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

ALSO BY ANITA OH

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.

Book 6: The Time Loop

An unbreakable bond. A magical trap. One bad day that never ends.

Lucy is having a bad day. Things are awkward with Sam. She's failing history. One of her roommates is missing and the other is crazy. Her evil dad is at it again, and this time, he's not playing around.

Lucy has a choice: leave the pack or stay trapped in this day forever. What do you do when the only way to save the people you love is to abandon them? Will Lucy fight to stay in the pack or fight to save them?

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 werewolves, 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.

Tennyson? I asked, but my words echoed back to me, as if I was speaking into a void.

I started to run.

Chapter 2

I ran back down the path faster than I’d ever moved before, faster than I’d even known I was capable of. It felt as if the entire world had stopped and I was rushing through it toward an immovable point that had somehow blinked out.

The four of them were standing in front of the gate to the Golden House, waiting for me. As soon as I caught sight of Tennyson, I stumbled to a stop. He was fine. He was totally okay.

I wrapped my arms around my belly, sure I was going to throw up.

He caught my eye and smirked at me, and for that one single moment, I didn’t care that he was in danger. I didn’t care what my father planned to do to him. I’d kill him myself.

“Lucy…” Sam said, taking a step toward me.

Althea caught him by the arm, shaking her head. “They need to sort this out themselves,” she said, turning him and Nikolai toward the house.

But that wasn’t what I needed at all. What I needed was to get out of there, as far away from that jerk as possible.

I turned away from them toward the forest. In the clearing behind the Golden House was a tree. There were a lot of trees, obviously, a whole forest of them, but this tree was special. I’d made that tree myself, with magic. I’d made it to save Tennyson. I’d made it when we’d bonded together. And even though Tennyson was the king of the jerks, something about that tree made me feel better. I walked right up to it and rested my forehead against the cool, smooth trunk.

Why couldn’t I have bonded with Sam? Everything would have been perfect then. I cared about Sam, and I wouldn’t have minded him being all up in my thoughts and feelings. Sam would never use the bond against me to prove a point, like Tennyson was doing. If it were Sam and I, I’d never have to worry about him hiding things from me again. We’d be in sync, understanding each other perfectly. Sam and I were the same, but Tennyson was someone I’d never be able to fathom.

Just being near the tree made me feel calmer. The tree had come from me, and I could feel that we were still connected somehow. Its power was my power, and although I didn’t really get it, I knew that the tree was different, more aware than it should be.

“You can’t believe anything she says,” Tennyson said from behind me, jolting me out of my thoughts.

I didn’t turn around. “Leave me alone, Tennyson.”

He sighed. “And what good will that do? If I leave you alone, you’ll become even less disciplined than you are now. If you’re going to be in this pack, you need to work as a part of it. When you meet my mother, if she doesn’t approve you, if you fail her evaluation, do you have any idea what will become of you then?”

I had absolutely no idea, but it didn’t matter. By the time the Wilde Pack Alpha had time in her busy schedule to meet me, I probably wouldn’t even be a lycanthrope anymore. I hadn’t told Tennyson, and he hadn’t sensed it. Whatever I was, whatever that gene was that had been triggered in me, it wasn’t lycanthropy. It was something totally different. I only vaguely understood it, but I’d keep changing, first a wolf, then something else, then something else. And when it stopped, I’d be a different creature entirely, and I didn’t think it would be something good.

There wasn’t a lot of information about that kind of thing. Even though I’d looked, trying to find some way to stop it before I became something I didn’t want to be, it was hard to find anything without letting the pack know what I was doing — Althea, especially, was sharp about that kind of thing and would work it out. I just wanted to enjoy my time as a werewolf, to make the most of it while I could. And I knew Tennyson wouldn’t understand any of that. I should tell him, I knew I should, but he’d react badly, and I had enough going on without dealing with his feelings. It was easier for him if we were the same. The bond wasn’t such a burden for him. There was no point telling him now and making him worry when I had no clue when it might happen. But it made it hard to feel as if I was really part of the pack when I knew it was only temporary.

“You need to start taking this seriously.”

“Maybe you should start taking threats against your life seriously,” I said, turning to face him. I rested my back against the tree, not quite ready to lose that comfort just yet. The cold emptiness, the terror of not being able to sense Tennyson still echoed deep in my chest. “I know you don’t trust Katie, but she has no reason to lie about this. My father is coming for you.”

He shook his head. “I’m sure she has a reason, even if you don’t know what it is. She could be trying to divert your attention or throw you off-track. Whatever your father is planning, I can look after myself. Can you say the same? Can you be sure you wouldn’t be the one putting me in danger because you don’t know how to handle yourself?”

His words made me see red. The accusation that I’d ever do anything to endanger him, or any of the pack, was so uncalled for. All I’d ever tried to do was protect them.

Without intending to, I stepped away from the tree, toward him. I needed to do something to make him understand, to make him see that he was wrong, but his mind was closed to me. The calm of the tree seemed to retreat from my veins, and the wildness of the lycanthropy flooded through me, as if I was being bathed in it from the inside out. It felt as if I was breaking chains that had held me down for too long, as if I were a helium balloon and someone had let go of my string. I let myself float away with it. I was free.

Tennyson was suddenly right there. In my face and in my mind.

Come back, he demanded. Stop being so selfish and irresponsible and get ahold of yourself.

I heard his words, but they meant nothing. He had no right to tell me what to do, to try to control me. He wasn’t my master. I pushed him away, my clawed hands scratching at his shoulder.

At the sight of his blood, blooming red across the whiteness of his shirt, I came back to myself with a thud. I stared at the spot with horrified eyes. Already, he’d begun to heal, but that didn’t change the fact that I’d hurt him only moments after being outraged that he’d think I could.

“Come on, now,” he said, reaching to take hold of my arm, but I couldn’t be around him.

I turned and fled into the forest.

I transformed into a wolf and ran through the trees, forgetting all my human problems. I couldn’t really afford to miss more classes, but what did that matter when there were so many new scents to explore? The pack bond was stronger when I was a wolf, but that was okay. That meant that my bond with Tennyson was less intense. The pack were all fine, going about their daily business, so I could push them to the back of my mind and let my instincts take over.

What was Tennyson complaining about, anyway? I was awesome at this. Just because he couldn’t werewolf good, he had to bring me down with him. I chased a butterfly through the forest, snapping my teeth at it as it flew out of my reach. Everything felt so pure, so uncomplicated, but there was a part of me that held back. I knew that if I let go completely, I’d fall into that wildness, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to return.

I couldn’t avoid my human problems forever, so eventually I went back to the house to shower and get ready for school.

Being a wolf hadn’t helped anything. As soon as I transformed back, the same feelings returned, as if I’d just hit the pause button on them. I was angry at Tennyson and angry at myself, but everything was in such a jumble inside of me that I couldn’t tell where one feeling ended and another began.

I arrived at class just in time for third period and sat through math in a grump, not hearing a word that Mrs. Godinski said. The more I thought about things, the angrier I became. Tennyson had no right to be so patronizing. It was as if he was purposely trying to antagonize me so that I’d fail. He could’ve been supportive and helpful, but instead he was a jerk, just like he was always a jerk about everything ever. The thoughts chased themselves around and around in my head, and I got madder and madder, sitting there and stewing over them. My hands itched, wanting to transform into claws, and I could feel the pressure of the fangs against my gums.

Things got no better in fourth period, so I decided to skip lunch. I could go back to the Red House and grab something small to eat from the common area. Even though I’d be starving by the end of the day, that was better than having to sit there surrounded by people who hated me. Better than having to be around Tennyson and his judgey eyebrows.

The halls were packed with the push of everyone moving toward the dining hall. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but it made me feel hemmed in, caged. The wildness inside of me wanted to claw my way out of there, to rip and tear at anything in its way until it was free. It scared me, but at the same time, I wanted to give in to it. I could just let loose, Wolverine-style, and maybe that feeling would be soothed for a while.

At the point where the science hallway opened out onto the main hallway, the movement of the crowd came to a standstill, and I found myself stuck behind two massive guys. Having werewolf senses in a crowd of teenage boys wasn’t the most fun thing ever.

“I’m starving,” one of the tall guys said. The other grunted in response.

They were too big for me to push past, even if we hadn’t all been crammed in like sardines. People were talking and laughing and squealing in a cacophony that made my head spin. But even amongst all that, my werewolf hearing honed right in on the two girls whispering to each other, just the other side of the wall of tall guys. Olivia Hearst and Charlotte Du Pont, the two biggest Tennyson fangirls in the school.

“She’s unbelievable, seriously,” Olivia said. “Look, I’ve got some pictures on my phone. Do you see that? She’s absolutely shameless.”

I sighed. I wasn’t surprised she was bad-mouthing some other girl. That seemed to be the only way she could relate to other people.

“Wait. Why are they sneaking off into the forest?” Charlotte asked. “They’ve got that whole big house.”

I started to get a very bad feeling.

“I don’t even want to know,” said Olivia. “But if you keep looking, she sneaks off with Sam as well. I think she’s two-timing them.”

There was a brief pause while Charlotte obviously flicked through the pictures, then Olivia continued.

“It’s obvious what she’s doing. She’s wormed her way in with the Golden so she can get her money-grubbing little paws all over their fortune.”

At the word “paws”, my heart leapt. Olivia had been spying on us. She’d probably been spying on Tennyson for a long time. She might know things that she had no business knowing.

The crowd began shuffling forward again, but I needed to hear more. I had to find out how much they knew. I maneuvered myself so I’d stay close to them as the crowd moved forward.

“Cheap girls like that have ways to get what they want,” Olivia said. “And I’m not just talking about the obvious.”

I strained to hear what she would say next, wondering what she meant. Did she know about witchcraft? It wouldn’t be that surprising; some pretty weird stuff went on at this school. But if I knew witchcraft, I’d do something way cooler with it than hanging out with Tennyson Wilde. Like, find some way not to hang out with him, for a start. And also, cakes.

“And, I mean, nobody’s talking about it, but something happened to her old roommate.”

My heart froze. They couldn’t possibly think I’d hurt Hannah. I was doing my best to find her, with the limited resources at my disposal. That was on a whole other level from them thinking I was banging half the Golden.

“That’s not fair,” said a third voice. Fatima. “She’s as worried about Hannah as anyone.”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Olivia. “You’re friends with the little troll, aren’t you?”

“We’re not friends,” Fatima said. “But I have had a conversation with her, unlike you.”

“She hurt you in class,” said Charlotte.

“She was obviously having some sort of fit or something,” said Fatima. She sounded exasperated, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. A bit of the anger in my heart faded and turned into gratitude. “And even if she’s unstable or whatever, I doubt she’s an actual danger to anyone but herself. Think what you like about her, but if you say she did anything to Hannah, then you’re oversimplifying things and implying we should give up on finding Hannah.”

“Whatever,” said Olivia, who obviously didn’t care about Hannah one bit. “At any rate, that girl is dangerous and a clear example of why we shouldn’t let her kind into the school.”

I really hoped that by her kind, she meant scholarship kids and not kids with genetic mutations. Though either way wasn’t really okay.

“I’m going to set up some stricter surveillance on her and on the Golden House. If I have some concrete proof of what she’s doing, I can take it to the headmistress. But even without that, I have a plan…”

Before I could hear her plan, someone grabbed me by the arm and pulled me outside. They pushed me up against the wall, and I struck out, ready to fight. They caught me by the wrist, and I looked up.

It was Althea.

“What are you doing?” she asked me. “You were half-transformed in the hallway. Look at yourself.”

She pulled a compact mirror out of her pocket and held it up to my face. My eyes were glowing, and my fangs were clearly visible.

“Lucky you’re so short. I don’t think anyone else noticed. We need to find some way to work this out, though. We can’t rely on luck forever.”

I stared at my reflection, feeling oddly displaced, as if it were a stranger staring back at me. Althea was right. Tennyson was right. I couldn’t keep on like this. Even if I wasn’t going to stay a wolf forever, I had to learn how to control it in the short term, or else I really would become a monster.

Chapter 3

I just wanted to be alone, but Althea thought that was a bad idea.

“We get our strength from the pack,” she said. “Once you learn to accept that, I think everything else will come much more easily for you. But if you’d prefer to be with one of the others, I’ll help you find them.”

I shrugged. I’d actually rather hang out with Althea than any of the others. She wasn’t annoying like Tennyson and Nikolai, and she wasn’t complicated like Sam. But I figured if I could give her the slip, I could have some time to myself. That was a rare thing lately. Even when I was alone, Tennyson was in my head.

We walked slowly together back toward the Golden House.

“Don’t you want to eat lunch?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “I’m fine. We can get something at the house, if you like.”

She smiled at me. I tried to smile back, but my fangs were still out. Althea had always been so kind to me, and she was just trying to help now. I knew I was being a jerk, but I couldn’t seem to help it.

“I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,” she said. “Only Sam has been through something like this before, and he had my mother and the other adults in the pack to help. They didn’t even let us near him for a lot of it. I know the circumstances are different, but I wish I knew how to help more. I told Tennyson we should contact Mother for advice, but he won’t hear of it, and I can understand why. You’ve met her, so you know she’s not exactly the most indulgent person, especially in regards to pack matters.”

Althea sighed.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I’ll get the hang of it. It’s just…”

I didn’t want to bad-mouth her own twin brother to her, but it would’ve been a lot easier without Tennyson second-guessing me constantly. I could feel her amusement through the pack bond.

“I know he’s not the easiest person to deal with. It’s hard enough being his twin. I can’t imagine having him in my head as well. In his own way, he’s trying to show that he cares.”

Knowing that didn’t make him easier to deal with, though.

“I’m sorry you’re stuck babysitting me,” I told her. “I know it’s not exactly fun.”

She elbowed me in the side. “Right, because trying to eat while Nikolai is monologuing about his ranking of senior girls is way better.”

I laughed as we reached the gates of the Golden House and Althea scanned us in. It made me think of something.

“That girl, Olivia Hearst, I think she’s really dangerous,” I said as we walked through the gates. I explained to Althea what I’d overheard.

Althea paused as we got to the front door. “That might work out in our favor,” she said. “It gives us an excuse to upgrade security without it being in relation to your father and his organization.” Her smile suddenly became wider. “Don’t think that I don’t want to ‘babysit’ you, but maybe you should head around back by yourself for a while?”

I started to ask her why, but she shook her head. I sensed that she wanted me to feel for myself why she’d said it, so I closed my eyes and reached out. It barely took me a second to realize what she meant, and that warm feeling that I associated with Sam wrapped around me like a blanket. When I opened my eyes to look at her, I could feel the blush spreading across my cheeks.

“Go on,” said Althea. “He knows how to help you better than I do.”

It felt like a major jerk move to ditch her for a boy, but she just laughed and pushed me off the step.

“Seriously,” she said. “This way, I can go take a nap and blame it on you.”

Maybe she was better at blocking her feelings than I was at sensing them, but she definitely seemed to be genuine. She gave me another push, waving me off as she went inside, so I headed around to the back of the house. I pushed open the gate that led to the clearing. Sam was sitting with his eyes closed at the opposite end of the clearing from the golden tree. He looked really peaceful, and I didn’t want to disturb him, so I just hovered awkwardly by the gate, wondering what I should do.

“Come and sit,” he said, not opening his eyes. “Let’s do some training.”

He spoke slowly, almost like he was in a trance. I really hoped he didn’t want me to try meditating again. I was really bad at it.

I sat down opposite him, cross-legged. I really hoped the ground was dry. Sometimes it seemed as if the ground was dry, but after a while you realized it wasn’t and by that time it was too late and you had a wet butt. The last thing I needed was to have to walk back to the Red House with a wet butt and for everyone to see me and start calling me “Wet Butt Lucy”. That was what happened when you meditated, but it was only one of the reasons I didn’t hold with it.

Before I could say this to Sam, he reached across the space between us and took me by the hands. His hands were large and warm and completely covered mine.

“Just relax,” he said.

Part of me wondered if he’d started smoking pot and that was his secret to how he could suddenly control his powers.

His fingers threaded through mine, and I closed my eyes. This was okay, I thought. This, I could handle. It was simple, easy. I didn’t have to chase thoughts out of my head or worry about chakras or anything. I could just sit there with Sam and let his warmth seep into my skin.

I don’t know how long we sat there, holding hands with our knees not quite touching, but it was enough to make me feel better — at least for a little while.

“You’re really getting it,” Sam said quietly.

My eyes flickered open, and I saw him staring at me. His face was really close, close enough to notice that he had a few tiny freckles on his nose. Even though I wasn’t nervous, my heart was pounding in my chest. I knew he knew how I was feeling, and it made me turn my gaze away, down to our hands. I was gripping him so tight, my knuckles had turned white.

“Sorry,” I said, loosening my fingers, about to pull away.

“Don’t,” he said, pulling me forward so I was even closer.

I could barely breathe. I let my eyes fall closed again, but I knew that he edged closer. I could feel his breath against my cheek. He was really going to do it. He was going to kiss me.

Somebody cleared their throat behind me.

I jumped to my feet and spun around without even thinking about it.

Tennyson was standing over by the gate. His arms were folded across his chest, and he didn’t look towards us. I couldn’t feel anything from him, but his posture was rigid. He was clearly still annoyed at me, but that was fine, because I was annoyed right back at him. He obviously knew he was interrupting a private moment, and he’d gone right ahead and done it anyway, like the big fat jerk he was.

Sam got to his feet and stood beside me, his arm brushing against mine.

“Hey, Tennyson,” Sam said. “What’s up?”

“The headmistress sent me to fetch Lucy,” he said, still not looking at us.

My heart plummeted. There was no way this was anything good. All thoughts of Sam and kisses and being annoyed at Tennyson and stupid girls in our class who were obsessed with Tennyson flew right out of my mind, replaced with only one thing. Expulsion. I’d missed too many classes, or my grades had dropped and they were taking away my scholarship. Or one of those nasty girls had complained about me. Or they’d realized it was me who’d exploded the Zen garden that one time. Or a bunch of other stuff that was clearly not my fault but would look bad out of context. Either way, it was curtains for me.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Sam said, leaning in to me just enough for me to take comfort from his warmth. “Don’t worry about something before it happens.”

I nodded and followed Tennyson around the side of the house and back toward the school.

As we got closer to the school, I noticed that Tennyson still hadn’t spoken to me. Not in my head, not aloud.

“How’s your shoulder?” I asked awkwardly.

“Fine. Obviously.”

What does the headmistress want? I asked.

“As I don’t have a psychic link with her and she doesn’t share her private business with random students, I have no idea. If you’re so eager to find out, perhaps you should walk faster.”

I sighed. I hated this, but I didn’t know how to fix it.

“I thought you’d be happy I was working on my control,” I said.

“It hardly looked as if you were working,” he said tightly. “I’m fairly certain that when my mother practiced control with Sam, she did not use any such methods.”

There was a world of things I wanted to say in reply to that, including an awesome pun about wolfs and MILFs, but I didn’t need a soul bond to tell that Tennyson wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

He led me into a part of the school that I’d not been in before, up another floor from the grand staircase, above the assembly hall, to a hallway lined with very stern portraits on one side and a magnificent view over the grounds on the other. It was obviously somewhere students didn’t have much call to come. The carpet was flawless white, not a speck on it.

If you have a problem with me and Sam…

I have no problem, Tennyson said.

I felt briefly triumphant that he was talking inside my brain again but then stamped down on it so he didn’t notice.

You’re free to have whatever type of relationship you like with anyone you choose. That is not the issue here.

Then, what is the issue?

“We’re here,” he said, and we entered through a gilded door into a small waiting room, where we found a stern woman with her hair pulled back into a tight bun. “Lucy O’Connor to see the headmistress,” Tennyson told her.

She nodded and typed something on her computer.

I stared between Tennyson and the door, wondering if I could escape. Probably not. I wanted more answers from him, but I couldn’t exactly get into an argument with him outside the headmistress’s door with the stern secretary looking on. But I really didn’t want to go in, either. Once I went in there, that was the end of everything.

Will you wait for me? I asked him.

He huffed a little. Fine, but hurry up. You don’t want to keep her waiting.

With bile rising in my throat, I knocked on the door.

Chapter 4

The headmistress’s office was nothing like I’d imagined. I’d thought it would be all light and airy, with fresh flowers and cushy chairs. Either that or a bit Dumbledorey, full of odd little bits and bobs. Instead, it had the feel of a second-hand bookstore. The walls weren’t just lined with books, they were jam-packed, with extra shelves wherever they’d fit and piles of books where they wouldn’t. Squeezed into the very corner was a desk, also piled with books. Headmistress Wu was sitting behind the desk, barely visible among the books.

“Lucy O’Connor,” she said, standing up to greet me. “Take a seat.” She indicated a rickety chair that was also piled with books. I hesitated a moment, not sure if I could put the books somewhere random or if they were organized in a specific way. “Just on the floor is fine.”

Headmistress Wu was incredibly tall and incredibly thin. It was impossible to judge her age. Her hair was cut into a severe bob that made her look fearsome, but then she smiled at me, such a brilliant smile that she didn’t seem scary at all. There was a mysterious air of glamour about her, as if when she wasn’t at school headmistressing, she was off being an international spy or maybe a superhero.

I moved the books carefully. They seemed so old that they might fall apart in my hands. The chair creaked as I sat down, and I hoped it would hold me.

“I suppose it seems strange that you’re well into your second year at Amaris and this is the first you’ve seen of your headmistress.”

Now that she mentioned it, it really did.

“It’s not really any of my business,” I said, though I really wanted to know, now that I thought about it.

“You know that Amaris has three campuses? The Asia-Pacific campus, the Mediterranean, and here, the Atlantic. I’m headmistress of all three, so my time is divided among them.”

I wondered why she was telling me all this, but nodded to show I was listening. It didn’t seem as if all this was an intro to giving me the boot, but maybe she was just going a really roundabout way toward saying it. I couldn’t exactly ask her to get to the point, no matter how bad the suspense was.

“This puts me in a unique position.” She tapped a finger against her chin, as if she was waiting for me to respond to a question she hadn’t asked.

“Um,” I said. “Because you mostly live in international waters, you get out of paying taxes?”

She laughed, but I noticed she didn’t say I was wrong.

“It means I’m able to act as a diplomat, of sorts, between many of the most wealthy and powerful families in the world.”

Now I could see where this was headed. The kids of those wealthy and powerful families didn’t want me at their school, so it was bye-bye Lucy.

