The Soul Bond

Werewolf High #4

Anita Oh

Werewolf High #4: Soul Bond

© Anita Oh 2016

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?

To my homies

Chapter 1

I woke to the sound of screaming.

For a moment, I didn't move. My brain was sleep-fogged enough that I wasn't entirely sure where I was or why someone would be making that awful noise. Then my brain kicked in and I remembered. I was at home, in my own bed. Nobody was getting tortured; the screaming was my little brother, Hamish. Summer was over, and he was determined not to go back to school. He wouldn't tell anyone why, but he'd been saying for weeks that he wouldn't go. Nothing could make him. And now it was the first day back at school and he was obviously being stubborn about it. I groaned and rolled out of bed.

The house was in chaos. I followed a trail of school clothes and books down the hallway to the kitchen, where my eldest brother, Liam, was staring blankly into the fridge. My middle brother, Fletcher, was chasing Hamish from room to room, waving a shoe above his head for no reason that I could see.

"NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!" Hamish screamed, ducking around Liam as he ran through the kitchen.

I caught him up with one arm and flipped him up over my shoulder. He wrapped his arms around my head like an octopus.

"NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!" he yelled in my ear.

Fletcher caught hold of Hamish's leg and jammed the shoe he was holding onto Hamish's foot, which seemed pointless, as Hamish wasn't wearing anything else apart from his underwear.

"What's for breakfast?" Fletcher asked, looking up at me proudly. He was already showered and dressed, and I'd bet he had everything he needed in his bag as well.

"Um," I said. "Hotdogs?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, Lucy. You can't have hotdogs for breakfast." He walked away from me, shaking his head, and joined Liam at the fridge.

"We're out of milk," Liam said, giving me a disapproving look from over the fridge door. He'd been looking at me like that for days, and I was sick of it.

"And you're telling me this now?" I asked, swinging Hamish around so that he hung off my back. He was getting too big for that kind of shenanigans, but there was no telling him that. I got some bread out of the bread bin and put it in the toaster. "Do I look like a dairy cow? If it's not on the list, I don't know we need it."

Liam huffed, slammed the fridge closed and stormed out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard the shower turn on in the bathroom.

Fletcher opened the fridge again and kept staring inside as if he could materialize food through sheer force of will.

"Can I have honey on my toast?" asked Hamish, kicking me in the side.

"Sure," I told him, leaning over to see if the toast was cooking. It seemed to take forever otherwise.

"Honey and PEAS!" Hamish said, squirming around.

"Ouch, Ham. Stop kicking me. Why would you want peas on toast, you little weirdo?"

"PEAS PLEASE!" he yelled in my ear.

"You can have peas if you tell me why you won't go to school," I said, with little hope he'd take the bribe. I'd tried everything I could think of to get him to tell me.

"NO!" He dropped off my back and ran from the room. He stopped in the doorway and turned back to me, his face screwed up in determination. "If you're not going, I don't have to either!"

I sighed as I listened to him stomp away. The toast popped up, and I started spreading it with butter. Fletcher came to stand beside me, peeking around my arm to wait for the toast. I slid the plate over to him.

"He thought that school would make you rich," Fletcher said, taking the plate and wandering over to the table. "He thought you'd come home and bring us all bikes and PlayStations and we'd be having cakes for every meal."

"It's just a school. It's no better than Greenville High."

Fletcher gave me a skeptical look from over his toast.

"And it's better if I'm here, with you guys," I continued.

Fletcher shrugged. He'd heard all the arguments before. He'd heard nothing but the arguments about it for days. Changing from one of the most elite schools in the world to our local high school wasn't exactly a decision I'd taken lightly; I'd been back and forth about it all summer. I'd only decided for sure a few days ago, and the Amaris High withdrawal papers were still in my desk drawer. I hadn't even enrolled at Greenville yet. I planned to go in after I dropped the others at school this morning; missing the first day wouldn't matter. As far as I was concerned, where I went to school was my decision and none of their business.

Before I could say anything else, a bell rang. I put some more toast in the toaster and went to answer it.

I tapped on my mother's door before opening it. The room was dark, but I could see the outline of her in the bed, propped up against the pillows.

"Are you okay?" I asked her. "Do you need anything?"

She normally only rang the bell if there was something wrong.

"Hamish sounds upset," she said. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," I told her. "He's just being a brat."

She shifted in her bed and sighed. "I suppose if you're there anyway, you might get me something to drink. My mouth is so terribly dry."

I moved farther into the room. "Didn't Liam top up your pitcher this morning?"

He was normally pretty responsible, and I didn't think he'd start slacking just because he was annoyed at me. I picked up the pitcher to find that it was mostly full.

"He did, but it has an odd taste."

I shrugged. "You know I'll just be filling it up with the same water."

She got like that sometimes, asking for things just for the sake of it. I figured she must get pretty bored just lying in bed all day, so thinking up errands was her hobby.

"You should eat something too," I told her. "What would you like?"

She didn't answer, just groaned and turned away. Getting her to eat was always a struggle, and getting her to eat something healthy was even harder.

I left to fill up her water. Liam and Hamish were both eating toast at the table with Fletcher. Hamish still wasn't dressed. I ignored them all and looked in the cupboard for something to feed our mother that she might actually eat.

As I stood there, I began to feel strange.

Everything around me dimmed, became kind of fuzzy and unimportant. All of my focus was on this strange sensation inside me, one that felt like a ball of light or energy, growing bigger and bigger. It sat just behind my breastbone, so bright and clear and warm. As it grew, I felt it was filling me up completely, merging with me and becoming part of me. Even though it felt strange, it was somehow familiar, comforting.

I knew it was coming before I heard it — the knock on the door. And I knew exactly who would be on the other side.

"Stay there," I told my brothers as they looked up curiously from their toast. I backed out of the room with my eyes still on them. They would definitely try to spy on this, and I didn't want them to see or hear anything to do with that other world. "I'm watching you. I am always watching you."

I paused in the hallway before opening the door. I did not want this. I wished there was some way to skip over the next ten or so minutes without having to actually live them, like the dud song that’s on everyone's playlist. I didn't even want this on my playlist. I wanted to delete it from my whole library.

The knock came again, even louder this time. There was no avoiding it.

I swung open the door and there he was, standing on my doorstep just as I’d known he would be. Tennyson Wilde.

For a moment, I stood there in shock, gaping like an idiot. How had I known he would be there? That was not normal. And not only that; the image of Tennyson Wilde there on my doorstep took me a moment to process.

He didn't belong in the real world.

He'd grown taller over the summer, which made him look too thin and brought a gauntness to his features that made him seem much older than sixteen. Even though it was the end of summer, his skin was still super pale, and it made the bright blue of his eyes almost seem to glow in the morning light. He didn't look human, and he definitely didn't look as if he belonged there. It felt unsettling, like vertigo.

"Why are you here?" I asked him quietly, so my brothers wouldn't overhear.

"Why are you?" he said, pushing past me and stepping inside.

As he moved, I saw the others standing behind him. Tennyson's sister, Althea, was leaning against the porch rail, looking as if she were posing for the cover of a magazine. Nikolai Volkov was standing on her other side, taking everything in with gleeful eyes. That made me notice all the junk sitting around on our porch: Hamish's broken fire truck, discarded sporting equipment and muddy shoes. Everything in their lives was immaculate, perfectly positioned. I couldn't even imagine what they thought of the chaos of my house.

My heart skipped a beat when I noticed there was someone else standing at the bottom of the porch steps. Sam Spencer. He wasn't looking at me, but rather at the house next door, where he used to live. The house where his family had been murdered. I was still so angry at him for betraying me, for selling me out to my father, but I could be angry and still care about him, and the expression on his face hurt my heart.

"You can't come in here," I told him, trying not to sound too harsh. I hadn't told my brothers that Sam was still alive, and I didn't want to have to explain it now, not when I didn't have any good answers for how or why. No way was I telling them about werewolves. They did not need that information.

When Sam looked up at me, his eyes were full of pain.

"I know," he said. "I just wanted to…" He shrugged and turned away.

"I'll stay with him," Nikolai said, then went down the steps to follow Sam as he walked over to the curb where a long black limo was parked. "I'm not sure I can stomach the inside of a commoner house after all."

"It's not catching, you know," I called after him, rolling my eyes.

"Don't mind him," Althea said, pushing off from the railing. "That's how he shows love."

I followed her inside, to where Tennyson had made himself at home in the living room.

He looked so fresh and crisp that he made everything around him seem shabbier in comparison. He was only wearing a simple black t-shirt with jeans, but something about the way the clothes sat on his frame made them look like works of art. I couldn't help but notice the way the t-shirt stretched across his shoulders, like he'd gotten broader since he'd bought it.

I looked away.

"This is where you live?" he asked.

"Obviously." Did he not realize I had better things to do than stand around while he made judgments about my life?

"We were worried when you didn't arrive at school last night," said Althea, sitting primly at one end of the sofa. "Is something wrong?"

I shrugged. "Everything's fine," I told her. "I'm transferring to the local school here."

Tennyson gave an annoyed little huff. "I can see how that might make sense, given your socio-economic situation, but you have to see that that's impossible now."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Don't tell me what to do."

"Somebody needs to! You're obviously incapable of making rational decisions on your own." He crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at me from beneath his thick eyebrows.

"How is it irrational to want to be safe? To want my family to be safe?" All of the arguments I'd had to bite back when I'd been fighting with my brothers, I could throw them at Tennyson Wilde — hurl them at him and hope they struck. "I made it through last year from sheer dumb luck, and you know as well as I do that some people didn't."

"You're part of our world now," Althea said softly, as if she was trying not to startle me. "Whether you're here or at school, it's not something you can avoid."

I stared down at my feet. I didn't want to argue with her, but she was wrong. I could avoid it all I wanted. I was safe at home. Before I went to Amaris, none of this werewolf stuff had been an issue. Everything had been fine.

"Sam's family wasn't safe here," Tennyson said. "They found him easily enough."

What was he, a mind reader?

"And your father is mixed up in all this as well. You're better off at school where we can keep an eye on you and make sure you don't do anything stupid."

"I never do anything stupid." I muttered.

He raised his eyebrows as if just saying it was stupid enough.

"Tennyson's right, Lucy,” Althea said. "There's all sorts of safeguards up at school, and we'll be there to watch over you as well. It won't be like last year; nobody will curse you or anything."

I nodded. "Right, and why is that again? Oh, yeah, because those creepy things came into our school and snatched Hannah right from under our noses."

Tennyson said, "I can't understand why you even care about that evil little…"

Althea silenced him with a glance. "I know Hannah Morgan was your friend, Lucy. We've been looking into her disappearance, and I think I've found something."

"Really?"

Althea nodded. "If you come to school, I'll show you everything."

I snorted. "You're bribing me?"

"Well, you won't listen to reason," said Tennyson. "And it's not as if we can have you running around, with you knowing all our family's secrets."

"Oh," I said. I shouldn't have been surprised, but the realization felt like a punch in the throat. "That's what this is about."

"No!" said Althea. She rose up from her seat and grabbed my hands. "It's not like that at all. You're our friend, and we're worried about you. We want you to come back to school."

I raised my eyebrows. "Sure," I said, stepping back from her. Althea had always been super nice to me, and now I understood why. She had played me like a fiddle, pretending to be my friend so I'd protect their secret.

"Don't be so sensitive," Tennyson said, then grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me toward the door. "Do you really think my family would have any qualms about getting you out of the way if we didn't place any value on your life?"

I rolled my eyes, but I found his words strangely comforting. Tennyson Wilde never sugar-coated anything, never pretended to be nice. It was one of the things that infuriated me the most about him, but at least I knew he was telling the truth.

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me," I told him as he swung the door open.

He went to swoop out the door but ran smack into three cheeky little eavesdroppers.

Hamish stared up at Tennyson with hearts in his eyes.

"Have you come to take Lucy away and make her into a princess?" he asked.

Tennyson opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Hamish went on.

"If Lucy is a princess, will you buy me a bike? A red one with racing wheels?"

He grabbed Tennyson around the middle and hugged him tightly. Tennyson stood frozen, as if he was afraid to move.

"Ham, get off him, you weirdo," I said. "He's not buying you a bike. Go put some clothes on and get your stuff ready for school."

He stepped back from Tennyson, and gave me a suspicious look. "Are you going to school?"

I sighed and glanced at Althea. She gave me a hopeful smile. Tennyson's hand tightened around my wrist. Even Liam had stopped glaring at me.

"I suppose I have to, since everyone is so set on it."

But, although I tried my best to sound grumpy about it, part of me couldn't help but feel pleased.

Chapter 2

My trip to school was very different from the year before, when it had taken days and a bunch of transfers and long waits.

I sat silently during the limo ride to the airport, trying not to second-guess myself. It was hard to believe that this was the right decision — leaving the safe familiarity of home to go back to a place that had only caused me misery.

I was sitting beside Althea and opposite Nikolai, who were both busy on their phones. Sam kept sneaking glances at me from the opposite corner. I ignored him. I didn't even know how to talk to him anymore, no matter how much I might want to.

The limo was unlike any other car I'd ever been in. The seats were so soft and spacious, it seemed like the car shouldn't even fit on the road. And it was so quiet. Not just the engine; all the outside noise was dimmed, people on the street and other cars. It hardly felt that we were moving at all.

We got to the airport in next to no time, which I guess is what happens when you don't have to take the bus. Instead of our going through the airport and checking our bags and all of that, the limo drove right out onto the tarmac to where the plane was waiting. That didn't seem particularly safe, and I wasn't even sure it was legal. Weren't there security measures in place? Just because someone was super rich didn't mean they didn't have evil plans. Rather, it meant they had the means to carry out their evil plans. Still, it was convenient just getting out of the car and getting right onto the plane.

The plane was even more swanky than the car had been. The seats were massive recliner armchairs that were the comfiest thing I'd ever sat on. There were only a few of them, arranged facing each other, rows of two on each side of the plane. I took a window seat on the left, thinking Althea would sit next to me, but she sat opposite with Tennyson, so Sam took the seat beside me. My legs twitched instinctively, and I wanted to get up and move away from him, but I forced myself to stay there. There was no point in making a fuss just to sit a few extra feet away. Nikolai sprawled out across the remaining seats, put in his earphones and was asleep before the plane even took off.

I hated flying. I hated it a lot. Sure, it was nice to be in a comfy seat and not crowded in with a bunch of strangers, but flying was still unnatural. Maybe if I'd understood a bit more about aerodynamics, it wouldn't be so terrifying, but I didn't, and so it was. I dug my fingers into the arms of the seat as we sped down the runway, and I squeezed my eyes shut. If I just pretended it wasn't happening, I'd be fine. I wasn't on a plane; I was safely on the ground, in a bakery full of delicious cakes. There were all sorts of cakes: tiramisu and mud cake and shortcake, all the delicious cakes.

It didn't work. The plane went faster and faster, bouncing along the runway. My entire body was tense, waiting for that moment when we would leave the ground, when the plane would inevitably explode.

Something warm covered my hand, and I opened my eyes to see Sam's fingers tangled in mine. I turned my hand over and pressed our palms together, marveling at how such a small thing could bring so much comfort. Then I looked up and met his gaze, and for a moment, I wasn't angry with him. He was my Sam again, and everything was okay.

"I'm glad you came with us," he said, so quietly that I had to lean in to hear him over the noise of the engines.

I hadn't been that close to him in so long that my breath caught in my chest. His eyes were clear and bright, like liquid amber. He smelled lemony fresh. Without really meaning to, I shifted closer to him.

"Are you okay now?" he asked.

"Huh?" I said, distracted by the closeness of him.

"We're in the air," he said. "Are you okay?"

I'd completely forgotten about the plane. I'd forgotten about everything that wasn't Sam.

"I'm fine," I said, pulling my hand out of his. "Why wouldn't I be?"

He smiled at me and gave a little shrug. "No reason."

I shifted as far away from him as I could get in my seat. Althea and Tennyson were both giving me a funny look. When I looked back, Althea smiled and pulled out her book to read, but Tennyson just kept staring. He was creepy like that, so I didn't pay much attention. I needed to start reading as well.

Because I'd decided not to return to Amaris, I hadn't bothered with any of the holiday reading we'd been assigned, which put me way behind. My marks had been okay last year, but not nearly as good as I'd hoped. I'd been aiming for first, which had gone to this girl Fatima — I knew that because she'd posted her marks up on the school message boards with a note that said, "If anyone has beaten this, tell me so I can end you." Nobody had replied.

For a while, Fatima and I had been neck and neck with our marks, but then things had happened to distract me from final exams, and my grades had taken a nosedive. If I had to return to Amaris, I'd need to keep up my marks. They didn't give out scholarships to B students.

I hadn't even made it through the second act of Hamlet when the plane started its descent. I hated the landing part nearly as much as the takeoff, but I forced myself to play it cool and not show any weakness. Even if the plane exploded and we all died, that was way better than getting all swoony over Sam when I was still angry at him.

The plane dipped, and I wanted to scream or maybe hide under the seat and whimper, but I kept my eyes on Hamlet. The words made no sense, but I kept staring at them anyway.

Something moved in my chest. I startled, worrying I was having a heart attack from freaking out over the plane, but then I realized it was nothing physical. It was in the same place that I'd felt that weird sensation earlier, when I'd been making the toast. It felt as if something warm had reached out and was holding on to me, holding my heart, just as Sam had been holding my hand. Straight away, I felt myself relax. Logic started to work in my brain again — it was highly unlikely there was anything wrong with the plane, so I was as safe here as I would be anywhere.

That warm feeling held on to me as the plane touched down and rolled to a stop. As far as coping mechanisms went, it was kind of weird, but I figured there were much worse.

The late afternoon sun glared in my eyes as I walked down the steps of the plane. It was good to be on the ground again, but as I followed the others across the tarmac, I realized my relief was to be short-lived. A helicopter was sitting a short distance away, propellers spinning into a blur.

"You'll be fine," Sam said, falling into step beside me. "We don't go very far off the ground, and because it's so small, you can kind of feel how it's staying in the air."

I wanted to say something to make it clear that I hadn't forgiven him for betraying me, but he moved ahead of me before I could think of anything.

The pilot loaded our luggage into the undercarriage of the helicopter as the five of us climbed in. I was squished between Sam and Nikolai and hastily put on the earmuffs hanging over the back of the seat so that I wouldn't need to worry about any awkward conversations. Nikolai smirked at me and shuffled closer so that I was pushed right up against Sam, so I elbowed him in the ribs. He laughed at me, and I jolted as the helicopter door slammed closed. It was probably just the vibration from the engine, but it felt as if something had smacked against my leg really hard. Tennyson stumbled into his seat, and Althea asked if he was okay. He nodded but winced as he reached down to rub at his leg, in the same spot where I'd felt the pain. Some sort of weird helicopter-related thing, I figured, then forgot all about it as we lurched up into the air.

The island was much closer to the mainland than I'd expected, so it didn't take very long for us to get there. Because I was stuck in the middle, I couldn't see much of what we were flying over, but as we began to circle down, the forest and the school buildings came into view. The day was drawing to a close, and it reminded me of that first day last year, when I'd first seen the four of them arrive and had been struck by how glamorous and untouchable they seemed.

I supposed they still were, in a way. Glamorous and untouchable and otherworldly, with their enhanced abilities and mountains of money. But I’d seen Nikolai fall asleep in weird places and drool everywhere. I’d seen Althea with dark circles under her eyes when she stayed up all night studying. And Tennyson — well, I’d lived in his body all that time, and that kind of took the mystery away from a guy. Strangely enough, the one who seemed most unreachable to me now was Sam, the boy I’d grown up with.

As we came in to land, my stomach started churning. Not because of the flying, but because of school. Last year had been awful, even aside from the magic and the werewolves. The people at this school were mean. It was all well and good for Althea and Tennyson to say I'd be safe, but that was because nobody would ever dare to bully them. I was an easy target, poor and nerdy and not pretty. Everyone hated me, and I had no reason to think that would be any different this year.

We touched down in the clearing behind the school, and the helicopter engine whirred to a stop. Sam said something to me, but I couldn't hear him properly, and I realized I was still wearing the earmuffs.

"Sorry. I couldn't hear you," I told him.

He smiled at me. "I said, 'You're still wearing your earmuffs.'"

"Funny," I told him.

I thought maybe I'd throw up.

Tennyson pulled the door open and stepped out gracefully. Althea followed him, then Sam. I didn't move.

"I could climb over you, but you'd get the wrong idea and say 'Nikolai!' in that scandalized voice that I never deserve."

"Sometimes you deserve it," I told him, forcing myself to stand up. "Most times."

"You wish I deserved it," he said.

"That doesn't even make sense."

I laughed as I began to climb out the door, but my foot caught and I slipped backwards. Nikolai caught me by the arm just before I would have fallen and helped me down safely.

"Thanks," I told him.

I turned to get my luggage, and that was when I noticed what looked like the entire student body gathered up by the fountain at the back of the school, watching us. The others didn't seem to have noticed them, but I saw that there were a lot of nasty looks being thrown my way, and I could just imagine what people were muttering to each other, seeing me arrive there with the students from the elite Golden House.

"I think I'll get going," I said, picking up my suitcase.

"You're not coming for dinner?" Sam asked, looking concerned.

