LOGINZora’s POVAs the evening wore on, my eyelids drooped, but I couldn’t find sleep even when I tried. I was close to the fire, resting on furs, and thanks to Neo, I had food in my belly. But, even as comfortable as I should have been, I found myself shivering with cold.Though the fire at my front was
Valentin’s POVWith tidings as ill as they were, Victoria and Valentin couldn’t talk about things openly, so they went to Valentin’s office, which he had left warded and protected. There, they would not be overheard.There, Valentin told Victoria all that occurred, with some exception for privacy’s
Max’s POVMax hadn’t made it far from his initial starting point before he had to stop and try to grab hold of the mating bond again. Closing his eyes, with his hand over his heart, he meditated, trying to manifest the bond in his mind’s eye as a rope, a tether, guiding his heart to Zora.With progr
“I’m not doing that. I’m going to follow the bond.”“You can still feel it?” Thorne asked him. “Enough to follow it?”Max pressed his hand to his chest. “I think so.”“She’s nowhere close to us,” Valentin said. “If you go blindly, it could take you days if not weeks to find her.”“Then I had better
Valentin’s POVValentin tried to remain calm as Max, Kairos, and Thorne engaged in varying levels of panic, but it was difficult. His resolve was being tested by the moment.One minute Zora had been here with them, and in the next she had simply vanished. What should have only been a small exercise
“Neo…” I whispered.He just kept staring back. His gaze was probing, like he could see down inside of me, straight to the soul he might have held a piece of. Could he feel this too?I opened my mouth, about to ask –The sky opened first, and suddenly rain fell. The tree branches and leaves blocked s
The walk to Valentin’s office was longer and quieter than it’d been before. All of campus seemed to be eerily quiet, as if the entire school was ashamed of last night’s actions. There were a few stragglers out in the early morning, walking home from whatever or wherever they’d ended up. They looked
The blurred voices around me stab through the darkness. At first, they’re muffled and I can only make out a few words around garbled yelling. I tried to protest. I didn’t trust any of those people in that house. I tried to pull out of whoever’s grasp I was in. My hands were covered and set back in m
The next morning, another note was slipped under my door. It was written in normal Valentin script with the time, ten at night, underlined twice. I frowned at it. He usually wanted to meet in the morning, before Basics. This was at night firstly and secondly, not on the day of Basics. Something ab
I cringed at the names but shifted my hearing to another conversation. “—she’s sleeping with like half the school! So desperate for attention after being rejected it’s kind of sad.” “Do you blame her? I mean she had one of the rarest bonds and rejected it. Couldn’t be me—” Another conversation