“Amaris was founded by a circle of those families, who, aside from their money and power, had other particular gifts.” She raised her eyebrows at me as if she was trying to hammer home a point, but she couldn’t possibly mean what I suspected she meant. Could she? “Of course, there were so few of those families that other students needed to be admitted as well, which is how the house system was born. Originally, there were just the two houses, the Golden and the White, and it had nothing to do with money.” Her eyebrows rose even higher, almost vanishing into her hairline. “Eventually, more and more non-Golden students were admitted, and the system was changed from the White to the Red and the Green, but the basis for it remained the same.”

She paused, waiting for my response. Even if she did mean what I thought she meant, there was no way I was going to say it. I didn’t know this woman. She could be trying to trick me into revealing everything about supernatural creatures. She could be a super bad person. She could be the sort of person who hunted down werewolves and wore their skins as a coat. I had no way of knowing. But on the plus side, it didn’t seem like this was going to end with me being expelled.

“I want you to know that I’m doing everything in my power to find Hannah Morgan,” Headmistress Wu continued. “She disappeared under my watch, so I hold myself completely responsible. I’ve updated security since her disappearance, not to mention other unusual events from last year. There are also other ex-Golden students who have different gifts from the current Golden students, many of whom are invaluable in this kind of situation. I have every confidence that she will be found.”

I nodded, wanting to feel reassured. I was sure Headmistress Wu believed what she was saying, but I knew what she was up against. How could anyone fight that?

“But that’s not why I called you here,” she said.

My heart started pounding again. She’d just been sidetracking me, and now this was it. I was toast.

“Alpha Wilde is one of my closest friends, and she asked me to meet with you on her behalf.”

Okay, that wasn’t what I’d expected. It was so much worse.

“She wanted to make it clear that she understands your situation, and despite her reservations, she’s willing to admit you into her pack in a nominal capacity.”

I blinked at her in response.

“She’s sorry she couldn’t greet you in person, but she couldn’t find the time to get away.”

“I don’t really understand,” I told her. “I thought I already was…” I didn’t want to say it out loud just in case she was still tricking me and waiting for confirmation, but on the off chance she was legit, I wanted to know exactly what was going on.

Headmistress Wu nodded and got to her feet.

“Lycanthrope pack dynamics are incredibly complicated,” she said, walking over to one of the bookshelves and running her finger along the spines of some books. “Much more complicated than ordinary wolves.” She shook her head and moved across to another shelf. “Of course, lycanthrope packs are one of the most straightforward of all the paranormal world, but there are many nuances that are impossible to pick up on unless you’ve been trained. Here, this should help you a little.”

She pulled out a small leather-bound book and held it out to me. The gold leaf had flaked off the title, but when I opened it up, the title page read The Etiquette of Lycanthropy.

“I know your situation is unusual, but this should make things less confusing for now. Please don’t hesitate to come to me if you have any questions at all. I may not be able to answer, but I’ve spent many years building a comprehensive library on this subject.”

I nodded. Part of me wanted to ask her if she had any books about me, about whatever I was. If she could tell me what I’d become, if what I feared was true. But a bigger part of me knew I needed to stop trusting people so carelessly. That was how things fell apart, every single time.

“Thank you,” I told her, then bit my tongue so I wouldn’t say anything else.

“No matter what anyone else says, Lucy, you do belong at this school. It was built for people like you.”

I had no idea how to reply to that, so I just shrugged, then got up to leave.

Tennyson was leaning against the wall of the waiting room when I opened the door. With his dark hair falling over his face and the tie of his uniform pulled loose, he looked like the bad boy from some cheesy movie. That image was dispelled almost immediately as he straightened up to his usual perfect posture.

My mother accepted you into the pack, he said.

Only nominally. I didn’t explain to him why, that soon I wouldn’t need a wolf pack because I wouldn’t be a wolf, I’d be some sort of evil, soul-eating monster. It was the perfect opening, but I just couldn’t do it. How do you know? I asked instead.

He raised his eyebrows. You didn’t feel it?

I shook my head. Was I supposed to?

He rolled his eyes and started walking back down the hall. I fell into step beside him.

Does this mean you’re talking to me again? I asked him. Now that we’re pack bros?

He didn’t answer me, which was the same as a yes.

Did you know about the headmistress? That she knows about stuff?

She’s close friends with my mother. My mother doesn’t associate with outsiders.

It was no wonder Tennyson was like he was. The strange thing was that Althea was as well-adjusted as she seemed to be.

Do you trust her? I asked him. I wasn’t sure why I was asking; Tennyson was a terrible judge of character. He made snap judgments and then was too stubborn to change his opinion, and that was only a small slice of the whole jerk pie when it came to him.

My mother trusts her, he said. And that’s enough for me.

I wasn’t so sure it was enough for me, though. I didn’t know how far I trusted my new alpha.

We got to where the path broke off toward the Golden House one way and the Red House the other. We stood there awkwardly, not speaking.

“I’m glad you’re talking to me again,” I said after the silence got to be too much to bear.

His eyes widened in surprise, just for a moment, and the wall between us weakened enough for me to feel a touch of warmth from him.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to take my advice and learn some control,” he said, because he was a pompous jerk.

I bit my tongue. It was impossible for him to go five minutes without being annoying. I had to learn to accept that as a part of him. A very large, overwhelming majority share. I turned and headed down the path before I could say something that would destroy the fragile peace between us.

When I got back to my room, I was surprised to find Katie sitting on her bed, studying.

“What time is it?” I asked, wondering why she wasn’t still in class.

She shrugged and set her books aside. “Like, five or something? I’ve been waiting for you.”

No wonder I was so tired. I must have really lost track of time while I was with Sam for it to have gotten so late. I flopped down on my bed.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“I’ve got some more intel, but you’re not going to like it.”

I propped myself up on my elbows to look at her. When I reached out with my mind, I could feel Tennyson there like a reassuring weight against the edge of my consciousness.

“They’re going to poison him with silver,” Katie said.

I nodded slowly. “Do you know how?”

I wasn’t sure what effect silver would have in that way on a werewolf, but I figured it wouldn’t be pretty.

What would happen if someone decided to make you eat silver? I asked Tennyson.

There was no response for a moment.

Are you planning something? he said eventually.

Wrong family member.

“I haven’t heard that they have someone on the inside,” Katie said. “So, the most likely thing would be to target the food before it gets to school. All the cooking staff and teachers who fly in are put through really strict security, so it wouldn’t be worth the time and effort to try to pay them off. It would have to be something undetectable. The Golden all eat a different menu from the rest of the school, so that would be how I’d do it.”

It kind of scared me how easily Katie came up with that stuff, and I made a mental note to never get on her bad side.

Maybe you should go home for a couple of weeks, I told Tennyson. Or on vacation somewhere. Somewhere far away.

I could literally feel him eye-rolling me, even from that distance.

Just… I sighed. Just humor me and don’t eat or drink anything until you see Nikolai eat it first, okay?

The stuff he eats really is poison, Tennyson said. But if it will stop you harassing me, sure, I’ll use one of my best friends as a human shield.

See that you do.

“It’s so creepy when you do that,” said Katie, then she went back to her books.

Chapter 5

I barely slept that night, worrying about all the various ways someone could be poisoned in this world, even while attending a high-security school. Even if they’d tightened security since Hannah was taken, my father never seemed to have any trouble at all getting onto the school grounds. He could just hide in the trees and wait for Tennyson to walk past and shoot him with a poison dart. It wasn’t just the food that I had to worry about, though that did seem to be the most likely problem. Katie wouldn’t give me any more information on her source, but she did seem convinced that that was how they’d go about it.

Stop fidgeting, Tennyson said to me in chemistry the next day. You’re driving me crazy.

I don’t think you should be sitting so close to hazardous chemicals when someone is out to get you.

This time, I was close enough to see him roll his eyes.

I’ve lived to be sixteen years old with constant threats on my life and without your “protection” for most of it. I think I’ll be fine.

But…

He shook his head. Pay attention. I’m not letting you borrow my notes later if you miss this. If you lose your scholarship and have to go to commoner school, I won’t have to listen to your constant prattling.

I aimed a kick at his shin under the table but turned my attention to the teacher. Tennyson was probably safe while we were in class, anyway.

Once the teacher had finished describing color oscillating chemicals, we had to do an experiment on the Briggs-Rauscher reaction, so Tennyson sent me over to get the equipment. Olivia Hearst elbowed me out of the way so she could get to the cupboard first, then smirked over her shoulder at me. Because getting the really good sulfuric acid was such a huge deal. Loser.

I took the stuff back to our table, and we set up the experiment. I opened my mouth to continue our earlier conversation, but Tennyson shook his head.

“You’ve made your point,” he said, uncorking the distilled water. “I have heard it and acknowledge it. That means you no longer need to keep making it.”

“Fine,” I said, arranging the chemicals in the order we would need them. But food isn’t the only way someone can be poisoned, and poison isn’t the only way someone can be assassinated.

“Step two of the experiment says we need to…” He pointed to his notes emphatically to show he was changing the subject.

The classroom settled into a quiet hum as everyone worked on their experiments, but before too long, a grating voice broke through the quiet.

“It just makes me sick,” Olivia hissed to Charlotte. “Look at her, sitting there flirting with him, playing footsy. I can’t understand why they all like her so much when she’s so… obvious.”

I had been trying to land another solid kick on him, but that was only because he was a jerk who didn’t listen and was going to get himself killed, not because I was flirting. I could feel myself turning red, and I hastily pulled my foot back and tucked it around the leg of my stool.

“Even the way she manipulated herself into being his lab partner is just too much! And it’s not just Tennyson. She won’t even let other girls speak to Sam. You know that Stephanie was in C&C club last year, and she said that one time she asked Nikolai to help with the pattern for her infinity scarf and that girl launched her crochet hook at Stephanie’s eye!”

I bit down on a snort. That had been a total accident. Crochet was hard! Somehow, it seemed so much funnier when they were saying it about Nikolai. Maybe because he wasn’t sitting right opposite me trying to pretend he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“But it’s obvious that Tennyson is her main goal,” Olivia continued. “The way she follows him around, making moon eyes at him, using any excuse to touch him, it’s just pathetic. You literally never see him around anymore without her tagging along. I bet she tracks him by GPS. And you know what else…”

Was that true, I wondered. It was really hard to judge, with the bond and everything. I mean, I didn’t need GPS; I just always knew where he was, regardless, but was I always following him around? Was I unwelcome? All those times when I had thought Tennyson was just being his natural jerk self, maybe he wasn’t naturally a jerk. Maybe he really didn’t like me. I wasn’t so struck on being forced into a bond with him myself, but I was trying to make the best of it, and I’d kind of gotten used to him. But it would be awful to be bound to someone you actually hated. Maybe that was why he’d blocked me, because he couldn’t deal with me anymore.

I finished the rest of the experiment on auto-pilot, not even taking in whatever else Olivia was saying. We packed away our stuff, and as the bell rang, Tennyson marched over to Olivia and Charlotte’s table.

“I chose Lucy O’Connor as my lab partner because she is the best in this class at drawing a rational conclusion from the collected data. Based on that information, it should be clear why I did not choose you. In future, please refrain from casting aspersions on my good judgment. Good day to you.”

He gave them a curt nod, then turned and strode out of the room. I stared blankly after him for a moment. He must be really mad. The more polite he sounded, the angrier he was, and he’d been super polite and had used a bunch of big words. But more than that, after worrying all class that he hated me, he’d stood up for me. A warm, happy feeling bloomed in my chest as I picked up my bag and started walking out of the classroom. He didn’t hate me at all.

Before I got to the door, Olivia grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me back. Her fingers dug into my flesh, and she shoved her face right up in mine.

“This isn’t over,” she hissed. “You think you can turn him against me? You’ll pay for this. I’ll get the worst revenge you can imagine, and then Tennyson will be mine.”

“Good luck with that,” I said, rolling my eyes and pulling away from her.

Why did I have to go to a school full of crazy people? As if high school wasn’t hard enough without everyone making up weird stories about me all the time.

Something about lycanthropy made it super-hard to focus on academics. Studying had always been something I was good at, but now, being cooped up in a classroom made me antsy. It didn’t seem natural to lock someone in there with a bunch of other kids and their smells and their feelings. It took all of my energy to focus, so between that and worrying about Tennyson, I was exhausted by the end of the day, and I still had to go to my club activity.

I’d signed up for it before the whole wolfy business, and it was too late to change. If I’d realized that I’d have aggression issues, I probably wouldn’t have decided on fencing as my activity, though apparently, I was dangerous enough when I was only doing crafts. The fencing coach was a surly old guy, an ex-Olympian who wouldn’t let us even look sideways at a foil until we’d perfected our footwork, so I’d managed to avoid any trouble so far by being especially uncoordinated. I’d hoped that by this point, Coach would’ve given up on me, but I guess you don’t win Olympic medals by being a quitter.

Our practice room was a small building between the library and the forest. It had wooden floors covered with mats that retained the scent of decades of martial arts practice. Folding doors opened up along two opposite walls, and the other two were lined with mirrors. In the far corner was a large storage cupboard that held not only the fencing equipment but the equipment for all the other martial arts clubs that shared the rooms with us. In the corner to the right was a wooden screen for me — the only girl in fencing club — to get changed behind.

“Hurry up,” Coach said. “We’re putting those drills into practice today.”

I stared at him in horror. “Even me?”

“Especially you. Now, hurry up and change out of that uniform.”

“But, Coach,” I said, rubbing my belly. “I don’t feel so good. It’s that time of the month and —”

I had never met any guy that the “that time of the month” excuse didn’t work on, but Coach was some kind of monster. He just waved me off toward the corner.

“Are you going to fence with your uterus? No? Then, go get changed.”

As I changed, I told myself it would be fine. I’d held it together earlier when Olivia was saying all that stuff. It wasn’t as if anyone would be attacking me out of malice in fencing club. They all seemed like okay guys. I just had to not take it personally when they attacked me.

That was easier said than done.

I had the footwork down pat, I’d practiced it so many times, but the fact that someone was coming at me with a sword was enough to awaken that wild part of me. I tried to think reasonably, to keep my breathing calm, all of the things I was supposed to do. But as soon as Coach called out, “En garde, pret, allez,” for us to start and my masked opponent stepped toward me, all my instincts said to throw down my foil and claw his guts out.

“Excuse me, Coach?” called a voice from the doorway, and for the first time in my life, I was grateful to hear it.

“If you’re not here to join my team, Mr. Volkov, then you may leave,” said Coach, signaling for us all to go back to practicing footwork.

“You know I would, Coach, if not for my debilitating injury,” said Nikolai. “Such a promising career, cut down too soon. You know it hurts the world more than it hurts even me. But I’m actually here for Lucy.”

I started creeping over to the corner to change back into normal clothes. Escape was so near.

“You like this girl?” asked Coach.

Nikolai muttered something, and they both laughed. Jerks.

By the time I re-emerged, they were chatting like old army buddies. I wondered how Nikolai knew the fencing coach, but I didn’t care enough to ask about it.

“What were you thinking?” Nikolai whispered to me once we were out the door of the fencing room. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me toward the forest. “Weapons will be a fun addition to my anger management issues? Sheesh. You really need to get a better handle on the pack bond. You know we were getting prizes for the best souffle in C&C club today, and you made mine deflate like a popped balloon when you started freaking out. Why would you ever think fencing club was a good idea?”

“I couldn’t get out of it,” I told him. “What was I supposed to do?”

Nikolai stopped walking and turned to face me. “You were supposed to come to your pack for help. Why do you think people have packs?” He sighed. “Look, you’ve tried the Tennyson strict discipline way, and you’ve tried the Sam hippie at-one-with-the-universe way, but sometimes the only way is the Nikolai way.” He started undoing his shirt.

“I’m not having sex with you,” I told him. “Not ever.”

He snorted. “Only in your dreams. But this isn’t about that. Your problem is that your human side is fighting against the wolf side, and it’s creating all this conflict within you. You need to stop fighting it. Just let the wolf go for a while. Let it have free rein. Go chase a rabbit or roll in the mud, or whatever your wolf wants to do. I’ll be there with you to stop you from doing anything too stupid, so you can just let go.”

The Nikolai way did seem to make sense, but then he pulled off his shirt and started undoing his pants.

“Maybe I should try the Althea way first?” I said.

“Don’t be such a prude. It’s not like you haven’t seen me change before.”

“Normally, it’s dark,” I muttered, heading into the bushes. Normally, it was the whole pack too, and the boys went off in another direction. This was just weird and a bit creepy. I folded up my uniform neatly and hid it in the hollow of a tree, then transformed.

Nikolai gave a little yip and pounced at me, and the two of us took off running into the woods.

We ran and ran. It felt as if I was outrunning all that bad feeling, all that conflict that Nikolai had talked about, that the faster I ran, the more of it burned up. If Nikolai annoyed me, I bit him or pounced on him, and then ran again. Nothing I did mattered; nothing had any consequences. I didn’t need to worry about falling into that wildness because Nikolai was there to pull me back. I could do anything I liked.

I was free.

Chapter 6

By the time I got to the dining hall for dinner that night, it was packed. I usually tried to eat super early or super late to avoid the crowds, but after going back to my room to shower off all the mud I’d been rolling in, I was never going to be early, and I was too famished to wait until later. I was still on a bit of a high when I entered, my head full of scents and ideas without form. It hadn’t been scary this time, that untethered feeling, because I’d known that Nikolai was there. I supposed that was what a pack was: that sense of security, of a safety net to catch you, even when you became untethered. I was so wrapped up in that feeling of flying free that I hardly knew where I was. I floated vaguely in the direction of food, uncaring.

Until I ran smack-bang into someone. I looked up to apologize, then realized it was Olivia Hearst. She’d stepped into my path on purpose. What was up with this girl?

She looked me up and down with an awful sneer on her face.

“Do you have… Is that a stick in your hair?” She reached up to pluck it out, and I flinched away. “I don’t even need to ask how that got there.”

I had washed my hair, but I’d been in such a rush to eat that I hadn’t been all that careful about it. Still, it was none of Olivia’s business how I wore my hair.

“Look,” I said with a sigh.

“No, you look,” she said, poking me hard in the shoulder. If I hadn’t recently become a werewolf, she’d have left a decent bruise. “I know you think you’re fooling everyone, but you don’t fool me. I know what you really are.”

I raised my eyebrows. I hoped she was bluffing, because otherwise, we were all in for a world of trouble.

“That’s right,” she said. “I know all about you. I told you I’d get my revenge, but you didn’t believe me. Well, take a look at that.”

She nodded toward where Tennyson and the others were sitting in their balcony overlooking the rest of the dining hall. Sam and Althea were listening to Nikolai, who was telling them some story that involved using wild hand gestures. Tennyson picked up a little teapot. Tennyson liked things a certain way and when he decided on that way, he stuck to it. He normally took his tea from an antique teapot with an ugly blue pattern, which had apparently once belonged to Queen Victoria. This teapot was plain white. He took the lid off it the pot and sniffed at it, and then poured the contents into his cup.

“That’s right,” said Olivia. “You think you’re so smart, that you’ve got everything all worked out. But everything is about to change.”

A terrible, cold fear gripped my heart.

Katie had been sure that my father didn’t have a person on the inside, but Katie wasn’t infallible. I’d thought that Olivia just liked Tennyson, that she’d been jealous that I got to spend time with him, but I wasn’t infallible, either. I’d been so, so wrong. Olivia Hearst was working for my father, and she was going to get her revenge on me, all right. She was going to get it by poisoning Tennyson.

I shoved her out of my way and ran toward Tennyson.

There was only one thought in my head as I pushed my way through the dining hall. Get to Tennyson.

Anyone who got in my way went flying. I seemed to be moving in slow motion, like running underwater or in quicksand. I didn’t take my eyes off him, dreading that moment when he’d raise that cup to his lips. He was holding it in his hand, that delicate cup that looked so tiny with his long fingers wrapped around it.

I tried to call out as I ran up the steps, to tell him to stop, not to drink it, but I was out of breath. I was going to be too late. He raised the cup to his lips just as I got to the top step, and I lurched forward, throwing myself at him.

“What?” he said as I knocked the cup from his hand.

I fell to the ground, looking up as I watched the cup circle in the air, the liquid spraying out and raining down on me. It seemed to glow as it settled on my skin, turning a bright pink before it vanished.

A second later, I started to scream.

Chapter 7

I woke up and couldn’t move.

I was in a dark room, but when I strained my eyes, I could make out the dim outline of a door to my right. I twitched my fingers, and that was fine. Then my toes. But when I lifted my arm, something stopped me. I tried out a few more movements and realized that I was chained at the wrists and ankles.

Tennyson? I asked. That cold fear still held my heart. Answer me.

But there was no answer.

That didn’t necessarily mean anything. It didn’t mean he was hurt. It didn’t mean he was worse than hurt.

That cold fear began to spread all through my bloodstream until I was shivering.

TENNYSON! I screamed in my mind, pulling against the restraints, trying to break free. ANSWER ME!

I tried to calm myself down so I could reach out with my mind and feel that he was there, that I was overreacting and he was fine, but there was only that cold fear. I couldn’t feel him at all. He just wasn’t there.

Finally, the door creaked open, and a strip of light appeared.

“Will you be okay if I turn on the light?” Althea asked quietly.

“I think so,” I said. It hurt to speak, and I realized I must have been screaming aloud.

“The light was hurting you the last time you were awake,” Althea explained. “Let me know how this is. I’ll keep them on dim.”

She switched on the lights, and I blinked. When I looked around, I realized where I was. I was in the basement of the Golden House. This was where I’d spent the last few full moons as well, only with light and company. If I’d been freaking out less, I probably would’ve put it together myself. As far as dungeons went, this was a fairly comfortable one, with cushy chairs and well-stocked bookshelves, but that was the furthest thing from my mind.

“Tennyson?” I asked her.

“He’s fine,” she said, picking up a tray from the shelf outside and bringing it in. “He sat with you all night, but he’s just gone up to bed.”

I had no reason to doubt her. It was just that I couldn’t feel him.

She set the tray on the table opposite where I was chained.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t know. “I can’t sense Tennyson. Not at all.”

It was hard to explain. It was different from when he’d been blocking me. Then, there had been a trail for me to follow, a trail toward him, but when I’d got to the end of the trail, I hadn’t been able to find him. But this was as if there was no trail at all, as if there never had been.

Althea nodded. “What else?” she asked, pulling her phone out of her pocket and swiping the screen. “Any pain? Strange sensations?”

I thought about it. “My arm feels strange. That stuff, the poison, it spilled on me?”

Althea nodded. “You don’t remember anything that happened after that?” she asked, making more notes on her phone.

I tried to think, but there was nothing between that and waking up in the dungeon. “What happened?”