I shook my head. "I'll grab something from the house kitchen. I'm pretty tired. It's been a long day."

It was the truth, but mostly, I didn't want to go into the dining hall with them, not with all those jackals watching. It was going to be bad enough as it was.

"Thanks for the lift," I told them, then I turned and walked down the path toward the Red House.

It felt lonely to walk away from the four of them and go off by myself. Even though I wasn't like them and would never really belong with them, they were the closest things to friends that I had.

I hurried through the gardens as fast as I could, wanting to get safely to my room before everyone else arrived back from dinner. The Red House was all lit up as I approached, and I rushed inside, stopping only to grab some sandwiches from the kitchen. I took the stairs two at a time up to the sophomore floor. I hadn't checked what room I was in, but I figured it would be around the same spot as last year, since roommates were organized alphabetically. I found my name on the brass plate outside the room directly below the one I'd had last year.

I stopped and stared at the name plate. I should've expected I'd have a new roommate, of course. Hannah wasn't around anymore. Still, I hadn't considered the reality of it, and what's more, this particular roommate shouldn't have been mine. The name plate said "Lucy O'Connor" and "Katie Canterbury". That wasn't alphabetical. It gave me a chill for reasons I couldn't really justify.

Probably, it was just because everyone else was already settled with their roommates and so I was the only one with a free spot. There probably wasn't anything funny going on at all. But, then, no harm ever came out of being too suspicious, and trusting people had never worked out that well for me. I'd trusted Hannah, and she'd put all sorts of weird spells on me. I'd trusted Sam, and he'd betrayed me to my father. I'd trusted my father, and he'd walked out on us. Clearly, being paranoid was the safest course of action.

I swiped my student card and opened the door. The room was the same layout as last year's, with a living area and a raised area in the corner that was the bedroom. Only, it looked completely different. It wasn't just that Hannah wasn't there, or any of our stuff, it was that everything seemed unnaturally clean and sterile. There was a strong smell of disinfectant that made my eyes water, and everything was lined up at right angles.

A tall girl with dark skin was standing in the kitchenette area, wiping down the sink, even though it looked pristine.

"Hi!" she said, smiling as she rinsed out the cloth. "I'm Katie!"

She placed the cloth in what smelled like hospital-grade bleach and walked over to me. She was super beautiful, with big eyes and an infectious smile and hair so long she could probably sit on it. I didn't trust her one bit.

"Lucy," I said, then walked past her and lugged my suitcase up into the bedroom area. I noticed she'd claimed my bed, the one farthest from the window.

"When you didn't arrive yesterday, I thought I'd be stuck here all alone," she said, following me up to the bedroom. "I'm so glad you're here!"

I didn't answer her. It wasn't as if I owed her an explanation. I hauled my case up onto the bed and began unpacking.

"It's so strange being the new girl at a school like this, isn't it?" she said.

I shrugged.

"I've met a couple of people, of course, but everyone already knows each other."

She prattled on as I put my clothes in the cupboard and my books on the desk, trying to sound friendly, but she wasn't fooling me. She had some nefarious purpose in being here. No way was I falling for the friendly roomie routine two years running.

"I'm going to have a shower," I told her.

I rushed to the bathroom and locked the door, just in case she decided to follow me in there to keep talking. She'd gone nuts cleaning in there too. I supposed it was better than her being messy, but it made me feel uncomfortable, as if I'd mess things up without realizing.

As I undressed and turned on the water, I wondered where she was from. Was she here of her own accord, or had somebody sent her? Did she have magic, or was she some sort of weird creature? There were probably tests I could do to tell; I'd have to read up about it. If I knew what she was, I could guard against her powers.

I let out a hiss as I stepped into the shower and looked down at my leg. It was the strangest thing, but I had a bruise forming on my shin, where I'd felt the pain in the helicopter.

Where Tennyson had knocked his leg.

Chapter 3

My main goal in life became avoiding Katie Canterbury. She'd clearly decided we were going to be BFF and wouldn't stop chatting at me. I put on my headphones and pretended to be asleep, and eventually she stopped talking. The next morning, I got up super early and snuck out for breakfast while she was still asleep.

The sun was just rising as I walked up to the school, and there was a slight chill in the air. Birds had begun to sing, and everything looked fresh and new. The school was always so much nicer when there were no people around. I took my time wandering through the gardens, as I wasn't even sure if the dining hall would be open yet. Just for a moment, I let myself pretend that everything would be okay. Maybe Katie wasn't evil. Maybe nobody would bully me this year. Maybe nothing bad would happen at all. Everything didn't have to suck all the time — that wasn't a rule or anything.

Eventually, I got too hungry and made a beeline for the dining hall. No matter what else was bad about Amaris, the food couldn't be faulted, and that was a fact. I'd just started daydreaming about bacon and omelets and danishes when I spotted Sam sitting by the fountain. I could circle back around and get to the dining hall from the front of the school, and I'd just turned to do that when he spotted me. He stood up and started walking toward me. I couldn't exactly run away, so I figured I might as well just go to the dining hall directly. If he wanted to talk to me, he could do it while I was eating.

"We need to talk," he said, putting out a hand to stop me from walking past him.

If I knew one thing in this life, it was that conversations that began "We need to talk" never ended with anything good.

"I can talk and eat," I told him, pulling out of his grasp so I could inside.

There was nobody else in the dining hall, so I picked a table in the far corner that was partly hidden by a large fern. If anyone came in, they wouldn't immediately notice that I was sitting with Sam. I pressed the button for the food to appear and waited. Sam took the seat next to me, pulling out the chair in a way that blocked me in unless I wanted to climb over him to escape.

"I just want you to understand why I did what I did," he told me as a plate of breakfast pastries appeared.

I picked out a cherry danish and bit into it. It was some high-quality danish. Sometimes you get a danish and there's just this tiny blob of fruit in the middle, but this guy had cherry right to the edges. The pastry was light and flaky, and the custard inside was creamy and sweet. It was the perfect danish. Really, when they were convincing me to come back here, all they'd needed to do was give me one of these danishes, and I'd have been sold.

"I understand," I told him when I'd finished the danish. "I know exactly why you did it, and I get that you thought you were doing the right thing."

He gave me a little smile. "So, you're not angry anymore?"

I glanced down at the pastries, trying to pick which one I'd eat next. Maybe the blueberry? But I needed to deal with Sam first.

"Are you nuts? Of course I'm still angry. Just because I get why you did it doesn't mean it wasn't a disgusting betrayal of my trust."

His face crumpled a bit, and I nearly gave in. He had thought he was helping; he'd just wanted to protect me. But he still didn't get the point.

"You had no right going behind my back like that. You should have told me everything from the start and let me make my own decisions. How can you expect me to trust you when you obviously don't trust me?"

"It wasn't my secret to tell," he said.

I pushed the plate of pastries away. "You aren't even listening to what I'm trying to say," I told him. "You're just trying to justify yourself."

He sighed. "Well, what are you trying to say? Just say it."

I took a deep breath. I didn't want to have to say it outright, because that would make it seem true, and no matter how angry I'd been at Sam, it was something I'd never wanted to believe.

"The fact that you're prioritizing other people's 'secrets' over my trust tells me that as much as you say you care about me, that's just an idea to you. It's not something real. You don't care about me, and you don't have any respect for me or my judgment." I shook my head. When I got mad like this, it was hard for me to get the words out, because I felt like I might cry. Angry tears are the worst, because they send totally the wrong impression. "You're all talk, Sam. I thought we had something between us, but I was such an idiot. You were right; I should have stayed away from you in the first place. At least when I thought you were dead, I didn't realize you were such a manipulative jerk. Now, will you just get up and let me out of here?"

I stood up and tried to push past him, but he grabbed me by the arm.

I wanted to strike out at him, to hurt him like he'd hurt me. Only, he'd hurt me by not caring enough, and I cared too much. Something of what I was feeling must have showed on my face, because he stood up and backed away.

"Lucy," he said quietly, almost sounding afraid. The tone of his voice stopped me from leaving. "Lucy, what's happened to you? Your eyes are glowing."

I pushed past him and ran.

His words didn't make any sense. He was just trying to change the subject or block out my words or something. No way were my eyes glowing. Why would they? I didn't have any powers or anything. I was just an ordinary girl. The most ordinary.

I ran from the dining hall and right smack into Fatima. I bounced off her and stumbled back against the door. I expected her to say something mean, since we hadn't exactly parted on friendly terms last year, but she just looked at me kind of warily. Milo was standing at her side with his arms folded over his chest and his eyes narrowed at me. If I wanted lessons in being paranoid, I should probably ask Milo, because he was the most suspicious person I'd ever met.

"Hi," I said to them, feeling awkward. I didn't look at them directly in case my eyes were doing something weird. "Congrats on getting first in the class. You really earned it." I thought of something she'd told me the year before, when we'd kind of been friends. "Did your parents let you go to the Green House this year?"

She nodded. "Yeah, but it's kind of weird there."

"I'm surprised you guys are even allowed to still be friends." I said it jokingly, but it was a valid point. I'd never seen anyone from the Green House get along with anyone from the Red House before.

Milo narrowed his eyes even more, so that he looked like he was squinting into the sun. Fatima just shrugged.

"Look, this is kind of awkward," she said. "But I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about Hannah. We've been trying to contact her all summer, and now she's not at school either. Have you heard from her?"

Oh, man. I should have expected that, but it hadn't even occurred to me that other people would miss Hannah too. I assumed that my father had contacted her parents, considering it had been largely his fault she'd been taken, but I didn't even know that for sure. I had no idea what to say to try to explain this. I hadn’t even had a chance to talk to Althea yet about whatever they’d found out.

"Did her parents tell you anything?" I asked.

Fatima shook her head. "They were very strange about it, actually. Evasive."

"We know you know something," Milo said, his voice hard.

I nodded. I had to tell them the truth as much as possible.

"Hannah's missing," I told them. "I don't know all the details, but I think it's something to do with her father's work."

Fatima gave a broken little gasp, and Milo went pale.

"Do you think she's…" Fatima couldn't say it, but I shook my head.

"I'm sure she's alive," I said. I had nothing to base that on, but Sam had been taken as well, and he'd survived, so surely Hannah would be fine too.

"How do you know this?" Milo asked. "We've known her parents forever and they wouldn't tell us anything, so how do you know more than we do?"

"I was with her just before it happened," I told him. "It was the end of semester last year."

"They took her from school?" Fatima asked, sounding even more distressed about that than anything.

"Yeah," I told her. "I didn't see what happened, but it was on the island."

"This is your fault," said Milo. "Everything was fine before you came here."

He stormed into the dining hall angrily. I couldn't blame him. I agreed with him.

"He's just upset," Fatima said. "But I'm sure there's nothing you could've done…" She seemed to want to say something else but wasn't sure if she should. "I'm sorry about last year, about being mean."

She rushed inside before I could answer, which was good, because what do you say to that? You can't say "it's okay" to something that really isn't.

I wasn't sure I should've told them anything. Maybe they'd go looking into it and find out things they weren't supposed to know, but Hannah was their friend too, and they deserved an explanation.

It was still way too early to go to class, so I hung out in the Red Garden until I saw Katie go to breakfast, then snuck back into our room to get ready for school. Even if she wasn't evil, it was better for her not to get too close to me. It wouldn't end well for her.

My first class was chemistry, which I'd kind of bombed in last year. I decided to go early to make a good impression and read through the textbook. But the problem with going to class early is that the seat next to you is free for anyone to sit in. The class had half filled up when Tennyson Wilde sat beside me. A bunch of people got out their phones and started trying to take pictures or post to social media about it. I couldn't exactly get up and move or their tweets would be even meaner, and I figured I might as well sit next to him as anyone else. Althea and Nikolai weren't in our class, and I didn't like anyone else.

"You're my lab partner this year," he told me.

"Um, I think actually the teacher chooses…"

He gave me a look as if I were crazy.

"You're upset," he said quietly.

I gave him a look as if he was crazy. Because he was.

"I am not going to sit in chemistry class and talk about my feelings with you, Tennyson Wilde. Also, I can't believe Sam told you."

"I haven't seen Sam this morning," he said, flipping open his textbook. "I merely sensed your distress. It was quite an imposition on my morning routine, and I would ask you to try to curb such strong emotions in the future."

I shifted back so he could feel the full weight of my incredulous stare.

"A: what are you talking about? And B: don't tell me how to feel. Oh em gee, Tennyson Wilde, I'm not part of your stupid little wolf pack, so stop sensing me or whatever."

He shook his head at me. "Keep your voice down," he whispered fiercely. "And this has nothing to do with lycanthropy. Surely, even someone as mundane as yourself has sensed this strange bond that has developed between us."

I waved my hands in front of his face. "No, no, no. What? No." I stared at him, but it didn't seem like he was kidding. He had never been much of a kidder, to be honest. "What?"

"Since our soul transference situation."

"Huh? Oh, you mean the body swap?"

"Inaccurate, but I suppose so."

I shrugged. "Nope. Nothing like that from me. I'm perfectly fine. No bonding whatsoever over here. Must be some weird werewolf thing of yours."

He sighed. "I have told you repeatedly that that is an offensive term."

"I won't call it that if you start keeping it to yourself," I hissed at him as the teacher walked into the room.

"Things don't just disappear because you deny them, Lucy," he said, not even bothering to keep his voice down as the rest of the class fell silent. "It only gives them more power."

Chapter 4

I hated the way that Tennyson Wilde thought that just because he said something with authority, it automatically made him right, so, for the rest of the day, I tried to test out whether or not we had a bond. When we’d swapped bodies, I'd been able to sense him all the time, way more than I'd wanted to. In English class, I tried to sense what he was doing in history. At lunch, I tried to sense what he was eating. Nothing. Big fat diddly. He was wrong, and I was right. Awesome.

What wasn't awesome was Fatima. She was in most of my classes, and every time I saw her sad face, I was reminded of Hannah. I wanted to be able to tell her that Hannah was okay. More than that; I wanted to look over at the seat beside me and see Hannah sitting there. I needed answers, and there was only one person who could give them to me.

I messaged my father that night while I was studying with my headphones on and ignoring Katie. I doubted I'd hear back from him. He hadn't exactly kept in touch after he'd walked out on us, so I didn't see why he'd bother now, and I was surprised when he replied after a few minutes.

"Friday night. 10PM. Lighthouse."

The week dragged on as I waited for Friday to arrive. I was avoiding Sam and Tennyson both, though for different reasons, which meant that I couldn't really hang out with Althea or even Nikolai. I wanted to talk to her before I saw my father in case I could use her information about Hannah when I talked to him, but she was always with one of the boys. That left me with nothing to do but study, and, since I was avoiding Katie, I spent most of my time in the library, sitting at a table alone and getting ahead on school work. Fatima and Milo were there a lot too, and Milo kept shooting me suspicious glances every time he saw me. It only made me more determined to find Hannah.

Getting away on Friday night was easier said than done. Katie seemed determined that we'd spend our first weekend hanging out and wouldn't leave me alone. In the end, I agreed to watch a movie with her, then said I was going to the bathroom and made my escape. Not very smooth, but she didn't give me a lot of choice.

It was dark in the forest, but I knew the way well now and went as quickly as I could. There were so many things I wanted to know about my father, but I knew I had to stay on track if I wanted any real answers. I couldn't get distracted by things like, “Where do you live?” and “What do you do all day?” and “How can you come and go here so easily?” This was about Hannah, and if I got sidetracked, my dad was slippery enough to get out of answering anything.

I was super early, so I sat on the lighthouse steps and waited for him. The lighthouse was one of my favorite places at school, even though I'd had some bad experiences there. The crash of the ocean against the cliffs below was so loud that it drowned out everything else, any troubling thoughts. I let myself relax, just for a little while, and forget about Sam and Tennyson and the horrible tortures that Hannah was probably undergoing. I pretended I was the ocean. When I was angry, I could just crash against the rocks or sweep worlds away. When I was sad, I could be still and hide everything away beneath a calm surface. When I was happy, I could sparkle in the sun. Nothing could defeat me if I was the ocean.

Well, maybe pollution.

I heard footsteps and looked up to see my father walking toward me down a path between the rocks that led down the cliff face, one I hadn't noticed before.

"Did you come by boat?" I asked, standing up, and glancing down at the water, though it was too dark to see anything.

He shrugged. It was so impossible for him to give a straight answer.

He looked older than he had the last time I'd seen him. Worn. There was a lot of gray in his dark hair, and there were dark pouches under his eyes. His clothes hung off his frame as if he'd lost a lot of weight, and I wondered how he was living. Still, I had to stay on track.

"I assume if you're here, you have news on Hannah?"

"Maybe I just wanted to see my daughter."

I snorted. As if.

"Can you do me a favor and just be straight with me? If you don't want to answer something, don't answer it, but don't try to weasel your way out."

He sighed and sat down on the step beside me. I shifted over so he wasn't so close.

"I know you think the worst of me, Lulu, but I'm still your dad."

I shifted over a bit more.

"That's not what I'm here to talk about," I told him. "If you don't have any news, I'm leaving."

He stared hard at my face, but I didn't look at him. Then he sighed again and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward so I couldn't see his face even if I'd wanted to. He smelled like sea air and motor oil, and something about that was so nostalgic that it made me want to run as far away from him as I could.

"We've been looking for her, but the Others have powers we don't fully understand. They can manipulate matter in ways that physics hasn't even imagined."

"You mean they're invisible?" That was kind of cool, though terrifying.

He shook his head slightly. "Not exactly invisible. If they were invisible, we could still pick them up on scanners. It's more complicated than that, more elusive."

"So, you have no idea where she is."

"We have some idea. We know where she's not."

I rolled my eyes. "I know where she's not. She's not here. She's not in class or in the dining hall or in our dorm room. You don't need to be some sort of paranormal detective or whatever it is you are to figure that out." I didn't see how he could be so flippant when it was his fault she was missing.

He laughed. "You think that's what I am? A detective?"

I shrugged. "You laugh at me for not knowing something that I have no frame of reference for. Nice." I stood up to leave.

"Wait," he said, catching me by the hand.

I wanted to pull away from him, but it was comforting to have him close by. Even though I'd never forgive him, I felt safer when he was around.

"You should talk to Sam," he said.

I turned around and glared at him. "What?"

They'd been talking again, I just knew it. Having their little secret chats about me and what was good for me and what I should do, like I was too stupid to figure that out for myself. I felt that familiar sense of betrayal twist in my gut.

"We're fairly sure they've taken Hannah to the place they were keeping Sam. Sam is the only person we've ever gotten back from them, and we're still not sure how. He says he doesn't remember anything, but I know that he does. He's just afraid. Maybe if you talk to him, you'll be able to get him to open up."

I continued glaring while I thought over his words. Maybe I'd jumped the gun, thinking they were ganging up on me, but I still couldn't trust either of them. Still, what he was saying made sense.

"Sam and I aren't exactly on speaking terms at the moment."

"Well, all this aside, that's something you need to fix. If nothing else, you two have been friends your whole lives. Whatever's gone wrong between you, it's not as important as that."

He stood up and made a jerky movement as if he was going to hug me but thought better of it. Instead, he patted me on the shoulder.

"You seem different," he said, searching my face as if he could deduce something from it.

"Yeah, that'll happen when you only see your kid once a year," I told him, then turned and walked away.

The last thing on Earth I wanted to do was talk to Sam, but my dad was right. Man, I hated that he was right. I knew I had to get over it, if for no other reason than that the churning feeling in my gut could not be healthy. I was going to have a peptic ulcer before I turned 20.

It was late by the time I reached the gates of the Golden House, but I knew they'd still be awake on account of lycanthropy. I buzzed the button and waited, but the gate opened almost immediately.

"You're upset," said Tennyson, appearing out of the shadows.

"Stop it with the evil sensory perceptions," I told him. "It's creepy, and it's not what you think."

He didn't argue with me, which was a surprise. He turned and led me toward the house without a word. Even though it was what I wanted, I found it was disappointing not to get a reaction out of him.

"Sam's in his room," he said when we got inside, then he left me standing by the door and walked away.

I watched him for a moment, not sure what he was playing at. Was he annoyed at me for some reason? Arguing was our thing; it was how we communicated. If he wasn't snarking at me, how was I supposed to know what he was thinking?

I sighed and headed up the stairs to see Sam. Tennyson wasn't my priority right now.

As I got to Sam's door, my heart pounded. I didn't want to do this, to rake over all those feelings and put everything out in the open to be scrutinized. That was the actual worst. Feelings should be tightly compressed in a hidden place; that was the best way to deal with them. Everyone knew that.

I knocked on the door, worried maybe I'd throw up.

He called for me to come in, and I creaked the door open warily. Every instinct in my body said to run, but I forced myself to go into the room.

Sam was sitting at his desk with his back to me. For a moment, I watched him: the broad stretch of muscles across his back, the way his hair curled against the nape of his neck. It made the churning in my stomach twist into something else, something sharp but not entirely unpleasant.

"We need to talk," I said, echoing his words back to him.

He startled and jumped up from his seat.

"Lucy!" he said. "Is everything okay?"

I nodded. "I'm fine. I just wanted to clear a few things up."

I followed him over to the window seat and sat down facing him. I didn't even know where to start. I took a deep breath and just let it all spill out.

"I meant what I said the other day. I might've been a little harsh about it, but the basics were true."

