Chapter 4 The Pull I Can't Explain

Emrys's POV

I catch myself staring before I even realize I've stopped walking.

It's lunch again, same courtyard, same tables, and Rosalind is sitting with Marlowe like she has every single day since I've known her, except today I can't stop looking at the gray smudge along her jaw, right over the scars she thinks nobody notices. It looks like a bruise. It looks like something else too, something I don't have a word for, and I hate that some part of me wants to cross the courtyard and ask her what it is.

I don't move. I just stand there like an idiot with my tray in my hands, staring.

"You're doing it again."

Odette's voice cuts through me sharp as a slap. I turn, and she's right there, arms crossed, that look on her face that means she's already decided how this conversation is going to go before I say a single word.

"Doing what?" I ask, even though I already know.

"Staring at my sister." She says sister like it costs her something to say it out loud. "Every day this week, Emrys. People are starting to notice."

"I'm not."

"Don't." She holds up a hand, and for once there's no performance in her voice, no audience to play to. Just something tired and real underneath it. "Our binding ceremony is in six weeks. Six weeks. Do you understand what that means for both our packs if you keep looking at her like that where anyone can see?"

I do understand. That's the worst part. I understand exactly what it means: the merger depends on this binding, my father's whole plan depends on it, generations of two bloodlines finally locking together depend on it, and none of that has ever once felt like mine. It's always felt like something handed to me before I was old enough to say no.

"I hear you," I say, because it's the only thing I can say that isn't a lie and isn't the whole truth either.

Odette studies my face for a long moment, like she's trying to find something specific and can't locate it. Then she sighs, some of the sharpness draining out of her. "I'm not trying to be cruel. I just need this to work. Both our fathers need this to work."

"I know."

"Then stop looking at her."

She walks off before I can answer, and for a second I actually believe I can do what she asked. I turn back toward my own table, ready to sit down, eat, forget the whole thing.

That's when Rosalind looks up.

Our eyes meet across the courtyard, and it isn't like yesterday, isn't like the flicker of recognition from the cafeteria three days ago. This time it hits like something physical, a fist closing around my ribs from the inside, and my whole body goes rigid before I can stop it.

My wolf, the wolf I have spent eighteen years failing to fully control, the one my father calls disciplined and everyone else calls cold, lunges.

Not metaphorically. Not a feeling. I mean it lunges, hard, like an animal throwing itself against the bars of a cage, and my knees actually buckle under the force of it. I catch myself on the edge of a table before I go down completely, tray clattering, food sliding, half the courtyard turning to look at whatever just happened to Emrys Caldwell in the middle of lunch.

"Emrys?" Someone's hand is on my arm. I don't even know whose.

I can't answer. I can't do anything except stare across the courtyard at Rosalind, who has gone completely still in her seat, one hand pressed flat against her chest exactly the way mine is pressed against my own, like we're both trying to hold something in that's trying to claw its way out.

For one impossible second, I don't see the courtyard at all.

I see silver water. I see the shape of her, not Rosalind exactly, but someone wearing her face, someone I know down to the marrow of my bones, someone I would burn the whole world down for. And I see my own hands closing around her throat while I beg her, out loud, in a voice that isn't mine, to forgive me for something I haven't done yet.

Then it's gone, and I'm back, and Marlowe is already on her feet next to Rosalind's chair, saying her name the same urgent way she said it three days ago in the cafeteria.

"You okay?" Someone from my table is asking me the same thing, but their voice sounds far away, muffled, like I'm underwater.

"Fine," I manage. "I'm fine."

I'm not fine. My hands are shaking so hard I have to shove them in my pockets. Across the courtyard, Rosalind is standing now too, gripping the table edge, and even from this distance I can see her scars, that gray smudge along her jaw, pulsing faintly, like something under her skin is lit up from the inside.

Nobody else seems to notice it. Not Marlowe, standing right beside her. Not the dozen other students glancing over and then looking away, already losing interest, already deciding whatever just happened isn't worth their attention.

Only me. I'm the only one who can see it.

And that's when I understand, cold and sudden, dropping through me like a stone through water, this isn't new. This has happened before, somewhere, some time I can't remember, but my body remembers perfectly, my wolf remembers perfectly, remembers her scars glowing exactly like that in exactly that place while something terrible happened right afterward.

I take a step toward her without deciding to. My body just moves, pulled forward like there's a rope tied around my ribs and someone on the other end is reeling me in.

Odette's voice cuts through the crowd behind me, calling my name, but it sounds like it's coming from another world entirely.

I take another step.

Rosalind's eyes lift and lock onto mine again, and this time I see something in them that stops me cold, not confusion anymore, not fear.

Recognition. Complete, terrible recognition, like she's finally remembered exactly who I am and exactly what I did to her, and whatever it was, it's bad enough that she takes one single step backward, away from me, like I'm something dangerous.

Like I'm something she's already died at the hands of once before.