“You had some sort of fit,” Althea said. “That stuff got all over your arms — I managed to get a small sample of it to test, but most of it just vanished into your skin. As soon as it vanished, you started… Well, it wasn’t pretty. Tennyson and Sam were both totally useless, but Nikolai’s had some basic first aid training, so he managed to restrain you enough for us to get you back here, but you really fought us.” She glanced up from her phone. “You probably don’t want a lot of the details, to be honest, but we didn’t just shackle you for fun. You couldn’t stand anything touching you or any light or sound. I was actually going to call Mother if you weren’t better when I checked on you this time.”

I tried to take it all in, but my brain wouldn’t process anything.

“But Tennyson, he’s okay? He didn’t drink any of that stuff? None of it got on him?”

She shook her head. “He actually got off much more lightly than the rest of us. The liquid didn’t touch any of us, but you did get awfully violent. You seemed to actually try to pull out Nikolai’s lungs through his ribcage at one point.”

“I thought you were going to spare me the details,” I said.

She shrugged. “Do you think if I unshackle you, you’ll be okay?” she asked, putting her phone back in her pocket.

“I think so,” I told her.

I felt normal enough, but then, as she approached me, everything started to go fuzzy. Without really knowing what I was doing, I thrashed against my chains, trying to get at her. Nothing existed but my instinct, and that instinct was to kill, to maim.

Then, just as quickly as the impulse had come over me, it ended. I blinked, staring around the room. Althea stared back at me, her face pale. Nikolai was standing beside her, his body angled slightly so that he was between the two of us.

“What?” I asked. “Did I…?” I gulped. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Althea shook her head.

I breathed out a long breath.

“I am so, so sorry,” I said. “To both of you.”

Nikolai shrugged. “No hard feelings. It’s not like you meant to hurt us.”

I gave him a small smile. He’d been surprisingly thoughtful the past few days, and it was starting to change my opinion of him. Maybe it was because we were pack now.

“I should go check on my tests,” Althea said, still looking unsettled. “There wasn’t a lot of the liquid left, so I don’t want to mess up what I have.”

She left quickly. I couldn’t blame her, though I hoped I hadn’t completely messed up our friendship.

“She’ll be fine,” Nikolai said. “She’s just not good with this kind of thing. You know, people trying to disembowel her.”

He reached up to unlock my chains. His fingers seemed to burn hot against my frigid skin.

“I don’t think you should do that,” I told him. “Did you not just see me thirty seconds ago?”

He shrugged and unbolted the heavy shackles. “If you try anything, I’m reasonably confident that I can take you.” He undid the rest of my chains, and I still didn’t go crazy, which seemed like a good sign. “Now, come over here and drink your tea and tell me how you knew there was something in that cup.”

I told him all about Olivia, and he listened with his lips growing thin and pale. I’d never seen him really angry before, I realized.

“You think she’s working for your father?” he asked when I finished explaining what she’d said.

“It seems likely. He was going to poison Tennyson, and then she put poison in his tea. It seems fairly conclusive.”

Nikolai nodded, but his brow was furrowed. He looked as if he was about to say something when the door opened again and Tennyson poked his head in.

“You are awake,” he said, sounding confused.

I stared at him for a moment. “You’re alive,” I said. I really hadn’t believed it. Even with him right in front of me, I still couldn’t feel him. There was still that cold fear in place of where our bond should be.

What’s happening? I asked him. Why can’t I feel you?

There was no response.

“Well,” said Nikolai, getting to his feet. “As interesting as it is to watch the two of you stare at each other, I have an evil wench to interrogate.”

Tennyson stepped out of his way as he walked out the door, and for one weird moment, I didn’t want him to leave.

“What’s happening?” I asked Tennyson. “Why aren’t you answering me?”

He hovered in the doorway. “You don’t feel it either?” he asked.

“Do you think that’s what it was? That poison or whatever it was? Do you think my father made it to sever the bond?”

He didn’t answer me. He just stood there in the doorway, a halo around him from the hall light behind him. My heart pounded. I’d never seen him like this, so uncertain. I couldn’t read him at all.

“Tennyson?” I asked. My voice was so small, and I wasn’t quite sure what I was asking him.

He backed out of the doorway and closed the door. I didn’t follow.

I wasn’t sure how much later it was when the door opened again. Nikolai had Olivia by the arm, and he shoved her into the room, then locked the door behind him.

“Is this her?” Nikolai asked.

I nodded.

Her hair was a mess and she had mascara tracks running down her cheeks, but I couldn’t feel any sympathy for her. She’d tried to hurt Tennyson. She’d severed our bond. She was in league with my father, and as far as I was concerned, she was just as evil as he was.

“Should I chain her up?” Nikolai asked. “They’re iron shackles, and she might be…” He wiggled his fingers to show he meant magic.

I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

“Please don’t,” she said, sniffling.

I glanced at Nikolai. I didn’t know a lot about methods of interrogation, but I figured it was better to have something to threaten her with.

“Fine,” I said. “Sit in the chair, but we’ll chain you up if you don’t answer our questions.”

She sniffled again and sat in the chair opposite me.

I got up to stand by Nikolai. Already, I felt so much stronger than I had earlier. Maybe the liquid was wearing off. Maybe the bond would come back once the liquid was out of my system. Or maybe it had served its purpose by severing the bond completely. Either way, I had to get answers out of this girl.

“You didn’t hurt her, did you?” As much as I didn’t like Olivia, it seemed kind of wrong for someone to use their superpowers against someone who didn’t have any.

Nikolai shook his head. “I mean, I grabbed her arm a little roughly when she wouldn’t come with me, but I think she just scares easily.”

“Guilty conscience,” I said.

He nodded.

“This will probably work better if I’m the bad cop and you’re the good cop,” I told him. “She already doesn’t like me.”

“Fine, but for the record, I’m actually the sexy cop.”

I groaned and turned back to Olivia.

I banged my fist down on the table, making the empty mug rattle. She flinched away. Good. I wanted her to be scared. As scared as I’d been when Tennyson had picked up that cup.

“What was the poison that you gave Tennyson?” I yelled at her. “Who gave it to you? Who are you working for?”

“What?”

“Don’t try to play dumb with me!” I shouted, leaning over the table to get right up in her face. A nasty part of me, deep within that cold fear, kind of enjoyed being the one on the other side of the bullying for a change. “You tried to kill Tennyson Wilde. Did you think you’d get away with it? You know we’re only the first wave of retribution you’ll have to face, don’t you? There’s a world of hurt coming your way, so you may as well make it easy on yourself and come clean now.”

“Now, now,” said Nikolai, pulling me back from her. “Give the girl a break. I’m sure she was just following orders, right? You were just doing what you were told? You never meant to hurt anyone. We know that. If you tell us everything you know, we can help you.”

I stepped back and watched him work. It was strange, Nikolai was normally such a d-bag, but when he tried, he really could turn on the charm. He sat down opposite her, took her hand up in his and leaned in close to her.

“We just want to know the truth,” he said.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I was just playing a prank on Lucy. I wanted her to look like an idiot. I wanted her to look stupid in front of Tennyson, and then I’d win him away from her.” She broke down, sobbing. “I’d never try to hurt him! I love him.”

Nikolai glanced back at me. “She’s telling the truth,” he said. “Her pulse rate didn’t change.”

I nodded. I believed her too. But that put us right back to square one.

Chapter 8

I still felt weird the next day, so I stayed in the dungeon rather than risk going to class and gutting people like fishes. I messaged Katie to explain what had happened and to ask if she had any information about it, because I was stumped. It still seemed strange to me that the moment Olivia had given me that warning, Tennyson had picked up the cup with the poison in it, but Olivia definitely seemed innocent. Nikolai said he’d get someone to keep an eye on her, but I thought he felt a bit bad about our interrogation when she’d actually been innocent. I felt a bit bad too, but not very bad, because even if she wasn’t guilty of trying to murder Tennyson, she was still guilty of being a jerk.

As the day wore on, I began to feel more and more off. Sort of fuzzy, but not like when I’d attacked Althea; more as if I was fading away. I tried to concentrate on my homework, but the feeling made it hard to see the screen properly. Everything sort of blurred together. I wondered if it was one of the effects of the poison. I’d thought it was working its way out of my system, but maybe it was only getting started.

Before I lost my vision completely, there was something I had to do. I hated to do it, but I had no other leads. I scrolled through my phone contacts until I got to EVIL DAD.

“What did you poison Tennyson with?” I typed. “Because you actually poisoned me instead. Congrats. Your evil plan failed, and now you’re one kid down. I’m dying.”

I looked at the message, my finger hovering over the “send” button. What were the chances of him actually telling me anything about the poison? A quick calculation said around zero. It was far more likely that he’d adapt his evil plan to fit the new information. At least this way, he thought Tennyson was the one who’d been poisoned, so we were at a slight advantage. I deleted the message and went back to dying.

I wasn’t entirely sure I was dying, but I’d really started to feel like it. I got too weak to sit up, so I curled up in a ball on the chair, shivering. Even if I was dying, at least I’d managed to save Tennyson. Not that he was at all grateful. I hadn’t even seen him since he’d run away from me. Maybe I could leave a request for him to speak at my funeral. He could read a poem. Or maybe sing! Something super embarrassing. That would teach him a lesson. Oh, man, it sucked that I’d be too dead to see it. If I could see it, I’d make him tap dance too.

The dungeon door burst open, and the four of them piled in.

“Why are you so pathetic?” Nikolai asked, slinging himself into the chair beside me.

I rested my chin on the arm of the chair to glare at him.

“When I die, will you make Tennyson tap dance at my funeral? And film it and travel back in time so I can see?”

“Sure,” he said. “Cupcake?”

I wrinkled my nose. Normally, I liked cupcakes the most, but I had no appetite.

I was trying to ignore the way Tennyson was hanging about near the doorway, as if he was waiting for a chance to flee.

“Are you feeling okay?” Sam asked, crouching down at my side. “I know you said you were a bit off this morning, but you don’t look so good, and it’s not like you to reject cakes.”

“I’m dying,” I told him. “Of poison. The poison that I bravely took on Tennyson’s behalf and received only scorn as a thank you.”

I glanced over to see if he looked contrite, but he wasn’t even listening.

“It may not be melodramatic enough for your current mood, but if you want to come upstairs, my tests should be about done,” Althea said, leaning over the back of the chair to look down at me. “If your feeble body can make it that far.”

“I take it that you no longer fear my psychotic rampage?” I asked her.

She smiled down at me. “I don’t think you could rampage on a kitten right now.”

I actually felt well enough to stand on my own. Maybe it was something to do with being around my pack members, but I definitely felt stronger when we were together, more solid and less as if I was fading away. As soon as I got to my feet, Tennyson vanished back through the doorway. I stumbled a little, and Sam caught me by the arm. He and Nikolai helped me upstairs.

“Okay, so you’re not dying,” Althea said, looking over her test results. She had a bunch of stuff set up on the big desk in the main room, and it all looked as if it would be really interesting if I had the energy to care.

“Am I dwindling?” I asked her. “I definitely feel as if I’m dwindling.”

She looked through a few more of her results. I couldn’t really see what she was doing because the sofa was too comfortable and making me curl up on the cushions.

“Oh!” she said suddenly.

I dragged myself upright. “What do you mean, ‘oh’?”

She looked over at me, biting her bottom lip. “You’re not dwindling,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

Tennyson was standing over by the mantle, facing away from us. Sam was sitting at the other end of the sofa, and Nikolai was playing a game on his phone and ignoring us.

“Well, this test of obviously rudimentary, so I can’t tell any of the details, but I’ve isolated the ingredients of the liquid. According to every source we possess, there’s only one result when these particular ingredients are combined.”

She took a long pause, which I was sure was only for dramatic effect. Tennyson didn’t turn around, but his shoulders were tense. Even Nikolai looked up from his phone.

“It was a love potion.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

“A love potion,” she repeated.

I shook my head. “There must be a mistake,” I told her.

“There’s no mistake,” she said. “Rose, ginseng, ylang ylang, turtle bile... A bunch of other stuff that you probably don’t want to know about… They’re all classic love potion ingredients. Without the bile and… other stuff… it might be a fairly effective skin tonic, or if you added mugwort and it had been brewed under the right conditions, there’s various theories about an effective psychic enhancer, but these specific ingredients, in these quantities? Sorry, there’s no mistake.”

My cheeks heated up, and I slid down on the sofa so I couldn’t see over the back to where Tennyson was standing.

“This is fantastic!” said Nikolai, grinning from ear to ear. “So, if the potion was meant for Tennyson, does that mean she loves him, or does she love whoever he was supposed to fall in love with? Oh, we have to find whoever slipped him the potion and bring them here! For science!”

Althea shook her head. “We don’t even know if the potion is acting as it was supposed to. It was meant to be ingested, but it was spilled on Lucy and absorbed through her skin. That may make the reaction different from what was intended.”

“That explains why she was trying to kill us all instead of snuggle us, I guess,” said Nikolai. Just one time, I wished this kind of thing would happen to him instead of me so I could be the one in the corner chuckling like an evil overlord.

She tapped a finger against her chin. “We need some of your blood,” she said to me. “If I can test that, I’ll have more of an idea how your body has reacted to these ingredients.”

I thought about what she was saying. “Do you think that’s why…” I took a deep breath. It was hard to get the words out. Obviously, that was part of the effects of the potion; it wasn’t as if I cared so much. “Is that why my bond with Tennyson is gone?”

Althea started in surprise, and Sam reached out for my hand. I’d thought Tennyson would’ve told them, but maybe he just didn’t care enough. He was probably pleased.

“I’m not sure,” Althea said.

“You can have blood if you think that will help,” I said, moving to get up.

I stood by her desk, watching as she cut my finger and collected some of the blood. She only got a few drops before the wound healed.

“Is that enough?” I asked.

“For a start,” she said. “I’ll be able to see if there’s anything strange.”

I raised my eyebrows, and she shrugged.

“I mean, if there’s any unusual reaction to the potion.”

I just wanted to go back to my room and sleep, but I didn’t think I could make it that far. I felt more normal than I had since it had happened, so I was confident I wouldn’t try to kill everyone in the Red House if I went back.

Sam stood up and moved to my side. “I’ll help you back,” he said.

Sam didn’t talk all the way back to Red House, and it took all of my energy just to put one foot in front of the other. Why was magic always so draining?

“Will you be okay to get up to your room?” he asked me once we were outside the house.

I shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

Sam nodded but didn’t move to walk away. He took a deep breath as if preparing for something.

“I don’t want it to be weird between us,” he said in a rush. “Or awkward or anything. I mean, because Tennyson… and you… and me… and… everything…”

He stared down at his feet.

“Things are always weird and awkward with Tennyson,” I said. “But we’re good, yeah?”

I cuffed him on the arm weakly.

“Yeah, we’re good.” He nodded. “It’s all good.”

“You know you’re being weird and awkward, right?”

I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

“Go on,” I told him. “I’ll be fine. I’ll talk to you later.”

He nodded and turned to leave.

I wasn’t really sure I could make it up to my room alone, but it was easier to try than to face all the weirdness of Sam coming into the Red House. People gossiped enough without something like that to fuel it. I made my way by leaning heavily on the wall. A couple of people gave me funny looks, and one guy made rock ’n’ roll devil horn hands at me, obviously thinking I was drunk.

Finally, I got to my room and stumbled through the door.

Katie was studying with headphones on. She glanced over at me, but I gave her a thumbs-up to show I was okay. She nodded, then went back to her work.

I collapsed on my bed, thinking I’d quickly fall asleep, but my mind was racing. I couldn’t stop going over everything Althea had said about the test results. She’d said the potion might react differently from normal, but I didn’t really know what normal was with that sort of thing. I’d been cursed a couple of times, but I knew nothing about potions at all. I sighed, rolled over to the edge of my bed, and felt underneath for a couple of the more useful books on witchcraft I’d been able to get my hands on.

Potions, apparently, didn’t need to be brewed using witchcraft. Anyone could cook up a potion. It was just a matter of having the right ingredients and knowing what you were doing, like baking a cake. That was bad. That meant it could be anyone. They didn’t even necessarily need to believe in the whole supernatural world; they could’ve just had a crush on Tennyson and come across some information and figured it was worth a try. I mean, when you wish on a shooting star, you don’t necessarily believe it will come true, let alone that there’s an entire world full of supernatural creatures and magic and terrifying things just out of your sight. But you still do it, because the shooting star is there, so why not.

There were a lot of different types of love potions. Love potions to make someone love you, to stop them loving you, to make someone else love someone else, lust potions, friendship potions, potions to make you seem more attractive in general. The most common type needed to include the DNA of one or both people involved in the spell. That was a little bit reassuring, at least — whoever had made the spell was definitely not targeting me. Nobody could’ve predicted that I’d not only stop Tennyson drinking the potion, but that I’d spill it on myself instead of drinking it.

I pulled out my phone to message Althea.

“Did the potion contain Tennyson’s hair or anything?” I asked her.

There was a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I needed to know for sure. After the potion had spilled on me, Tennyson had been the only thing I could think of. Even without the bond, my mind was full of him. My heart pounded when he was in the same room, and my eyes were drawn to him.

When I’d first become aware of the bond between us, I’d hated it. I’d have done anything to be rid of it. It made me feel as if my mind was being violated. But now it felt like a violation for it to be taken away. I’d not only become used to it, I relied on it. Having Tennyson always there, feeling him in the same way as I felt my arm or my little toe — it was comforting. Even when I was annoyed with him or frustrated, it still was reassuring to have that link to him. I’d been betrayed by so many people, by my father, by friends, but because of our bond, I knew that I would always, always be able to trust Tennyson. Whether I liked him or was angry at him or thought he was a jerk — all of those things were irrelevant. They were secondary things, changeable. But our bond was immutable.

And now it was gone. It had been severed, and I was alone. Of course, I knew I could still trust Tennyson, but taking something on faith isn’t the same as having the proof constantly in front of you.

Having the bond gone was bad enough. Having it replaced with these fake love feelings felt like an insult. There was no way I was going to turn into one of those Tennyson fangirls, following him around and sighing every time his eyes caught the light. I refused. I would fight those feelings to the death, if that was what it took.

Chapter 9

I wanted to avoid Tennyson, but we still had classes together, and I couldn’t afford to skip. I felt strong enough the next day to go, so I had no excuse to stay in bed with my head under the covers, no matter how appealing the idea seemed. I’d just act normal. I could totally do that. Act normal and maybe not make eye contact.

I had math class first up, and he wasn’t in that anyway, so that was safe. As the day went on, I began to feel stronger and stronger. The potion was obviously working its way out of my system. Maybe I had nothing to worry about. Maybe those feelings would be gone soon. That seemed contrary to everything I’d read — that depending on the potion, some of them never faded. Others you could end with a kiss; some with other things I didn’t want to think about. Like marriage. Fading away quickly was definitely the best option on the table.

Althea replied to my message a bit before lunchtime, saying that there had been a small trace of Tennyson’s DNA in the potion but that the test was inconclusive because she’d collected the sample from his cup. I wandered to lunch, thinking about what that meant. If there had been no DNA belonging to anyone in the potion, that made it a totally different type than if there had been Tennyson’s, and different again than if it had been Tennyson’s plus the person who’d made the potion. I wanted to consult the book I’d been reading again, but I’d left it in my room — I couldn’t exactly sit in the middle of the dining hall reading an ancient text on witchcraft without raising a few questions.

I was so caught up in my thoughts, I almost barreled into someone who was blocking my path.

“Oh,” I said, looking up into Tennyson’s face.

I quickly looked away. I definitely hadn’t noticed how full his bottom lip looked, or how his skin seemed smooth like marble. That kind of thing made no difference to me, because I didn’t see Tennyson like that. I was so used to him being in my head, I rarely noticed how he looked, but even objectively, he was very good-looking. It didn’t need to be a big deal. There were a lot of good-looking people in the world. I mean, Tennyson was probably in the top one percent of the good-looking people in the world, but even that didn’t mean anything. What use was being good-looking? It didn’t make him a better person. He wasn’t any happier than an ordinary-looking person. The only thing it meant was that he had a bunch of crazy fans following him around, being mean to any female who spoke to him and wasn’t his immediate family.

“You seem a little stronger today,” he said, not looking at me.

I nodded. “I feel a bit better.”

“Good,” he said.

I figured that was the end of our conversation and tried to move past him, but he stepped into my path again.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Privately.”

“Well, you can’t,” I told him. “We can’t do that anymore, and I need to get to lunch.”

I tried to dodge around him, but he was too fast for me. He reached out as if to grab my arm but then hesitated. I folded my arms across my chest and let out a huff.

“It’s fine,” I told him. “I’m not going to suddenly start writing sonnets about your aquiline nose if you stand too close to me or something.”

He was standing awfully close to me, though, and he probably didn’t even need superhearing to tell how my heart was thumping.

“I’m not going to argue with you in the hallway,” he said. “Follow me.”

I rolled my eyes at his back as he turned and walked away, but it was unsatisfying, because he didn’t know I was doing it. I followed him down the path to the garden with the topiary animals, which seemed to be his favorite.

“What’s up?” I asked, standing at the edge of the garden, tapping my foot.

“You need to be rational about this situation,” he told me, pacing the strip between the elephant and the ostrich. “I know it isn’t ideal, but you need to prioritize your training. Now more than ever, control is important. Your tendency to go off half-cocked has landed you in more than enough trouble already, and with —”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” I said, raising my hands to stop him. “Just back up a bit there, buddy. My going off half-cocked? Sorry, who was it who warned you repeatedly that something like this would happen? That someone was trying to poison you? And who was it who completely ignored those warnings, in fact mocked those warnings and went around drinking poisoned cups of tea willy-nilly?”

“I wasn’t poisoned,” he said.

“So, I should’ve just let you drink it, then?” I asked him.

“Maybe you should’ve,” he said.

“You are impossible to have a conversation with,” I told him, turning to leave.

“Lucy!” he yelled.

I stopped and stared at him. For a moment, it had felt as if he’d spoken in my head, but my ears were still ringing.

As we stared at each other, my heart ached. It felt so empty. He was only on the other side of the garden, but he felt so very far away. Nothing I did or said would reach him.

I turned and walked away.

After that, I couldn’t stomach lunch. I wandered around the gardens until it was time for class, thinking about Tennyson. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him there. His eyes had seemed sad. Maybe I should’ve listened to him more. Obviously, the potion was making me crazy, because listening to Tennyson never ended well. Still, by the time I got to history class, I felt bad and a little bit like I probably should’ve eaten, even if I didn’t feel like it. Food was my friend. Food had never once let me down. I shouldn’t turn my back on food when food had never turned its back on me.