He nodded, staring down at his hands.

"And I know it's not your fault if I was seeing things that weren't there. Between us, I mean." I looked up at the ceiling, trying to pretend I was somewhere else, anywhere else. This was so awkward and horrible.

"Lucy…"

I shook my head. "Let me keep going, or I won't get this all out." I couldn't listen to him try to explain his feelings, to tell me kindly that he didn't think of me that way. It was obvious, even without the words being lodged into my brain for the rest of my life. I took a deep breath. "Whatever else happens, you were the first friend I ever had. For a long time, the only friend. That's the only thing that should matter, right? Even though I’m still mad at you, I'm not ready for our friendship to end. I’ll work on trying to forgive you."

He grabbed me up into a crushing hug.

"I thought you hated me," he said into my hair. "I thought I'd ruined everything."

"You dummy."

I clutched at his sleeve, the warmth of his body seeping into my skin. The twisting in my stomach got sharper, more painful, but there was a sweetness to it as well. Even if Sam didn't feel the same way about me, at least I had him in my life.

"I should go and let you study," I said, pulling away from him.

He shook his head. "I was only trying to distract myself," he said. "Stay a while. Tell me about your summer."

There wasn't much to tell, but we chatted for a while. I wasn't sure how to steer the conversation around to Hannah or where she might be. I didn't want Sam to think that was the only reason I'd made up with him, not when things were still so fragile between us. Even if it was mostly the truth.

"So, I was talking to my dad," I said during a lull in the conversation. So smooth.

He raised his eyebrows.

"I'm not trying to pick a fight," I said.

"Are you still mad at him?"

"Do you even need to ask? It's not even the same planet of angry. What he did to us isn't something that can be forgiven."

Sam didn't say anything, but he looked as if he wanted to.

"Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, I wanted to talk to him about Hannah Morgan. I need to find her, Sam. It's my fault she got taken." My voice cracked on the last word, and I looked away.

Sam shook his head. "How can you think that? It's nobody's fault. The Others, they have a plan, Lucy. No matter what you had done, or your father or me or Hannah or anyone, they were always going to come for her on that day, at that time."

"You know a lot about them?" I said softly.

"No," he whispered, biting his lip. "I don't remember."

I reached out and took his hand. "Sam, you can tell me anything."

He glanced up at me and then out the window. "It's nothing, really. Just flashes of things. Nothing that could help her."

I squeezed his hand. "My dad thinks she's being kept at the same place that they took you."

There was fear in his eyes when he looked at me. "That place," he whispered. "It's hell."

"We need to save her," I said. "She might have tried to hurt us, but she doesn't deserve that. She's just a girl."

He held on to my hand so tightly that I thought my fingers would snap.

"Everything was gray," he said, sounding a whole world away. "Hopeless. Endless. There was only gray and pain." He shuddered. "I wasn't awake a lot of the time, but when I was, they were doing things to me. Experiments." He closed his eyes, wincing. "I don't remember anything. Only one word. Establishment."

Chapter 5

The word seemed to echo in the room for the longest time. I had no idea why, but I felt as if it held some strange power that I didn't understand. Establishment. The word seemed to hook on to something inside of me, pulling it to the surface from the murkiest depths.

"I need to go," I told Sam, pulling my hand out of his grasp. For some reason, it seemed wrong for him to be touching me, but I couldn't understand why. "I'm sorry. I just feel so strange all of a sudden."

I got to my feet and stumbled.

"Lucy, what's wrong?"

I shook my head. I felt as if as soon as I tried to speak, that hook would pull that thing up from inside of me and out into the open.

"You can't go out there alone if you're not feeling well."

I staggered away from him to the door, trying to get away from Sam. That word. Establishment. What was the significance of it? And if it had something to do with the Others, why was I reacting to it?

I could see Sam pulling on his shoes to follow me and hurried out. Somehow, I got down the steps without injuring myself, then made a dash for the front door. I could hear Sam behind me, so I moved faster, but before I could get outside, I barreled right into Althea. That seemed to be a pattern with me lately.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, taking me by the forearms.

She glanced over my shoulder at Sam and gave him a nod. Then she led me into the Golden common room and sat me down on a comfortable sofa. I barely knew what was happening.

"Stay there, and I'll make a pot of tea."

I nodded vaguely. The strange feeling was fading a little, but I chased it, wanting to follow it to see where it had come from, to see what it was. It frightened me, but at the same time, I craved it as well. The rest of the world seemed to exist on the other side of a curtain, hazy and not quite real. Then, suddenly, it snapped back into focus.

"Althea, what's happening here?"

Tennyson was standing in the doorway, staring at me although he was speaking to Althea. The hook tugged at me again, but this time I tried to ignore it, to fight it.

"Everything's fine, Tennyson. You don't need to worry." Althea appeared again with a teapot and cups on a tray. "Tea?"

Tennyson stared at the teapot for a strangely long time. It was a pretty teapot with gold edging and cherry blossoms, but I wasn't sure it warranted that level of attention. Maybe he had super conflicting feelings about tea. Eventually, he shook his head.

"No. Thank you."

He didn't look at me again as he left the room. Weirdo.

Althea poured the tea and handed me a cup. "It's a special blend," she said. "It will help to calm you."

I sniffed it. It smelled strongly of licorice and a little minty. I wrinkled my nose as I took a sip, but it wasn't that bad.

"So," said Althea. "What just happened?"

I opened my mouth to tell her but found I couldn't explain. I didn't know myself.

"I've been talking to my father, trying to find out where Hannah could be. He told me to talk to Sam, and I suppose I just freaked out."

Althea's face was hidden by her cup, so I couldn't read her expression. "A panic attack?"

I shrugged. "I'm not sure. I haven't had a panic attack before, so, maybe?"

"Pounding heart? Chills? Trouble breathing?"

I shook my head. That sounded awful, but it wasn't what had happened. "It was more like a hook inside of me, trying to drag something out."

Althea lowered her cup a little to blow on her tea, and steam rose up around her. "And you think it was something that Sam said that caused it? Something about the Others?"

I didn't want to think about it. I couldn't bring that word to my mind and risk it happening again. I sipped my tea while I tried to form an answer.

"I don't know," I told her eventually. "I thought it was, but it might have been a coincidence."

"Do you still feel it?"

I shook my head. I'd started feeling much calmer as soon as Althea came near me. The tea was helping, too. She should be a therapist or something.

"It's more like the echo of it," I said. "Or a shadow. I can feel where it was, but I can't actually feel it."

"Have you felt anything else strange since you've been back at school?"

I thought about the bruise on my leg but shook my head. "No, nothing important."

Althea smiled at me. "I'll do some reading, but I've never heard of anything like this before. If something strange is happening, I'll help you figure it out. Don't worry." She set her cup back down on the tray. “Our information about Hannah Morgan — I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet, have I?”

I shook my head and sipped at my tea as she told me about more disappearances, other people who had been taken by the Others. Even though the tea was settling my nerves, her news was really distressing.

“I’ll forward you the information. Maybe you can find some pattern in it, something that might give us a clue to where they’ve all been taken.”

That word whispered inside my head again, but I pushed it away and focused on Althea.

"Now, tell me all about your week. I haven't seen you at all!"

"I think my new roommate is evil," I said, and started telling her all about Katie Canterbury, relieved at the change in subject.

Katie was awake when I got back to my room. I still felt a bit odd and just wanted to sleep and forget the whole night, but she was bright-eyed and full of questions.

"Where have you been?" she asked, sitting up in bed with her laptop open in front of her. "I was getting so worried!"

If there had been anywhere else to go, I would have turned around and walked out.

"I'm fine," I told her. It was a lie, but that was none of her business.

She set her laptop aside and swung her long legs out of the bed. "You don't look fine. You look all flushed and weird!" Her eyes went big, and she gasped. "Did you sneak out to meet with your secret lover?"

I rolled my eyes and stomped over to my bed. "No."

"You can trust me, you know. I won't tell anyone."

"You'd say that if you were untrustworthy," I told her, getting a pair of clean pajamas out of the drawer. "Saying you’re trustworthy means nothing."

"Okay, that's fair."

I could hear her moving around behind me, but I didn't look to see what she was doing. I peeled off my clothes and got changed into my PJs, then flopped back onto my bed.

"I'll earn your trust, though," Katie said. "We've got all year. Neither of us is going anywhere."

"Why do you even care?" I asked, staring up at the ceiling.

"Because I want us to be friends. A lot of the people at this school don't seem very nice. To be honest, you don't seem very nice either, but in a different way. I think if you were my friend, you would be nice and we'd have fun."

I lifted my head to look over at her. "Who says stuff like that?"

She shrugged. "I always say what I mean. You'll appreciate it once we're friends."

I snorted and stared back up at the ceiling. So many things had happened that I didn't know if I'd be able to get to sleep. My brain was whirring, and there was still the shadow of that hook in my chest. I felt like something had changed irrevocably, but I couldn't pinpoint what.

"Was it Tennyson Wilde?" Katie asked.

"What?"

"Your secret lover. I read online that you guys had a torrid affair last year but broke up because his mother didn't approve."

The thought of Tennyson doing anything torridly was kind of amusing, but still. Ew.

"No, Katie. Tennyson Wilde is not my secret lover. I don't have a secret lover."

"That's a shame," she said. "He's super hot. You could do worse, you know."

I wiggled up the bed and reached over to turn out the light.

"Goodnight, Katie."

Chapter 6

Even though I'd been sure I wouldn't be able to sleep, I drifted off as soon as Katie stopped asking me stupid questions.

The dream I fell into was the most vivid I had ever had. It seemed ultra-real, more real than reality.

I was in a long underground tunnel. The walls were tiled with mosaics of the brightest colors, forming pictures that I couldn't quite decipher, though I knew in that dreamlike way that they held some special significance. I followed the tunnel down a slope until I reached a set of doors carved with intricate silver patterns. The doors swung inward as I approached as if it was welcoming me, but I hesitated before entering. I knew that I was dreaming — and yet it wasn't a dream, and I didn't know if whatever was in that room would be able to hurt me.

Wind rushed through the tunnel behind me, so strong that it pushed me into the room. The doors slammed behind me, and I was plunged into darkness. Then I noticed the tiniest speck of light, like a distant star. The light grew bigger and bigger, pulsating like a firefly, until it grew bright enough to see by. The room seemed big, though I couldn't see enough to tell what kind of room it was, and I could hear dripping water that echoed in the vast space. As I tried to adjust my eyes enough to see properly, I noticed there was someone else in the room with me. My body tensed, but the expected spike of fear at being alone in the dark with a strange figure never came. Instead, it seemed reassuring, somehow. As if I was protected.

"Hello?" I called out. My voice echoed in the cavernous space.

"Lucy?"

I would recognize Tennyson Wilde's scoffing voice anywhere, though I didn't often hear him say my name. The sound of it gave me a strange feeling that I couldn't exactly describe, though it wasn't unpleasant.

"Why are you in my dream?" he asked.

I rolled my eyes, even though he probably couldn't see.

"What is this place?" I asked, more for something to say than because I expected him to have any answers.

"It's the first temple of Lycaon," Tennyson said.

I snorted. "The dude who fed Zeus his son and got you all turned into wolves? That seems like a good sign."

"The myth isn't true, but the man was real," Tennyson said. "There are records in our family library. Lycaon was the first of our kind."

The spark of light continued to get brighter until I could see the expression on Tennyson's face. He looked around in wonder, and I realized that with his wolfy eyes, he could probably see much better than I could.

He started moving away, walking toward something in the darkness. I followed him, not wanting to be left there alone.

"Next, you'll be telling me that Zeus was a real guy."

"Of course not," he said, though he sounded distracted. "Zeus is a mythological god. Lycaon is one of my ancestors. One of all our ancestors."

"So, it's a hereditary medical condition," I said, thinking aloud. "My dad was right."

"It's still the topic of much debate, but I think this place might contain the answers."

He reached a wall and stopped walking, looking up at it. I could tell there was a flat surface, but nothing more.

"This is amazing," he whispered, running his hands over the wall.

The light became brighter, and I glimpsed something of what he could see. More mosaics, intricately designed to tell a great story. In the shadows, it was impossible to get a sense of what the story was about, only that the scope of it was epic. The picture right in front of me was of a girl and a black wolf. The wolf was standing on its hind legs, its paw placed in the palm of the girl’s hand. They were surrounded by flames, but neither looked very concerned about it.

I became impatient for the light to get brighter so I could see more of the story of the girl and her wolf, but, before I could see any more, a jarring sound broke through the stillness. The tinny sound of a ringtone, one of those annoying songs that gets stuck in your head. It sounded far away, from a whole other world.

"Is that…" I looked at Tennyson in surprise.

His eyes were wide. "Nikolai?"

"He's here?"

Tennyson shook his head. "He was studying in my room when I fell asleep."

I laughed. "Very funny."

He raised an eyebrow.

"This isn't actually your dream," I explained. "There's no reason why we'd be hearing Nikolai's phone in my bedroom. If anything, it would be Katie jibber-jabbering at me again."

"Who's Katie?" he asked.

"Does this even feel like a dream to you?" I asked him.

"Do dreams ever?" he asked. "Do you think this is part of our bond?"

"We don't have a bond."

The temple started to fade around me.

"I'm waking up," Tennyson said. "If this is really your dream, come and see me and use the word 'budgerigar'. I'll respond with the word 'portable', and we'll both know that this is real."

I thought that was a stupid idea, but before I could tell him that, I woke up in my bed.

I sat up and looked around. Katie was fast asleep, definitely not playing that stupid song. Predawn light was filtering into the room, and I shivered as I climbed out of bed and pulled on a sweatshirt and some boots.

This was stupid. He would be asleep and make me feel like a fool for waking him up with a stupid code word. But even though it was stupid, I still snuck out of the room and into the gray morning. Something inside me had to know for sure.

My heart sank as I approached the Golden House and saw his shadowy figure waiting outside the gate. As much as I might want to deny it, that seemed a pretty sure sign that our shared dream had been real.

"Budgerigar," I said as I approached him.

His eyes flashed as they met mine. "Portable."

"You couldn't have thought of something less random?" I asked him.

"That's hardly the issue." He folded his arms across his chest, making his forearms bulge. Why wasn't he wearing a jacket, at least? "What do you remember?"

My mind was racing so fast with the reality of what had happened that I could barely articulate what I remembered. Of all the weird things that had happened at Amaris, this was somehow the most disturbing to me. That my mind could be penetrated, my sleep invaded, seemed like the worst kind of treachery imaginable.

"Lucy, focus!"

He'd said my name in the dream, I remembered. And that brought back the other details.

"I remember we were in your creepy great-grandpa's temple, and it was all dark, and you were being a jerk. What do you remember?"

"There were pictures on the walls. Stories."

I was close enough to him now, looking up into his face, and I realized that although I could hear him speak, he wasn't moving his mouth.

"Can you hear me?" I said to him silently, whispering the words from a hidden corner of my mind but not giving them voice.

He rolled his eyes. "Of course I can hear you. I haven't gone deaf."

"Look at my face," I told him.

His eyes widened in shock, and for a moment he seemed stunned.

I had half-expected him to just pass it off. He had some sort of psychic link with his pack. I remembered what it was like from our body swap: sensing where they were, their emotions. I'd thought this was just a heightened version of that, but the terrified expression on his face said otherwise.

"What?" I asked him aloud. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head and didn't answer, but I felt it again. The same feeling as when Sam had said that word. The hook.

And Tennyson felt it too. I knew it even before he clutched at his chest, rubbing at his breastbone in the same place I could feel that hook latching into me, trying to pull something up from the murky depths of my soul. He was hooked as well, and there was no hope for either of us.

I staggered toward him involuntarily, my body being moved by a will that was not my own. I was being reeled in.

The closer I got to him, the more I could feel the thing inside of me begin to surface. It broke free from the depths of my being and cracked open, tendrils of it spiraling outward, all through me. It felt bright, burning bright, scorching a path in its wake. Something inside of me was changing irreparably.

I didn't want it.

It took all of my strength, but I wrenched myself backwards, away from Tennyson. Whatever was happening to me had something to do with him. I couldn't be around him; I had to get away before the transformation was complete. I knew that my eyes were glowing again. In fact, my whole body felt as if it was glowing. The strange power that was uncurling inside of me couldn't be contained and was radiating outward. I had to get away before I detonated.

Not even sparing Tennyson a glance to see how he was doing, I turned and ran.

The island wasn't big enough to get me as far from him as I needed to be, but I ran as fast as I could anyway. The only thing that existed for me was that feeling, no longer a hook but a nuclear reaction that threatened to transform everything around me with its sheer force. I didn't know where I was running to; I had no concept of place or time or anything. The entire world was a blur, and the feeling threatened to rip me apart.

Maybe that would be better. I could fly into pieces, dissolve into nothing but atoms, and the only thing that would change would be me. And then I'd be gone.

All of a sudden, the feeling faded. It wasn't gone completely, but it pushed back enough for me to be aware again. I was in the forest. I'd lost a shoe. Everything was tinged with the golden glow of sunrise, and Tennyson Wilde was standing in front of me, his fingers circled around my wrists.

"What's happening to me?" I asked him.

There was no doubt in my mind that it was his touch on my skin that had calmed me down. A feeling of relief spread through my body from where he was touching me, like stepping into cool water on a hot day.

He shook his head. "I've never heard of anything like this before," he said. "I've been aware of our bond since our consciousnesses were returned to our correct bodies, but it was just an awareness, similar to the pack bond. It's a known thing that sometimes happens to my kind, but since our return to school, the bond has become irregular."

I stared up at him, my mind still reeling, not able to process his words properly. "Our bond?"

"You can no longer deny it," he said. "Whether it's unwelcome to you or not, we're linked. Our feelings are shared, our dreams…" He seemed as if he was going to say something else, but he fell silent.

"When you hurt your leg on the helicopter, I got a bruise," I admitted.

He nodded. "That's unusual, but not unheard of in very strong empathic bonds. What's happening here goes beyond that." A shadow passed across his face.

My brain was still too fried to come up with any suggestions for the weirdness. I couldn't do much more than stand upright and let that feeling of tranquility from his hands wash over me.

"I suspect it's because of your irregular gene," he said eventually, sounding as if he was talking to himself.

He didn't explain what he meant, and I didn't ask. Taking in any more information seemed impossible at that point. I could still feel the power pulsating under my skin. Whatever it was, it wasn't going anywhere. I had to get rid of it, or it would destroy me.

"So, we're bonded," I said, the idea still not really sinking in. I had no idea what it meant, not really. "If we get rid of the bond, does that mean I'll stop freaking out?"

He stared at me for a moment, his deep blue eyes seeming to search my soul. Maybe they were. I had no clue how this kind of thing worked.

"I've never heard of it being possible to break a bond," he said finally. "However, it's typically something that happens through a consensual arrangement, not like… this."

He sounded so disgusted that I wanted to pull away from him, but I couldn't bear to end that feeling just yet. "Surely, if something is made, it can be broken," I said.

"At any rate, I see no alternative but to try," Tennyson replied. "This isn't a situation that can continue. It's quite unacceptable."

As he dropped his hands and turned away, I couldn't help but feel the slightest bit disappointed.

Chapter 7

The others were all awake and waiting for us as I followed Tennyson into the Golden House common room. I felt nervous about facing them for some reason, which was dumb. It just seemed like nothing was as it should be, as if something fundamental had shifted.

Tennyson stood by the unlit fireplace, and everyone sat facing him. I took a seat on the sofa beside Althea. Everyone looked tense, and I wondered how much of what had happened they'd sensed. They weren't usually awake this early, so they must know at least some of it.

"As senior member present, I hereby call to order this meeting of the Wilde pack," said Tennyson, looking solemn. He always had to make such a production of things.

The other three looked at me with huge, shocked eyes.

"Tennyson…" Nikolai said, sounding unusually wary. "You realize there's a human here, don't you?"

"Everything will be explained much more quickly without interruption," said Tennyson. He looked tired and not coping, and I'd never seen him look like that before. He must really hate being bonded to me. "It appears that due to complications with the spell that switched our consciousnesses, Lucy O'Connor and I have been the inadvertent participants in a soul bond."

The reactions were way more dramatic than I'd expected. Althea gasped and clutched my hand. Nikolai burst into laughter. Sam stood up with a clatter as the book he had been holding fell to the floor. He looked from Tennyson to me with betrayed eyes and then walked out of the room.

Tennyson sighed, then continued with his announcement. "There are some peculiarities with this particular bond that have led to it being more" — he glanced at me with an unreadable expression — "intense than any soul bond I have heard of."

"In what way?" Nikolai asked. His eyes were lit up with an evil glee. He was enjoying this way too much.

"Physical sensations are shared, for one thing," Tennyson said.

Nikolai snickered, and Althea slapped him on the shoulder.

"Injury as well," Tennyson continued, paying Nikolai no mind. "And Lucy has been undergoing some changes that seem inconsistent with anything I've read about." He seemed at a loss to explain, and I understood why. It was hard to put those feelings into words.

"I feel like I'm undergoing some sort of metamorphosis," I said. "But it's overwhelming, and I'm not sure my body can handle it."

Tennyson nodded. "It causes her to act irrationally, like an injured animal. Also, it seems to generate some sort of internal power that causes her to glow."

