer fast enough.

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” he said.

The floor felt very far away.

“But it won’t happen,” he said, stepping between me and his father, his back to me now, facing the man who made him. “Because anyone who tries will have to go through me. I claimed her. I’ll complete the bond. And the first person in this house who reaches for that old, ugly way is going to find out exactly what four generations bred into me.”

The hall went silent again. His father stared at his back, and something passed between them that I couldn’t read, two predators measuring each other.

Then his father laughed.

“You think you can protect her,” he said. “From all of us. From the Cross house. From the whole clan, who by morning will know there’s an unbound resonator under this roof.” He turned for the stairs. “You have until the bond completes to convince me she’s worth the war you just started. Fail, and I’ll cut her loose myself.”

He climbed two steps, then stopped, and looked back at me.

“I’m sure you’ll sleep well, little Luna,” he said. “If the dreams let you.”

Just that and he was gone, and the mother went after him. His sister gave me one last look before she followed, and then it was just me and Ramiel and Tobias in that huge cold hall when my legs finally gave out. I sat down hard in the chair because I couldn’t not.

“Ramiel.” Tobias’s voice was low. “The Cross house. If they find out tonight—”

“I know.”

“Adelheid won’t wait. You humiliated her in front of the whole school.”

“I know, Tobias.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I’d forgotten I even had it. I pulled it out with a shaking hand, this stupid normal thing from my old life, and there was a text on the screen from a number I didn’t know.

I read it. Then I read it again.

“Ramiel,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine. “Why is there a message from a stranger that knows my name?”