That much was blatantly obvious about an hour later when I started feeling super light-headed. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I could barely sit upright in my chair. Usually, I kept a protein bar or something in my bag, because you never knew when a food emergency might pop up in this world, but I hadn’t restocked since the last time I’d been studying late in the library. All I had to do was make it through class, then I could go and get something. I’d be fine.

I tried with all my might to focus on what the teacher was saying, to use that to keep me anchored in the real world, but the words sounded meaningless. Then I remembered what Nikolai had said when I’d lost control in fencing club, about relying on the pack. Losing my bond with Tennyson didn’t mean that the pack bond didn’t work. The pack bond was different from my soul bond with Tennyson, in that I had to actively reach for it, to make myself aware. Blocking the pack bond was the first thing I’d mastered about lycanthropy. Well, the only thing. I’d found it easier than the other stuff because it had been secondary to my bond with Tennyson, but even with that gone, the pack bond was something I could call up at my own will. I couldn’t speak to them or let them know the specifics, but I could get out the message that I wasn’t okay.

The effort of doing that made my head swim. The room seemed to go dim, and the next thing I knew, I was hitting the floor. That was fine. The floor was comfy. I’d just lie there for a second, maybe have a short nap.

I wasn’t sure how long I lay there, or if the rest of the class had reacted to me falling out of my chair, or anything, really. I could feel the hard wooden floor beneath me and a heavy sort of lethargy in my bones, but there was nothing else. Nothing mattered. Everything was fine.

Then, all of a sudden, the world rushed back. It was bright and full of color. Someone was hovering over me, their hand on my arm. Their hand was warm, and I somehow knew that this person was The One. He was the person I’d been waiting for my whole life. It was as if a circle had been closed and the last piece of a puzzle had snapped into place. Everything seemed somehow right. The whole world made sense, just as long as this person was close by. This person was my equal in every way. They understood me on a fundamental level. This person was how I understood happiness.

I blinked, reaching out for them. But when they came into focus, it was not who I had expected.

“Are you all right?” asked Nikolai, pulling me to my feet. “You look like you might puke.”

Chapter 10

“I’ll try anything,” I told Althea, pacing the floor of the Golden common room. “Even if it’s dangerous. If there’s the slightest chance it will reverse this, I’ll try it.”

I sat down on the sofa beside Nikolai, not looking at him. It seemed that as long as he was close by, I felt okay. I could not live like that.

“Aw, honey,” said Nikolai, patting my hand.

His hand was warm and felt nice against my skin. I automatically turned over my hand to tangle our fingers together, but as soon as I realized what I was doing, I pulled my hand away and tucked it safely into my armpit.

Tennyson was at polo practice and Sam was off meditating or something, so it was just the three of us there. I wondered how hard it would be to keep this a secret from them.

“There are a few simple things we can try to start with,” said Althea. “They probably won’t work, so don’t get your hopes up, but at least it should help us narrow down what type of potion it is.” She sighed. “It’s strange that it reacted how it did. That complicates things somewhat. I’m guessing that when Nikolai tried to help you, he touched the part of your arm where the potion had spilled.”

Nikolai elbowed me. “You weren’t trying to rip out my lungs. You were trying to steal my heart! Aw, such a romantic.”

I tried to make some snappy reply, but really, Nikolai was pretty funny. And cute when he scrunched his nose up like that.

I slapped a hand over my eyes, horrified at myself. What was I thinking?

“I’m also guessing that maybe the adverse physical reaction has to do with how the potion’s affect is contrary to your natural feelings,” Althea continued.

Nikolai shook his head. “The heart wants what the heart wants, baby. Don’t try to find it.”

“Just stab me,” I said. “Someone please just stab me in the face and put an end to this.”

“We’re also pretty limited in what we can do here, since none of us have magic, but try this for a start.” She handed me a test tube full of a thick brown liquid.

Whatever was in it could not possibly be as gross as feeling these things for Nikolai, so I closed my eyes and drank it down.

“Um,” said Althea, staring at me. “Obviously not that one, then.”

“What?” I asked.

Nikolai was too busy laughing to reply, and I felt a warm glow that something I had done could make him so happy.

“Nothing,” said Althea, sounding strangled. “But maybe don’t look in a mirror for an hour or two.”

She went back to her desk and sorted through a few other jars and things.

“Eat this,” she told me. “It’ll be chewy, and it’s probably best not to look at it first.”

I chewed on the thing she handed me, which burst out with a bitter warm liquid that I tried not to think about.

“I don’t feel any different,” I said.

“What did she say?” asked Nikolai.

Althea tilted her head to the side, staring at me.

“You guys can’t understand me?” I asked.

“I think she’s speaking backwards,” Althea said. “I’ve got something to help that, though.”

I ate and drank everything Althea gave me, but nothing stopped the warm and fuzzy feeling from having Nikolai sitting close by me. It was sickening.

“What are you guys doing?” Sam asked as he came in. He sat down at the opposite end of the sofa from Nikolai and me.

I couldn’t look him in the eye.

“And why do you have scales? Are you turning into a lizard?”

“We’re trying to find an antidote to the potion,” said Althea. “It had some adverse effects.”

Sam raised his eyebrows, but I couldn’t answer him. Literally. After I’d stopped talking backwards, I was only capable of letting out high-pitched squeaks. It didn’t seem like such a bad thing now.

“Sorry, Sam,” said Nikolai. “I know you crazy kids were trying to make a go of it, but our feelings are too strong to be denied.”

I buried my head in my hands.

“You haven’t tried kissing me yet,” Nikolai said. “You know that I’m an actual handsome prince, right?”

“What’s going on here?” said a cold voice from the doorway.

I pulled my blazer over my head, since my hands weren’t large enough to hide all this from Tennyson. What had I been thinking earlier, when I was talking to him? What had I actually said? I’d been confused, thinking that I had feelings I didn’t actually have. The potion had messed up my brain, making me think I was in love with Tennyson. I hadn’t known what I was saying. I went back over the conversation in my head, but I couldn’t remember saying anything to him that I regretted. I risked a look outside my blazer.

Tennyson was standing at Althea’s desk with his back to me. He seemed so cold. It was strange, and I wondered when I’d stopped thinking of him like that. He always tried to seem so aloof, but I knew inside that he wasn’t like that at all. Inside, he was burning up. He wanted to protect everyone. He wanted to prove himself. He wanted to be the absolute best that he could be. And our bond had gotten all tangled up with that. I knew that was why he acted like he did, why he pushed so hard and acted like a jerk. In his own way, it was how he showed that he cared. And he was harder on me because he was closer to me than the others, because we could see past what was on the outside, even past the pack bond.

Except not any more. Now he was cold again.

“It’s more complicated than we thought,” Althea said quietly to him. “I don’t know if it’s because of the composition of the potion or how it was absorbed, but she’s not reacting to anything in the way I expected. I think perhaps we should…” Althea sighed. “I think we need to tell Mother.”

“It might be a bit soon for that,” said Tennyson. “You’ll fix this. There’s no reason to get her involved.”

“Okay, give me a few days,” Althea said. “I’ll find something.”

I wanted to leave, to just go back to my room and sleep until this was all over, but at the same time, I didn’t want to leave Nikolai, even though he was just sitting there, playing on his phone. Just being near him was enough.

“This is the worst,” I said. It came out a little squeaky, but at least it was actual words. “I’m going home.”

I stood up to leave.

“Wait, Lucy. Just try one more thing.”

I sighed. “Don’t you get it? I’m in love with Nikolai. I want to hold his hand and hear him laugh and draw his name surrounded by little hearts. It’s sickening. It goes against every single thing I believe in. You might all think it’s a huge joke, but you don’t realize…”

I broke off, taking a deep breath to calm myself down. I wasn’t sure I had the words to explain how very wrong this felt. “It was bad enough before, when I had trouble controlling the lycanthropy, but now… Now, I can’t even control my own emotional responses.” I rubbed a hand across my face. “It’s like I was roofied, but in the feelings.”

I sighed again. There was no way I could make them see just how sick this was. Everything I was feeling was a lie, and even though I knew it was a lie, that didn’t make it feel any less true. “I have to go,” I said.

Sam caught up with me before the gate to the Golden House had even fully closed. He didn’t say anything, just fell into step beside me.

“I’m sorry that I’m so…” I waved a hand around to encompass everything that was going on. I couldn’t even think about my feelings for Sam; that was just an extra complication that was more than I could deal with.

Sam shrugged. “It’s not your fault. I just wanted you to know that, whatever else is going on, I’m right here. Whether it’s this thing with Nikolai or stuff with Tennyson or whatever. Before anything else, I’m your friend, and that won’t change.”

He caught hold of my hand, and even though it felt kind of weird, I let him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sam to hold my hand, exactly. Only, I didn’t. It felt wrong. The only hand I wanted to hold was Nikolai’s.

I couldn’t tell Sam that. Even though it was because of the potion, I couldn’t tell him that my feelings for him were totally gone. We’d never actually talked about having feelings in the first place, so there was that, but as things were, rather than seeing Sam as a friend before anything else, it was all I could see him as.

I walked as quickly as I could without it seeming weird, just so I could stop holding his hand.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, breaking away as soon as the Red House came into sight. “Everything is just so confusing right now.”

“It’s okay,” he said, but I could sense through the pack bond that he was disappointed. I could only imagine what he was feeling.

Everything was awful, all the time. I couldn’t study. I couldn’t sleep. I had no interest in food. All I wanted to do was sit around and daydream about Nikolai. I tried to think about homework, and my brain came up with a zillion scenarios where Nikolai suddenly confessed his secret feelings for me. Or I wanted to get some repair work done and got distracted by remembering how he had shown up and saved me in fencing club, and how it had felt to run through the woods with him by my side. It was no wonder I had no appetite. It was nauseating.

Besides daydreaming about Nikolai, my interests narrowed down to worrying about how Nikolai felt about me and arranging situations where I could be close to him. The logical part of my brain knew that this wasn’t something I actually wanted, but that didn’t stop me wanting it. We weren’t in many classes together, but I had his timetable memorized. It was easy to sneak away and stand outside the door of his classroom, peeking in. Just watching him stare blankly into the distance made me so happy. I tried to get special approval to swap from fencing club back into C&C club and nearly clawed out Assistant Head Noel’s eyes when I was denied.

I was out of control. The more I told myself to avoid him, the more I found myself watching him. I’d always been so scornful of those Tennyson fangirls, and I was so much worse. At least I could understand why someone would be like that about Tennyson. Even among other good-looking people, Tennyson stood out. There was just something about him that made him shine more brightly than anyone else. Plus, he was at least a good person, despite being a jerk. Nikolai was a jerk right down to the bone, but Tennyson always tried to do the right thing. Tennyson wanted to protect people, Nikolai just wanted to mock them. I was so, so much worse than those other girls. That was what I got for looking down on them for having a crush, I supposed.

Nikolai had been hanging out with Tennyson a lot. It was the worst. I wanted to avoid Tennyson as much as possible, but I wanted to be close to Nikolai. So, I did the most logical thing and just followed them around at a discrete distance.

They sat on the bench in the clearing behind the Golden House, chatting. Even with my superhearing, I was too far away to hear what they were talking about. I even had to balance in an uncomfortable position in the tree I’d climbed to see them properly. I’d never really paid that much attention to how they interacted before, but watching them now, I was surprised to see how close they were. They were physically comfortable with each other, their elbows and knees knocking together in an unselfconscious way that reminded me of my brothers. Nikolai was telling some story, waving his arms around to emphasize his point, and Tennyson threw his head back and laughed. It was so strange. He was normally so restrained that it gave me a funny sort of ache in my gut. Was he so very happy now that our bond was broken?

I sighed. Nikolai was grinning at Tennyson in a way that almost made a person forget about his obnoxious personality. I tried to get my phone out so I could take a picture of it, but it was in my back pocket, and I was perched so precariously on that tree branch that the motion of reaching back made me overbalance. I clung to the branch with my legs, hanging upside down like a sloth for a moment before falling to the ground.

I landed with a crash and got to my feet as fast as I could. That had definitely been loud enough to alert them to my presence, and I didn’t want to get caught.

But I wasn’t fast enough. When I turned to leave, the two of them were standing right there.

“I can explain,” I said, brushing fallen leaves off myself and trying to look nonchalant.

They both raised their eyebrows.

“The potion,” I told them.

“Right,” said Nikolai. “The potion turned you into a creepy stalker.”

“I wasn’t stalking,” I said, knowing full well I didn’t have a leg to stand on. “You know I was getting physically weak if I wasn’t close to Nikolai, but it didn’t seem fair to burden him about it…”

That was a total lie, and it was obvious that neither of them was buying it.

“You don’t have to hide your love,” Nikolai told me. “It’s only a natural thing. I am amazing.” He paused a beat, his eyes going wide. “Wait, I am amazing. Did you do this even before the potion? Have you been stalking me this whole time?”

I punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up,” I said, but I couldn’t stop smiling. Even being mocked by Nikolai seemed like a good thing.

“No, seriously,” he said, following me as I turned to leave the woods. “I’m pretty sure this is one of those potions that can’t work unless the feeling already exists.”

“You’re delusional,” I said. “I think maybe you’re a little bit too obsessed with me, to be honest.”

But when I glanced back at Tennyson, I noticed he was watching us with narrowed eyes.

Chapter 11

As the full moon got closer, Althea tested more and more antidotes on me, and the effects just got weirder and weirder. I didn’t complain, even when one gave me a unicorn horn for a whole hour. I even tried kissing Nikolai – an awkward peck on the lips that I wished I could scrub from my mind forever, even though the potion-addled part of my brain blushed every time I thought about it, despite his bad breath. I really did not want to have to face the Wilde Alpha. That woman was terrifying.

“We should wait until after the full moon,” Tennyson said when Althea brought up contacting her again. “Adding more stress to the situation when Lucy already lacks control is only going to exacerbate the situation.”

On the day of the full moon, I didn’t feel all that different from normal. I went about my Saturday business, assuming I’d spend the night safely shackled in the basement of the Golden House. I talked to my family, sent back some repair work, loaded up on snacks and settled in on the sofa with Katie to watch some Netflix.

Katie had been awesome about the whole love potion thing. She listened to me bang on about Nikolai for hours: the exact shade of his eyes, every little thing he said and all the possible meanings it might have, my theories on his sordid past. On and on I talked to her, and if I occasionally noticed that she had one of her earphones in her ear, I couldn’t begrudge her that. It probably wasn’t very interesting for anyone else. I owed her big time.

She didn’t think the potion was the attack my father had planned. She thought it wasn’t aggressive enough, but it felt plenty aggressive to me, and it seemed too coincidental that it would happen just after we’d found out that there would be a poisoning attempt.

We were trying to choose between Sharknado 3 and a movie where a monkey teaches a Jack Russell how to wrestle when my phone buzzed. I was surprised to see that the message was from Tennyson. He rarely messaged me. He’d never needed to before.

“I need to talk to you. Meet me at the lighthouse. HIPPOPOTAMUS.”

“Hippopotamus” was something Tennyson had come up with as a way to prove he was really the one sending the message. He changed the code word at random times, whispering it to me when nobody else was around. I’d have said he was paranoid, except that I was just as paranoid and I thought it was a good idea.

“Sorry,” I said to Katie. “There’s a pack thing.”

She shrugged. “That’s okay. It means I can watch Russell Madness without having to try to justify it.”

I wondered why Tennyson wanted to meet at the lighthouse rather than the Golden House. Maybe he was going to take me to his scary mother. Or maybe Nikolai wanted to avoid me. Maybe he hated me and was sick of all this and had asked Tennyson to do something about it. The thought was like a lead weight in my stomach. Logically, I knew that Nikolai had zero interest in me, just as I had none in him when I wasn’t magically brainwashed, but I still held on to the hope.

As I walked through the forest to the lighthouse, I imagined various ways that Nikolai might come to realize he had feelings for me. Maybe I should get Althea to give me a makeover. Maybe I should start dressing in more revealing clothes. Nikolai seemed like he’d like that kind of thing. Maybe I should act interested when he started talking all that boring stuff, like whatever game he was playing.

The part of myself that wasn’t affected by the potion wanted to punch me in the face. But the part that was thought that was a great idea. All I needed to do was change everything about myself ever, and maybe then he’d look at me in a new way.

By the time I got to the lighthouse, I was in a bad mood. It felt as if I was being split into two people, not just because of the potion but also because the full moon was getting closer. I approached the lighthouse warily. This was where my father used to meet with me. It was a place he was familiar with, so it would be the easiest place for him to lay a trap for me. Or for Tennyson. I kept my back to the wall as I entered, and I sighed in relief when I saw that it was just Tennyson inside.

“Hey, remember that time you got the polo team to kidnap me and then you brought me here and tortured me for information?”

“I didn’t torture you,” Tennyson said. His voice sounded a little off, and I glanced around nervously, worried that I’d missed something.

“It was pretty torturous,” I told him. “You asked me all those boring questions. Anyway, what’s up? Why the secret meeting?”

He didn’t answer. He turned his back on me and lifted a heavy-looking bag up onto the table.

“Whatcha got there?” I asked, moving a little closer to him and trying to see what he was doing with the bag. We hadn’t been alone together for so long. I couldn’t even remember the last time he’d spoken directly to me, not through someone else. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“Just a few things that I thought might help.”

“Help with what?”

I hadn’t realized Tennyson had been working on the potion as well. The thought was somehow pleasing. Maybe he missed our bond as well. Maybe he felt lonely and lost. Maybe he also needed a distraction from that gaping emptiness where the bond used to be. After all, he was a pretty needy guy underneath his cold exterior.

He moved so fast, it took me a moment to realize what he’d done. One second he was there, right in front of me. Then he was behind me, by the door. I spun around to face him and somehow got tangled in rope. He’d placed it around me and then maneuvered me into a position where all he had to do was pull on the rope and I was restrained.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I yelled, struggling against the rope, which only made it pull tighter.

“Please understand why I’m doing this,” he said, standing by the door. “It’s for your own safety and the safety of the pack.”

“You jerk, Tennyson Wilde!” I snarled. “I’ll get you for this!”

He sighed. “You’re not acting rationally at the moment. Your control was poor enough before this potion, but under its effect, there’s no way of knowing what you’ll do. I had to take some precautions.”

“You could’ve chained me up in the basement,” I said.

He shook his head. “In a house full of Nikolai’s scent? Do you really think that would be a good idea?”

“You’re enjoying this! You’re mad at me, and you’re just doing this to make me suffer!”

For a moment, he looked unbearably sad. “Lucy…” He sighed, shaking his head. “The ropes are threaded with silver. You won’t be able to break out while you’re bound by them. I’ll come get you in the morning.”

He was wearing gloves. I should’ve noticed that earlier. Then, maybe I’d have clued in that something was up. He pulled on one end of the rope, and instead of it growing tighter, it started to lift me off the ground.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Put me down! Tennyson!”

He gritted his teeth and kept pulling, no matter how much I shouted. When I was suspended high up in the lighthouse, he tied the rope off and left without another word.

The closer it got to dark, the angrier I became. Tennyson had just assumed he had authority over me, that he could treat me any way he pleased and I’d let him. That was not okay.

The silver stung against my skin. There wasn’t enough of it to burn, just a slight irritation wherever it touched bare flesh. But every sting was like a slap in the face, a reminder of how little regard Tennyson had for me. He didn’t trust me one bit. He thought I was stupid, that I’d go off on some rampage. After everything we’d been through, he should know me better than that. We’d shared our minds, and still he didn’t understand me. That thought burned more than the silver ropes ever could.

Eventually, the light began to fade. I could feel my human side slipping away and the wild animal taking over. The more this happened, the more obvious it became that lycanthrope side of me was completely affected by the potion and the logic I’d been able to apply about my actual feelings for Nikolai was forgotten. It made sense that the magic would work better on the magical part of me, but that kind of thought had no significance for me. There was only one thought in my mind. Only one thing seemed important. I had to get to him.

I could still feel the grass against my feet from when we’d gone running through the forest together. I could feel the softness of his fur and that absolute sense of belonging. In my mind, that day seemed to take on a greater magnitude, as if it had been the start of something legendary. The colors in my memory seemed brighter than anything possible, and I recalled a sweet scent in the air that hadn’t ever existed.

I had to get to him. Every cell in my body yearned to be close to him. He was mine and I was his and we had to be together.

Night fell, but the silver in the rope stopped me from transforming. I screamed and howled, but nobody could hear me. No matter how much I struggled, the rope didn’t give. I had to do something to get free.

I looked around frantically, trying to find something, anything. And then I saw it. Tennyson had been so worried about his clever trap that he hadn’t noticed the obvious. There were windows. If I got up enough momentum, I could swing myself at one of the windows. They weren’t big enough for me to escape through, but if I could break one, I’d be able to use the jagged glass to cut the rope.

I was too frantic to even be able to gloat about outsmarting Tennyson. In that moment, Tennyson barely existed for me. The only thing I cared about was Nikolai.

I swung my body back and forth. It took some time to build up enough force, but that was okay. I could be patient. It was just like stalking prey.

My body swung closer and closer to the wall. If I’d been hanging just a little lower or higher, I wouldn’t have been able to reach the window, but the length of the rope was exactly right, so that once I was swinging enough, I could kick out at the window.

The glass shattered easily. I quickly hooked a foot through the window, ignoring how the glass cut into me. Cutting the rope was more difficult. The weight of my body was pulling me back into the lighthouse, and I had to use my legs to cut at the rope enough for it to unravel. The glass tore at my skin and clothes, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting myself free.

I’d almost given up hope when I finally felt the rope give way. I didn’t even try to keep hold of the windowsill, just let myself fall. I landed in a crouch, already transformed into a wolf, then took off for the door.

The forest smelled intoxicating at night, but nothing could distract me from my goal. I knew exactly where he was, exactly what he was doing. I was locked onto my target, and nothing could get in my way.

He was in the forest behind the house. There were others with him, but they were unimportant. He was a magnet, drawing me in. I drew closer and closer to him, and the closer I got, the closer I needed to be. The feeling was all-consuming. It could devour me, and I wouldn’t even care.

Finally, I broke through the bushes, and he was there.

I stared at him for a moment. He was still in human form, and he turned around in surprise. Even this short distance between us was too much. I needed to touch him, to be as close to him as possible. I leapt toward him, but something got in my way. I bared my teeth at them and lashed out with my claws, forcing my way forward, toward Nikolai. He began to transform, and I let out a howl of delight. We would run together again, through the forest and through the night. We’d be together.

I launched myself at him again but I didn’t reach him. There was a dull pain at the back of my head, and everything went black.