If I'd hoped that Althea had some secret knowledge about this kind of thing, like she sometimes seemed to, I was in for a disappointment. She just stared at me with a kind of blank hopelessness.

"Does it help to be close to him?" she asked quietly, as if she didn't want the others to hear. Nikolai especially, probably.

I shook my head. "That makes it worse, but…" I leaned in closer to whisper. I really didn't want Nikolai making his dirty little comments about this. "If he touches me, the feeling goes away."

Nikolai burst into laughter again. I'd forgotten about the heightened hearing thing.

"I wonder if it has something to do with the dormant gene your father mentioned," Althea said. "The zero gene, I think he called it?"

I nodded. "He said that unless something provoked it, it wouldn't do anything."

That was why Sam had seemed like just a normal kid for the first twelve years of his life, until he'd been captured by the Others.

Althea nodded. "Yes. So, perhaps when Tennyson was in your body, because he's not completely human, that triggered the gene."

Fear shot through me completely, turning me so cold that I began to shiver. "I'm turning wolfy?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. At least, nothing you've said makes it seem that way. The lycanthropy triggered the gene, but it can't change it into something other than what it would have been if it had always been active."

I chewed on my thumbnail as I thought about what she was saying. "Is that even possible?" I asked her. "It seems a bit sci-fi."

She gave a little shrug. "It happens all the time. Say you're allergic to legumes. You live all your life thinking everything is fine, and then one day you eat a peanut."

"Isn't that just not knowing you're allergic?"

She shook her head. "It's obviously more complicated than that, but it's the same basic principle."

I knew it made sense; I just didn't want it to make sense. I didn't want to change into some sort of supernatural thing. It was hard enough just being a regular girl.

"It's clearly not that at all," said Nikolai, almost bouncing in his seat. "It's a mate bond, obviously."

"This isn't a joke, Nikolai," said Tennyson. His eyes gleamed, and Nikolai stopped bouncing.

"I'm not joking," Nikolai said, though he totally had been. "The most intense bonds are always mate bonds. Because emotions are involved, the bond can have unprecedented effects. Tell them, Al."

Althea nodded. The traitor. "That's true, though I still think it's got more to do with the dormant gene."

"It is not a mate bond," I said. "No way. No mating here at all."

I wasn't entirely sure what a mate bond might involve, but it was not happening, ever.

"Whatever type of bond it is, we need to end it," said Tennyson. "It's a danger to us both, and we can't allow it to continue."

"Tennyson…" said Althea, looking sad.

"It has to be possible," he told her. "If something is made, it can be broken."

He met my eye then and gave me a nod. I nodded back.

"Let's get to work," I said.

We scoured every book in the Golden library, and Althea sent a message to get more sent from home. All weekend, I read musty old books, trying to find some way out of this situation. I didn't sleep. My back ached and my eyes blurred, but I forced myself to pay attention. If I could stop this, I could stay human. That was what it boiled down to. So, I had to do everything I could do break the bond.

Tennyson didn't sleep, either. He sat beside me, occasionally touching me on the wrist or the back of the hand if he felt me starting to lose it again. Althea and Nikolai drifted in and out, but if Sam was around, he didn't come near us.

Before I knew it, it was Monday morning.

"We have to go to class," Tennyson said.

I glared at him over the cover of my book. "You're joking, right?" There was nothing on the planet I wanted to do less than go to class. I wanted to sleep or shower or not be suffering from repeated supernatural hijinks. "How about you go to class, and I'll just be there empathetically while I nap?"

"Fine, I'll rephrase," he said. "I have to go to class. And I'm not comfortable with you being too far away. If you have another attack, it will affect me too, and I need to be able to get to you before anything bad happens."

I sighed. "Fine, but I need a shower and some clean clothes."

Morning classes were almost over by the time we got to school, and I started to worry when I realized that Tennyson wasn't in my English class.

"You were fine with being separated when you were going to nap."

I shrugged. "Well, it's not as if I can ever get away from you, then, is it?"

Our classes were in the same wing, but when Tennyson turned down a corridor and I kept climbing the stairs, my heart started to jackrabbit.

"You'll be fine, you'll be fine, you'll be fine," I repeated to myself.

You'll be FINE, Tennyson said inside my head. Now, be quiet. I need to concentrate, and people are looking at me strangely.

Such a jerk, I told him.

But he was right: I was fine. I joined in the class discussion on Hamlet, and things felt almost normal. But, toward the end of the period, I started getting a little antsy. That feeling, which had been simmering below my skin, began to boil. My mind began to swirl. Oh, man. I really hoped I didn't start to glow in English class. That wouldn't be easy to explain.

"May I please be excused?" I said, then grabbed my stuff and ran from the room.

Once again, I was blind, rushing around in a panic. Only this time, I had a definite destination in mind. I had to get to Tennyson Wilde.

I met him on the stairs, almost crashing into him in my need to be close to him. It was so wrong — Tennyson Wilde, of all people — but I had no control over it.

He grabbed me by the hands, and it was like taking a breath after being held underwater. I came back to myself with a thud. I was standing in the main stairwell, hand in hand with Tennyson Wilde. He was standing a few steps below me, so we were at the same height, his eyes on a level with mine as we stared at each other.

My life had taken a most unexpected turn. I knew I needed to step away from him, to let him go, but I was still out of control.

"Am I glowing?" I whispered.

He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing me. "Not noticeably."

I was going to let go of him. Any second now. Just as soon as that calm feeling had maxed out.

The bell rang, and people started flooding out of the classrooms into the halls.

"Come on," Tennyson said, dragging me down the stairs by my hand.

People stopped and stared as they saw us dash by, but still, I couldn't let go of him. I was too afraid of what would happen if I did. Of what I'd become. But, man, I would be staying off social media for the next week, because nobody would have anything good to say about this.

We got outside to the courtyard, and he let go of my hand.

"You're okay now," he said. It wasn't a question.

"What are we going to do?" I asked him, struggling to keep up with his long stride. "We can't just spend the rest of our lives with each other."

"We won't have to," he said, stopping suddenly and turning to face me. "The bond is unstable because it wasn't forged properly."

I nodded. I'd learned at least that much in all my reading over the weekend. Normally, it was a really involved process that opened a clear line between the two people, an open channel for their "souls" to communicate back and forth. But because our bond had been a mistake, there was no clear path, and our "souls" had to keep finding shortcuts or hacking out a way through, which was why everything got so messy.

"Right, but the only way to fix that is to create a proper bond," I said. "Which is the opposite of what we want."

All the books were clear on one point: a bond that was made in the proper way could never be reversed. But none of them said anything about whether or not an accidental bond could be reversed, or, even better, how.

"We'll find a way to break it," he said. "There is no alternative."

He turned again and walked away, trusting that I would follow.

Chapter 8

Our afternoon classes were together. but Tennyson had polo later on, and because he was the captain, he couldn't get out of it.

"It'll be fine," he muttered to me in chemistry as we waited for the bell to ring. "If we stay in contact through our minds, I'm sure it'll be fine. Though, I don't know why you refuse to come to polo practice with me."

I rolled my eyes. "There are a lot of reasons," I told him. "Pick one."

Like the way people were glaring at me enough as it was, or the way that polo was evil.

The bell rang, but instead of everyone rushing out like they normally did at the end of the day, they hung back. I thought it was strange, but then when we left, they followed us. They obviously wanted to see if Tennyson and I were going off to canoodle somewhere. Tennyson didn't even notice — I guessed he was used to that sort of thing — but I kept a sharp eye out. Charlotte Du Pont had once threatened me just for speaking to Tennyson, and I didn't want to get caught somewhere unawares by a bunch of his fangirls. I tried to stay ahead of them as Tennyson went off toward the polo grounds, not even saying goodbye, and I turned toward the Red House.

Sleep. I needed sleep. Everything would seem better after sleep. I could hopefully forget all this for a few hours, and when I woke up, I'd be refreshed and ready to find some answers. Sleep was everything.

But it would have to wait. Sam was waiting for me on the steps of the Red House.

"Come in," I told him. I didn't want to risk letting the others into the house before me so they could lie in wait. Maybe I was paranoid, but I'd spent enough time around these people to know not to leave them an opening.

Sam followed me up to my room without saying a word. I had no clue why he was there; he hadn't seemed eager to talk to me earlier.

You seem bothered. Is everything all right?

I gave a small start. The appearance of Sam had almost made me forget Tennyson.

I'm fine. Just go torture some horses.

I wouldn't have thought it was possible to sigh psychically, but Tennyson managed it.

I let Sam into my room warily. At least Katie's insane cleaning obsession meant that the room wasn't a mess, but I never knew when she'd pop up, and I had the feeling this wasn't going to be a conversation I'd want overheard.

I motioned for Sam to sit on the sofa, but it felt weird to sit there with him, so I went over to the little kitchenette area.

"Something to drink?" I asked, my voice sounding too loud.

He shook his head, which left me with nothing to do. I leaned against the bench and folded my arms across my chest so I would feel less vulnerable.

"So…" I said.

"I'm sorry I haven't been helping with your research," he said.

I shrugged. "You're not obligated."

"I am, actually, if it's something that affects my pack. But that's not why I'm sorry." He picked at a thread on his pants. "I've been bitter and petty, and I'm sorry."

I raised an eyebrow. "Okay…"

"You were my best friend, and then Tennyson — he's like a brother to me. You're the two most important people in my life, and that you have this bond with each other… I suppose I was jealous. I let that get in the way of helping you, and I'm sorry."

I wondered how I'd be reacting if Sam had bonded with some other girl. Not well, probably. But I doubted I'd have the guts to own it like Sam just had.

I took a deep breath and sat down in the armchair. "I don't even like Tennyson that much," I told him.

He huffed out a laugh that didn't sound genuine. "Still," he said. "It's always the two of you in these situations together."

"To be fair, sometimes it's just me. Or everyone."

He shook his head as if I was missing the point, but I wasn't. It made me wonder which of us he was jealous of, me or Tennyson. It hadn't escaped my notice that he'd spoken about our friendship in the past tense. I supposed that had been my call, but it still stung.

"Look, I get that you're upset, but it's not as if people can just replace other people. Even if Tennyson and I someday stop despising each other, it's not as if either of our feelings about you would change. It's totally separate. I mean, just because donuts are delicious doesn't mean I want to stop eating grilled cheese, right?"

"I'm grilled cheese?" Sam asked, his smile seeming more genuine now. "That's kind of plain. Can't I at least be lasagna?"

I smiled back at him. "I don't know if you have enough layers for lasagna."

He clutched at his chest. "Ouch."

My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out to look at the screen. It was a message from my dad. That gave me an idea.

"Look, we've both hurt each other, right? Whether intentionally or not. So, maybe we should just let those things cancel each other out. Call it even."

He nodded. "You're not mad at me anymore?"

I thought about it for a moment and realized that without even meaning to, I’d forgiven him. "I'm over it," I told him. "And, actually, I'm supposed to go meet up with my dad now. Do you want to come along?"

A wary look crossed over his face, as if I was putting him through some sort of test.

"That's okay," he said. "I think it's better if you guys spend some time together by yourselves. If he needs to say anything to me, he can do it through you. It's better if we all know where we stand."

I nodded. That sounded fair. "Well, he's waiting for me, so I'd better get going."

As I got up to find my coat, I checked in with Tennyson.

You need to spend some quality time with Sam, I told him.

We met at the lighthouse again, but this time my dad was already waiting for me. He paced back and forth as I approached, but when he saw me, he stopped and sat down on the step, as if he wanted to appear less agitated than he was.

"Your message sounded urgent," I said. "What's up?"

He narrowed his eyes, looking up at me. I couldn't tell if he was suspicious of me for some reason, or if he was squinting into the setting sun.

"I have some follow-up questions about what you told me Sam said."

I raised my eyebrows. "And you couldn't send them in a text?"

"I'm not in the habit of sending sensitive information through unsecure channels, and neither should you be."

I didn't want to talk to him about what Sam had told me. It had been a while now since I'd seen Tennyson, and I kept reaching out to be sure he was still there. It was a strain to be apart. I should've told my dad to wait and met up with Tennyson before coming out here. I should've known my dad would bring up stuff that might bother me. I was a big dumb dummy, and this was going to go badly. I just knew it.

"Anyway, I don't think Sam knows anything more than he told me. It seemed a strain for him to remember that much." I wanted to nip any potentially alarming questions in the bud.

"Do you think he'd let us take him back to the place where he was found? If we could retrace his steps, it might help him."

I sighed. "I don't know. He's still pretty fragile. I'll ask, but don't expect much."

"Are you okay?" he asked. "You really do seem different. Has anything strange happened to you recently? Anything to do with magic?"

The way he asked it made me take a step back from him. He knew something about what was happening to me. I didn't trust him one bit, and every instinct I had told me to get as far from him as I could. But if he had answers, I had to get them from him.

Lucy?

I ignored Tennyson. "What do you know?" I asked my father.

Lucy, where are you?

"You know that different kinds of magic can trigger your dormant gene?"

I nodded. That was old news.

"If you're exposed to enough magic, it can bring about a transformation phase that we call the Becoming."

The world seemed to fall silent at his words. The way he said it, it sounded like a death sentence.

"Becoming?" I asked. "Becoming what?"

Lucy! Answer me.

"Becoming whatever it is you were destined to be," he said.

I scoffed. "That's a pretty pathetic non-answer."

"Becoming one of them." His eyes were dark, shadowed. “One of these sub-humans. The Becoming transforms people into something else, something paranormal. Something almost human but not."

I raised my eyebrows at the term “sub-human” but didn’t call him on it. Still, I wouldn’t be forgetting the tone he’d used when he’d said it in a hurry.

"So, what? Like a werewolf? A witch? A freaking mermaid? What?"

"It's not something we have a lot of information on," he said, but it sounded like a lie. "If it's happening to you, Lucy, you have to tell me."

"You haven't even told me what it is, so how should I know?"

But I knew. Oh, I really knew.

"As far as we know, it feels like being overtaken by a greater power from within," he said. "But reports are conflicting."

"And then what happens?"

"This is all speculative, you have to understand. Once the power overtakes the body, it then undergoes a kind of rebirth, and then the transformation is complete. Does any of that sound familiar to you?"

"No," I told him as Tennyson Wilde yelled inside my head. "Nothing like that here."

Chapter 9

My freakout when I left my dad was different from the other freakouts I'd been having. It was more of the usual type, that kind that didn't involve glowing. A "What the hell is my life?" kind of freakout.

I wandered around the forest in a daze, my father's words playing back in my mind, over and over. Becoming. Rebirth. Transformation. I didn't want any of that. I mean, I didn't love my weirdly-shaped, gangly body, but it was my body, and I was used to it. I knew how it worked and what to expect from it. And I was fine with that. My body and I, we understood each other. We had an agreement. You do the things I need you to do and I will give you pizza and other delicious things. We were on good terms. But this, this was far from anything I'd ever expected or wanted. This was really bad. Something inside was taking me over, and I wouldn't even know what until it happened. Like an evil lucky dip. Well, unlucky dip, I supposed.

"Lucy!"

Tennyson Wilde suddenly stood in front of me, snapping me out of my thoughts. And, man, did he look mad.

"I've been calling you for hours! I thought…" He shook his head and strode forward, hovering over me. He wanted to touch me, to calm me, I could tell, but he felt awkward about it.

"It's not your fault!" I told him. "I thought this all had something to do with the bond, but it doesn't."

"Yes, well, we can discuss it inside," he said, then took me by the hand and led me forward.

Rather than the feeling of calm it usually gave me, Tennyson's touch seemed to bring me back to myself. It felt as though I was a kite that had come untethered, and he had caught me and brought me back to Earth. I felt anchored to him, as if he was the only safe thing in all of existence.

As we walked, I realized we were in a part of the forest that I'd never seen before. I had no clue how I'd gotten there, which kind of extra freaked me out. It was such a huge forest, covering most of the island. Anything could have happened to me while I was spacing out. I could've wandered right over the edge of a cliff.

"How long since you slept?" Tennyson asked me.

"How long since you slept, more like it."

"I'm a superior being. Therefore, my stamina is much greater."

I rolled my eyes but didn't comment. He had made a valid point; I couldn't keep things up the way I was going.

"Tennyson, wait," I said, pulling him to a stop. Somehow, I wanted to tell him what my father had said without everyone else around.

He listened without speaking as I told him everything my father had said, his eyes dark and unreadable.

"Have you ever heard of it?" I asked him when I was finished. "This Becoming?"

He shook his head. "No, but it's more or less what we expected, isn't it?" He squeezed my hand. "Whatever happens, it doesn't matter. We'll get through it."

I stepped closer to him, looking up into his face. "Am I dying?" I asked him. "Is it really that bad?"

He furrowed his brow. "What are you talking about?"

"You're being super nice to me. It must be bad."

He rolled his eyes and turned to keep walking, dragging me along with him. "Don't be stupid, Lucy. I'm always nice."

I snorted.

"And at any rate, we're stuck together for the moment. Your problems are my problems. There's no point in making this harder than it already is."

What he said was logical, but it still seemed weird to me. The whole time I'd known him, we'd been in opposition, even when we were working for the same thing. To have him truly on my side seemed strange, unnatural.

"And, anyway," he said in a voice so quiet that I was sure he didn't mean for me to hear. "You're pack now."

His words filled a place in my heart that I hadn't even known was empty.

When we got to the Golden House, Tennyson sent me straight to bed while he went to fill everyone in about the new information. I'd been in his room before, both when I was tiny and when I'd been in his body, but it was different somehow, being there when I was my regular self. It seemed illicit in a way that being in Sam's room wasn't. It felt even weirder to get into his bed, so I just lay on top of the covers. The bed was firm, some sort of mega-expensive memory foam, I thought. It didn't move at all, no matter how much I wiggled around; it just stayed in exactly the same form. The pillow was a weird shape, sort of dipped in the middle. Normally, I liked to scrunch my pillow up into a little ball, but this pillow would not scrunch. But once I got used to it, it was super comfortable. For a weird pillow. The whole room was so Tennyson that I fell asleep without thinking too much about it.

It was still dark when I woke up, but someone had put a soft blanket over me. I felt as if I'd slept for weeks and my body had forgotten how to move. It took me a long time to haul myself back downstairs.

The other four were seated around the big table when I came in, books stacked up between them. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and sat down next to Althea.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Seven," said Tennyson.

I looked at him curiously.

"You slept all day."

"It's tomorrow?" I asked, alarmed. I'd missed a whole day of classes.

"We took notes for you," said Nikolai. "Well, our minions did. But they're very good. Color-coded."

"Thanks," I told him.

"You need to sign up for an activity, too," said Althea, handing me her tablet. "The deadline was today, but we asked for an extension for you."

I nodded. I hadn't even thought about activities. Tennyson did polo, and Nikolai had been in C&C club with me last year, but I had no idea what the others did.

"What are you guys doing?" I asked.

"Violin," said Althea, rolling her eyes. "Mother insists."

"I've left C&C," Nikolai said, looking up from his book and marking his spot with his finger. "Sorry. I know it was our special bonding time. This year I'm doing jazz ballet, if you want to sign up for that?"

"You know they probably won't all wear leotards, right?"

He shrugged. "I live in hope."

"I'm doing art club," said Sam, looking at me shyly. He'd always been really good at art.

Art club sounded fun, but my skills in that area were pretty laughable.

“None of you guys do sports,” I said, finding it odd. They all seemed like country club types who would play tennis or golf and wear white sun visors and polo shirts. It was so easy to picture. “Well, except polo, I guess. If that’s considered a sport.”

“Because of the lycanthropy,” said Althea. “It’s not allowed. Polo is different because of the horses, but even so…” She glanced over at Tennyson.

“Wait. Lucy doesn’t know about the…” Nikolai stopped talking when Tennyson shook his head.

“What?” I asked. “What don’t I know about?”

Tennyson sighed but didn’t answer, and I could feel his embarrassment.

“Have you ever actually seen Tennyson play polo?” Nikolai asked.

I hadn’t. “I’ve seen his horse,” I said.

“The horse that he bought for five million dollars because its previous owner was known for his cruelty,” said Althea quietly.

“Wait, are you only the polo captain so you can destroy the system from the inside?”

Tennyson shrugged and wouldn’t meet my eye.

I bit down on my smile as I scrolled through the list of clubs, feeling inexplicably pleased. I was about to give up and join Nikolai in jazz ballet when something caught my eye.

"Do you need a lot of equipment for fencing?"

If I was going to be in this strange paranormal world, really in it, it would be good to have some fighting skills. Althea had tried to teach me a bit, but we didn't have the proper equipment or facilities. I knew that if the Others came for me, they wouldn't be all, like, en garde, but anything I could pick up could only be helpful. Still, you needed fencing swords and masks and stuff, I guessed.

"Most of the equipment is provided, I think," said Althea. "For things like that, where safety is an issue, the school provides it so that it's at the right standard."

"Awesome," I said, clicking on the button to sign up.

I knew I should catch up on studying, but I felt bad working on something for myself when everyone else was researching on my behalf, so I pulled a pile of books closer and got to work.

"Why are all of your problems so obscure?" asked Nikolai after a while. "Why is it never anything that can be found with a quick Google search?"

"I know, right?" I said, then turned a page and scanned it for any sign of the word "becoming". So far, no luck.

