Bound to My Step-brother

Chapter One

Lila's POV.

The house smelled like money the second I walked in. Polished wood, fresh flowers, and something citrusy the cleaners must've used. I trailed behind my mother with a box of my old sketchbooks pressed to my chest, feeling like I'd wandered into someone else's life.

~This isn't home. This will never be home.~

Mom kept glancing back at me, her smile a little too bright, a little too hopeful. "You'll get used to it, sweetheart," she said, setting her purse down on a table that probably cost more than our old apartment's rent for a year.

I didn't answer. I just nodded and kept walking.

The space in my room was the combination of all the rooms in our old apartment.

By evening, I'd unpacked exactly one box before Mom called me down for dinner.

Victor sat at the head of the long dinning table, already halfway through a glass of dark liquor, and Ryker....I almost didn’t believe my eyes. The campus’s playboy was now my brother?

He sat across from me, sprawled back in his chair like he owned the whole house.

Which, I supposed, he basically did.

His eyes found mine the second I sat down. Held there. I looked away first, reaching for my water glass just to have something to do with my hands.

"So," Victor said, cutting into his steak without looking up, "Lila. Roseline tells me you're quiet. Gentle." He said the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth. "That's a rare quality in this town. It

usually gets people eaten alive."

"Victor," Mom said softly, a warning.

"I'm only saying." He finally looked at me, and his smile didn't reach his eyes. "Ridgeview isn't kind to soft things."

~Neither are you.~ I kept that thought locked behind my teeth and speared a piece of asparagus I had no intention of eating.

Victor moved on like he hadn't just gutted me at my own welcome dinner. "The gathering's tonight. Bonfire out at the east field, everyone from the pack, half the students from Aldric." His gaze slid to Ryker. "Including Sarah Whitlock. Good family, that one. Old money, older bloodline."

I saw Ryker go still across the table.

I glanced up in time to catch him look away first, jaw tight, and something about it made my stomach twist in a way I didn't want to examine.

~Not my business. None of this is my business.~

Dinner ended not long after, Victor retreating to his study, Mom trailing after him with that same too-bright smile. I stood to clear my plate when a shadow fell over the hallway doorway.

Ryker leaned against the frame, arms crossed, that easy, arrogant smirk already sliding into place. "So. Stepsister."

"Don't," I said, brushing past him.

He fell into step beside me anyway, unbothered. "Don't what? I haven't even said anything yet."

"You don't have to. I've heard about you." I kept my eyes forward, kept walking. "Ryker Blackthorn, campus playboy, breaks hearts before breakfast. I don't need a demonstration."

"Ouch." He pressed a hand to his chest like I'd wounded him, but the grin didn't waver. "You wound me, and we've barely met."

"We're family now. Or did you forget that part?"

Something flickered across his face, there and gone so fast I almost missed it. "Trust me. I haven't forgotten anything."

The way he said it made my skin heat, made my pulse do something stupid and fast. I hated it. I hated that my body reacted to him at all when my mind was screaming that this was wrong, that he was off-limits, that I had exactly one job in this house and it was to survive it quietly.

"I need to get ready for the bonfire," I said, and walked away before he could answer.

***

The east field was already packed by the time Mom and I arrived, firelight throwing long shadows across dozens of faces I didn't recognize. Music, laughter, the smell of woodsmoke thick in the cold air. I stayed near the edge of it all, arms wrapped around myself, wishing I could disappear into the tree line.

Then Ryker found me. Of course he did.

"You look like you're about to bolt," he said, coming to stand beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off him.

"I might."

"Don't." His voice dropped, quieter now, none of the earlier teasing in it. "Stay. Just, stay near me tonight."

I opened my mouth to argue, to tell him I didn't need a babysitter, when the fire surged.

Not from wind. Not from anyone tossing another log on. Then, a fire rose, gold and violent, climbing higher than any bonfire had a right to, and the whole clearing went silent.

Heat slammed through my chest like a fist closing around my heart, and I gasped, stumbling back a step. Ryker caught my arm, and the second his skin touched mine, something snapped into place between us; a thread, invisible and unbreakable, pulling taut.

~What is this? What's happening to me?~

"Ryker," I breathed, panic clawing up my throat.

He wasn't looking at the fire. He was looking at me like he'd just found something he'd been searching for his whole life. "There you are," he murmured.

Then he turned to the crowd, to the dozens of eyes now fixed on us, and raised his voice loud enough for the whole clearing to hear. "She's my mate."

The words landed like a thunderclap. Gasps rippled outward. Somewhere in the crowd, I heard Victor's voice cut through the noise, low and furious.

"That bond will be broken." He shouldered through the onlookers, eyes locked on Ryker, on me, on the space between us like it personally offended him. "Do you understand what you've just done? She's your sister."

"Stepsister," Ryker shot back, not letting go of my hand. "And I don't care."

"You will care," Victor said, "when I break it myself."

My chest was heaving now, the thread between Ryker and me pulsing hot and terrifying. Everyone's stares pressed down on me like a weight I couldn't carry.

~This is too much.~

"Lila..." Ryker reached for me again, but I was already moving, already running, shoving through the crowd with my eyes burning and my heart slamming against my ribs.

I didn't stop until the fire was just a distant glow behind me and the forest had swallowed the sound of his voice calling my name.