Chapter 12

When I came to, it was morning and I was in my own bed, naked under the covers and covered in dirt. I wondered how long I could lie there and pretend to sleep before it became suspicious. Maybe nobody would even come looking for me. They were probably so disgusted that they never wanted to see me again. I’d attacked Nikolai. It was different, somehow, from after I’d first been affected by the potion. This had been pre-meditated, intentional. It had been a specific set of actions aimed at a specific purpose. I hadn’t cared who got hurt, not even myself, not even Nikolai. They shouldn’t call it a love potion, because none of this had anything to do with love. It was obsession, and it was dangerous.

I tried to bury my head under my pillow without moving any more than necessary. What sort of a person was I, to be capable of something like that? I couldn’t blame the lycanthropy. I couldn’t even blame the potion, not really. They’d been my actions, and I had to take responsibility for them.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to stop existing. Maybe whatever it was in my father that had turned rotten had been passed on to me. Maybe this was just the first step in my downward spiral to evil.

My thoughts became darker and darker until I heard someone bang into the room.

I lay completely still. Maybe if I held my breath, they’d be convinced I was dead and just leave. Or bury me in a shallow grave. Either way.

“Get up,” said Katie. “You can’t hide in here all day, no matter what it was you did last night.”

“I can’t,” I told her. “I’m dead.”

“You will be,” she said, “if you don’t get these damn Golden off my back. They’ve been hounding me since I left this morning for my run.”

I peeked out from under my pillow. “You run?”

“We’ve been roomies all semester and you didn’t know that? That’s a pretty high level of self-involvement right there.” She grinned at me. She didn’t look as if she was dressed for running. “Okay, it was a snack run. You know today is cherry danish day. But that just makes it more annoying. Not to mention that they woke me up in the middle of the night bringing you in here. You seriously need better friends.”

I retreated back under my pillow. “It’s not their fault. I’m evil and horrible. They probably just wanted to make sure I hadn’t hurt anyone.”

Katie snorted. “If they cared about that, why would they put you in a room with a defenseless human? They’re the ones who are evil and horrible, not you.”

“You don’t know what I did,” I mumbled.

I felt the bed dip with her weight as she sat down beside me.

“Well, now you have to tell me,” she said. “Did you get drunk and flash them? Did you steal their favorite chew toy? From what I’ve heard about werewolf packs, it would have to be something pretty bad for them not to forgive you. And to be honest, they seemed more worried than angry when they were badgering me all through breakfast.”

I shifted over to give her more room and pulled my head out from under the pillow.

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to hate me.”

“No promises. Like, what if you ate a puppy or something?”

“It’s not funny,” I said.

“Eating puppies isn’t funny,” she said. “That’s like, the worst thing I can imagine anyone doing, ever.”

I shook my head and launched into the story, starting from when I’d left her in our room the day before. She didn’t say anything the whole way through, didn’t even react. It made the story easier to tell, though some parts were a bit blurry. By the end, I couldn’t even look at her. I didn’t want to see the look in her eyes change.

“So, Tennyson Wilde restrained you against your will, and you broke free and then proceeded to not actually hurt anyone, and now you feel too bad to get out of bed?”

“Well, of course it doesn’t sound bad if you say it like that,” I said. I didn’t have the words to explain what had been in my heart when I attacked, how I’d have done anything, anything.

“It doesn’t make you a bad person,” Katie said. “You weren’t in control.”

“That sounds like something a frat guy would say to justify date rape,” I told her.

She shook her head. “It’s different, and you know it. Look, if you’re determined to feel bad about this, nothing I can say will stop you, but aside from your loser friends bugging me, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

Something in her voice made me prop myself up on my elbows to look at her. “What?”

“Okay, so I know you’re a scholarship kid, so you have to keep your nose clean and all that, but what would you think about sneaking out of school today to meet up with some of my friends? I’ve kind of got the impression that they know more than they’re telling me. I don’t know if they’re holding out on me or if they’re just worried about their messages being intercepted, but either way, I think we’d get more out of them face to face.”

I didn’t even need to think about it for a second. “I’m in,” I said.

I’d snuck out of school before, but I felt like it didn’t count if it was with the Golden. It wasn’t as if they’d ever get in trouble in the unlikely event that they were caught. This was the real thing, though. Katie’s mother wasn’t BFF with the headmistress, and my family didn’t donate millions of dollars to the school. Plus, neither of us had access to a helicopter.

I had no idea how to even go about sneaking out of school. It wasn’t as if we could steal a boat from the yacht club. Well, we could, but neither of us knew how to sail. But I had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t the first time Katie had snuck out. She knew what she was doing.

She led me to the entrance to the underground platform for the school train, where she snicked open the lock with a pair of bolt cutters she’d pulled from her bag.

“We’ll just follow the train tracks,” she said easily.

I assumed we had a very long walk in front of us, but after we got to the platform and jumped down under the tracks, she ducked underneath the end of the platform and rolled out a vintage scooter.

“Okay, let’s blow this popsicle stand,” she said, throwing me a helmet.

I didn’t bother to question her. I was half-sure she was actually an international spy or something and not a high school student at all.

I held on tight around her waist as she rode the scooter down the train line. I knew that the train only ran at the start and end of term, but I had a sudden fear that for some reason, today it would be coming toward us.

We made it to the end of the platform, emerging in the bright early afternoon light at the other end.

“It’s a couple of hours from here,” Katie said, then took a sharp turn and drove us off the platform and onto the actual road.

The location of the school was supposed to be a massive secret, but it didn’t surprise me that Katie knew exactly where we were. I tried to get some idea from the landscape, but we really could’ve been anywhere. The coast was on one side of us and there were mountains off in the distance on the other, and a lot of trees, but it wasn’t as if I knew enough to identify regionally specific flora or anything. Katie would probably tell me if I asked, but I didn’t want to take her concentration away from driving. We weren’t on a highway, so there wasn’t too much other traffic, thankfully, or we probably would’ve died. Katie seemed to think the road rules were for other people.

I wished I’d thought ahead enough to wear a coat and maybe also gloves and a warm hat. The day was clear enough but cold, and the wind whipping past us soon froze all my extremities. I wondered how that kind of thing worked with lycanthropy. If I got frostbite but my superhealing kicked in, would I just keep freezing and healing and freezing and healing? That didn’t sound like fun, though, so I didn’t particularly want to test it.

We seemed to travel forever and ever, and just as I thought that my arms were too numb to hold on any longer, the road wound around to show me that we were approaching a town.

“This is it,” said Katie.

The town was tiny, with only one main street. She parked the scooter across three spaces in front of a diner.

I felt too frozen to move, but I awkwardly climbed off the scooter and shook out my arms and legs once I was standing upright. Katie laughed, stretching her long leg over the seat easily. She was dressed way more appropriately than I was, in long boots and jeans, a warm jacket and gloves. She shook her hair out from the helmet, and it fell perfectly.

Why was I always surrounded by beautiful people? It wasn’t really fair.

“We try to meet here once a month,” Katie explained as we headed into the diner. “They’ll be curious about you, but try not to say too much.”

I didn’t know what “too much” could be, so I figured the safest thing would be to say as little as possible.

There were two girls and a boy sitting in a booth in the corner, and Katie headed toward them.

“Hey,” she said, sliding in next to the boy.

I shuffled in beside her, nodding hello.

“This is Emily, Sara and Dave,” Katie told me.

“Those aren’t our real names,” said Dave.

Katie introduced me. “This is Sophie.”

I wonder if Katie was her real name, but it made no difference to me either way, I realized.

“We have a situation,” Katie told them.

“Wait,” said Emily. “Are you the one who broke into one of the labs and set it on fire and then, like, exploded five guys with your brain?”

“Um,” I said.

“That’s her,” said Katie. “Only she didn’t actually kill anyone. She just immobilized them with her superpowers.”

I didn’t really remember either of those things happening, but my memory of that time was a bit foggy, so I just nodded.

“Cool,” said Sara.

“Yeah,” said Dave. “Those guys are dicks.”

“Some of those guys are our parents, Dave. How would you feel if you came home one day to find your dad exploded all over the place?”

“She didn’t explode anyone,” Katie repeated.

The waitress came over to take our order. I realized I hadn’t brought any money with me, but Katie waved me off and ordered us a burger and shake each.

“What’s your situation?” asked Sara, once the waitress had gone.

I glanced at Katie, and she started talking on my behalf. She left out most of the details but got across the general point that I’d been the victim of a “non-consensual amorous compulsion” potion and we were interested in finding out the origin of it.

“To be honest, it doesn’t sound like the company to me,” said Sara. “They’re not very subtle.”

I nodded. That had been true in my experience of them too.

“They’re more of a snatch-and-grab kind of operation,” said Dave. “If they wanted to target you or the person you’re enamored with, they’re more likely to just shoot you with a tranq gun.”

“They tried that with her, though, and she exploded them,” said Emily. “Maybe they thought they’d try something new.”

I nodded. That did make sense. “I don’t think they were targeting me, though,” I said, then I bit my tongue. I didn’t want to give them any information about Tennyson or the pack.

“I’ve been decrypting some of my mother’s classified documents,” said Sara. “I’ve found some interesting things about trial therapies, but I haven’t come across anything like this. I mean, this is basically psychological torture with no guaranteed benefit to the aggressor, isn’t it?”

The waitress arrived with our order, and I listened to them discuss my problem while I ate. The more I heard, the more I became unsure whether or not my father’s organization was behind the love potion. They drifted from the topic of me and my problems to other stories they’d heard about the company — a friend’s mother did this, they’d heard about a guy who did that. It all fitted in with my idea of my father and what his company did, and Sara had been right: none of it was subtle. I was nearly finished with my food when I heard something that made me choke on my shake.

“Oh, hey, you were asking about that girl that vanished from your school,” Emily said to Katie. “I heard my dad talking about her last week. He said they have a lock on her location, and they’re monitoring the situation. I couldn’t get any information on where, but I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.”

By the time I finished choking, the conversation had moved on. I didn’t want to give anything away, but I knew they meant Hannah.

She was alive.

I had to get over this love potion thing so I could find her.

Chapter 13

The whole way back to school, my heart felt lighter, knowing that Hannah Morgan was alive. If she was alive, I could save her. If I could save her, I wasn’t evil. She might be evil, though — I mean, she was borderline even before she got taken by those creepy things, but that was something I could deal with once we got her back. My head was so full of hope and ideas that I was barely even terrified of Katie’s driving along those back roads in the dark.

By the time we got back to school, it was past midnight, and I was past exhausted. We trudged down the path to the Red House, dragging our feet and too tired to talk. All I wanted was my bed. Anything else could wait until tomorrow.

Something grabbed me as soon as I walked through the door to our room. I shrieked and struck out without thinking, but my attacker was too strong. I looked up at him and immediately relaxed. It was Tennyson. I struck out again.

“What are you doing here?” Katie asked as she closed the door behind her and leaned back against it.

Tennyson didn’t let me go. I looked around the room. All four of them were there. Sam and Althea were sitting on the sofa, where they’d obviously been watching something on TV. Nikolai was lounging on my bed. I gulped. That was more than my potion-addled brain could handle. If Tennyson hadn’t been gripping my arms so tightly, I’d probably have pounced on Nikolai then and there.

“Where. Have. You. Been?” asked Tennyson.

“What are you, my mother?” I asked, trying to pull away from him. “Let me go.”

He gave me a little shake, and I noticed he was even more pale than usual. There were dark shadows under his eyes, which I’d never noticed before. It made my heart jump in fear.

“What’s happened?” I asked him. “Is everyone okay?”

“Are you completely stupid?” he said in a quiet voice that was somehow much worse than if he had yelled. “We’ve been looking for you all day. Nobody has been able to sense you through the pack bond. We had no idea what happened to you after last night.” He let go of me and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I knew we should’ve chained you up in the basement after you got loose, but everyone else said we needed to show that we trust you. Which we obviously can’t. Now, tell me: where have you been?”

I shared a glance with Katie, and she shrugged. I knew she trusted them about as much as they trusted her, and it had taken a huge leap of faith for her to take me with her. I didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize the only lead I had on Hannah.

“I went out,” I told him. “And now I’m back. Everything is fine.”

He shook his head. “That’s not good enough.”

I was way too tired to deal with Tennyson when he was in a mood like this. He thought he could bulldoze people until they agreed with him, and I didn’t have the energy for it.

“Can we talk about this tomorrow?” I said, heading for the bed.

It was nice to be in the same room as Nikolai. Nikolai was hot. And uncomplicated. And didn’t yell at me. I loved him.

“No,” said Tennyson, stepping in front of me and blocking my way to Nikolai. “We cannot talk about this tomorrow. We’re talking about this now. You’re part of a pack, and you need to start acting like it. How could you be so irresponsible? You know this girl is an enemy of ours, and yet you went off with her to who knows where without telling anyone. Not to mention the fact that your body and mind are both unstable at the moment. What if you’d had a reaction to being so far from Nikolai? What if you weren’t able to handle being out of the range of the pack bond so soon after having such a volatile full moon? Did any of these things even pass through your head?”

His eyes began to glow. I’d seen Tennyson angry before, but I’d never seen him actually lose his temper, lose that tight control he kept on himself. My heart was pounding, but I couldn’t show him that I was afraid.

“That’s it,” I said. I could feel myself beginning to change too, the claws pricking at my fingertips. I wondered what would happen if we both changed. Would we rip each other to pieces? “I’ve had enough of this. You think that because your mother is the alpha, you can tell me what to do? Well, I don’t recognize your authority. All you care about is trying to make me submit to your power. Do you know what that makes you, Tennyson? It makes you a bully. And I’m sick of it. Just… leave me alone.”

I marched over to the door and held it open. He stared at me in silence for a moment.

“Fine,” he said tightly. “If that’s how you feel, you’re on your own.”

He swept out of the room without looking at me. I felt a cold chill in my heart as he left, but I was sure it was because I was so tired and angry. I didn’t care one bit if he was walking out of my life forever. Good riddance to him.

I hadn’t meant to kick out the others as well, but they also stood up to leave. Althea gave me a small smile as she walked past, and Sam leaned in for a hug.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said.

Nikolai waited for them to leave before he got up and walked over to stand in front of me. My heart raced. I hadn’t seen him all day. I felt a thousand things at once. I was happy he was there but ashamed of how I’d attacked him. I wanted to reach out and touch him but I didn’t want him to be even more creeped out by me than he already was.

He stared at me for a moment and then sighed.

“Come with me for a minute,” he said, then walked out, obviously expecting that I’d follow straight after him.

I followed him outside, and he sat down on one of the benches in the Red Garden, underneath a hanging lantern. He patted the spot beside him, and I sat down. I had no idea what was going on. Part of me hoped he was making a move on me, that he’d use that low, private voice I’d heard him use on other girls when he was flirting, and would slide his arm around my shoulders and pull me close. Another part of me was revolted by the idea and sure he wouldn’t do it. That little peck on the mouth for the sake of reversing the potion had been bad enough; he wouldn’t put us through something like that again. And he didn’t think of me like that, I knew that. And even though I knew his morals were questionable at best, he knew any feelings I had for him were fake. He wouldn’t abuse that, surely? Not when I was powerless to resist him.

All those thoughts raced through my head, and a million more. We were sitting so close together. He might try to kiss me. Of course, he wouldn’t. But if he tried, I wouldn’t stop him.

I edged a little farther away from him on the bench.

“I’m sorry about attacking you,” I said, staring down at my hands. “It was inexcusable.”

He shrugged. “No biggie. You didn’t actually get near me, though you hit Sam pretty hard. I think he blacked out for a minute, there.”

“It is a biggie,” I told him. “If I’d got to you, I don’t even know what I would’ve done.”

“But you didn’t,” he said. “You can’t sit around worrying about every stupid thing you almost did. If I did that, I would literally never move. Let’s just be grateful that we dodged that particular bullet and move on.”

I stared at him. Of all the things I expected from Nikolai, I’d never expected anything that sounded kind of like common sense.

“Thanks,” I told him.

He shrugged again. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. If you’re going to apologize to anyone, it should be Tennyson.”

I pulled back from him. “What?” I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him.

“This is hard on him too,” said Nikolai. “Tennyson finds it really hard to connect with people – that much should be obvious, even to you. So, this creepy bond thing you guys had was really important to him. He’s never been close to anyone outside the pack before, and even with us, he still holds a lot back. I’ve never seen him open up to anyone like he did with you. I guess having someone in your brain 24/7 would kind of force the issue, but even so, he’s closer to you than anyone, even Althea in some ways. I know you’ve had a lot going on. I mean, I can understand being distracted by all this…” He waved a hand along his body. “But did you ever stop to think how it felt for him to have your bond cut off like that? And you’ve been such a brat about anything he’s suggested, when it’s obvious that all he’s been trying to do is help and maybe get to know you a bit outside of the bond. And you can’t tell me that you haven’t been holding back with the pack bond. It’s obvious that you’re blocking it, so he can’t even feel you through that. I really think you could give him a break, you know? He was frantic all day today, thinking you’d been kidnapped or murdered or something.”

He gave another shrug and stood up. “Just think about it. He may not act like it, but Tennyson has feelings too, and you, more than anyone, should know that.”

I barely noticed as Nikolai disappeared into the shadows. His words were ringing in my ears. I’d been so selfish and unthinking, so wrapped up in myself. I always called Tennyson a jerk, but maybe I was the jerk. It wasn’t a nice thing to realize. Even though the night was cold, I sat there in a daze, going back over the things I’d said to him. He really had been trying to help me, and I’d been so mean to him. It was as if, as soon as I’d stopped being able to feel his feelings, I’d stopped feeling anything. Was I such a cold person?

I sat there half the night, taking a long, hard look at myself. I’d felt so ashamed about attacking Nikolai, but what I’d done to Tennyson was a lot worse. I didn’t deserve the bond with him. I hadn’t appreciated it properly, hadn’t taken proper advantage of being able to be so close to him. I always thought of his as being cold and strong, like a marble statue, but he wasn’t really like that at all, and it wasn’t fair to treat him like that, especially when I knew better. All the things I’d accused him of – that was actually me.

Eventually, I fell asleep on that bench, exhausted by the day and the travel and the shocking realizations. I dreamed that I was a cloud, and all I could do was cover the sun and rain on people.

Chapter 14

I woke up with a layer of frost settled over me. My body was so stiff that I could barely move, but I forced myself to get up and move around a bit. I wanted to rush off and find Tennyson and apologize, but I knew him well enough to know that wouldn’t go well, so I went back up to my room for a hot shower and to think about how to approach the whole Tennyson thing.

Katie was still asleep, snoring her head off.

I thought about Tennyson while I washed my hair, about the best way to approach him. A direct apology would make him defensive and awkward. What I needed to do was to somehow erase what I’d said the night before. I still didn’t like the way he went about things, being all bossy and stubborn, but I couldn’t do anything to change that until we were on good terms again. That could come later. First, I had to fix all the damage I’d done.

I hadn’t tried reaching out through the pack bond to Tennyson, not really. It seemed too much of a sad mockery of the bond we had lost. I hadn’t intentionally blocked it, but I definitely hadn’t tried to use it, either, not with him.

I dressed in my warmest clothes and sat on the end of my bed, prodding at the pack bond. It was so different from my bond with Tennyson, like going from using precision tools to something primitive, a laser to a hammer. My bond with Tennyson had been a direct line between us, a tunnel that our thoughts and feelings easily travelled through, but the pack bond was more like a map. I could see where things were, even see some information about them, but it wasn’t the same as actually being there, as truly knowing. Still, having a map was useful. You could get the lay of the land, go into a situation prepared.

I stood up, unable to put it off any longer. I had to go find Tennyson and make things right between us.

He’d gone to breakfast early and was just heading back. If I hurried, I could intercept him before he got back to the house. I didn’t push too hard, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he was feeling and I didn’t want to intrude if he didn’t want me to. As I rushed down the path, I examined that feeling of him from the pack bond. It was distinctly Tennyson, though I couldn’t really describe what made it so. It was like a scent or a flavor or a color, only in my mind. It was the same flavor as through our soul bond, only much more distilled, watered down. Still, it was familiar enough to give me comfort.

I was so wrapped up in examining it, all the angles and textures of it, that I didn’t notice someone else was on the path until they grabbed me by the arm and stopped me.

It was Olivia Hearst.

I was so close to Tennyson, so close to the Golden House, right near the topiary garden. If I let her delay me here, I might miss him, and it would be a pain to get him on his own if he was determined not to talk to me.

“I’m in a hurry,” I told her.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What are you playing at?” she asked me. “I’ve been watching you, and I know something’s going on. Isn’t one boy enough for you? Now you’re playing around with Nikolai Volkov as well as Tennyson and Sam, when you’re not even good enough to wipe the boots of any of them.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her. “You should butt out of things you don’t understand.”

She screwed up her whole face, like she’d been sucking on a lemon. “If you’re worried that I’ll tell everyone about your creepy sex dungeon, you shouldn’t. When I get my revenge on you, it’s going to be something you’ll never come back from.”

This girl was so annoying, and I was in a rush. I was about to lose my patience with her. It would feel kind of good to take all my frustrations out on her, the nasty little cow. But as I opened my mouth, about to let her have it, I noticed someone lurking creepily behind the topiary T-Rex. Only one person I knew could lurk with that level of creepiness. Suddenly, Olivia and her stupid threats didn’t seem important.

“Sure,” I told her. “Do that. Get all the revenge on me you like. That’s really going to make Tennyson fall for you. He’ll really love you for being nasty and spiteful to one of his friends.”

She gave a little huff, then turned and walked away, leaving me free to slip into the topiary garden.

I couldn’t find him at first, because he’d melted into the shadows. My heart sank. He really didn’t want to talk to me. He was going to avoid me forever, and I’d never be able to make things right with him. Then, I felt for him with the pack bond. He was still close by.

I made my way through the topiary garden and finally found him sitting on a seat hidden in the curve of a topiary dragon’s wing. I sat down beside him with no idea what to say.

“I was out of line,” I told him. “I was a jerk.”

He shook his head. “No, you were right. I shouldn’t have been ordering you around.”

I was speechless for a moment. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him admit to being wrong before. He sounded so defeated. I didn’t like it one bit.

“You were only trying to help me,” I said, staring at my hands. “I should’ve listened to you. If I’d listened to you about controlling my lycanthropy, you wouldn’t have needed to lock me in the lighthouse. I never would have attacked Nikolai. If I’d been more in control, I’d have thought to use the bond to tell you not to drink the tea, and none of this would have happened in the first place.”

“If I’d listened to you, I wouldn’t have tried to drink the tea,” he said.

“Maybe we’re both jerks,” I said, glancing up at him.

His lip twitched up into the smallest smile. It made my heart ache to see it. I’d really hurt him; I could see that now. I’d never imagined he could be so vulnerable.