"I mean, logically, it's going to be lycanthropy, right?" Nikolai continued, pushing the books away and leaning back in his chair. "Since it was triggered by Tennyson."

"It was triggered by a spell," said Tennyson. "So, she could be a witch."

"Well, at least that would make you retrospectively right," I told him. "You used to be so sold on the idea."

"I say we break for dinner," said Nikolai. "This could take months."

I felt as if I'd just started, but then, I hadn't eaten in over a day.

I'd just marked my spot and closed the book when Althea gave a little gasp.

"I think I've found something," she said, leaning in closer to the book so that her long dark hair made a curtain around her. "'When one with no power or ability undertakes the Becoming, their will is tested to ensure that only the worthy shall succeed. If they master the power within, the Rebirth shall be achieved during a transformative event, and thus the Becoming is complete.'"

There was silence all around the table.

"The transformative event is probably a full moon, most likely the solstice," said Althea eventually. "'The worthy' probably just means someone with the recessive gene.”

I wasn't so sure. "Why would the process even start if someone didn't have the gene?"

She shrugged. "This book is like 500 years old. People did strange things back then."

"At any rate, that part is irrelevant," said Tennyson. "Lucy's worthiness is not in question. More importantly, we need to find out when this transformative event will take place so that we can be prepared."

"Wait," I said. "I mean, it's nice that you think I'm awesome and won't die, but I thought we were all about stopping this. Stop the creepy transformation, break the creepy bond. Zero creepy, isn't that our motto?"

The others exchanged a look around the tablet that I did not like.

"Obviously, that's the ideal scenario," Tennyson said eventually. "But…"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by the intercom buzzing.

"Pizza's here!" said Nikolai. "Flown in specially. Let's eat and think about all this later."

Nikolai and Althea went to get the pizza, and Tennyson wandered off to do something, leaving me sitting there awkwardly with Sam.

"We just want you to be safe," he said.

I forced a smile. I'd heard that from him before. It was what had started all the trouble between us.

"My dad had some more questions for you," I told him, wanting to change the subject. We'd only just made up. I wasn't going to go into all that with him again yet. "I don't think you're going to like it."

He shrugged. "If it'll help, I'll do whatever you need."

"Wait ‘til you hear what it is before you agree," I said.

He moved over to Althea's seat beside me. "You know, what you're going through, it was similar to my change."

His eyes slipped out of focus for a moment, and I shivered. He'd gone through the same thing — the gene being triggered and changing him — but he hadn't had anyone there to support him. He'd been surrounded by enemies, evil creatures who wanted to hurt him. It was so hard to begin with; I couldn't even imagine what he'd been through.

"You'll get through this," he said, covering my hand with his. "I know you will."

And, just for that moment, I believed him.

Chapter 10

No matter how weird things got at Amaris, I always seemed to find a way to manage, and this was no different. Somehow, I found a balance between school, research, and spending enough time with Tennyson to keep me lucid. After meeting with my dad, I went a week without any freakouts, and ate a whole cake for lunch as a reward.

I was sitting alone at a table in the dining hall, patting my stomach in satisfaction.

"You'll be sick," Tennyson said, appearing at the table and looming over me.

"Cake would never betray me like that," I told him. "Cake is my friend."

He blinked at me. "Well, you'll be sick in a moment anyway." He pulled out the chair beside me and sat down, unaware of all the stares and whispers his actions were causing. "I have to go away."

My belly churned, and it wasn't the cake.

"What do you mean?"

"Something has arisen. A family matter." He waggled his giant eyebrows in a way that made him look stupid but I assumed meant the family matter had to do with lycanthropy.

"Why do you have to go?" I sounded like a whiny brat, but I didn't care.

"It's complicated."

"Well, can I come too?"

"My mother will be there."

His mother did not like me at all. If she learned about our bond, she'd probably keep Tennyson away from me just so I'd go crazy. Or something worse.

I sighed. "How long will you be gone?"

"A day. Maybe two."

I took a deep breath. "When do you leave?"

"Now."

I'm sorry, he said in my mind. Then he reached across the table and brushed his fingers across the back of my hand.

"I'm fine," I told him. "Just go do your thing. It'll be fine."

I pushed back from the table and walked away, but I could feel his eyes on my back until I got out the door.

I knew the exact moment he left the island. I was in history class and about to do a presentation on the Boston Tea Party, but it felt as though I was walking across a tightrope. The moment he was gone, the rope snapped, and I was falling. Down, down, I fell, into a bottomless pit.

Everyone stared at me as they waited for me to get up and walk to the front of the room. Their eyes were like darts, shooting out at me as I fell. And that feeling that had been simmering inside me this whole time once again began to boil.

I stood up, my fingers turning white as they clutched my tablet. Slowly, I walked to the front of the room and stood in front of the teacher's desk. I turned my tablet on and looked at the screen, not really seeing anything. That feeling grew inside of me, surging through my veins.

"The Boston Tea Party," I said. The words meant nothing to me.

The eyes disappeared. The whole room disappeared. Tennyson was gone and there was nothing left, nothing but that power inside of me, taking hold of me. Was I glowing? If I wasn't already, I would be soon. I had to get out of there. I had to get away.

My tablet fell to the floor with a clatter that I barely registered. I rushed for the door, but somebody stood in my way. I stopped for a moment, unsure of how to process this obstacle. Part of me knew it was Fatima, but the association meant nothing to me.

"Lucy, are you okay?" she asked, reaching out to touch my arm.

I pushed her away. Nobody should touch me, not now that Tennyson was gone. My push had more force that I was aware of, and she went flying back against the wall, then slumped to the floor with her eyes closed and her head tipped at a funny angle. I paid her no mind and ran from the room. I had to get away, to be alone. If this force was taking me over, I didn't know what would happen. I'd go back to my room, lock myself in and wait until Tennyson came back. Once he was back, I could deal with this power. Then, it would all be fine.

The world moved in a blur of color as I made my way back to my room. I moved purely on instinct, all my focus taken up with keeping that power at bay, with not being overcome by it. It felt as if I would never make it to safety, but finally, I got there. I locked the door and dashed to my bed, where I hid under the covers.

If I focused on my breathing, I'd be okay. All I had to do was keep breathing. Everything would be fine, and the power wouldn't defeat me, as long as I kept breathing.

"Hey."

Katie. I'd forgotten Katie.

"Don't you have class?"

Breathe in. Breathe out. I was fine.

"Hey, are you okay?"

She pulled the covers back and stared down at me. "Man, you do not look okay."

"Leave me alone, Katie," I said. "You don't want to be around me right now."

She nodded and sat down on her bed. "That's facts. I don't want to be around you most of the time. You're mean and rude and messy. But you know, I don't have much choice in it."

Her words were enough to pull me out of my freakout just a bit.

"What do you mean?"

Sure, we had to share a room, but that didn't mean she had to keep trying to force a friendship on me.

She raised her eyebrows at me. "You can't tell me you don't know."

I shook my head. "Katie, this is so not the time to be messing with me. I'm a ticking time bomb here."

She sighed. "I thought your dad told you. I thought that was why you didn't want to be friends."

With a strength I hadn’t known I had, I pushed that power right down. Whatever was going on with it, it could wait. This was more important.

"What do you know about my father?"

Katie pinched the bridge of her nose. "Oh, man, I did not sign up for this," she muttered, then looked over at me. "Our fathers work together."

"Oh," I said. A bunch of things clicked into place. How my dad could access the island so easily. How he’d known something was going on with me. "So, you're here to spy on me."

Katie shrugged. "Kind of. Among other things. Your father was worried about you." She waved a hand at me vaguely. "But, obviously, he was overreacting, right? You're totally fine?" She gave me a sarcastic smile.

"Whatever I am, it's none of your business," I told her. I sat up, pulling myself out of bed. "I can't believe I thought I was just being paranoid about you."

"Look, I get that you're mad at your father for whatever reason, but I'm not the enemy here. I know about your zero gene thing, and you're clearly in the middle of some serious kind of meltdown, so if there's anything I can do to help, you just have to tell me."

She sounded sincere, and in a way, I much preferred this straight-shooting Katie to the overly nice Katie she'd been when she was lying to me. Either way, I was done with being lied to and manipulated.

"Yeah, there's one thing you can do," I told her. "You can leave me the hell alone."

Walking out was the last thing I wanted to do. I had nowhere to go. But I couldn't stay there with her.

I knew I could go to the Golden House, but if I detonated, I didn't want to take them with me. Until I knew what I was, what I'd turn into, and what would happen when I did, I couldn't risk hurting anyone. For all I knew, I'd broken Fatima's neck. I couldn't be around anyone.

The only safe place for me was the forest.

I headed toward the lighthouse, because that was the path I knew best and I knew nobody else used it. It was growing cold; I could feel it on my skin, but inside, I was burning up. Although I knew the power wasn't sentient, it seemed as if it was angry that I'd pushed it down and was striking back at me with a vengeance. I fell to the forest floor, unmindful of the mud and leaves and bugs as I writhed with the torment inside of me. The power filled me, burning away everything that I had been to make room for what would come. I had no defenses against it. There was nothing I could do but lie in the dirt and let it take me.

But then, he was there. I couldn't see him with my eyes, but I could feel him like a cool breeze on a summer's day, a break in the weather during a heat wave. That feeling enveloped me and cooled my boiling blood until I gradually started to come back to myself. I was lying on the forest floor, covered in leaves and mud, and Tennyson Wilde was standing there beside me.

"You came back?" I whispered when I felt like I could speak.

He nodded. He looked more pale than usual, and I wondered what it was like for him when I had a freakout. Did he feel it with the same force that I did, or was it more like an echo?

He knelt beside me and held my face in his hands. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the touch, ignoring the strangeness of the situation, how much more intimate this seemed than his hand on my wrist. I wanted to feel this way forever, this quiet happiness that didn't ask anything from me. But eventually, I had to open my eyes.

"Fatima," I whispered. My throat was sore, as if I'd been screaming for hours. "I think I killed her."

He shook his head. "She's fine. But I think your history grade might not be."

"Did you just make a joke?" I asked him.

"No."

He stopped touching my face and stood up, offering me a hand to get up with him. I brushed the leaves off my clothes and tried to pick them out of my hair, but it was difficult enough for me to even stand upright, let alone anything more complicated.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

I nodded. The alternative would be… what? To have him carry me back to school? That seemed like a terrible idea. Still, it was slow going. I hobbled along, clinging to his arm like an old lady clinging to a walker while crossing a busy road.

"What about your family thing?" I asked him after a while, needing to break the silence between us. "Is it okay that you bailed on it? Or are you going later?"

I really hoped he wasn't going later. I didn't think I could handle this whole thing again.

"Althea went in my place," he said. "Mother will be angry, but it seemed like the only solution at the time."

"I'm sorry," I told him. "You shouldn't have to be at odds with your mother just because of me. You could've just let me suffer, so thank you."

He stopped walking and turned to face me.

"This isn't just happening to you alone," he said, his voice so cold that he seemed like the old Tennyson. I'd almost forgotten he used to sound like that. "It isn't as if I just suddenly think, 'Oh, Lucy seems to be having a hard time. I should completely rearrange my life for her'. It's not like the pack bond, where I would have an awareness of what you feel but I could disregard it. I feel everything you feel, as if it's happening to me too. If you really focused, you would be able to feel what I feel, but I think that because of this Becoming, you're probably unable to differentiate between which feelings are caused by that and which are mine. So, it's not as if I'm doing you some great service. I was unable to attend my family obligations because I was suffering from the same experience as you. It was only my superior mental fortitude that allowed me to return back to school and find you. It's incredibly fortunate for you that you bonded with someone with my training and skills."

I blinked at him, trying to process everything he'd said. I hadn't realized it was as bad for him as it was for me, that he was suffering the same thing. That really sucked for him. But I couldn't apologize. He wouldn't accept it, and it wasn't as if this was my fault, anyway. But I felt as if I understood him just a little bit better. Though, I wondered what particular training he’d done to be able to handle all this.

"But you realize that if I hadn't bonded with you," I said, "this wouldn't be happening at all."

"Well," he said, beginning to walk again. "You could've bonded with Nikolai, and then you'd be Becoming a pervert."

Chapter 11

Knowing that Tennyson could feel everything I felt was kind of awkward. By the time we got back to school, I felt almost normal again, but my thoughts were racing from one embarrassing scenario to another. Could he feel it when I needed to go to the toilet? Could he feel it whenever I saw Sam and my belly flipped? Could he feel it when I ate so much that I was slipping into a food coma but still kept on eating anyway? There were some things I just didn't want to share willy-nilly, and it wasn't as if I could ask him. The only way to know was to try to focus, like he'd said, and see if I could separate his feelings from the strange feelings of the Becoming.

The Golden House was all lit up when we passed through the gate.

"Everyone is worried," Tennyson said.

Sam was pacing in front of the fireplace when we entered the common room. Nikolai was staring vacantly into space, seeming more pale than usual. Their eyes snapped to the doorway as we entered. I'd always thought Nikolai didn't care much for me, that he only tolerated me because he had to, but he sagged in his seat when he saw us, a hand clapped over his face. Sam grabbed me up in a crushing hug.

"We thought you were dead, you idiot," Nikolai said to me. "Next time you can't handle something, say you can't handle it, instead of acting all tough and then trying to murder your history class."

I couldn't answer him, because Sam had squeezed all the breath out of me. Finally, he let me go and stepped back, his hands on my shoulders.

"You look a wreck," he said. "You should go have a hot bath and some rest."

I probably should, I knew that, but I didn't want to be that far from Tennyson just yet. I glanced over at him and knew that he could tell that. It was the perfect time to test whether I could feel his feelings too. Tentatively, I reached out through the bond, ignoring that bubbling power just under the surface that didn't belong to either of us. It was difficult, confusing, but all of a sudden, I could feel an exhaustion that was apart from my own. It was tinged with relief and exasperation and a bunch of other stuff, but it seemed shaded differently from my own feelings, almost as if he felt things in a different color than I did. That wasn't exactly it, but it was the closest I could come to understanding it.

"I think you should be saying that to Tennyson," I said.

He gave me a short nod, and I knew it wasn't because he agreed with what I said but that he was acknowledging that I'd felt what he was feeling. That he appreciated that I’d heard what he’d said and tried.

He was right: this was completely different from the pack bond that I'd experienced when I'd been in his body. It was much more personal.

"I'm not the one with leaves in my hair and dirt all over me," he said, and moved over to the table. "Have you heard from Althea?"

Nikolai nodded. "She messaged to say your mother was suspicious, but otherwise things were going well. You should let her know you're both fine, though. She was worried." He hesitated before he went on. "Tennyson, I think I might know somebody who can help with all this, but you're not going to like it."

Although I couldn't see Tennyson's face from where I was standing, his reaction could not have been clearer. It was as if now that I was aware of his feelings, I couldn't make myself unaware. He was wary, but pleased and proud that Nikolai was being open with him.

"It's a friend of my cousin's. A vucari."

I didn't understand the shot of fear that struck Tennyson at hearing that word. What was a vucari?

Nothing good, Tennyson told me.

Is there any harm in talking to them? I asked. How much worse can they make it?

Tennyson shrugged. "Contact them and ask for information, but don't give them any specifics about our situation."

Nikolai nodded and got up from the table. "I'll go talk to my cousin."

When Nikolai left the room, a nervous sort of tension seemed to replace him. I stood awkwardly between Tennyson and Sam, wondering if I should make an excuse to leave.

"I should go message Althea and then have some rest," Tennyson said before I could get the words out. He tapped me on the arm. "You need to rest too. Don't be long down here."

I nodded, amused by his bossiness.

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

"So…" Sam said.

"So," I said back.

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

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

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

"And Fatima's definitely okay?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He nodded at Sam. "Proceed."

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

Just copy me, Tennyson said. This is easy.

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

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

"Woah!" I said. "What was that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I heard the growl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tennyson snarled at her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They're coming," Tennyson said.

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

Nobody blames you, I told him.

He didn't respond.

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

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

"We're both fine," I said.

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

"So, nothing happened to you?" Nikolai asked. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and I rolled my eyes, but I was pleased he'd decided to ignore all the awkwardness.

"Nothing," I told him.

Althea clicked her tongue. "I was sure it would be the full moon," she said, pulling the book with the passage about the Becoming closer to her and going back over it. "I mean, maybe it’s the winter equinox, but I don’t see how much difference that would make. What else could it be?"

"No idea, but I'm fine with it not happening," I said. "Maybe things will be okay if they just stay like this."

I smiled at Sam, but he looked away. Okey dokey. That wasn't good.

"Nothing says that's possible," Althea said vaguely, running her finger over the page as if she could bring out a different meaning through touch.

"Maybe because she hasn't learned to control the power?" asked Nikolai.

"But I have," I said. "Kind of."

"It hasn't been tested," said Tennyson. "We just assumed that you have, but it's not as if you've been in a circumstance where you needed to control it."

"I can control it," I told him through gritted teeth before he came up with some bright idea like flying to Siberia to make sure everything was working fine. "Anyway, the book says I'd have died already if I hadn't mastered it, so obviously, I have."

"Flawed logic," he said, still looking down at his book.

He hadn't spoken in my head since we got back to the house.

"We need more information," said Althea, sounding frustrated.

"Maybe…" I said, an idea occurring to me that was so obvious that I was annoyed at myself for not thinking of it earlier. "We're looking in all these old books for an idea that's mostly new, right?" I turned to Sam. "Do you still have that book that our parents wrote? Do you have it here?"

He nodded but still didn't look at me. "I know what you're thinking, but I already read back through it to see if there was anything useful."

"Dammit," I said. It had seemed like the answer to everything for ten whole seconds.

"Still, there's a lot in there about genetics, isn't there?" asked Althea.

Sam shrugged. "You can read it if you like, but it's not exactly fun going. I'll go grab it."

I'd read the book before, and Sam was not wrong. A lot of it was pure science, and the theories were hard to grasp. Still, if anyone could get something useful from it, it would be Althea.

The atmosphere at the Golden House was so tense and uncomfortable that I didn't stick around for long. I took a few of the more promising books with me and made an excuse to leave.

I avoided being around the house for the next few days. Sam was obviously mad at me, or at Tennyson. Probably both. Althea seemed to think the fact that nothing had happened on the full moon was a personal failure of hers and was driving herself into the ground trying to find an explanation. No matter what anyone said or did, she barely ate or slept. Nikolai was Nikolai, and Tennyson hadn't reached out for me once.

Later that week, I had my first fencing club session. I had been looking forward to some physical exertion to take my mind off things, but for half an hour, the fencing instructor talked and talked and talked. The rules of fencing. The dangers of fencing. Tactics of fencing. With a slideshow that had way too much clipart. There were only three others in the club, two seniors and a freshman, all guys, and they were as bored as I was. I'd actually started to nod off when someone called out my name.

"Lucy! Wake up!"

I opened my eyes to see Nikolai right up in my face. I pulled back so fast that my chair almost overbalanced.

"While I do love to mock you and your inability to act like a human being, you need to come with me right now." He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out of the chair.

"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong? What happened?"

My first thought was that something had happened to Tennyson, and I felt almost paralyzed with fear. Would I even know, now that he was pushing the bond away? I reached out for him with my mind for the first time in days and almost sank to the ground in relief when I felt the familiar shade of him.

If something happened to him, would it happen to me too? If one of us died, would the other? Or would I just spiral out of control until I'd burned the whole world down? I could control the power now, but that was because I felt tethered to him. If that tether was cut loose, I wasn't so sure I'd be okay.

"Everyone is fine," Nikolai said, peeking into an empty classroom and dragging me in behind him. "My cousin's friend contacted me." He sat on the teacher's desk and gave me an expectant look, as if I was the one with the information to share.

"And?"

"Are you mind-melding with Tennyson right now? Can he hear everything you hear? Because I hate repeating myself."

I rolled my eyes. "It doesn't work like that."

Nikolai's heard back from his cousin, I told Tennyson, not expecting him to reply. He wants us to mind-meld so he can tell us both at once.

Tennyson didn't reply. Instead, I felt him like a freight train in my mind. All of my thoughts were tinged with that Tennyson Wilde shade, as if he were a demon possessing me.

"Woah," I said.

"You're mind-melding?" Nikolai asked, his eyes shining with evil glee. "Hi, Tennyson!" He waved in front of my face, as if my eyes were a webcam and Tennyson was on Skype.

"Technically, no," I said. "But we can both hear you. It's strange and unpleasant, so please do this quickly."

I couldn't tell if the words were mine or Tennyson's.

"So, my cousin's friend, Vucari —"

"Wait, his name is Vucari? Or he is vucari?"

That was Tennyson, because I had no idea what that even meant.

Nikolai shrugged. "I don't know. Both, probably. Does it matter? He told my cousin that the only person who can stop someone's Becoming is the one who started it."

"Hannah Morgan," I said, my heart sinking. "We'll never find her."

"Vucari said there's a ritual he can perform. He can't stop the Becoming, obviously, but he can give us more information. What event triggered the Becoming, what you'll Become, and if everything works well, even where the person is."

"What's the catch?" I asked.

"It's dangerous. The ritual is dangerous, and from what I can gather, Vucari is, too. You'll owe him a favor."

I nodded. "I'll do it."

