Bound to My Step-brother

Chapter Two

Lila's POV

Branches snapped behind me. I turned around before I even knew it was him.

"Lila." Ryker's voice came out of the dark, closer than I thought. His hand grabbed my wrist and spun me around. He was breathing hard, like he'd run the whole way. "Wait. Just wait."

"There's nothing to wait for." I tried to pull away. He didn't let go.

"Do you feel it?" His voice dropped. "The pull. Tell me you don't feel it."

God, I wanted to lie. I wanted to say no. But my mouth wouldn't do it, because the thread between us was still humming. Still alive. Still pulling me toward him even while my brain screamed at me to run.

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

"Step siblings." He said it like that one word fixed everything. "No blood between us. Not one drop."

"Tell that to your father. Tell that to the whole pack that watched you announce it like some prize you won."

Something in his face slipped. Just for a second. Under all that arrogance there was something rawer. "I'll protect you," he said. "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 just to look at him. "I've known enough for a long time."

I opened my mouth to ask what that meant. I never got the chance. His mouth was on mine.

It wasn't soft. It was hungry, like he'd been starving for this exact second for years and finally let himself eat. My hands grabbed his shirt on instinct. And the moment I gave in, everything behind my eyes went white, then dark, then... something else.

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 watched him break away from his friends and walk over without saying a word. He just stood there beside her until they scattered.

Then more. So many more. Him two steps behind me at school events I don't even remember him being at. Him quietly paying off some bully's family. Him standing in doorways, at the edges of rooms, always close, always careful never to get caught.

He's been there. Oh my God, he's been there this whole time.

I gasped and stumbled back, breaking the kiss. Whatever door had just cracked open in my head, it slammed again. Ryker grabbed my elbow before I could fall. His eyes were wide. Shocked.

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

"Then what am I?" My voice cracked.

He didn't answer. He just stared at me like I was some puzzle he hadn't figured out yet. That scared me more than anything else that happened that night.

"Wait." He looked like he'd gone somewhere else for a second. Then he snapped out of it. "That's not possible. You could be a wolf, but it's suppressed."

"Should I be worried?"

"No. I'm not sure if that's the case."

Twenty minutes later, I was in my room.

I didn't sleep that night. I couldn't.

I lay there in the dark of my new room, staring at a ceiling I didn't recognize. The vision ran over and over until it blurred at the edges. He loved me before I even knew he existed. That has to mean something, right? Maybe he was my soulmate.

Then my brain went somewhere colder. Tomorrow. School. Hallways full of girls who used to have Ryker's hands on them, his mouth on theirs, his attention. They're going to hate me. They're going to think I stole him.

***

The morning lecture went by in a blur. I don't think I caught a single sentence.

Thank goodness today's isn't as I predicted.

Nadia, Talia and I walked toward the campus restaurant.

"There she is." Cassandra's voice cut through the noise. Like she'd been waiting all morning for this.

She stepped right into our path. Two girls flanked her, arms crossed, chin up like she'd already won. "The little stray who bonded her way into the Blackthorn name."

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

"She's not worth it," Talia added. But even she looked braced for something.

"You think some forbidden little bond makes you special?" Cassandra's smile showed all her teeth. "You were nothing yesterday. You're nothing today. You're just wearing his name like a costume."

Something hot uncoiled in my chest. Unfamiliar. Electric. "Walk away," I said quietly.

"Or what?" She laughed and shoved me. Hard. Both hands slamming into my shoulders. "I challenge you to fight me. You're just a human. You don't even have a wolf."

She stepped back and shifted. One second she was standing there in her uniform, the next there was a black wolf where she'd been. She lunged at me and I ducked, my body moving before my brain caught up. Her claws sailed past my ear, close enough that I felt the wind of it. I answered with a strike of my own, open palm, right into her throat. She dropped like someone cut her strings, gasping, all the air punched out of her.

Something ancient moved under my skin. I don't know how else to describe it.

The crowd gasped, all at once. Somewhere far away, muffled under the roar in my own ears, I heard Talia yell my name, "Lila."

Then Ryker's voice, from behind me.

"Lila, stop!"

I stopped.

"Lila. Ryker. My office. Now." Victor's voice cut through everything.

Victor's office was just as fancy as everything else he owned. He didn't even look up from his desk when we walked in. Just kept signing whatever he was signing, hard, angry strokes of the pen.

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

"You embarrassed this family in front of half the student body." He finally set the pen down and looked at me. His stare could've frozen water. "I'm an official at this university. I will not have my name dragged through gossip because you can't control whatever it is you're doing."

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

"I don't care what you know. You'll learn to control it, or you'll learn to hide it. Those are your only options."

He leaned back and looked at Ryker. "The elders have summoned you both. They want the bond declared in front of them, formally, or broken in front of them, formally. I won't have this scandal hanging over my name one more day."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"You will stand in front of them," Victor said, folding his hands. "And you will reject each other. Publicly. Completely."