“Lucky for us, then,” he said.

He reached over and touched my hand, and I never got to hear the rest of what he was about to say, the reason why it was lucky for us, because as soon as his hand touched mine, our soul bond came rushing back. It smacked into us both like a freight train, and for a moment, all I could do was hang on. I gripped his hand so tightly, afraid to let go.

I could feel everything. All his thoughts, all his feelings. That diluted sense of him from the pack bond was nothing compared to this. This was pure Tennyson. All his goodness, all his strength, it all came flooding through. For that moment, the love potion ceased to have any effect on me whatsoever. How could any mere magic touch us? We were infinite.

I’ve missed this.

I couldn’t tell if that was my thought or his. There was no difference. There was no line where I finished and he began. It all blended seamlessly together.

But it couldn’t last. We knew that as soon as we stopped holding hands, the connection would be lost. We couldn’t sit there forever in the wing of the dragon, but neither of us wanted to let go. No words were necessary between us when we were like this. No awkward apologies or explanations.

We had to let go. We knew we did. But the longer we left it, the harder it became. It had been so long.

When we finally let go, the day had already grown late. Everything looked dull and gray. Already, I missed him, even though he was sitting right beside me. But despite all those things, I had something that I hadn’t before. I had hope.

“The bond isn’t broken,” I said, needing to hear the words aloud. “We can get it back. We can reverse the potion.”

Chapter 15

I threw myself into finding an antidote more wholeheartedly than ever. I didn’t just listen to Althea’s explanations and take the antidotes she gave me; I made her teach me all their properties so that I understood and could test things out for myself. I read every book I could find on potion lore and antidotes. I remembered the headmistress’s office, and we all agreed it would be worthwhile to ask her if we could borrow some books. If she thought it was weird that her students wanted to borrow her books on potions, she didn’t show it, and she sent us off with a stack of books so huge that we definitely needed superstrength to carry them.

And we finally decided it was time to tell Tennyson and Althea’s mother what was going on.

The rest of us hovered around nervously while Tennyson made the call, but in the end, it was anticlimactic. He tried about twenty times and couldn’t get through, so he left a message with her assistant. The others seemed to think that by the time she got back to us, we’d have fixed the problem ourselves, but I wasn’t so sure. I needed to feel as if we were doing something about it. I needed to get the bond with Tennyson back, and even more than that, I needed to get rid of my feelings for Nikolai. They were becoming more than a nuisance; they were affecting every part of my life. My grades were slipping. I had no interest in food, even really delicious food. Even food in bite-sized portions. Nothing. It felt as if everything that had ever interested me before or had made life fun was slowly being drained away and replaced by Nikolai. I tried not to resent him for it, but it was hard not to. He’d been surprisingly good about the whole thing, but it was so tiring thinking about him all the time, looking at him, arranging my time around him. I was so sick of the idea of him, but at the same time, I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

Sam caught up with me one day after class, just as I was making a beeline for Nikolai’s C&C club.

“Wanna hang out?” he said.

I shrugged. I really wanted to go join in on C&C club, and I knew that Sam knew that too. I also knew it would be way more emotionally healthy not to, so I followed Sam away from the main school buildings.

I thought he’d head out to the clearing behind the Golden House, but he led me in a completely different direction. There was a lot of the school that I was still unfamiliar with. Even though it was my second year there, I’d spent so much time caught up in magical shenanigans, and then catching up on the schoolwork I’d fallen behind on because of magical shenanigans, that I hadn’t had a heap of time for other things. He led me through some gardens that I hadn’t seen before and down a path through some trees to a little hut.

As we got closer, I realized it wasn’t a hut at all. It was a greenhouse, though it was much bigger than any greenhouse I’d seen before.

“You seem to always be cold lately,” he said, leading me inside.

“Well, it is winter,” I told him, feeling the warmth of the greenhouse wrap around me.

There was a large fountain in the middle of the greenhouse, with all sorts of exotic plants growing around everywhere.

“This is beautiful,” I said, staring around.

Sam nodded, walking farther inside. “It’s so relaxing in here.”

I could see what he meant. The air was so still and fresh, it felt like a whole different world. Just for a moment, I was able to let myself forget everything that was going on.

“I came here a lot when we first started school,” Sam said, vanishing behind a wall of hanging lilacs. “When I was trying to force myself to stay away from you. It helped, at least a bit. So, I thought that maybe it might help you now.”

I followed his voice through the flowers until I stepped out in front of him.

“Was it this hard for you?” I asked, looking up at him.

I wished these feelings I had were for Sam. It would make everything so much easier if I could just go with things, if I didn’t have to fight it. I wanted so much for these feelings I had for Nikolai to be for Sam, for us to be together properly. I took another step closer, almost close enough to touch. Sam was so tall. He was so warm and gentle and kind. So easy to be around. Falling in love with Sam would be like falling asleep. I could just let myself drift off and know I was safe.

I reached up to touch his arm. Nothing happened — no powerful surge of emotion and understanding like when Tennyson had held my hand. But it wasn’t bad, either.

“Was it really like this for you?” I asked him.

I bit my lip, waiting for his answer. Maybe, just maybe, if Sam kissed me, it would break this spell that Nikolai had over me. Maybe everything would be normal and right.

I stood on my tiptoes, reaching up for him, but he took me by the shoulders and pushed me away.

“It’s okay, Lucy,” he said gently. “You don’t need to force yourself. We’ll have time later on to figure things out. It’s better if we wait.”

His words made sense, but that didn’t stop the sting of rejection. I tried not to show the hurt on my face, even though I knew he could probably sense it. It gave me the illusion of keeping my pride.

“Let’s just hang out as friends for now,” he said, then led me over to a swing seat set in amongst some ferns. “It’s peaceful here. We should just enjoy it.”

I nodded. I couldn’t deny that part of me was relieved.

It got to the point where we’d run out of things to try as antidotes and began looking for other avenues. Days went by and Alpha Wilde didn’t get back to us, even though Tennyson and Althea had both left more messages for her. I returned the books to the headmistress and tried to subtly question her about what she’d use to reverse the effects of a love potion, but all her answers were things we’d already tried. Nikolai got in touch with his sketchy contacts. We all did everything we could think of, but nothing panned out. Katie even messaged her parents for information, so when she called me out of class one afternoon, I thought we’d hit the jackpot. One look at her face told me otherwise. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in close.

“Thursday night,” she whispered in my ear, her eyes darting around frantically, even though we were in the hall outside the English classroom. “The night of the new moon. They’re going to come for him, and they’re coming in force. If you want to save him, you have to get him out of here.”

She dropped my arm and rushed away, leaving me standing there in shock. I needed to warn him. I needed to move, to hurry, but I couldn’t force myself into motion. It was really happening. This was all my fault. I’d made Tennyson into a target, and he was going to get hurt.

Eventually the bell rang, startling me back to the real world. I found Tennyson in the dining hall, and it gave me the worst sense of deja vu. He was sitting up on the Golden balcony, chatting with the others, but when I rushed in to look for him, he turned around, meeting my eyes from across the room. I hurried over to them and collapsed into the chair beside Tennyson, and I didn’t wait to catch my breath before I let everything Katie had said spill out.

Everyone was silent for a moment.

“Thursday,” said Althea. “That’s only two days from now.”

I nodded.

“She didn’t say how they’d get into the school or what they plan to do?”

“No, but she seemed really freaked out. I know you guys don’t trust her, but I don’t think she’s lying about this.”

I couldn’t stop staring at Tennyson. What if something happened to him? I couldn’t even imagine it, couldn’t imagine him not being there. It was bad enough without our bond, but without him at all? My stomach churned.

“They know that the new moon is when we’re weakest,” said Tennyson. “It’s the perfect time for them to attack us.”

“You should get out of here,” I told him.

He shook his head. “If it’s me they want, so it won’t matter where I am. And if I’m not here, other people will get hurt in my place. I’ll stay here but we’ll be prepared.”

He reached over and took my hand, and just like before, our bond flared back into existence. It filled me with warmth, with reassurance. He was there. He would always be there.

We will fight, and we will win, he said.

Or, I replied, we’ll lure them into clever traps while we remain at a safe distance and we’ll win.

That is acceptable.

He smiled at me, and I held his hand even tighter.

“Oi,” said Nikolai. “Hands off my girl.”

I started in surprise. I’d barely noticed he was there.

We will win, Tennyson repeated.

I chose to believe him.

Chapter 16

Without knowing what type of attack we were facing, it was hard to prepare. Nikolai and Sam were pretty excited about laying booby traps. Sam looked up all sorts of ideas. Nikolai mainly seemed excited about saying booby a lot, but he helped Sam set things up. Tennyson went off on his own, muttering stuff about artillery and security, and Althea and I tried to outthink them.

“They were obviously planning to use the potion as some sort of weapon to throw Tennyson off guard,” I said. “I think we need to figure out exactly how it could impair someone when we’re fighting them.”

Althea nodded. “Why don’t you look into that, and I’ll collate all the data we have on them and look for any patterns in how they attack.”

I’d also planned to ask Katie for anything else she might know, but she was obviously avoiding me. I didn’t know where she was sleeping, but it wasn’t our room. The others thought this was suspicious, but Katie was obviously really scared of what would happen if they found out she’d told me about the attack, and I didn’t blame her. I knew what those people were capable of. Concepts like family didn’t mean much to them, and Katie obviously knew as much as, if not more than, I did. I’d be scared too.

Still, even if she was scared, I wished I’d got more information out of her when I had the chance. Without any more to go on, I had to think about what type of attack would benefit the most from having Tennyson distracted by the potion. There were too many gaps in our knowledge for me to be sure of anything, but the obvious reason for making someone obsessed with another person was in order to use that person as bait. That didn’t make a lot of sense to me, because the potion hadn’t contained anyone’s DNA, so, as far as I understood, there was no pre-arranged target for him to have fallen in love with. With that type of potion, the target could be the first person to touch whoever drank the potion, or in advanced cases, someone who said a particular phrase, or any number of things. It was impossible to tell with the information we had. I had to assume that was intentional, and that the point was that Tennyson was in love with someone, not the person themselves.

We had a meeting that night to talk about our progress, and I told everyone my thoughts.

“So, the way I see it, it’s one of three things,” I said. “One: they’ve got some way of knowing who Tennyson fell in love with when he drank the potion, either magically or through a spy. If it’s this, then they probably know that it didn’t go as planned and Tennyson didn’t take the potion. Two: they didn’t care who it affected, because the whole thing was just a distraction. In which case, we don’t know if it was a distraction for when the potion was taken, in which case their plan worked and we clearly missed whatever it was. Or they plan to use it as a distraction when they attack. Or the third option, which is that they had nothing to do with the potion and it’s unrelated.”

“So, you’re basically saying that you’ve got no idea why they might have used the potion against us,” said Althea.

I raised my eyebrows. I could understand that she was stressed and worried about Tennyson getting attacked, but she wasn’t usually so snappish.

“Well, while you were busy doing nothing helpful, I went through everything we know about their infiltration methods. They prefer a guerrilla style of combat. They’ll try to incapacitate us from a distance and engage as little as possible. We don’t know what they plan to do to Tennyson, if their mission is to kill or capture him. They may approach differently, depending on whether or not they want him alive. Our goal needs to be to make sure they don’t get close enough to do either.”

“Agreed,” said Sam. “We’ve done all we can to secure the perimeter.”

He pulled out a map, and he and Nikolai started pointing out where they’d laid their booby traps and what they’d done.

“Hang on,” I said. “I thought there was all this special security on you guys. Where are the ninjas? The wall of lasers? You guys have basically been re-enacting Home Alone. Where are your black ops specialists?”

The four of them gaped at me.

“We’re werewolves, Lucy,” said Nikolai. “That’s all the security we usually need.”

I groaned. “You’re kidding, right? What about when you need protection from people who know about werewolves? Like right now? Surely, the adults in your pack don’t leave you defenseless against that kind of thing.”

Tennyson shrugged. “We’re all highly trained in combat.”

I rubbed my temples. “So, what you’re saying is, the forest isn’t full of ninjas who’ll jump out if you’re suddenly in real danger?”

“Well, if they were any good, we wouldn’t know, would we?” Tennyson said.

I was fairly sure that was his way of trying to reassure me. It didn’t help.

I stood up. “I’m going to the headmistress. It’s her job to protect the students, and she’s friends with your mother. If there’s a threat, she should know about it.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Tennyson.

I shook my head. “No freaking way. You’re not leaving this house until this is over. I’m not having you wandering around in the open where anyone can pluck you up off the ground. One of you guys can come with me so I don’t fall into any tar pits or step on a trap or something.”

Sam got up to come with me, and I was half-relieved that it wasn’t Nikolai. Too much was going on for me to worry about how to act if I was alone with him.

The headmistress was just leaving her office when we got there, but she stopped when she saw us and let us go into her office to explain what was happening.

“And you’re convinced that this is a real, genuine threat?” she asked, pacing around the bookshelves. “You trust your informant?”

I’d left Katie’s name out of it. I wasn’t sure how much the headmistress or Alpha Wilde knew about her, and I didn’t want to blow her cover.

“Not completely,” I said. “But I believe the threat to Tennyson is real.”

She nodded. “I’ll inform Alpha Wilde at once,” she said. “And set the security countermeasures in place.” She gave me a tight smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep him safe. Go back to your house now and stay inside until you get word that the threat has been neutralized.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“I know it’s difficult in these situations to sit by and do nothing,” she said, pulling a book off a shelf, seemingly at random, and then handing it to me. “I think you’ll find something in here to reassure you.”

It was a heavy, leather-bound book titled, Spells for Protection and Healing.

“I’m not magic,” I told her.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

It was a harmless question, but it didn’t feel like one. I’d never actually tried magic. Not unless you counted running around the yard with my brothers, waving a stick and yelling, “Expecto patronum!” Which had not worked.

“The key to this kind of thing is to do it with your heart, not your head,” the headmistress said. “At any rate, it will keep you occupied.”

I nodded and thanked her, and we got up to leave.

As we walked back to the house, I cast Sam a sidelong glance. He hadn’t spoken in the headmistress’s office, and I wondered what he thought of her.

“Do you think we can trust her?” I asked him.

“It’s probably safer not to,” he said. “But I didn’t sense anything off about her.”

I agreed. Plus, she’d given me a book, which was nice of her. Unless it was an evil book. It didn’t feel evil, though. Just heavy.

Things looked fairly normal when we got back to the house, only instead of doing homework, Nikolai and Tennyson were sitting at the table, sharpening long knives. Althea was looking at a screen, monitoring the outdoor security monitors. She seemed normal again, though still a bit worried, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she blamed me for putting Tennyson in danger. It was my fault.

“Put down your broadsword, Sephiroth. Come over here and let me magic you.”

Tennyson looked up at me. “I know you think you make sense, but you rarely do.” But he set his knife neatly on the cloth he had laid out for his weapons.

“Just come here,” I said, taking him by the sleeve and pulling him up.

We sat opposite each other on the rug by the fire as I flicked through the book.

“I told you that you were a witch,” he said, the firelight flickering in his eyes and making them seem like they were twinkling.

“You’re the witch,” I said. “I haven’t actually done any witchcraft yet, so leave the name-calling until after I’ve saved your life.”

I stopped on a page titled, “Protection Against a Specific Threat.” The instructions were short and seemed relatively simple.

“Don’t try anything on me without reading the instructions thoroughly,” Tennyson said. “I know what you’re like, with your rushing into things before you have all the information. I don’t want you to transform me into a bowl of porridge or something.”

I snorted. “Okay, shuffle a bit closer and hold your hands out like this.”

I held my hands out toward him at chest height with the palms up. He copied my action, and I placed my palms against his. The bond surged back to life between us, and for a moment, I pretended to be reading the spell book so I could enjoy the feeling of him. He was so warm, and I wondered if that was why I had been so cold recently.

“Now, close your eyes,” I said.

There weren’t many opportunities for me to study his face like this, so I took the chance. There was a shadow of stubble on his jaw that made him look older than sixteen. He had a small mole on the left side of his chin, and I wanted to reach out and touch it. I could see every little groove in his lips, every shadow cast on his cheek by his eyelashes. I wanted to capture all of it in my mind forever, just in case something happened to him. But there was no way I’d let it. I’d protect him, no matter what.

He cracked one eye open. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s part of the spell,” I said, quickly looking back down at the book. “Sheesh, don’t be so impatient. Do you want to be turned into porridge?”

He closed his eyes, and I read back over the spell. It seemed simple enough, but I wasn’t sure I could do it. I wasn’t magical. I was supposed to gather our energy in the place where our hands touched, but what did that even mean? I didn’t have a lot of energy. Quite frankly, I could use a nap. And I had no clue how to get the energy I did have to move from the rest of my body into my hands.

I closed my eyes and focused on the place where our palms were touching. Tennyson’s hands were soft. Ridiculously soft. His hands were so big that they engulfed mine, the heel of my hand settling into the hollow of his palm as if our hands had been sculpted to fit that way. I tried to send all of my energy to that point, to focus it all there, but rather than moving energy around, it felt more like I was imagining how that might happen.

I sighed and opened my eyes.

“Well, it’s obviously going to take more than one try,” Tennyson said. “You can’t assume you’ve failed just because you can’t do it the first time.”

His fingers curled slightly into mine, just slightly, linking our hands together. I wasn’t sure if the spell allowed that, but it felt right. As if I was binding him there so nobody could snatch him away.

“Okay, I’ll try again,” I said.

This time, I focused on our bond. That was kind of like energy, right? Everything was energy, wasn’t it? That was just science, not witchcraft. The heat generated from our hands touching was energy. That made sense. It was logical. So, I focused on that and then on surrounding Tennyson with that energy so it enveloped his whole body like a shield.

“Hey, you guys? Sorry to interrupt.”

I was jolted back to reality. Maybe I’d dozed off for a second, but it really felt as if I’d left my body for a moment and was reaching out to Tennyson. Weird dream.

I looked up to Sam, who was staring down at us with a weird expression on his face. For a moment, Tennyson’s hands tightened on mine, then he let go.

“What’s wrong?” Tennyson asked.

“Some of the alarms have been triggered,” Sam said. “One or two of them might be a coincidence, but five of them just went off at once.”

Chapter 17

“But they’re not supposed to attack until tomorrow night!” I said, jumping to my feet.

Tennyson was standing beside me, and I wanted to grab him, to do something that would guarantee that he wouldn’t just vanish from before my eyes the same way our bond had vanished from my mind.

We weren’t ready. We had to set more booby traps. We’d told the headmistress it was the new moon. Nobody was coming to help us, not until Thursday. We were all alone in a big creepy house with only a few knives and tar pits to protect us.

“Everybody stay calm,” said Tennyson. “This is the safest place for us. So long as we stay here, we’ll all be fine.”

“Are you serious?” I said, punching him in the arm. “You did not just say that. How about you go check out the basement by yourself, and on the way out, tell us you’ll be right back? Idiot.”

I knew I was freaking out, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“This place is a fortress, Lucy,” Tennyson said, giving me a bracing smile that wasn’t one bit convincing.

“Your face is a fortress,” I told him. “Shut it up. Where are those knives you had before?”

Even though I had claws and fangs, I’d still feel safer if I had a weapon in my hand. I probably wouldn’t be able to use it, if it came down to it, but I’d feel better anyway.

“Nothing has changed,” said Althea. “We stick to our original plan. Nikolai, bolt the doors. Sam, check the windows.”

The main room of the Golden House had extra security. Although it was only one room in the house, it functioned on a grid so the room could change depending on what was needed. It had boggled my mind when I first saw it. They’d just pressed a button, and it had seemed as if the whole room had transformed, but that wasn’t it at all. The rooms were like interchangeable boxes, and a button was pressed, one box was taken out and replaced with another. It hadn’t occurred to me that this could be a security feature until we were discussing the booby traps, but the idea was that if the enemy gained entrance to the house, we’d change the room while we were inside it so they couldn’t access it, and then change it again once they’d entered, effectively trapping them within the grid of rooms under the house. For that to work, though, the room had to be completely secure while we were inside it. And we would’ve been if they’d attacked on Thursday like we’d expected.

It had seemed like a good plan.

Just as Nikolai was about to draw the last bolt and Sam pulled down the last shutter, there was a massive crash from somewhere upstairs and the power went off.

“What do we do now?” asked Nikolai. He tried to sound calm, but his voice trembled. I wanted to comfort him, but the feeling was weaker than it would’ve been a day or two earlier. I didn’t know if that meant the potion was wearing off or if it was just because I was so freaked out, but I didn’t really have the time to sit around wondering.

“Let’s get this room moving,” I said. “Come on!”

“We can’t,” said Tennyson. “We need power to change the rooms.”

“Okay,” I said. “Plan B.”

We didn’t actually have a plan B. We might’ve had time to think of one by Thursday. Man, I was so angry at my dad. Couldn’t he keep to a schedule like a normal person? Still, that couldn’t be helped now. We had to do something, and do it fast. We could hear footsteps upstairs, people crashing through the tower windows above us.

“We need to get Tennyson out of here,” I said. “They’re in the house. They’re expecting him to be here. We need to get him as far away as possible.”

“Agreed,” said Althea. “Do you know somewhere?”

The Golden House was the safest place on the school grounds and they’d easily broken in there, but then I thought about how easy it had been for Katie and me to leave the school grounds. I didn’t exactly trust Katie, especially since she’d given me the wrong day for the attack, but even so, she wouldn’t exactly be expecting me to steal her scooter to use as a getaway car.

“I think I can get us away,” I said. “But we might need a head start.”

Althea nodded. “He’ll be safest with you. Your father doesn’t need the rest of us alive, but he won’t hurt you.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but it wasn’t as if we had any other options.

“Protect him,” Althea said. “We’ll hold them off as long as we can to give you some time.”

“I can actually protect myself,” Tennyson said as Althea nodded to Nikolai to start unbolting the doors.

We could hear the noises getting closer, so as soon as Nikolai had the doors open, I pulled Tennyson through and toward the front door. For the first time, I was pleased Tennyson had made me do all those stupid stealth drills. We were silent as we escaped from the house. If there had been ninjas in the forest, they’d have been impressed. But there weren’t, and it was up to me to protect Tennyson.

We took a running leap at the massive stone wall that encircled the house and landed at the top of it at the same time. We crept along in a crouch. I looked around to see if the way was clear ahead, trying not to be distracted by the sounds of fighting coming from the house behind us. It was safest to stick to the forest so that we weren’t out in the open, so we made our way around and then leapt off the wall into the clearing behind the house.