Chapter 14

I thought it was the only logical choice. Do the ritual. Find Hannah. Rescue Hannah. End the Becoming. It was perfect — everything I wanted. But Tennyson did not agree, and I couldn't escape an argument with someone who could talk inside my head. I began to yearn for the past few days, when he hadn't been reaching out for me at all.

It isn't a feasible plan, he kept saying. We need to look at all the options and choose the best one, not jump at the first thing that's offered.

Over and over, he kept pushing his point. While I was in class, while I was in the shower, eating dinner, trying to sleep.

What other options? I asked him while I was lying in bed, sick of his yammering. I hoped that would shut him up, but no dice.

Your father, he said. He obviously knows something about the Becoming. It would be remiss of us not to explore all avenues of information.

Why do you talk like a fifty-year-old barrister? I asked him. Shut up now. I need to sleep.

But I couldn't push him away completely.

When we'd first met, when he'd been suspicious of me, he used to follow me around everywhere, watching me like a creepy weirdo. It hadn't been funny or cute then. It was even less so now.

He was waiting for me when I left the Red House to go to class. He skipped his own classes to sit in on mine. He walked down the halls beside me, and when I told him to quit bugging me, he walked half a pace behind. By lunchtime, I'd had enough.

"What is your problem?" I hissed across the table. "Are you trying to drive me crazy so I'll agree with you? Because I'd have to be crazy to want to discuss this with my father."

"That's not it," he said, not looking at me.

Well, what?

He shook his head.

The other three watched us like a tennis match.

"To be honest, Lucy, I don't really like the idea of the ritual, either," said Althea. "If that kind of thing goes wrong, it can be disastrous."

Nikolai nodded. "It's pretty dicey stuff. Even my cousin was wary about putting me in touch with this guy, and my cousin is the sketchiest guy in the family."

If Sam had an opinion, he'd have to speak to me to give it, so I was saved that, at least.

“What changed your mind?” I asked Tennyson. “Not too long ago, you were with me on this. We can’t trust him.”

Tennyson shook his head. “You don’t know about the vucari. What they’re capable of. Even if we can’t trust your father, I don’t believe he’d do anything to actively harm you. Can you say the same about someone you’ve never met, who has powers you can’t imagine?”

"Fine," I said, convinced by the shadows under Althea's eyes more than anything else. "I'll contact my father. But if he doesn't tell us anything useful, I'm going ahead with the ritual."

I didn't want them hovering over me while I sent the message, so I pushed back from the table to go do it outside, but as soon as I stood up, so did Tennyson. I waited until we were out of everyone's earshot before turning on him.

"So, what is it?" I asked him. "This creepy stalking is not okay, so you need to at least give me an explanation."

He sighed and looked away. "When I was in your mind, when we were talking to Nikolai…"

I nodded, worried about what he might've found while he was poking around in there.

"I felt it. That power. I've felt it before, of course, but not so directly, not as if it were in my own body."

"It frightened you," I said, suddenly understanding.

"No!" he said. "Of course not!"

I raised my eyebrows.

"I'm worried. That power — I've never felt a force like it. If it wants to take you, I don't see how we can resist it."

I laughed and hooked my arm through his, forcing him to sit down beside me at the edge of the fountain. "Tennyson Wilde, you fluffy marshmallow."

He scoffed and tried to pull his arm away, but not very hard.

"We beat it down before, and we can do it again," I told him. "Whatever it is, it's part of me, so by definition it must be kind of awesome, right?"

"That makes no sense," he told me. "Now, hurry up and message your father."

His voice was gruff, but I could see a smile curling at the edge of his mouth. I’d never seen him smile before, and it changed him entirely. All his harsh edges melted away, all his shadows. If he wanted to, he could shine brighter than the sun, I realized. Even that small spark was blinding. It took me a minute to look away from him and send the message.

"MEET ME IN ONE HOUR," my dad texted back almost immediately.

"Where is he that he can get here so fast?" I asked wonderingly. It would take me nearly that long to get to the lighthouse myself.

"I'm coming with you," Tennyson said.

I had no argument. I was nervous about meeting my father as it was. I still remembered how he'd treated Hannah when he was interrogating her, and it wasn't such a leap to see myself in her place.

"He's your father," Tennyson said as we walked through the forest. "He won't hurt you."

But he'd already hurt me as badly as he could when he left us. It might not be exactly the same thing, but he'd known what he was doing, how we'd all feel. He'd known Mom was sick and I'd be left to nurse her. He’d known we’d have no money, no one to rely on.

I don't trust him, I told Tennyson.

He squeezed my hand.

My father was waiting already when we got there.

"Do you, like, live in a houseboat just off the shore or…?"

"This is not a joke, Lucy."

Mostly, when I looked at my dad, I thought he looked old, tired and used up. Not today. Today, he was filled with something dreadful, and it made him strong.

He glanced at Tennyson Wilde, his face filled with disdain, then he looked down at our linked hands. His face turned white.

"So?" I asked him, not wanting to get any closer to him. "I asked what you know about the Becoming. Do you have information or not?"

"I do."

I motioned for him to go on, but he shook his head.

"What are you doing with him?" he asked. "You can't trust him."

I choked out a laugh. Tennyson squeezed my hand.

"Look, I'm not here to argue Tennyson Wilde's alleged merits," I said. "I want to know about the Becoming. I want to know how to stop it."

My father let out a long breath. "So, it's true?" He rubbed a hand across his forehead. "From when the two of you swapped?"

I nodded, and my father's eyes grew wide.

"Oh!" he said, narrowing his eyes at us. "You have a bond. Yes, a strong one. I can almost see it."

I took a step backwards. I didn't want him looking at our bond. It was something private, just between the two of us.

"He knows nothing," I told Tennyson. "I'm doing the ritual."

I turned to walk away, but my father was suddenly right beside me. He grabbed my arm.

"What ritual?"

I shrugged. "This guy, he knows a ritual to get information about the Becoming. What I'll turn into and how to find the person who can stop it."

"Vucari," Tennyson said, meeting my father's eyes over the top of my head.

My father's grip tightened on my arm. "These are the sort of people you associate with." He shook his head. "You can't do this ritual. It will ruin you."

I snorted. "You're not giving me any other option. What do you expect me to do?"

"Come with me," he said, pulling on my arm, trying to pull me away from Tennyson. "You can’t trust the Wilde pack. They only want you for your power. It wouldn't surprise me if they forced this bond because they knew what you would Become."

I moved away from him and closer to Tennyson.

"And, do you know?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "I can protect you. From the Wilde pack. From the Others. Come with me, and I'll sever this bond and you can be free."

The thought filled me with panic, and almost immediately, the power began to bubble inside of me. Even Tennyson's hand gripping mine did nothing to stop it. It bubbled and boiled until I thought it would rise up like a snake and strike out at my father.

But before it could, my father placed a hand on the top of my head. Tennyson gave a yell and surged forward, and everything went white.

Chapter 15

I woke up in a dark room. I knew nothing except that I couldn't move and that Tennyson was far, far away.

I lay there for the longest time, reaching out, trying to feel him, the shades of him, but there was nothing. Then I remembered what my father had said about severing the bond, and I began to scream.

I screamed until my voice gave out. The power was still bubbling inside of me, but I didn't care. I wanted it, wanted to let it take me. I could implode, and what would it matter? Tennyson was gone. The power writhed inside of me, and I could feel it all through my body. I wanted it to take me over. I could Become. I would Become something terrible and have my vengeance on everyone who had taken Tennyson from me. I didn't know if he was alive or dead, but it felt as if the whole world was devoid of him, like he had been wiped from all history and memory. I felt the absence of him like an abyss inside of me.

And that abyss was where the power was drawn to, as if it had belonged there the whole time. The power boiled and churned throughout me, but the overflow flooded into that spot behind my breastbone, that hollow place where Tennyson had been. It didn't soothe me, for the power to fill that place, but it felt satisfying in a righteous kind of way.

When the door opened and the light came on, I was ready.

I couldn't see at first, after being in the dark for so long, but once my eyes had gotten used to the light, I could see my father standing in the doorway. I opened my mouth to say something scathing, but my voice wouldn't work because of the screaming. My arms and legs were chained to a crappy old bed that looked as if people had been dying on it for years but nobody had ever bothered to clean it. The room was dank, with rising damp around the walls. The door was solid iron, but rusty. For a moment, my father just stood there silently, and the only sound was dripping water.

"This is for your own good," he said eventually. "It might not seem like it right now. You probably hate me, and I understand that. I just want what's best for you."

"You're crazy," I forced out, my throat feeling like fire.

He smiled down at me. "I can see why you'd think that." He sat down at the edge of the bed and took my hand, pulling my wrist at an awkward angle. "I'm going to help you, Lucy. You wanted my help, didn't you?"

I shook my head. "Get away from me," I whispered.

I closed my eyes, reaching for the power inside of me. I didn't know what it would do, whether I would be able to harness it in any productive way, but if I could use it to just push him away from me, that would be something, at least.

"My baby girl," he said, then pulled a syringe from his shirt pocket and uncapped it with his teeth.

I writhed around on the bed, trying uselessly to get away from him. The power churned inside of me, but I had no way of getting it out. I didn't know how to use it. I did the only thing I could think of. I called for help.

Tennyson! I screamed inside my mind. Help me!

But, as my father injected the syringe into my arm, I remembered that Tennyson wasn't there.

I drifted in and out of consciousness for what might have been days, or might have been years. There were times when I knew where I was but couldn't move, couldn't do anything. Those were the worst times, like a nightmare or a horror movie.

Other times, I saw things. They seemed real. I wanted them to be real. Althea riding through the forest on a rainbow unicorn. Nikolai was the moon, and his face was made from cheese. Sam had a curly moustache and danced the cha-cha around the world. The world was papier mache. When it rained, the world fell to pieces, but somebody always made it anew. Katie Canterbury and Hannah Morgan merged together to make a Roomie-zilla, and they trampled all the mean girls at school.

But in all my hallucinations, there was no Tennyson Wilde. There was only a shadow on the wall in the shape of him.

My father appeared at random times. Sometimes he was real, but other times, I couldn't be sure. He told me things that made no sense. Stories of where he had been since he left us, what he had done. Sometimes, I could see these stories playing out in front of me like little Claymation figures.

Whenever I was lucid, I tried to keep myself together enough to send a message to Tennyson. Even if he was dead, even if our connection had been severed, maybe someone would hear. Maybe one of the pack would be able to sense me and could somehow track me down. I couldn't be just another girl who had vanished from Amaris High that nobody ever talked about, like Hannah.

I tried to send him details, though I didn't know which ones were real.

I think I can hear a train, I told him.

There were no windows, so, even if I hadn't been chained down, I'd have no idea of what was outside, but the building itself might be a clue.

It's a small room with an iron door, I told him. When he comes in, his footsteps echo, like he's coming from a long corridor. I think it might be an old hospital. No, that wasn't quite right; why would a hospital need such heavy doors? Or an asylum. I shivered.

But there weren't many times when I was lucid. It was always right before my father entered to dose me up again.

I hate him, I told Tennyson. And because I was sure he couldn't hear, I added, I miss you.

I was on a lot of drugs, but I could've sworn I heard him say, Wait for me. I'm coming.

I knew it couldn't keep on like that, but I didn't know how to stop it. Every time my father came in, I tried to talk to him, but nothing I said seemed to make any difference. I threatened him, begged him, screamed at him and cried, but he just calmly took me by the hand and pumped me full of drugs. I tried everything I could think of — everything but the one thing that would turn my father's betrayal inward, turn it to myself. I didn't think I could do that — sell out Tennyson and our bond and give my father what he wanted.

But then, one day, as my father entered my room with that benevolent smile on his face, I realized something. I didn't need to betray Tennyson. I just needed my father to believe I had.

"Daddy," I whispered as he sat down. "Daddy, I'm ready."

His hand froze halfway to his pocket to get the syringe. He shifted to face me directly, staring me in the eyes. I needed to sell it, to make him believe. The power inside me swirled around in the place where Tennyson used to be, and it felt like biting down on a sore tooth. I ignored it. I thought back to the me of a year ago, when I'd first met Tennyson. He'd been such a jerk. Well, he was still a jerk, only now I understood him. But before the bond, before the body swap, he'd seemed so cold, so alien. Not someone you'd ever want a connection with.

I'd hated him.

Even as I thought that, I knew it was a lie. He'd been compelling. It was impossible not to be aware of him, to watch him. Part of the reason he'd made me so angry was that I couldn't hate him. But I needed to believe I did.

Whatever I did, it was enough to convince my father.

He nodded. "Very well," he said. "We'll perform the procedure to sever your bond tonight." His face shone with approval, and it made me want to throw up. "You're a good girl, Lucy. We'll cure you of this, I promise."

"Thanks Dad," I said, forcing a smile. "So, can you maybe unchain me now?"

He smiled back at me and shook his head like I was a cute but slow puppy. "Not yet, Lucy. Not until we have you safe."

I held on to my composure with everything I had until he had closed the door behind him. Then I let out a long breath. I was sure there were cameras in there, watching me, so I didn't cry or scream or do anything to give myself away. I just closed my eyes.

My father's words had told me something for sure.

Tennyson was still alive, and our bond was intact.

Come for me, I told him. It has to be today.

Chapter 16

My head was clearer than it had been in ages. Even before my father had kidnapped me, my thoughts had been a mess with the bond and the Becoming and everything else that was going on, but lying there in that darkened room waiting to be rescued, I found clarity.

I'd blamed magic for all my problems, but that wasn't the issue at all. I'd made a series of choices that had led me to this place. I'd always tried to do what was right, ignoring my instincts to the point where I was so confused, it was impossible to even tell what was right. But one thing was clear now. My bond with Tennyson — that was right. The power inside me — that was right too. It was part of me, and I needed to accept it.

But my father, and the people he worked with, and whatever they were doing was so far from right. Kidnapping girls and performing weird procedures on them — you didn't need to be a genius to realize something was iffy there, but more than that, it was a pervasive feeling I had that said something was rotten here, right to the core.

But it wasn't as if I could do anything about it, lying there chained to the bed. I waited for help to arrive, for my pack to storm in and rescue me. I waited, and I waited. There was nothing to mark the passage of time but the dripping of water. I counted the drips. One hundred drips. One thousand drips. Ten thousand. But no help came. Twenty thousand, thirty thousand. I'd almost gotten to fifty when the door opened. But it wasn't my pack that came through.

"Are you ready?" my father asked.

There were two men behind him, dressed in what looked like surgical scrubs. I bit down on my panic.

"If you're not sure about this, the procedure may have some serious side effects, so I need you to be sure."

"We're doing the procedure," one of the evil doctors said.

My father turned to him and said something quietly which I was clearly not meant to hear. But I heard him.

"Nevertheless, she needs to have all the information," he said. "It's the law."

I could have laughed. Since when did he care about the law?

"What kind of side effects?" I asked. The longer I kept them talking, the more time the pack had to get there and stage my rescue.

My father approached the bed. "It depends on the strength of the bond," he said. "If it's weak, there may be some nausea and vomiting, headaches, but nothing permanent."

"And if it's strong?"

It was strong. But obviously not strong enough for Tennyson to find me.

My father hesitated before speaking. "In stronger bonds, the procedure can cause bleeding from the eyes, ears and nose, severe abdominal cramping… Lucy, you'll be fine. You don't need to know all this, not if you're committed to the outcome."

"Tell me," I said.

"There can be permanent brain damage on both sides of the bond, and in the absolute worst case scenario, heart failure."

"On both sides?" I said.

He nodded.

Hurry up, you loser, I said desperately. They're going to kill us both.

"Can I have some more time to think?" I asked, glancing at the evil doctors. "I've been on a lot of drugs, you know? My decision-making process is a bit foggy."

My father patted my hand. "You'll be fine, Lucy. Just be sure to reject the bond in your heart and mind, and no harm will come to you."

He sounded like some sort of cracked televangelist, and that was when I realized I was well and truly screwed.

The power rose up inside me so quickly that there was no way I could have prepared for it. My body was filled with it, and I didn't resist. I glowed so brightly that I had to close my eyes, but I didn't need to see. I was aware of everything — every speck of dust, every atom in the room.

I pulled myself free of the chains and stood up.

"Stop her!" my father yelled.

"How is she doing this?" shouted one of the evil doctors. "The iron door!"

There was no way I was letting them touch me. I'd walk right out of there, and anyone who got in my way would be crushed like a bug. But before I could even get out of the room, I felt something pierce my neck. I reached up to feel what it was and found the end of a dart that was lodged deep in my neck. I didn't have time to pull it out before my glow faded and I fell back onto the bed, helpless.

I was still conscious, but I couldn't move. They chained me back down to the bed and wheeled me out of the room, and there was nothing I could do about it. I didn't know what had been in that dart, but I couldn't feel the power inside me anymore. It was as if they'd just flicked a switch and shut it off.

The florescent lights flashed by as they wheeled me down the corridors and into a room. I could see all sorts of weird machines around me, hear them humming and beeping, but I couldn't turn my head to see what they were. They unchained me, and I was lifted onto a high table or workbench. I could feel cold metal beneath me as they slipped leather cuffs around my ankles and wrists and buckled them into place.

My father's face appeared in my field of vision, smiling down at me from the top of my head. I wished I could reach up to claw that smile right off his face.

"It will all be over soon, Lulu," he said.

I couldn't blink, and a tear slid down the side of my face. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't force myself to want to break the bond when the very idea appalled me, but if I didn't, both Tennyson and I could die.

One of the evil doctors appeared beside me. He wrote something on my forehead with a marker pen, then turned away. The other appeared on my other side with a long needle. I thought it would be a sedative, that they'd knock me out, but I was wrong.

"This might feel uncomfortable," said my father. "You need to be lucid for the procedure to have any effect, but it can be unpleasant."

The evil doctor held the needle above my eye. Every instinct I had willed that eye to close as he lowered the needle toward it, but I couldn't move a muscle. Inside my head, I was screaming, but I couldn't make a noise.

Just as the needle was about to enter my eye, there was a mighty crash, and the evil doctor pulled away.

There was a lot of loud banging and shouting, but I had no way of knowing what was happening. I hoped that one of the evil doctors had poured some evil doctor concoction all over himself and was in the middle of transforming into a flesh-eating slug who would then eat the other doctor, but that seemed too good to be true.

Something knocked into the table I'd been laid out on, and I jolted to the side. I had no idea what was going on until someone grabbed me by the wrist. All of my senses jumped back to life as Tennyson's face came into view.

The cavalry had finally arrived.

"She's alive!" he called out. "I can feel her pulse."

He unbuckled my restraints and then turned away as if he expected me to follow, but I still couldn't move.

Are you all right? he asked.

Hearing his voice in my head made it all seem real, as if he was actually there and this wasn't some drug-induced hallucination.

I can't move, I told him. They've dosed me up with something.

He turned back to lift me from the table, and I was surprised at his strength. Even though I knew he was a werewolf, his wiry frame had lulled me into a false sense of him being a weakling. He lifted me easily, one arm around my shoulders, one under my knees. He was warm after lying on the cold metal, and his sweater was soft.

Now that I wasn't on the table, I could see what was happening. Nikolai and Althea had the two evil doctors trapped in a corner between a supply cupboard and a filthy sink. Sam was back to back with them, facing off with my father, a trolley full of strange silver instruments between them. Sam was half-transformed and feral.

I couldn't believe anyone thought it would be okay to operate in a place like this. Even without all the broken equipment, which I assumed was because of the rescue, everything was layered in thick coat of grime and looked about fifty years past its "best before" date.

Let's get out of here, I said to Tennyson.

He nodded, and the whole pack started moving as one unit toward the door.

"Get your hands off my daughter, you monster!"

Tell him never to contact me again, I said to Tennyson. Tell him never to come near me or my family again. He’s no better than the Others.

Tennyson told him, but he didn't like it.

"I will bring a world of trouble down on your pack," my father said, grabbing one of the silver instruments from the trolley and hurling it at Nikolai. It only grazed his cheek, but he fell to the ground, screaming.

It gave the evil doctors a burst of confidence, and they rushed at Althea.

This couldn't happen. I couldn't let this happen. After everything, after them coming to find me and being so close to escape, they couldn't defeat us now. It was too unfair.

I watched helplessly as the doctors knocked Althea to the floor.

"Get her out of here!" Sam snarled at Tennyson.

Tennyson turned toward the door, but I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't escape while the others were stuck here to be tortured and experimented on. It just wasn't going to happen.

I didn't have very much strength, but what I had, I used to form that connection with Tennyson.

Let me, I said, and he didn't argue.

He was so powerful, so strong, and he gave all of that power to me. It merged with the power inside of me, that endless power I'd been storing inside. And with only the thought of protecting my pack in my mind, I unleashed that power. I let it consume me.

And then I knew no more.

Chapter 17

From the moment that my father kidnapped me, I hadn't had any hope of getting out of that place alive, so I was shocked to wake up and find myself in Tennyson's bed. Sunlight was streaming through the window, making everything seem too normal, too bright. For a moment, I wondered if I'd dreamed the entire thing, but there were chafe marks on my wrists from where I'd been bound to the bed.

Hello?

I had no idea what time of day it was, where Tennyson might be, and I felt a bit strange wandering around the house without him there. There was no reason for it; the others were my friends as well, but for some reason I needed him there. I didn't want to leave the sanctuary of his room without him.

