Bound to My Step-brother

Chapter Two

Lila’s POV

Branches snapped behind me. I turned before I knew it was Ryker.

"Lila." Ryker's voice cut through the dark, closer than I expected, and then his hand closed around my wrist, spinning me to face him. His chest heaved like he'd run the whole distance without stopping once. "Wait. Just...wait."

"There's nothing to wait for." I tried to pull free, but his grip only tightened, gentle and immovable at once.

"Do you feel it?" he asked, quieter now. "The pull. Tell me you don't feel it."

~Liar. Say you don't feel it.~ But my mouth wouldn't form the words, because the thread between us was still humming, still alive, still pulling me toward him even as every rational thought in my head screamed to run the other way.

"Yes," I whispered. "I feel it. That doesn't make it right, Ryker. You're my...we're siblings. This is forbidden. It's sick."

"Step-siblings," he said, like that single syllable could fix everything. "No blood between us. Not one drop."

"Try telling that to your father. Try telling that to the entire pack that watched you announce it like...like a prize you'd won."

His jaw tightened, and for a second the arrogance slipped, leaving something rawer underneath. "I'll protect you. From him, from the elders, from anyone who looks at you wrong. I don't care what it costs me."

"You don't even know me."

"I know enough." He stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. "I've known enough for a long time."

Before I could ask what that meant, his mouth was on mine.

It wasn't gentle. It was hungry, searching, like he'd been starving for this exact moment for years and finally let himself feed. My hands found his shirt, fisting the fabric, and the second I gave in, the world behind my eyes shattered into a vision.

I saw him. Younger, maybe ten, maybe eleven, standing at the edge of a playground, watching a smaller version of me get shoved off a swing by kids twice her size. I saw him break away from his friends and walk straight over, saying nothing, just standing beside her until they scattered.

I saw a hundred more moments after that, stitched together like a film reel-him trailing two steps behind me at school events I didn't remember him attending, him quietly paying off a bully's family, him watching from windows, from doorways, from the edges of rooms, always close, always careful never to be caught.

~He's been there. This whole time, he's been there.~

I gasped and stumbled back, breaking the kiss, breaking whatever door had just cracked open in my mind. Ryker caught my elbow before I could fall, his eyes wide with something like shock.

"You shouldn't have seen that," he said slowly. "You're not a wolf. You shouldn't be able to pull memories through the bond like that..."

"What am I, then?" My voice cracked on the question.

He didn't answer. He just looked at me like I was a puzzle he hadn't finished solving, and that terrified me more than anything else that had happened all night.

“Except...” he looked like he was in a trance. But suddenly he snapped out of it. “It’s not possible .”

“Should I be worried?”

“No.”

I didn't sleep. I couldn’t .

I lay in the unfamiliar dark of my new bedroom, staring at a ceiling I didn't recognize, replaying the vision over and over until it blurred at the edges.

~He loved me before I even knew he existed. That has to mean something.~

Like he was my soulmate.

But then my mind dragged me somewhere colder, tomorrow, school, the hallways full of girls who'd once had Ryker's hands on them, his mouth on theirs, and his attention.

~They'll hate me. They'll think I stole him.~

***

The morning lecture blurred past me. I couldn’t retain any sentence. By the time Nadia, Talia, and I headed toward the campus restaurant, I'd almost convinced myself the day might pass without incident.

I was wrong.

"There she is." Cassandra's voice sliced through the chatter, sharp and delighted, the way people sound when they've been waiting all morning for a fight.

She stepped into our path with two girls flanking her, arms crossed, chin tilted like she already knew she'd won. "The little stray who bonded her way into the Blackthorn’s name."

"Ignore her," Nadia muttered under her breath, tugging my sleeve.

"She's not worth it," Talia added, but her eyes were already narrowing, already braced.

"You think a forbidden little bond makes you special?" Cassandra's smile was all teeth. "You're nothing. You were nothing yesterday, and you're nothing now, just wearing his name like a costume."

Something hot uncoiled low in my chest, unfamiliar and electric. "Walk away," I said quietly.

"Or what?" She laughed, and shoved me, hard, both palms against my shoulders. “I challenge you to fight me. You’re a mere human with no wolf.”

She scrambled up, shifted into a black wolf. She lunged at me, and I ducked without deciding to duck, my body already three steps ahead of my brain. Her claws sailed past my ear, close enough that I felt the wind of it, and I answered with a strike of my own, open palm, straight to her neck. She went down like her strings had been cut, gasping, air punched clean out of her lungs.

I felt a strange power, ancient, riding underneath it.

The crowd around us gasped in one collective breath. Somewhere distant, muffled by the roar in my own ears, I heard Talia shout my name.

“Lila stop...” Ryker screams from behind.

I stopped.

“Lila, Ryker, see me in my office, now,” Victor roared.

Victor's office looked luxurious, same as everything else he owned. He didn't look up from his desk when Ryker and I stepped inside. He just kept signing something with sharp, irritated strokes.

"Sit," he said. Neither of us did.

"You embarrassed this family in front of half the student body," he said finally, setting the pen down and fixing me with a stare that could've frozen water. "As an official of this university, I will not have my household name dragged through gossip because you can't control whatever you're doing."

"I didn't ask for this power," I said. "I don't even know what it is."

"I don't care what you know." His voice was flat, final. "You will learn to control it, or you will learn to hide it. Those are your only options."

He leaned back, gaze sliding to Ryker, cold and deliberate. "The elders have summoned you both. They want the bond declared before them formally or broken formally. I won't have this scandal hanging over my name a moment longer than it has to."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"You will stand before them," Victor said, folding his hands, "and you will reject each other. Publicly. Completely."