While we were in mid-air, I heard a loud crack. There was a flash through the air like a shooting star, only bright red, and when I landed on the ground, Tennyson was no longer by my side.

I turned around to run back toward the house. I’d felt him jump beside me, but maybe something had happened. Maybe he’d fallen or turned back for some reason. But before I got more than two steps, I hit something. There was nothing in front of me but air, but I couldn’t move forward. I tried to go to the right, and the same thing happened. After a few steps, I couldn’t go any farther. When I turned back again, the reason became obvious.

My father was standing behind me.

“Where’s Tennyson?” I demanded.

“Where’s your manners, more like it,” my father said. “I know you’re angry with me, Lucy, but really, that’s no excuse. You were raised better than that.”

“This isn’t funny,” I said, trying to push forward.

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere. Look down.”

I looked at the ground and saw something glinting in the grass. There was a line of it going around me in a ring, trapping me inside it.

“Ring of silver,” said my dad. “It was a bit of a gamble, I wasn’t sure if your lycanthropy had manifested yet, but there was a reasonably high probability.”

I gritted my teeth. My lycanthropy had manifested enough to rip his face off, that was for sure.

“Where’s Tennyson?”

My father shook his head. “You didn’t feel it?”

I didn’t know how much he knew. If Katie had been playing me, then he’d know everything. If she hadn’t, he knew nothing. She was probably playing both sides, so I couldn’t be sure of anything.

“He’s dead, Lucy.”

I shook my head. Even without the soul bond, I would’ve felt that. He couldn’t be there by my side one second and then just nowhere.

“You’re lying,” I told him.

He shrugged. “Believe me or don’t. It doesn’t change anything.”

Probably, the silver ring muted the pack bond or something. My dad had done some hocus-pocus so I couldn’t see Tennyson, and the ring muted the pack bond. That was definitely it. Tennyson was probably going through the exact same thing like a yard to my left.

“You need to come with me, Lucy. I want to help you.”

“You’re actually insane,” I said.

I pushed against the silver ring, but it completely resisted. I could actually lean against the air above it like a solid wall. I wondered if it went up and up, or if it was more like a dome. How had I even entered it? Maybe he’d sealed it up after I jumped. There had to be some way out of it. All I had to do was keep him talking until I found it, then I could go find Tennyson.

“The insane thing is you hanging around with a bunch of werewolves,” he told me.

“Lycanthropes,” I said.

“Their lives are dangerous, Lulu. You need to come with me so I can keep you safe.”

“You’re the one making it dangerous,” I yelled. “You’ve just attacked a bunch of teenagers. You’re supposed to be adults.”

I couldn’t even think about that, about Sam and Althea and omg, Nikolai.

“And what was the point of that potion?” I asked. It didn’t make any sense to me. “What possible outcome were you hoping to achieve by slipping Tennyson a love potion, of all things? There is absolutely no logic in that.”

My father laughed. “What are you talking about, Lu?”

I stopped leaning against the invisible wall and took a step toward him. “You’re lying.”

“If I slipped that boy anything, it would be a lot stronger than a love potion. Why? Did he do something to you?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, of course not.”

“Did he go off with some other girl and blame it on a potion? Lulu, boys are like that. You can’t trust them, especially boys like Tennyson Wilde. You’re better off without him.”

He didn’t seem as if he was lying about the potion, but then he was crazy. Still, he had no reason to give Tennyson the potion. It hadn’t made sense in the first place. But then, why?

“You don’t know anything about Tennyson,” I said absent-mindedly as I tried to sort through my thoughts.

I’d blamed my father’s organization for the potion because the timing had fit. Katie had said Tennyson would be poisoned, and then the potion had been in his tea, it had seemed the only logical assumption. There was something I was missing, something I couldn’t see. But if it had nothing to do with my father, I could think about it later.

My father was banging on about how he didn’t need to know Tennyson to know that type.

“He’s alive,” I said suddenly. “You wouldn’t be this bothered if he was no longer a threat to you. He’s alive, and he’s going to come for you. If you try to take me away again, he’ll come.”

My father stopped talking, and then an awful smile began to bloom across his face.

“You worked that out through logic, didn’t you? Not because you could feel him, but because you deduced it.” He laughed. “The bond is gone? How did you do it? I thought that kind of thing was unbreakable.”

I stalked across the circle toward him. “It is unbreakable. Now, tell me where he is.”

“He’s alive, but not for long. Agree to come with me, and maybe we’ll spare his life.”

Chapter 18

The transformation came so suddenly that I barely registered it. I roared in my father’s face, clawing against the invisible barrier as I tried to get to him. My father stood silently, observing my half-human form as I spent all my energy trying to get to him and eventually fell back in a heap. I glared up at him, breathing deeply as I returned to human form. My father nodded to himself as if he was confirming a theory he’d had.

“There are two ways to leave a werewolf pack,” he said finally. He had the air of a teacher giving me a lesson, rather than a crazy man threatening murder. “The pack can be renounced. There’s a specific ritual that must be observed. Some words must be recited, and then you spill some of your blood. It’s fairly simple and painless. Or, the pack can die. As your father, I forbid you from being in a werewolf pack. You must leave, but it’s your choice how you do it.”

I snorted. “There’s no way you can kill the entire pack.” I’d have liked to see him face down Alpha Wilde, though. That would be badass.

“I don’t need to,” he said. “Only your ties to it. At the moment, you only share the pack bond with the children at this school, so their deaths would be enough.”

“Do you hear yourself?” I asked him. “You’re talking about murdering kids.”

I sat on the ground, glaring at the silver ring as I tried to come up with some way to escape. I needed to break that ring somehow. On TV shows, when people were in this kind of situation, there was usually some sort of convenient breeze to blow away the magic powder, but this wasn’t powder. I squinted at it, trying to work out what form of silver he’d used. It wasn’t solid, like silver bars. It looked as if he’d mixed it up some sort of paste and painted it on the ground. That, I could work with.

I got to my feet.

“And if I renounce the pack,” I said, moving as close to the edge of the ring as I could. “What then? I just go off and live in your creepy laboratory with you? Are you going to keep me chained up again? Because that wasn’t so fun last time.”

I barely listened to his answer, only enough to nod or comment in the right places. I needed to keep him distracted enough that he wouldn’t notice that I was pushing dirt forward with my foot. I couldn’t break the barrier myself, but I could use something else to break it.

I wasn’t sure if pushing dirt over the top of the silver would be enough to break it; I needed to move a whole section of the ring by pushing it out of the way. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t exactly slip off my shoe so I could get right in there. Luckily for me, my father loved to monologue.

I didn’t care what he said. Nothing he had planned could justify killing four innocent kids, even if it wasn’t for his own selfish reasons.

When the ring finally broke, I felt it. That loud crack rang through the air again, and the air shimmered in front of me. My father stepped back in shock, but I didn’t give him time to react further than that. I leapt for him and knocked him to the ground.

I held my claws to his throat and growled, “Where is Tennyson?”

“You would attack your own father?” he demanded, his voice croaking as my hand tightened around his throat. “Don’t you see what you’ve become? You’re a monster. I’ll do anything to save you from that, even if you kill me for it.”

I’d get no information from him. I had to find Tennyson myself.

“You’re the monster,” I said, then smacked his head back against the ground hard enough to knock him out.

I got to my feet and ran back to the house.

There was no sign of Tennyson. He wasn’t hidden in his own silver ring, or conveniently knocked out somewhere close by. That didn’t mean anything, though. I still couldn’t feel him through the pack bond, but that didn’t mean anything, either. My father wouldn’t have let Tennyson be killed if he could be used as leverage. He was fine. He was safe. I just had to find him.

As I got closer to the house, I realized I couldn’t hear fighting anymore. I leapt from the stone wall toward the west tower, using every superpower I had to propel my body high enough. I climbed in through one of the broken windows and crept toward the main room, straining to hear anything that would give me a clue as to what was going on, but everything was silent. When I got to the main hall, I saw two guys standing outside the door of the main room. That must be where everyone was, or they wouldn’t bother guarding it. I hung back in the shadows for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to get past the guards without alerting whomever was inside to my arrival. Man, if we all got out of this, I was signing myself up for some combat training. This kind of thing was tough. Not just the fighting part, but the tactics. All my training on paranormal rescue missions had come from Netflix, so I wracked my brains trying to think of a similar scenario. Nothing helpful came to mind. People on TV always had backup or handy props. I only had myself. That would have to do.

I walked toward the guards, trying to look confident.

“Hey, guys. My dad sent me in here to do some ritual to get me out of this pack,” I told them.

They looked surprised and a little suspicious, but they didn’t immediately attack me, so I took that as a win. I’d expected them to be armed with massive werewolf-killing machine guns or something but I couldn’t see any weapons on them at all. They had little walkie-talkie things clipped onto their shirt pockets, but apart from that, they looked like regular security guards at the mall.

“Yeah, he’s just outside,” I went on. “Man, I hate all this werewolf stuff. Can’t wait for things to get back to normal.”

One of them reached up for his walkie-talkie, and I moved as fast as my superpowers allowed. I smacked their heads together hard enough to knock them out, and they both fell to the floor. I moved them over to the side so I could open the doors. For a moment, I was worried that they’d changed the rooms and the pack was stuck somewhere beneath the house where I couldn’t reach them, but the power was still off, and when I pulled open the doors, I saw Althea, Sam and Nikolai tied together in the middle of the room. Even from the doorway, I could see the glint of silver in the ropes that bound them.

The guards inside the room were armed. And there were a lot of them. But that wasn’t what bothered me.

“Where’s Tennyson?” I said, edging into the room with my back to the wall.

Althea’s eyes went wide in shock, but there was no time to explain to her what had happened.

One of the guards laughed. That sound, that mocking laughter, triggered something deep inside the worst part of me. It was dirty and ugly, and it wanted to rip the faces off them all. Not just the one who had laughed, but every single person standing between me and Tennyson, who had put us in danger. In that moment, I had no mercy at all. I had less regard for human life than even my father. Maybe that was where it had come from, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that my claws came out and I was ready to use them.

It happened in a blur. The whole world turned red, and I seemed to move automatically, as if my body were being controlled by a remote power. This wasn’t just giving in to my lycanthropy, it was letting it take over. I wasn’t just out of control; it was so far beyond that. For that brief moment, anything human in me ceased to exist. I became the monster my father thought I was. There was no thought in my head, only instinct. I had to save my pack, save Tennyson. Anything standing in the way of that had to be destroyed.

But my movements were too frantic, too imprecise. I struck out at them with all my power, but no skill. For every guard I took down, another was able to retaliate just as hard.

When I came back to myself, four of the guards were holding me down. They were covered in blood and panting for breath. To my left, I could see Althea out cold on the floor, and beyond her, two more guards had Sam and Nikolai restrained. Even after all that, I hadn’t been able to help them.

“Tie her up with the others,” one of them said in a gruff voice. “I’ll go find the boss. If she tries to get free, shoot her.”

I’d failed. I’d lost control, and because of that, any hope of our getting out of this was gone. And Tennyson wasn’t even here to gloat about being right.

Chapter 19

They left Althea sprawled out on the floor and tied me together with Sam and Nikolai. They weren’t gentle about it, either. Looking around the room, I could understand why. I didn’t think I’d killed anyone, but there were a lot of guards incapacitated, knocked out or shredded up by my claws.

“Are you okay?” I asked Sam and Nikolai as they bound our hands together behind our backs so that we were standing in a circle, facing outward in different directions. Even with everything else going on, my body flushed warm at being pressed up so close to Nikolai.

“We’re fine,” said Sam.

“I’ve been better,” Nikolai said. “What happened to Tennyson?”

I shook my head. “My father was waiting for us. Tennyson was there one second, and the next…” I broke off. “Can you feel him?”

“Enough talking,” said one of the guards, wrapping more rope around us. “Another word, and I’ll gag you.”

“Hang on,” said another guard, staggering to his feet and holding his bleeding guts. “We could have a bit of fun here while the boss is gone.”

I was fairly sure we wouldn’t like their idea of fun.

“Only the boss’s daughter needs to come through this, right?” said Bloody Guts, grinning evilly at me. “So, let’s play a little game.”

He stepped on Althea’s hand as he walked forward, hard enough that I heard something crack.

“We don’t need all these extra werewolves,” said Bloody Guts. “So, let’s make her choose. Which one of these two should we keep and which should we kill?”

A couple of the other guards snickered.

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded.

“I dunno,” said Bloody Guts. “Maybe the fact that I’m holding my spleen inside my body with my bare hands puts me in a bad mood.”

“That doesn’t make it okay to kill people,” I told him.

He waved the hand that wasn’t holding his guts to indicate all the bodies lying around the room.

“If you didn’t kill anyone here, it was only from sheer dumb luck. Don’t act all high and mighty with me, girly. Now, choose.”

“No,” I said.

A few of the guards had started to gather around us. They all had guns and knives, and I knew they could probably force me to do anything they wanted if they tried, but honestly, calling me girly was only going to make me mad again.

“It’s okay, Lucy,” said Sam. “If you have to choose Nikolai, I understand.”

“What?” I asked, trying to turn my head far enough to look at him.

“That’s right,” said Nikolai. “You love me. You should totally pick me to live. I’m the man of your dreams.”

“So, that’s your decision?” asked Bloody Guts, moving toward Sam.

“What? No. I’m not choosing anyone. This is stupid.”

If I could delay long enough, my dad might show up. He might be a psychopath, but at least he didn’t make a game out of killing people. At least he was convinced that he was doing all this for noble reasons, not just funsies. Unfortunately for me, Bloody Guts seemed to think so too.

“If you don’t hurry up and choose, I’ll do it for you. Or maybe I’ll just kill them both. And it won’t be quick, either. Have you ever seen a werewolf die from a cut by a silver blade? Or injected with liquid silver? It’s not easy to watch, let me tell you. But we’ll make you. If you don’t choose, we’ll do one of each. I’ve got fifty dollars that says the liquid silver kills faster. Who wants to take me up on it?” He grinned at me, and a few of the others laughed.

“When I get out of this,” I told him, “you won’t have any hands left to hold in that spleen.”

“Decide,” he told me, his eyes looking black and dead in the darkness. “You’ve got thirty seconds, or it’s both of them.”

“It’s okay, Lucy,” Sam said.

“Twenty-nine,” said Bloody Guts.

“It’s not okay,” I said.

Bloody Guts continued to count down the seconds.

I couldn’t choose Sam. I’d lost him once, had stood by helplessly while he was taken from me. There was no way I’d let that happen again. But I couldn’t pick Nikolai, either. How could I? Even if my feelings for him were fake, they didn’t feel any less real. And even without the potion, how could I sentence him to death? He was part of my pack. He was a real person, with his terrible fashion sense and even worse jokes and unexpected kindness. I couldn’t let him die, either. It was an impossible choice.

“Ten seconds,” said Bloody Guts. “Nine. Eight.”

A few of the guards muttered to each other in low voices, and I saw a couple of them shake hands. They were actually making bets with each other.

“You people are sick,” I told them.

“Seven. Six.”

When he got to five, I saw Althea’s eyes flick open. She didn’t look groggy or injured. She’d been faking this whole time, waiting for the right moment.

“Four.”

Her hand snaked out to one of the unconscious bodies close by and grabbed the handle of his knife. In the darkness, none of the guards even noticed.

“Three.”

Her muscles tensed, ready to spring.

“Two.”

I nudged Nikolai and Sam with my elbows, trying to get their attention enough to warn them without alerting the guards.

“One.”

Althea jumped to her feet just as I pushed the three of us forward toward Bloody Guts. Between the three of us, we had enough momentum to knock him off his feet. A few of the guards yelled and sprang into action, but Althea was a shadowy blur, too fast for any of them to react to. She didn’t bother to attack them; she made her way closer to us and sliced through the silver ropes.

As the ropes fell away, I could feel the pack bond again. For the first time, I really understood the purpose of it. The four of us moved like separate parts of a single entity, dividing the guards from each other and immobilizing them. So many of them were already injured or had let down their defenses when we were captured that it seemed ridiculously easy. We didn’t need to speak to know what we intended to do: maneuvering the guards toward the center of the room and then fleeing through the door.

Nikolai slid the bolts into place from the outside, and Sam ran down the hallway. I wondered what he was doing for a moment but five seconds after he disappeared into the darkness, the all the lights came back on. Althea hit the button for the room to change. The gears clicked into place, grinding together as the room began to move, and as it did, we could hear the guards yelling and banging on the door.

The two guards I’d knocked out were still on the floor where I’d left them, and I knew there was one other who had gone to fetch my father, but we had no way of knowing how many more might be lurking around.

“We have to find Tennyson,” I whispered. “I’m sure my father hasn’t taken him. He wasn’t after Tennyson at all. It was all a trap to make me go with him.”

“Well, I know one person who might have some idea where they might be,” said Nikolai.

I looked at him and realized what he meant. I nodded.

“Katie.”

Chapter 20

We huddled together as we moved toward the Red House, all of us on high alert. The night was clear and cold, so any sounds travelled easily, but everything was silent. I knew that if Katie had double-crossed me, she wouldn’t be innocently hanging around our room when we got there, sitting on her bed and studying with her headphones on with no idea there was an attack taking place on school grounds. I hoped she was, but I knew better than to expect it. I knew the others were worried about Tennyson and trying to tamp down on their panic at not being able to sense him.

There were a few people in the halls of the Red House as we made our way up to my room, and they looked on in surprise at the Golden having invaded.

When we burst into my room, I expected to find it cold, empty, maybe even with all of Katie’s stuff gone, but she was there. She looked up as we tumbled in, pulled her headphones off in surprise and let them fall onto her open textbook.

“Hey,” she said, a note of wariness in her voice.

“Hey, yourself,” said Nikolai.

“Where’s my brother?” demanded Althea.

“What’s going on?” Katie asked.

“Like you don’t know,” Nikolai said.

“Um, I don’t,” Katie told him. She slowly got to her feet, and even though she didn’t take her eyes off us, I knew she was looking for a way to escape.

“They attacked tonight,” I told her.

“Yeah,” said Katie. “I kind of figured from how you’re all covered in blood and freaking out.”

“They took Tennyson,” I said.

“Figured that too,” Katie replied, edging toward the window.

“They don’t trust you, and to be honest, I’m finding that a little bit hard myself right now,” I said. “If you’ve got any idea of where my father might’ve taken him, now might be a good time to share.”

Katie glanced at the window.

“If you try to escape, we’ll catch you,” said Althea. “And if we catch you, I’ll end you myself.”

Katie sighed. “Look, I don’t know where they’d hold someone here. None of my information said anything about that. I do know that they approach the island by boat. They dock at the bottom of the cliff near the lighthouse. That’s the only way I know that they come and go here. Every other access to the island is closely watched, but everyone assumes the cliffs are too dangerous to approach and to climb, so that’s how they get in and out. If they’re holding Tennyson, it’s probably at the lighthouse so they can leave quickly if they need to.”

The others turned to leave, but I waited a moment.

“My last roommate betrayed me, and now she’s somewhere being horribly tortured,” I said. “If you’ve betrayed me too, what she’s going through will seem like a cakewalk in comparison.”

I didn’t wait around for her response. I turned to follow the others out.

When we got out of the Red House, instead of heading toward the lighthouse, all four of us hesitated.

“It’s probably a trap,” I said.

“Do you feel him at all?” asked Sam.

I shook my head. “I know our bond is still there. When I touch him, I can feel it. But no matter what I do, I can’t break past the effects of the potion to feel him again. No matter how I push…” I sighed in frustration.

Althea let out a sob and covered her face. For a moment, I was too stunned to react. She always played things so cool. It was shocking to see her have such an overt reaction.

“Hey,” I said, rubbing her arm awkwardly. “We’ll find him.”

“Of course we will,” said Nikolai. “He’s definitely alive and not horribly disfigured by those freaks.”

Althea shook her head, her face still covered. “It’s not that,” she said. “Well, it is, but…” She dropped her hands and looked at me, her eyes filled with tears. “All of this is my fault. I slipped that potion into Tennyson’s tea. I’m so sorry, Lucy. You and Tennyson were growing so close, and I knew that Mother didn’t approve of your bond. She’s always said that if Tennyson doesn’t partner with a girl of his choosing when the time comes, she won’t let him inherit the alpha status and it will fall to me. I really don’t want that, Lucy. I’m terrified of all that power.”

I stared at her in shock. For a moment, my mind was completely numb.

“You tipped off Olivia. You were going to have her be the one he fell for,” I said as all of the pieces fell into place. “That was why she stopped me to gloat. If she hadn’t done that, your plan would have worked out.”

Althea nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I didn’t realize it would break your bond. I didn’t know it would hurt you. I didn’t do it to be spiteful. But now Tennyson is going to die because I wasn’t honest with you all. I’m so sorry, Lucy.”

Right then, I couldn’t hear her apology. I was so sick of being betrayed by the people I trusted. I’d thought that since I was part of the pack, I’d at least have these people to rely on.

“Do you have the antidote?” I asked her, my voice cold.

She’d been so convincing, trying to help me. Making up all those antidotes for me to try out. She must’ve been having such a good laugh.

She nodded. More tears fell from her eyes, but they just made me angrier.

“I do, but it’s back at the house.”

I nodded. “Fine. Sam, Nikolai, you go to the lighthouse and see if Tennyson’s there. I’ll go back to the house with Althea and get the antidote. Then, if he’s not at the lighthouse, I should be able to track him down.”

Sam started to leave, but Nikolai shook his head.

“I’m not leaving you with her,” he said.

“I won’t hurt her,” I sighed. “Just because I’m angry with her. And, anyway, she needs to get the antidote.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, and I noticed how coldly he was glaring at her. “Because of her, Tennyson might be dead. As far as I’m concerned, she’s as complicit as the enemy.”

She gave another sob.

“We can worry about all that later,” I said. “Right now, you need to go and find Tennyson. She’s as worried about him as the rest of us. She’s not going to do anything that might hurt him.”

“She already has,” Nikolai said, but he turned to leave.

For a moment, I watched as he walked away. I knew that time was a factor, but if the antidote worked, this would be the last time I saw him while I still loved him. It was a bittersweet feeling, and it made my heart throb in pain for a moment. Then he vanished into the shadows.

“Let’s get going,” I said, walking past Althea toward the Golden House.

We didn’t speak as we walked, though I could feel the misery rolling off her. I pushed it from my mind. Now wasn’t the time to think about it. Even though I was angry at her, we were on the same side, and we both wanted to save Tennyson. Anything else had to wait.

We approached the Golden House warily. My father was still around somewhere, and so were some of the guards. We couldn’t be too careful. But as wary as we were, we were both distracted. Which was probably why, when we jumped down from the stone wall, we landed in one of the tar pits.