We're downstairs, he said. How are you feeling?

I wasn't sure how to answer, so I showed him through the bond.

Maybe you should sleep a bit more, he said.

But I'd slept for the whole time I'd been in that room. I didn't want to sleep ever again.

I sat up warily, expecting my body to be filled with aches and pains, but I was surprised to find that I felt fine. Better than fine. I was full of pep.

What do you mean, sleep more? I asked him. I feel great!

Still, I was a bit hesitant about going downstairs. Nikolai and Althea had both been injured while rescuing me, and that was on me. Sam had gone feral, and he'd been so good with control lately that I was sure he'd have some issues about it. Things would probably be weird.

Things were definitely weird.

Nobody looked at me as I walked in. Not even Tennyson.

"Hi!" Althea said brightly into her book. "How are you feeling?"

"Are you guys okay?" I asked.

They looked uninjured — even Nikolai's face where it had been grazed was healed — but something was definitely up.

"We're all fine," said Sam. "How are you?"

I wasn't sure if I should sit down at the table with them while they were all acting so odd. It wasn't exactly a welcoming atmosphere.

"I'm okay." I looked around at them, but they seemed real, not figments of my imagination. "Don't take this the wrong way, you guys, but you're not hallucinations, are you?"

"We're real," said Nikolai, and sure, maybe he wasn't a cheesy moon anymore, but did that mean I could take him at his word? "They sure must've done a number on your head."

"How long was I there?"

"Six days," Tennyson said in a tight voice.

I sighed. I was definitely not going to win any prizes for my grades this semester.

I stood there awkwardly, not sure of what to do. Maybe I should just leave, but first I had something I needed to say.

"I know it doesn't count for much, but I'm sorry for what happened," I said. "You guys got hurt, and it could've been a lot worse, and I'm so, so sorry that you had to come and rescue me from that place."

"Nobody blames you for getting kidnapped," said Althea. "We pushed you into contacting your father when you said we couldn't trust him."

"Oookay," I said. "Well, then. Maybe I should go. Let you guys do your stuff, or whatever." I took a step toward the door.

Finally, Tennyson looked up. "You don't remember?"

"Um," I said. "Remember what?"

"Those guys were attacking us," said Nikolai, still not looking at me. "And then you went all rawr." He made a growly face and claw hands. "Like a supernova."

"You were bursting with power," Tennyson said quietly. "I couldn't even touch you."

"You just waved your hand, and that was it," said Althea.

It felt like an icy hand was squeezing my heart. "My dad," I whispered. "Is he…"

I'd gone into a rage blackout and killed my father, and that was why nobody could look at me. I was a murderer. A patricider.

Tennyson shook his head. "We think you just knocked them out, but it was…"

You were terrifying, he said. I couldn't get near you.

"Oh," I said.

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with that.

"I should…" I hooked a finger back toward the door. "Go have a shower and, you know. Try not to explode and murder people."

"Do you want me to come with you?" Tennyson asked.

I shook my head. "You've probably earned some time off. If things get bad, I'll let you know."

I half-expected him to argue, but he just nodded.

"We've contacted Vucari and asked him to do the ritual. We're waiting for him to get back to us with a time and place."

"Great," I said, backing toward the door. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

I knew logically that they didn't hate me, but it wasn't exactly a friendly environment. Hopefully, they'd get over it quickly, because it would kind of suck being bonded to Tennyson if he and all his friends didn't want me around.

I was looking forward to a hot shower and maybe some Netflix when I got to my room, but I'd forgotten Katie. Oh, man, Katie. Whose dad worked with my dad. If I'd gotten a frosty reception from the Golden, this was going to be arctic.

She was sitting on her bed, typing on her laptop, but when I came in, she jumped up and rushed over to me. I half-expected a slap in the face, but she pulled me into a hug.

"Omigod, are you okay?" she asked. "I can't believe they took you right off school grounds. I was so mad when I found out." She pulled back to look me in the face. "You look terrible. And you smell terrible. Go have a shower, and I’ll find you something to eat."

She shooed me into the bathroom, and I had no will to resist her. I felt about a zillion times better after a shower, after washing that awful place down the drain.

"What's that smell?" I asked, sniffing the air as I came out of the bathroom, toweling my hair dry.

"Mini pastries," Katie said. She handed me a plate and then sat down on the sofa. "So, is it true you went nuclear and burned the doctors' eyeballs out?" Her eyes were alight with an evil sort of glee that reminded me of Nikolai.

"I'm not sure," I said. "Katie, is everyone okay? I mean, I didn't…" I couldn't even say the words; surely, I couldn't have done that.

She shook her head. "Nobody died, but there's all these rumors flying around. I've gotten like a hundred messages from the other kids in the past few hours alone. You're a legend now."

I screwed up my face in horror. "The other kids?"

"Yep, you know, like us. Well, not like you, obviously, because none of us can explode things with our brains!" She bounced a little in her seat. "So, were you at the main facility? Was it awful? Were there brains pickled in jars and all, like, science experiment mutants and stuff?" She sat forward in her seat, long fingers gripping her knees.

I shrugged. "I was chained to a bed most of the time, so I didn't see anything, really. It was dirty and awful, but they kept me drugged up the whole time. I don't really remember what happened."

She sank back in her seat, disappointed. "Still, you exploded stuff with your brain, right?"

I nodded. "I think so."

"Cool," she said, grinning at me.

I grinned back.

Chapter 18

It was great to have Katie as a friend. When I hung out with her, it felt almost like being a normal teenager, except that she knew all about everything, so I didn’t have to hide anything from her.

I was waiting for the weirdness with everyone else to pass. They were trying not to act weird around me, making an effort to include me and even looking me in the eye when they spoke to me now, but there was a reservation there that hadn't been there before. I couldn't blame them. I remembered the first time I'd seen Sam as a wolf, and how I'd needed some time to adjust.

"We're to meet in two days’ time at sunset," Tennyson told me, stopping me in the hall between classes.

People goggled at us, nearly tripping over each other as they walked and stared.

"Okay," I said, wondering why he hadn't just said it in my brain.

"We were given coordinates which we'll need to fly to," he continued. "We should leave early in case there's any delay."

"Right."

If he was going to be weird and standoffish, I could be that too. I couldn't even sense why or what he was feeling, as if a wall had sprung up between us.

He stared at me for a moment, then gave a curt nod and walked off in the other direction.

I sighed. He hadn't even tried to touch me. Maybe it disgusted him now, to have a bond with someone who could lose control so completely. I wondered if it had hurt him when I'd taken his power, when I'd gone supernova. I wondered if I'd ever get the opportunity to ask.

I wished there were someone I could talk to about the whole thing. I kind of felt like meeting with this Vucari person was a waste of time; I knew he'd just say I needed to find Hannah Morgan. Maybe he could tell us where to find her, and maybe he couldn't, but I wasn't crossing my fingers. I only had one other lead on where she might be, and I didn't think my dad would be giving me information any time soon. And even if he offered me Hannah Morgan gift-wrapped, I wouldn't go near him to collect. I felt like I was stuck in a sort of stasis, halfway between Becoming and Not. My whole life felt as if it was at a standstill.

Maybe I could've talked to Katie about it, but even though she was fun to hang out with, I couldn't entirely trust her. She was part of my father's world, and it was a world I didn't understand. So, I kept my thoughts to myself and tried to catch up with my classes while I waited to do a ritual that might kill me or might just be pointless.

On the day of the ritual, Tennyson showed up at the door of my English class and announced loudly that I had to leave. I turned bright red and rushed out of the room, but he wasn't even a bit phased.

None of us talked as we loaded into the helicopter and flew to the coordinates Vucari had given Nikolai, but it was a normal, nervous sort of silence, not that strained formality that had been the usual thing since I'd gone nuclear. I glanced at their faces, which were all pale and tense, and wondered why they were even there. This wasn't a pack thing. It didn't even have to do with the bond. Then I realized — moral support. They were there so I wouldn't freak out.

"Thanks for coming, you guys," I said over the noise of the helicopter. "I really appreciate it."

Althea smiled at me, and Sam nodded.

"Yeah, yeah. Just don't go nuts and pop us all like popcorn," said Nikolai, and I knew that the weirdness was over. Nikolai could always be relied on as a barometer for awkwardness.

I'd assumed that we'd be meeting somewhere close to the school, just not on the island, because of security, or maybe the thing about magic and running water, but the flight seemed to take forever.

"Are we going to make it in time?" I asked, craning my neck to look out the window. There were a lot of trees. I hoped we'd be able to land.

"We're almost there," said Tennyson.

As he said it, the helicopter began circling to land.

We landed in a clearing in the middle of a massive forest full of fir trees. There was something about fir trees that had always creeped me out. They seemed as if they were whispering secrets.

"Whatever happens, wait for us to return," Tennyson told the pilot, who was already playing Candy Crush on his phone.

There was a clear, wide path to the left that we headed for.

"He sent very clear instructions," said Nikolai. "Down the path until we reach the circle. Once we reach the circle, only you and Tennyson are allowed to enter."

"Tennyson too?" I asked, surprised.

"He thought it would be safer because of your bond."

I nodded. That made sense as much as anything else did.

When we reached the circle, it wasn't what I'd expected at all. I'd thought maybe it was a clearing with markings drawn on the ground or something, but it was a circle of hazel trees with another circle of ash trees inside. Neither the hazel nor the ash had begun to lose their leaves, though it was late in the year and the weather had already begun to turn bitter. There was red thread tied around the trunks of the trees, connecting them in intricate patterns.

"So, do we just step over it, or…"

ENTER THE CIRCLE, said a thunderous voice inside my mind that definitely wasn't Tennyson.

From the look on his face, he had heard it too. He took my hand, and we stepped through the gaps in the thread until we were inside the circle.

As soon as we entered, white flames rose up around the edge of the circle, cutting us off from the others.

"It's for protection," said someone I figured had to be Vucari, as he appeared before us. "So, nothing can get out into the world."

"And nothing can get in," added Tennyson.

Vucari shrugged as if that didn't concern him.

I didn't know how familiar the guy was with popular culture, but I thought he could've at least tried to avoid the stereotype. He was wearing a long black cloak with the hood pulled over his face so that his features were in shadow.

"I need your blood, drawn with a bone knife," he said, pulling a knife out of his cloak and handing it to me. "Let it fall naturally to the earth below."

Literally everything I'd ever watched or read had said that blood magic was bad, but Tennyson wasn't saying anything, and I couldn't exactly go with a "Netflix says it's wrong" defense, so I held out my arm, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to draw blood.

It just wasn't happening. I couldn't do it.

"Here," said Tennyson, taking the knife from my hand. "Can someone else draw the blood?" he asked Vucari.

"If it's you, that's fine," Vucari said. He sounded amused, but I had no idea why.

"Count to three," Tennyson told me, staring into my eyes.

I held his gaze as I counted. "One… two… omigod, you jerk."

He smirked at me and looked down at my arm. It wasn't a deep cut, across the soft part of my forearm, but the blood was dripping out like crazy. We watched as it dripped onto the ground. Each drip sounded like a loud thud, like a giant's footsteps.

“Your arm,” I said, looking up at him.

He nodded and clasped his own arm where it had also started to bleed. The blood was soaking into his sleeve, but before any of it could fall to the ground and mix with mine, his wound had already healed.

Vucari held out his hand over where my blood had fallen, palm facing downward, and began to chant strange words that didn't sound like any language I'd ever heard. Still, Tennyson seemed fine with it, and I figured he'd know if something wasn't right.

As Vucari chanted, the drops of blood began to glow silver. Then they rose into the air, spinning around like raindrops in zero gravity. Vucari watched them intently, then did a complicated hand gesture. The blood stopped glowing, and Vucari barked out one sharp word.

The blood rushed back into my arm, and before I could blink, the wound had healed.

"The one who did this to you is named Ruby Spencer. I cannot say what she did to cause it or what you will become. These things are unknown to me, for they are covered by a darkness I cannot penetrate. I do not know her location, but I can tell you she is with those whose names we do not know, those who are opposed to the natural world."

"The Others," said Tennyson.

Vucari nodded. "She is neither living nor dead. I don't know what she is, but what I sense tells me that she is someone best avoided."

He looked at me for a reaction, but there wasn't one I could give him. I was in shock.

"Thank you," said Tennyson. "You've been most informative."

"The favor that you owe," Vucari said to me. "I will collect it when it is of most value."

I nodded, because what could you even say to that? With a flourish of his hands, the white flames vanished. I was fairly sure Vucari didn't actually disappear, but he was no longer standing in front of us.

As the other three rushed into the circle to meet us, Tennyson and I stared at each other in dismay.

Sam's mother had done this to me.

She was alive. She was evil. And we had to find a way to tell him.

Chapter 19

It was the most awkward silence ever. Tennyson and I had managed to avoid answering any questions the whole way back to school, but once we got there and were safe within the walls of the Golden House, there was no way out of it.

"My mother?" Sam asked, staring at me blankly. "You're sure?"

I shrugged and picked at my fingernail. "Unless he meant a different Ruby Spencer."

"Seems unlikely," he said.

I nodded.

"And she's alive?" he continued.

I glanced at Tennyson, not knowing how to answer.

"He said she isn't dead," Tennyson said tactfully.

"I don't understand any of this," Sam said, standing up. Then he began to pace the room.

I knew how he felt. Sam's mother had been more of a parent to me than either of my own. She'd always been so warm, so loving. I couldn't help but think there had been some mistake, but then, she had known things. She'd co-written that book with my father. She must have known Sam had the zero gene. Still, I couldn't reconcile this new information with the person in my memory. The rest of the pack were shocked, but it was more out of sympathy for Sam. They hadn't known Sam’s mother. They couldn't understand that this was the worst betrayal of all.

Althea was subtly trying to open a book she'd reached for as soon as we'd mentioned Sam's mother, and I was sure something had given her an idea. Nikolai looked as if he was trying to think up an excuse to leave.

Sam paced until he was standing in front of me.

"I'm sorry," he said, staring at the floor.

"What for?" I asked him.

"If I hadn't turned, if I hadn't attacked my family, this wouldn't have happened to you."

I sighed and stood up so I could hug him. He was putting things together all wrong.

"No," I told him. "Whatever she did to me, it must have started long before you turned. I don't understand what she did or why it's taken this long to kick in, but she must have…"

A series of things clicked inside my brain. All those delicious cookies she'd made me. All those cupcakes. What if she'd laced them with something? My brothers had eaten those cookies too, and Sam's little sister. And that wasn't even the worst of it.

"It never did make sense," I said, picking up the trail that Sam had been pacing. "That night, the night you disappeared."

I looked at Sam, but I didn't want to say it.

He needs to know, Tennyson said.

"There were no bodies," I said. "From the time I looked through my window when I heard that scream until the time I got to your house — it wasn't very long, but no one was there. There wasn't enough time. It was staged, the whole thing. She must have staged it."

The truth of it was too terrible to speak aloud, that his own mother had handed him over to the Others. What was she that made her able to do such a thing?

"They might still be alive," I said, trying to put a positive spin on it, to distract him. "Your father, your sister. They might be…"

But Sam's eyes were cold. "She gave me to them."

I nodded, and it felt like my heart was being torn out. "Probably."

I wondered what part my father had played in it all. If he'd stayed in contact with Ruby Spencer after he'd walked out on us. If he knew she was working with the Others. If that was why he hadn't wanted me to do the ritual. Why what he was doing seemed so much like what the Others did. It was all too much to think about.

"I need some air," Sam said, and I couldn't blame him.

Life went on as usual, but everything seemed surreal, like I was viewing it through an Instagram filter and the colors were all just a bit off. I went to class, studied, researched, but it all seemed like a façade.

A few days later, I was sitting in chemistry class next to Tennyson. We were supposed to be testing the acidity of different household items with pH strips, but it was the last class of the day and everyone was just chatting and mucking around. Troy Hathaway leaned back on his stool to rest an elbow on Britt Pendlebury's table and say something flirty to her. Olivia Hearst and Charlotte Du Pont were looking up different hairstyles on Pinterest. The only person actually working was Fatima, who was bossing her lab partner into doing everything because her arm was still in a sling.

And I saw, with a sudden clarity, that I would never be like them. I'd never be normal. I'd never have the luxury of being ignorant about the realities of this world, whether it was because I was poor or because I had some whacked-out gene. I'd always have bigger problems than late homework or how to do waterfall braids. And that wasn't bad. It just wasn't good, either. It was just what it was. It was my life. Even if I'd gone to Greenville High, I still wouldn't be normal. In fact, I'd probably be even worse off, because I wouldn't have my wolfy buddies to make me feel like less of a freak.

There was no way to stop the Becoming. I had to go through with it. I had to embrace who I was and Become.

I felt better now that I had a course of action in mind.

Tennyson kept giving me strange looks, but I waited until we were all together for dinner to tell everyone.

"I want to go ahead with the Becoming," I said.

Althea nodded and primly cut up her grilled chicken. "You realize that we have no idea how to do that?"

I nodded. "I think if I…" I paused. It was going to sound a bit hokey to say it, even if it felt true. "I think if I just let the power inside me guide my actions, I'll know what to do."

She nodded. "I suppose that makes as much sense as anything."

"Fifty bucks says she'll be a witch," said Nikolai.

"We have no idea what she'll be," said Sam, his voice small. "We have no idea what my mother made her into."

I shrugged. "Well, it's not as if I have much choice. It's literally 'to be nor not to be' at this point."

Sam shook his head and didn't look at me. I'd hoped to have his support on this, since he was the one other person I knew who’d gone through the same thing, but I could understand his feelings.

This will change you forever, Tennyson said.

I shrugged. Probably not in any important way, though.

He'd been more open with me since the ritual, but still kept his feelings closed off. Not now, though; now, I could sense everything he felt. He was worried, frightened. He thought that the Becoming would change our bond, and he didn't want that.

I stared at him in surprise.

You don't want to break the bond anymore.

I didn't either. The panic I'd felt when my father had tried to sever the bond was still fresh in my mind. Even without the risk of death, I hadn't wanted him to do it, to lose this connection with Tennyson. Tennyson had become a part of me, something too important to lose. I'd never realized he felt the same way, though. I'd thought he was just doing what was necessary.

He stared back at me, something like guilt flashing in his eyes. He didn't reply.

I don't want to break it, either, I told him. I shook my head. But this is something I need to do. It'll be fine. The bond will be fine.

I said it to reassure myself just as much as him.

"It's so creepy when you guys do that," said Nikolai. "You have no idea."

Chapter 20

The book had said "a transformative event" would trigger the Rebirth, so, after dinner that night, I made the others brainstorm ideas with me and wrote them up on a whiteboard with appropriately colored pens.

"A haircut," said Nikolai. "I could refer you to someone. It really would be a community service."

I rolled my eyes but wrote it down. In red pen, which was the "not helpful" color.

"We could contact a magic user and have you transformed into something else," suggestion Althea, wrinkling her nose to show she didn't really like the idea.

I wrote it up in blue, which was the "I'd prefer not to" color.

"I doubt that would work," said Tennyson. "Lucy was transformed by Hannah Morgan, first with the miniaturization and then with the mind transference. If those transformations had no effect, I doubt a spell from a different magic user would, either. Nor a haircut, for that matter. The transformation clearly needs to work on a deeper level."

"Blood transfusion?" suggested Nikolai. "Gender reassignment?"

I wrote them down, but I agreed with Tennyson. Physical changes wouldn't cut it. The change needed to rock the foundations of my world.

"Well, think about it. What things have changed you in the past?" asked Althea. "Significant life events and such."

I thought about it, but none of it was anything I wanted to repeat.

"When my dad walked out," I said quietly. "When Sam died."

"We could do a reenactment!" said Nikolai. “Lie down and look corpsey, Sam.”

Sam sneered at him.

"Even those things obviously weren't enough to trigger it, though," said Tennyson. "If our theory about the timing is right."

"How about you guys?" I asked.

Tennyson, Althea and Nikolai looked awkwardly between each other.

"I suppose it was the first time we fully transformed into wolves," Althea said, looking to the others for agreement.

Nikolai nodded, but Tennyson hung his head.

"When Lady Fluffington died," he whispered.

Althea rubbed his arm.

"There's nothing you could've done, buddy," said Nikolai. "It was just her time."

Tennyson shook his head.

"You know mine," Sam said.

I nodded, but something occurred to me. It wasn't something I wanted to bring up, but it was too important to be delicate about it.

"Something must have triggered your change, though, right?" I said softly. "That night?"

Sam narrowed his eyes at me. He'd never looked at me coldly before, and I hoped he never would again. I shivered.

"What are you trying to say, Lucy?"

"Only that you went through this ‘rebirth’ process, right? So, according to the book, something must have triggered it."

I wasn't sure why he was being so defensive about it, but it made me think he hadn't told me everything about that night and what he remembered.

"Not necessarily," said Tennyson. "From what you've said, Sam, you didn't have this same awareness of the power inside you, did you? Without knowing what Ruby Spencer intended for you both, we can't assume it’s the same experience. I believe she viewed you both as test subjects, and that she was experimenting with different ways to trigger this Becoming."

It was an awful thought, one that must be even worse for Sam. It was considerate of Tennyson to refer to her by her full name rather than her relationship to Sam, but that didn't change the fact that she was Sam's mother and had used him in such a terrible way. I wondered what her endgame had been, why she'd wanted to turn us into monsters. And if they were doing the same thing to all those other people who had gone missing.

"We're getting off track," said Althea. "What else?"

"I think the solution here is pretty obvious," said Sam, giving me that cold stare again.

We all looked at him expectantly.

"Oh, come on," he said. "The two of you. You can't tell me it hasn't occurred to you before."

Tennyson and I looked at each other, both of us puzzled.

"You have to complete the bond," Sam said. "Then your souls will be forever entwined, or whatever garbage they say happens, and you'll be transformed enough for the Becoming."

It seemed obvious now that Sam had said it.

"But I don't…" My throat was dry, so I swallowed. "I don't know how to do that."

Sam rolled his eyes. "That's pretty obvious, too. It's like a wedding, right? Of sorts, anyway. And how does that end?"

I shrugged. "With divorce?"

"With a kiss," Sam said. "So, just get it over with and put us all out of our misery."

I couldn't look at Tennyson. I'd never even thought of such a thing. He turned away from me too.

The whole atmosphere became awkward.

"I think there's something in this book," said Althea, drawing a tall pile of books toward her so that her face was hidden.

Nikolai started humming that song, "Girl, you'll be a woman soon."

"Um," I said, trying to think of an excuse to leave.

Sam shook his head. "You know I'm right," he said, pushing up from the table to leave.

I thought about Sam's suggestion all night. All the next day and all the next night. No other thought came into my head. Sam had been right: completing the bond would definitely be enough of a transformation. It would change me on every level of my being. If that didn't work, nothing would.

It wasn't as if I wanted to break the bond, but it wasn't something I could back out of later on if I didn't like it, either. A soul bond was for life. And maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe Tennyson and I could live separate lives while still being linked. Despite what Sam had said, it didn't mean marriage. Not all bonds were romantic. We could have a buddy bond; that would be fine. So, I looked into other ways to complete the bond that didn't involve putting my lips on Tennyson's lips.

Not that there was anything wrong with Tennyson's lips. He had nice lips. They were full and shapely lips. They just didn't have any business with my lips.

Sam had kissed me once. It had only been a whisper of a kiss, and I wasn't sure that it counted. I wasn't entirely convinced that it had been real, although I'd played the moment back in my mind a thousand times. We'd never discussed it, and it had never happened again. I didn't want my first actual kiss that was definitely real to be an "obligation because of magic" kiss, no matter who it was with. When I was a crazy old lady with a million cats, I didn't want to think back on my first real kiss and remember that it had been a chore.

Still, I couldn't think about anything else. I vagued out in class; I lay awake at night. I didn't even have much of an appetite.

As I watched the sky turn light from my bed, I finally gave up. I should at least talk to Tennyson about it, get his opinion. We'd done a good job of avoiding each other since Sam had brought up the whole kissing business, but really, it was something that the two of us needed to decide together, and only the two of us.

He was waiting for me in the clearing behind the Golden House. Morning sun was filtering through the trees in bright streaks, making the whole place seem enchanted. He reached out and took my hand, but even before we touched, I knew what he would do. He'd already decided.

We both had.

My eyes fluttered shut, and his fingers brushed my cheek. I rested my hands on his chest, clutching the soft fabric of his shirt, needing to be sure he was real. He was so close that I could smell the pine fresh scent of him. His face was so close to mine that I could feel his breath on my skin.

So close.

Are you sure? I asked him.

And then his lips were on mine.

It wasn't a chore, and it wasn't a whisper. It was a revelation.

And then the Becoming started.

Chapter 21

We were pressed so tightly together that when the power filled me, it filled him as well. Light exploded around us, and I closed my eyes and pressed my face against Tennyson's neck to block it out.

And then we were nowhere. We had no form.

I was him and he was me. There was nothing between us, no divide whatsoever. A perfect blending. Those cracked and broken pathways between us that had formed our bond melted away. No road was needed to bridge the space between us anymore. There was no space between us. I knew all his thoughts, remembered his memories, shared his opinions. I was still myself, but I was him as well, and it felt right. It felt as if it had always been that way. It felt as if it would be wrong to be apart. Unfathomable.

That matterless place existed for an eternity. It was the entire history of the universe, from the first spark until the final darkness. We were everything. Everywhere and always. There was nothing but the two of us; nothing else was possible. There were no secrets between us, and we knew that we could trust one another completely, knew that we would always be on the same side, no matter what the battle.

I wanted to hold on to that feeling, the absolute perfection of it, but as soon as that occurred to me, it became harder to do. The power that had been swirling around us, holding us together, compressing us like a diamond, dropped away.

It felt as if we were falling. Logically, I knew we were probably still standing in that clearing behind the house, but our conscious minds weren't there at all.

As we fell, we began to separate. We had no form, not in any way that I understood, but I could feel him being slowly pulled away from me. If I'd had hands, I could've grabbed him, but there was nothing to hold him with, and none of him to hold. It felt like my skin was being ripped from my body, and I screamed and screamed as he parted from me.

Before we were completely divided, we stopped falling. We appeared as if we were in our bodies, but I knew that was just our own perceptions of how we were; our bodies weren't really there. I still could feel Tennyson as a part of me, and myself as a part of him, but less than we had been. That wasn't enough. We weren't solid or human; we only looked that way.

I could no longer feel the power inside me or swirling around us, but I knew it was close by. It had brought us to this place for a reason, and it wouldn't let us go until it was satisfied. I knew that the power wasn't sentient, couldn't reason or make decisions. It wasn't even inherently good or bad. But it had a purpose, and it was driven to complete that purpose. There was no way for it to stop until it was done.

Where are we?

I wasn't sure if it was me who was asking, or Tennyson. It didn't matter.

When we tried to look, we realized that we could see.

The mosaic walls were familiar, as was the strange light. We were in that same temple that we'd dreamed about, what felt like so long ago. The temple of Lycan. The pictures on the walls made more sense now, without that dreamlike quality obscuring my vision. The story they told also made a lot more sense now.

I saw the girl and her wolf again, surrounded by flames, but I realized now that she wasn’t the only girl. There were so many girls. A series of different girls, little details showing them clearly to be from different times, different places. All of them in a dark place, then being surrounded by light. The light changed them, transformed them into something else.

It seemed to happen in a series of stages. They became one thing, a witch or a werewolf or a weird bird creature, various different things that I couldn't even name, and then they moved on to the next thing in their own personal process. Always moving toward something bigger, something more powerful. Some of them got to a point where they stopped. They stayed a wolf or bird for the rest of their lives. But most of them kept moving through the steps, absorbing the traits of each form and becoming more and more powerful until they reached the final stage in their evolution.

The power seemed to be pushing me toward the answer, to see what that final stage would be.

But I could guess, and I didn't want to know.

The more I recoiled from the knowledge, the more the power pushed me closer to the answer and farther away from Tennyson. The power was so strong, much stronger than I was. Even without the weaknesses of my human body to hold me back, I was no match for that power. My entire being screamed for Tennyson, and I could feel him trying to reach me as the power forced us apart.

It was useless. The power consumed me, no longer diluted or restrained. I knew what it wanted me to Become now, knew that it would drive me through all the steps in the process, like those girls on the wall, until I Became one of the Others.

That was the final goal.

I understood now how Sam's mother had been unable to resist it. It was unstoppable. I could feel it seeping into me, into all the parts of myself that I'd shared with Tennyson. It wanted to drive him out completely, to own me, to make it as if Tennyson had never been a part of me. But that wasn't possible, and it gave me the strength to push back.

Tennyson was there. He was right there. And I could feel him fighting to drive that power away.

Let me take it, he said. Channel the power into me. I can handle it. I'll take it for you.

I wasn't sure that werewolf strength counted when you had no form, but the power was quickly overwhelming me. It felt as if it was burning up everything that made me who I was and replacing it with something new. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't become one of them.

With everything that was left of me, I reached out to Tennyson. I felt us connect, the thinnest thread of connection — but it was enough. I felt him drawing the power from me, and with all my strength, I pushed it toward him.

I pushed and he pulled, and the space inside me began to clear. Without the power pressing down on me, I felt more like myself and could push even harder.

Then we hit a barrier. I felt Tennyson's alarm as the power started to flood back into me. I pushed back even harder. The barrier was unyielding, but I pushed and pushed. And the harder I pushed against it, the more I began to understand it. It was a stubborn, resentful power that did not belong inside of Tennyson. It had been constructed to hurt him, and it needed to be destroyed. It was the curse that stopped him from transforming fully into a wolf.

Help me break it, I told him, pushing with renewed force. I wanted to give him this one thing, to help him like he'd been helping me.

The power flooded back into me more and more quickly, like the sea retreats into the ocean floor after an earthquake. And I knew then that I had the strength to break that barrier, to control the power inside of me, to do anything I needed to. That spot behind my breastbone, where I’d first felt the bond with Tennyson, which had become an abyss when he’d been taken from me — I sealed it shut completely.

The power surged back out of me like a tsunami, hitting that barrier with the full weight of its force. The barrier hadn't been built to withstand such an onslaught. It shattered into nothing, and Tennyson was free of it.

Still, the power continued to surge. There was so much of it. It flooded into Tennyson at an unstoppable rate.

Push back, I told him as I felt it overtaking him. Share it between us.

I knew, somehow, that the only way to control it was to find a balance between us that was manageable.

Some of the power had been spent when the barrier was broken, so it was a little easier to manage as we tried to balance it between us. It took all of my concentration as we held it there, like balancing on a tightrope. It wasn't sustainable. We both released our hold on it at the same time. The power bled out into both of us, and once again, it felt as if we were falling.

It seemed shocking that we would still be standing there in the clearing, the morning sun still filtering through the trees. How could it possibly still be the same morning, the same day? It felt as if lifetimes had passed.

As I returned to my body, all my strength left me. I clutched Tennyson's arms as my legs gave out, and the two of us crumpled to the ground. He held me to him, and I stared up into his face, both of us wide-eyed in fear as we thrummed with the power.

The power had been scary enough before, but now it was out of control. It spiked between us like a ping-pong ball, gaining momentum each time it changed direction. We had no idea how to find that balance again, or what to do with it once we had, but we had to try to do something.

My fingers dug into Tennyson's biceps as we tentatively reached out for the connection between us. As we did, the power crackled. It wanted to possess me, to take root in me and grow, and my connection with Tennyson was preventing that. It stopped ping-ponging as it crackled, waiting.

As we prepared for it to strike, we became aware of a new problem. Sam, Althea and Nikolai. They were awake and looking for us. They were getting closer.

We turned to look at them, to try to warn them, but as they stepped into the clearing, the power crashed into us.

It took hold.

Chapter 22

It hit us like an electric shock, forcing us apart and sending us flying back across the clearing in opposite directions. The power was visible now, its glowing purple live wires snaking all around us.

"Stay away," I warned the others, but I hardly needed to. There was no way they could come any closer without one of those tendrils of power hitting them.

The whole clearing was alight with the purple glow, and as I looked around, trying to find some way back over to Tennyson, I realized that the tendrils of power were coming from him. He was lit with a fierce purple glow, and he was half-changed into his wolf form again. He was radiating that same feeling as he had on the full moon, that protective fury.

I took a cautious step closer to him. Even if that power struck out at me, it didn't matter. It didn't matter if it hurt me or took me over; I had to help him.

His eyes weren't his own. He wasn't in control, and that seemed so wrong. Tennyson was always in control. It was his defining feature. It terrified me to think of him being out of control like this, losing such an integral part of who he was.

"Lucy, I think you should move away," said Sam from somewhere behind me.

I kept my eyes on Tennyson, reaching a hand out toward him. I couldn't feel him through our connection, and when I tried, it felt like stepping over a cliff and into a void. I couldn't move away from him. I had to find him, to bring him back.

I remembered a moment similar to this with Sam, when he’d been stuck mid-transformation. I’d wanted to help him, and I’d been so sure he wouldn’t strike out at me, but I’d been wrong. But I wasn’t wrong this time. Tennyson was part of me, and no matter how lost he was, he would never hurt me.

The others moved farther into the clearing. I couldn't see them, but I could sense them as clearly as if I were looking straight at them. They moved toward Tennyson.

"Don't come any closer," I said, trying to stay quiet so I wouldn't alarm him. "He's not himself."

"We can help," said Nikolai. He moved toward Tennyson, putting himself between Tennyson and me.

I tried to move around him before Tennyson could react, but I wasn't fast enough. Tennyson let out a thunderous roar and struck out at Nikolai with one of the tendrils of power. The force of it sent Nikolai flying all the way across the clearing until he smacked into the garden wall.

He slumped down into a heap and didn't get back up. Althea ran to help him.

"Lucy, get out of there!" Sam yelled.

"No!" I yelled back at him. "I'm the only one who can help him."

This was my fault. Tennyson had taken the power to help me, and now it was consuming him. It had made him hurt one of his pack members, the ones he'd do anything to protect. I couldn't think of anything worse for Tennyson, and I had to stop him.

I took another step toward him. The power was so strong this close to him. It was almost like a forcefield, pushing me back. I had to shield my eyes from the blinding light. I couldn't believe this power had been inside me all along. How had I not burned up?

"Lucy!"

Sam grabbed my arm, and I knew exactly what was about to happen.

Tennyson gathered up the full force of the power and directed it at Sam.

I twisted around, pulling Sam behind me, and as the power struck me, Tennyson's eyes met mine.

As the power flooded into me, I let go of Sam and let it take me. It was me that it had wanted all along, so I'd let it have me. Better me than Tennyson.

As it filled me, I rose into the air, held up by the steady stream of power between us. I'd thought to siphon the power from him, but it didn't seem to be leaving him. A high-pitched squealing noise began to fill the air, and I realized what was happening. The power was circulating between us through our connection, and that sound was the feedback loop we created as it amplified. The noise got louder and louder as the power grew, and I knew I had to do something about it. The power had to go somewhere. If I wanted to save Tennyson, I had to find somewhere to direct the power. But, first, I had to take the power from him, and it occurred to me that the two problems might actually be the solution.

I had to use the power to block him from it, to create another barrier. Only, this time it wouldn't be a hurtful barrier to cut him off from an integral part of himself, but one to protect him from me and whatever I might someday become.

I'd never used the power for any real purpose before, only pushing it and pulling it as best I could, so I wasn't sure I could do anything fancy. I raised my arms in front of me and tried to weave the power into shapes.

I wove it into a dome around him, like he was trapped inside a big glowy purple bubble. Only this bubble wouldn't pop. It was indestructible. As I wove it, I realized that I didn't want him to be completely trapped, to be cut off from me. He should be allowed to come and go from his protective bubble as he pleased, to talk in my mind and share my feelings and all that other stuff the bond had allowed us. I added a door. And some windows. He'd probably miss me too much if the barrier was too strong.

All the power that had been spiraling from him, lighting him up, was drawn from him now and added to that bubble.

The stream of power between us faded, and I dropped back to the ground. Tennyson was standing inside the bubble, looking more like himself again. He reached out to touch the bubble and smiled at me.

You did it, he said.

Then he collapsed.

All the power rushed back into me at once. I let it. I had no other choice.

Behind me, I heard Sam snarling. He lunged for Tennyson, but the protective bubble pushed him back.

The power wanted to consume me, and I wanted to let it. It was inevitable. It was my fate.

As long as Tennyson was protected, I realized, I didn't care. The power could do what it wanted to me as long as it stopped hurting him. The entire time we'd had this bond, he'd been suffering because of me, because of the power, and I just wanted that to stop.

As if that thought was a command, the power flowed out of me and surrounded Tennyson. It spun around and around him like a tornado. I couldn't even see him, the power was rushing around him so fast. It glowed faintly, turning from the purple that it had been earlier into a bright gold.

Even though I couldn't see Tennyson, I knew the power would no longer hurt him. This power came from within me. However it had first been sparked into being, it came from me, had grown within me, and I suddenly understood that because of that, it couldn't overpower me unless I let it. The power was mine, and it would do as I willed it.

I raised my hand to tell it to stop, and the power drew back into me.

I had mastered it. I had been transformed. Where the power had been spinning around Tennyson, there now stood a giant golden tree, and he was lying at the foot of it, a pure white wolf.

The Becoming was now complete. But I knew that it wasn't over. I'd merely taken the first step in the journey I'd seen on the mosaic walls.

Chapter 23

Nikolai had healed in no time, more injured pride than anything, but Tennyson still hadn't woken up. It had been three days. The armchair by his bed wasn't the most comfortable place to sleep, and I'd been developing a pretty serious crick in the neck.

He’d transformed back into human form sometime during the first night, but part of me wished he hadn’t. He looked so vulnerable lying there, his eyelashes dark against his pale cheeks. I'd wanted to help him, and it had ended like this. The others thought he'd be fine, that he just needed time and rest for his healing abilities to do their work, but I was getting worried. He was so still that I had to keep watching carefully to be sure his chest was still rising and falling.

"You know, you can't really call me the creepy one when you're in my room watching me sleep."

I'd been so intent on watching him breathe that I'd missed the moment he woke up. He stared at me with those bright blue eyes, brows furrowed in question.

"How much do you remember?" I asked.

My belly squirmed around, which was stupid, because it wasn't as if I was nervous. Everything that had happened between us had been a matter of survival. It didn't mean anything.

Even I didn't remember everything. There were things I knew had happened, like when we'd been so joined that we knew every thought the other one had ever had, but the details of that were fuzzy now. Maybe it was the protective bubble, or maybe it was that we were separate again now, but that was probably for the best, even though part of me still yearned for that kind of closeness. It just wasn't realistic, wasn't sustainable.

He gave a little shrug, then winced. "Bits and pieces."

Then his eyes went wide in fear and he reached out for me and grabbed my hand. There wasn't that immediate feeling of relief that there had been before, when I'd needed his help controlling the power, but still, it was kind of nice anyway.

"Nikolai and Sam?" he asked.

"They're fine," I told him. "Better than you."

He sagged back in relief, his eyes falling closed. I thought he'd fallen asleep, but then he spoke again.

"It's still there," he said quietly. "Our bond. I can feel it, but it's different now."

"We completed it," I told him.

He nodded. "I remember."

My stomach flipped over again, but I ignored it. "You're stuck with me now," I told him.

"Probably for the best," he said, squeezing my hand. "You're fairly useless without me."

There were so many things for us to sort out, to deal with, but just for the moment, it was nice to sit there with him quietly.

Before long, Althea and Nikolai appeared in the doorway. They knew Tennyson was awake, and I'd sensed them coming. I always would now, I supposed. It was part of my new powers, my new life. Just one more of the things I needed to sort out later on.

I pulled my hand away from Tennyson's and stood up.

"You don't have to leave," said Althea.

I moved out of the way so she could take my spot at the bedside.

"It's fine," I said. "I've got some stuff to do."

She smiled at me. and I knew she understood what I meant.

Nikolai hung back by the door for a moment, and I hovered, wanting to see how this played out. They were both kind of idiots about most things, but I hoped they wouldn’t be about this.

“How are you?” Tennyson asked. He sounded nervous.

“You punched me in the face with magic. How do you think I am?”

I held my breath for a moment, but then Nikolai started to laugh, and I knew everything would be fine.

Sam was out in the clearing when I found him. I'd known he would be. He was sitting on the bench, glaring at my golden tree. He didn't speak to me as I sat beside him. We’d barely spoken in days.

"You're misunderstanding everything," I told him. "I can't help but think it's on purpose."

"The Becoming gave you lycanthropy," he said. "And you're bonded to Tennyson forever."

I nodded. Both of those things were true, more or less. But I wasn’t exactly a werewolf. I wasn’t exactly anything anymore.

"Tennyson and I…" I sighed. "Just because we're bonded, that doesn't mean we're in love."

He scoffed at me. "Don't be naïve, Lucy."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't be a jerk, Sam. What's going on here is about more than some stupid bond. The Others are out there, Sam. They took you, they took Hannah. They have your mother."

I couldn't tell him the thought that followed on from that. One day they would have me. I'd started walking down a path that had only one destination. It was too terrifying to think about, so I put it out of my mind.

"Plus, I'm one of you now. I'm going to need your help. You can't teach me how to werewolf if you're mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you, Lucy. I'm…"

I nudged him in the side. "You're what? In awe of my awesomeness, right?" I waggled my eyebrows at him.

"Sure, Lucy. I'm in awe of your awesomeness." He cracked a smile. It was only a small one, but it was there.

I waved a hand toward my tree. "Right! I mean, I grew a whole tree with my brain. That's pretty awesome, right?"

"You and Tennyson joined together to grow a tree," he said, sounding glum again.

"Don't make it sound dirty. It's an awesome brain tree. It probably has powers, too."

I looked at my tree, at its wide, golden branches. No matter what Sam said about it, that tree shone like a symbol of hope to me. If the power inside me was something inevitably evil, how could it create something so bright? That helped me believe that maybe I wouldn't have to walk down that dark path, that instead I could use the power inside me to fight the Others.

In my mind, I could feel Tennyson's contentment. Part of it was our bond, but I could also now sense him as part of the same pack. It felt good. It felt right.

Everything okay? he asked me.

Yeah, I told him, leaning my weight against Sam. Everything's just fine.

END BOOK 4

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.

Click here to join the Werewolf High VIP list for news, freebies and special offers

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