I groaned and tried to wade over to the edge, but they’d built it deep into the ground, so it was too high to easily jump out of. The tar was so thick and sticky that it was as if it was trying to pull me back into the pit.

“Here, I’ll help you up,” Althea said.

I looked at her, and all my anger vanished. Her long, beautiful hair was caked with tar, and her pale skin and designer dress were covered. She looked like a baby seal that had been caught in an oil spill, and I couldn’t be angry with her. I dragged myself over to where she was standing.

“I’ll give you a boost up, and then you can help me,” she said.

I nodded, but before we could move, we heard someone approaching.

“You go,” I whispered, linking my fingers together to make a step for her. “Go find the antidote. They won’t do anything to me if they find me, but if it’s you…”

She nodded and stepped onto my hands. “Be careful,” she said. “I’ll be fast.”

She leapt up and out of the tar pit and I held my breath, waiting to see if whoever was approaching had caught her. Their footsteps didn’t falter, and I didn’t hear any voices. I stared up at the top of the pit, waiting to see who would appear. I really hoped it wasn’t Bloody Guts.

But it wasn’t.

It was my father.

Chapter 21

“Lucy?” he asked. There was a tremble in his voice that I was fairly certain was suppressed laughter. “Hold on a second. I’ll get you out of there.”

His face vanished, and for a moment I was left alone with just a square of sky above me. The stars twinkled coldly, as if they were laughing too, but nothing about this was funny. If my father was here, that meant he wasn’t at the lighthouse, which raised the odds of Katie being a double-crosser really high. Which meant that Sam and Nikolai were walking into a trap, and we were no closer to finding Tennyson. And if my father was at the Golden House, he’d probably freed the guards that we’d trapped, so Althea was walking into a house full of armed and angry guards. We were pretty much screwed in every way possible.

My father reappeared, and he threw something down into the pit. It was a length of the silver rope. I didn’t want to touch it, and it literally repelled me. Every time I tried to catch hold of it, my body forced itself back. I pulled my hands inside my sleeves, hoping that if I minimized the bare skin close to the rope, I’d be able to hold it. It was like trying to swim against a tsunami, but eventually, I was able to hold on to the rope. As soon as I’d grabbed it, my father started to pull the rope up. I climbed out of the pit, the tar all over me.

“You’ll be getting that stuff off for the next six months,” my father said helpfully. “Got a bunch of my guys good with these pits, you did. And the other traps you set.”

“Are you trying to compliment me?” I asked him. Seriously, I would never understand this guy.

It was hard to move with the tar sticking to my skin. I’d been kind of disappointed when the boys had said “tar pits” to realize they just meant pine tar and not boiling pits of asphalt for our enemies to fall into, but now I supposed it was probably for the best.

“I assume it’s too much to hope that you were coming back to turn yourself over,” my dad said, starting to walk back to the house.

I followed him, not sure what else to do. I wasn’t exactly fast enough to escape with this tar all over me.

“I’ve come back hoping to make you see reason and tell me where Tennyson is,” I said. The more I talked, the more Althea would be able to judge where I was, at least.

“How about you tell me where my guards are, and I’ll think about it,” my dad said.

When we entered the house, I automatically turned toward Tennyson’s room.

“I’m going to clean up,” I told my father. “Then we’ll negotiate.”

“You’ll understand if I don’t believe that you’ll return of your own volition,” he said, following me.

It felt wrong for him to be in Tennyson’s room, looking at Tennyson’s things. Tennyson was so private, and my father exploited everything he encountered.

“Stay right there,” I said when my father was in the middle of the room. “I’ll leave the bathroom door open, and if you touch anything, then your guards can rot.”

Most of Tennyson’s clothes were too big or too fancy for me, but he had a pair of warm track pants and a hoodie that he slept in, so I found those in his drawer and then backed into the bathroom. It was hard to clean myself up while trying to watch my father through the crack in the bathroom door, but I got enough of the tar off myself to feel human again. The clothes smelled comfortingly of Tennyson, and just for a moment I was sure everything would be okay.

Except for my hair. My hair was probably a lost cause. I stuffed it into a black knit cap that I’d never seen Tennyson wear so I didn’t have to think about it.

“If we’re bargaining,” I said as I dressed. If I kept him talking, he wouldn’t get any evil ideas. “You could throw in the location of Hannah Morgan to sweeten the pot.”

“I'm trying to keep you out of danger, not get you killed. Forget that girl, she’s long gone.” His voice sounded final but he’d all but admitted he knew where she was. I’d find out the information, if not from him then some other way.

He hadn’t moved from his spot in the middle of the room, but I knew he was memorizing every detail.

“Let’s go back downstairs,” I said, shooing him out.

“Where are my men?” my father asked as we walked down the stairs.

“They’re safe,” I said. “Where’s Tennyson?”

“You’ll never find him,” he said. “Not alive.”

I could sense Althea quite strongly, and I knew she was close by. Her mood was much lighter than it had been.

“Tennyson is just one boy,” I told him. “True, he’s a very powerful boy, probably the richest boy in the world, with a family who would hunt you to the ends of the earth if anything happened to him. But still, just one boy. Is his life really worth the lives of all your men?”

At the bottom of the stairs, my father turned and smiled at me. He opened his mouth to say something, no doubt something vaguely offensive, but before he could get it out, Althea appeared behind him and cracked him over the head with an antique vase.

“Catch,” she said, tossing me a small glass bottle.

For a moment, I was terrified that I’d drop it and it would shatter everywhere and I’d never, ever be cured, but luckily, I had super reflexes now.

“All of it?” I asked, taking the lid off the bottle.

“Yes, and hurry. I don’t think he’s completely knocked out.”

I quickly swallowed the contents of the bottle. It tasted sweet, and warmth flooded through me as it travelled down my throat. The world tilted, and I fell down the last few steps, landing hard on the floor. I half-expected that searing pain from when the potion had splashed on me, but there was no pain at all. It felt like when you’re in a dark room and you pull up the blinds on a bright morning and the room floods with light. For a moment, you can’t see anything. You can only feel the sunshine on your skin.

Tennyson? I asked. Where are you?

I waited for his response. I wasn’t sure how immediately the bond would return to him after the potion was reversed.

“Nothing yet,” I told Althea.

My father groaned and tried to get to his feet.

“Don’t move,” I told him.

“What should we do with him?” Althea asked.

“Do you think we can get him to the basement?”

She nodded, and we pulled him to his feet. He wasn’t coherent enough to struggle against us, but he was bulky and heavy, and we struggled to drag him down the hallway toward the basement door.

“I really am sorry, Lucy,” Althea said, pulling my dad’s arm over her shoulders and trying to take his weight.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I understand why you did it. I just…” I sighed. “If you’d have just talked to me about it, I could’ve told you that it’s not like that with Tennyson and me. Just because we have the soul bond doesn’t mean it has to be romantic.”

“Lucy…” she said.

I shook my head. I knew what she was going to say. “I love Sam,” I told her resolutely. It felt weird to say that aloud when I’d never really admitted it before. “And I know Tennyson doesn’t have any feelings for me. He’ll do whatever your mother tells him. Trust me. I’ve seen inside his brain. I know how determined he is to take care of the pack.”

“Okay,” Althea said, but although she tried to sound as if she believed me, I knew she wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t help that, though. What more could I do but tell her the truth?

We got to the basement door without any guards appearing or my father coming to enough to fight us, but as we opened the door, I was hit with a blinding pain.

I screamed and fell to the floor.

Even as the pain wracked my body, I knew it wasn’t really my pain that I was feeling. But that only made it worse.

When it ended, Althea was crouched over me, her face lined with worry. Sam and Nikolai were beside her.

“Tennyson,” I gasped. “I know where he is.”

Chapter 22

I struggled to my feet, and Althea took my arm to help me up. I had to get to Tennyson. My father hadn’t been kidding when he said I wouldn’t find Tennyson; without the bond, it would be impossible. Even with it, I wasn’t sure I’d find him in time.

I glanced at Althea. She was still covered in tar, and it made her movements sluggish.

“There was nobody at the lighthouse,” said Sam.

“We know,” I said. “I have to go. Tennyson… He’s not… I don’t think we have much time.”

Althea nodded. “Go. We’ll deal with this. Just please save him.”

I didn’t stick around to argue. Whatever happened with them now, I couldn’t let it be my problem. I couldn’t be distracted.

As I ran through the forest, I felt the bond growing stronger. All the walls we’d built up were gone. We hadn’t needed them when I was under the influence of the potion. I wasn’t sure whether Tennyson wasn’t able to communicate in words or if he hadn’t realized our bond had returned, but words weren’t even necessary. The line between us was clear. I could feel everything he felt, sense everything he was. And he was in a lot of pain.

I rushed toward him, terrified that I’d be too late. Nothing else mattered. The leaves of the forest floor crunched beneath my bare feet and blood pounded in my ears, but nothing mattered except that sense that led me to Tennyson.

I ran until I reached the lighthouse, and then I ran past it. I reached the edge of the cliff, where I hesitated. Katie had been right. This was how they’d got access to the island. There was a series of rope ladders tied to tree trunks and hanging down over the sides of the cliffs. I knew that was where I had to go, but I couldn’t take that first step. I wasn’t good with heights. I wasn’t particularly good with climbing, either. But I could feel Tennyson’s pain, his carefully repressed fear, and I forced myself over the side. At least it was just normal rope, no silver.

I gripped the rope and took that first step over, into the darkness. My foot wobbled against the rope, but I had to force my other leg down as well. Then down another step, and another. The whole ladder swayed from side to side, and I was sure that at any moment, I’d lose control of my body and let go and tumble down into the rocky ocean below.

No, I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t think about what was down there. I could only think about Tennyson. Step by step, I forced my body down the ladder until I was almost to the bottom.

When I was around three-quarters of the way down, I saw it. This was going to be the hardest part. I needed to get from the ladder into the entrance of the cave where Tennyson was being held. The rocks were slippery, and the ladder didn’t completely line up with the cave entrance. It wasn’t a large opening: narrow and so low that I’d have to stoop to walk.

I held the ladder with one hand and pushed against the rocks with the other, edging my way across. When I got to the entrance, I took a deep breath. I walked my feet up the rocks and into the entrance with no real concept of how to get my body from the ladder into the cave. It didn’t seem possible. I angled my torso around the ladder, and for a moment, I hung suspended, my legs in the cave and my hands gripping the ladder, with only a gaping chasm of darkness beneath me. I pulled forward with my legs and then, squeezing my eyes tightly shut, let go of the ladder with one hand to grab the rock face. When I felt my balance shift from the ladder to the cave entrance, I pushed forward, letting go of the ladder. I let out a long breath before going forward into the cave.

More than heights, more than climbing, I was not good with caves. I tried not to think about it as I squeezed my way through: not about getting stuck in there, not about how it was so dark, or how there were probably rats and bats and snakes and who knew what else. I only thought about Tennyson. Eventually, the way widened out, and I could see a glimmer of light in front of me. I headed toward that light, sure that was where Tennyson would be.

I came out into a large cavern. There was a narrow ledge around the outside, and in the middle, a deep pool of water. Water was falling in trickles around the cave walls and into the pool, the sound of it echoing loudly in the confined space. There was a man standing opposite me, holding a lantern in one hand and a rope in the other. The rope rose up to the cavern ceiling and then over an outcropping of rock and down the other side, and suspended on the end of the rope was Tennyson. He was tied by the feet, and the ends of his hair were grazing the water’s surface. The water glimmered with a strange texture, and I was sure that whatever that was, it was why Tennyson had been screaming in my mind.

The man hadn’t noticed me, so I crept forward, around the edge of the cave. I edged closer and closer, wondering what I should do. If I attacked the man, he’d drop the rope and plunge Tennyson into the water. I needed to get the rope and then deal with the man, but I had zero ideas on how to do that.

“Take another step, and I’ll let go of the rope,” the man said.

I froze.

“Have you heard of colloidal silver?” the man asked conversationally, jiggling the rope. “Tiny silver particles in liquid. People sell it on the internet as a dietary supplement, but there are no actual health benefits. Effective in the war against werewolves, though.”

“You call this a war?” I asked him. “This isn’t a war. This is persecution.”

“You’re young,” he said. “You only know as much as they want you to know.”

Screw that. I had no time for some old crackpot and his hate crimes. I couldn’t see Tennyson’s face from that angle, but I knew he was suffering. The dripping water echoed eerily around the cave, and the lantern light reflected off the pond, casting flickering shadows on the walls. It felt like another world. There was only one thing I could think of to do to save Tennyson, and I’d only get one chance at it. It would take every ounce of control that Tennyson had tried to teach me, and I’d need to do it perfectly. I couldn’t keep trying to fight the lycanthropy, but I couldn’t let it take over again, either. Neither of those things worked. I had to find the place where they balanced inside me perfectly.

Suddenly, I realized that I’d been doing that all along, only not with the lycanthropy. It was no different from my bond with Tennyson. I had Tennyson constantly in my mind, and that presence could easily overwhelm me if I let it. There had been times when I’d just wanted to drown in him and other times when I wanted to push him away completely, but neither of those things made me happy. I was happiest when there was a harmony in our bond, an equality. Things weren’t perfect between us; we both had our secrets and issues to deal with, but when we didn’t push each other away and everything flowed naturally between us, everything else seemed to fall into place as well.

Lucy? Tennyson said.

I’m here, I told him. Just hang on.

I’d explain to him later why that was funny.

I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling for the lycanthropy with my mind. I didn’t push against it, and I didn’t pull it toward me; I just let it flow through me. It was similar to the feeling I’d had that day in the woods with Nikolai, only much better. There was a clarity I’d never felt before. I was neither girl nor wolf but the perfect blending of both.

I flicked out the claws on my right hand, Wolverine-style, then leapt into the air.

The man stumbled backwards, dropping both the lantern and the rope, but I wasn’t leaping for him. I leapt for Tennyson. I grabbed him with my left hand and cut through the rope with the claws on my right. The two of us landed in a heap on the other side of the cavern. The man stepped forward, but I stopped him with a look.

“You’re stuck in a cave with two angry werewolves,” I told him. “Think carefully about what you do next.”

I didn’t take my eyes off him as he edged his way out of the cave, even as I carefully unwound the rope from Tennyson’s legs. Not until he’d finally disappeared and his footsteps had faded away did I look at Tennyson. He was pale, but his eyes were clear.

“It’s like you’re a helpless princess who constantly needs saving,” I told him, using my sleeve to dry the water from his skin.

The corners of his mouth turned up into a small smile. “Is that my hoodie?” he asked.

“Not anymore,” I said.

His eyes fell shut for a moment, and I really hoped he wasn’t passing out. Even though I was clearly the most awesome person ever, there was no way I could carry him up that rope ladder.

“That was some decent werewolfing you did there,” he said, swaying in closer to me. He was clearly exhausted, so I let him rest his head on my shoulder, even though the silver water in his hair stung where it touched my skin.

“Did you just use the word ‘werewolf’?” I asked him. “And as a verb?”

“I’ve been tortured,” he said. “My brain is addled. But, still, you’re starting to get the hang of it. You may actually be decent at lycanthropy someday.”

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t keep avoiding it forever. It was probably the worst possible time to drop a bombshell on him, but there was never going to be a good time. Better to do it now, when he was too weak to get angry.

“So, about that,” I said. “It’s not actually a permanent condition. Not for me.”

His eyes flickered open, but he didn’t move away from me.

“This, whatever it is that I am, the weird gene or whatever? It’s not the lycanthropy gene.”

“I know,” he said.

I blinked at him.

“That spell you did, the protection spell? It worked. They couldn’t hurt me, not directly. You couldn’t do that with only lycanthropy.”

I couldn’t fully take in the implication of what he was saying. I had magic? I shook my head. I’d think about that later. Right now, there was something I needed him to know.

“I’m going to become one of them,” I whispered. “The Others. I’ll become something else first, then something else, but eventually, I’m going to turn evil.”

It was my darkest fear, and now he knew it. He’d turn his back on me, and I couldn’t blame him.

Even through the bond, it was difficult to tell what he was feeling. He didn’t seem angry or disappointed or any of the things I’d expected.

“That will definitely give the pack a tactical advantage over our enemies,” he said finally.

“The pack?” I asked. “But when I change to whatever it is I’ll be next…”

He shrugged. “The pack is for life,” he said. “Once you’re in, you can’t leave.”

“Like the mafia?”

“Help me up,” he said.

We struggled to our feet and he stood facing me, holding on to my shoulders. He ducked his head to stare right into my eyes. For the briefest moment, I felt sure he was going to kiss me. My heart pounded; I wasn’t sure how to react. He was so weak that if I pulled away, he might fall back into the water, and all my rescue effort would be for nothing, so I’d have to just stand there and let him do it. I held my breath, waiting for him to lean in.

But he didn’t.

“I’ll be the alpha one day,” he said. “No matter what happens, you’ll always have a place in this pack.”

I nodded, and he squeezed my shoulders.

And if my heart felt heavy, it was only because I knew we had such a long way to go to get home.

Chapter 23

“I can’t believe you’re so fickle,” said Nikolai. “Our love had barely begun to bloom, and already it has wilted.”

The five of us were sitting in the garden of the Golden House, watching the teams of workers finish up the repairs. The headmistress had sent people in early to take away my father’s henchmen, and I was fairly sure those people weren’t regular police. When they’d gone to collect my father, though, they’d only found an empty set of shackles in the basement room. It made me uneasy to have him still on the loose, but I wasn’t surprised.

I’d never seen repairs done so quickly as the repairs to the Golden House. It was only just going on dark the next evening, and already everything was nearly back to how it had been.

Well, almost everything.

“You miss me following you around like a shadow?” I asked Nikolai.

“No,” he said, with a sardonic laugh. “That was sarcasm. You scared off at least five of my actual admirers and none of them believed me when I said I’d never look at you in a million years. I couldn't exactly explain to them I had to endure you purely because we’re in the same pack, though it should be obvious to anyone with eyes that I’m way out of your league. I couldn't even tell you to leave me alone because Althea said that might make the potion react badly. Which was probably a lie and just another part of her evil plot.”

I smiled over at him. Although I couldn’t fathom what potion-struck me had been thinking, he’d been so much more considerate of my feelings through the whole thing than I ever would’ve expected, I couldn’t help but think better of him now. Even when he was being a jerk and basically calling me ugly right to my face. I could remember having those feelings, but not what they’d actually felt like. When I tried to call them back up now, it was like trying to recall the details of a dream – and it wasn’t a dream that I particularly wished to remember. At least, not with him.

“Sorry,” I told him. “I’m sure you can win them back.”

He shrugged and got to his feet. “And it’s about time I graced them with my presence. Who’s ready for dinner?”

I glanced over at Sam, and he gave me a tiny nod. There was a conversation we needed to have now that the potion’s effects were over. We’d put it off for too long already.

“I could eat,” Althea said.

Nikolai turned his back on her and walked away. She glanced at Tennyson, and he looked away too.

You need to forgive her, I told him. Surely, you can understand why she did it.

She had no right.

I shook my head. She knows that. She’s sorry. If you talk to her about it now, then next time she has a problem, she’ll know she can come to you about it instead of turning to the black arts.

He sighed. Fine.

He got up to join Althea, and her face broke into a smile. She ducked her head so that her hair fell across her face. How she’d managed to get her hair back to that shiny perfection after having it covered in tar, I’d never know. I was fairly sure I’d have to shave my head to get the tar out.

I tucked my knees up inside Tennyson’s hoodie, which I was still wearing, and watched them leave. I hadn’t wanted to go back to the Red House. I didn’t want to be around Katie, not while I was still so suspicious of her. Something about the way Tennyson had been strung up had been similar to what I’d told her about him restraining me on the full moon. Nobody else outside the pack had known that, and all these little details had started to convince me that she wasn’t on my side.

“So,” I said to Sam when we were finally alone.

“So,” he said, smiling at me. “Walk?”

I nodded and got to my feet. With the workers hammering and chatting to each other while they were installing the new windows, it wasn’t exactly a romantic setting.

He laughed at me as we made our way around the house. Althea’s feet were tiny, so I’d had to borrow shoes from Sam, and his sneakers were about 20 sizes too big for me.

“I feel like a kangaroo,” I told him as he held open the gate to the garden behind the house.

“You look like a deep-sea diver,” he said, watching the way I was picking my feet up super-high so I wouldn’t trip over the ends of the shoes.

“How do you live with such enormous feet?” I asked him.

He laughed and caught my hand. “I don’t know. I just make it work, somehow.”

I stopped walking and turned to look up at him. The moment turned serious, and if I hadn’t been wearing those massive shoes, I would have turned and run. Sam’s face was so earnest, so full of feeling, and something about that didn’t make sense to me. But I loved him. He was my best friend. I’d loved him as far back as I could remember.

This was everything I wanted. It was right.

“Are we really doing this?” he asked softly.

I nodded, and he leaned in and kissed me.

He kissed me, and I felt cold.

END BOOK 5

Book 6: The Time Loop

An unbreakable bond. A magical trap. One bad day that never ends.

Lucy is having a bad day. Things are awkward with Sam. She's failing history. One of her roommates is missing and the other is crazy. Her evil dad is at it again, and this time, he's not playing around.

Lucy has a choice: leave the pack or stay trapped in this day forever. What do you do when the only way to save the people you love is to abandon them? Will Lucy fight to stay in the pack or fight to save them?

Click here to join the Werewolf High VIP list and when it’s released, you’ll get the Halloween Special for free! Plus other freebies, special offers and news!

ALSO BY ANITA OH

Werewolf High #1: The Truth Spell

A Very Werey Christmas: A Werewolf High Short

Werewolf High #2: The Tiny Curse

Werewolf High #3: The Body Swap

Werewolf High #4: The Soul Bond

Werewolf High #5: The Love Potion

Werewolf High #6: The Time Loop

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Kathryn for sharing your wealth of knowledge.

Thanks to Carol Davis for editing.

Deranged Doctor Designs, my cover is awesome.

Hannah, Liam and Morgan, thank you for letting me steal your names.

Sandy and Laurie, thank you for all your help, support and advice.

Thank you to everyone who has continued to read and support this series. You guys are the best!

About the Author

Anita lives in Melbourne, where she is a full-time servant to her two dogs. When the dogs give her a break, she writes books. Anita likes books about kick-ass girls and hot boys who fall in love while defeating evil.

Anita's favourite things include: cake, coffee and karaoke. Her special skills are sleeping and marathoning TV shows.

Click here to join the Werewolf High VIP list for news, freebies and special offers

www.anitaoh.com

admin@anitaoh.com

Facebook

Twitter