Behind me I hear him hit the floor. He gags, the sound wet and broken, like he’s being torn apart from the inside. My own stomach lurches. I gag too, my hand flying to my mouth, the pull of the mate bond making me sick with him. I keep walking.
I find the stairs and run down fast, my footsteps echoing in the stairwell.
I reach the exit doors and his voice comes down the stairwell after me, bouncing off the walls.
“I’m going to get you back, Mara. And you better hope no one gets hurt for what you’ve decided to do.”
I push the door open and step out into the cool evening air, the campus emptying around me, the lamps coming on in the courtyard one by one. I look at the tree line at the far side of the grounds, then break into a run.
The wind hits my face, pulling my hair back. I cross the courtyard, my feet pounding against the pavement, then the edge of the field, grass whipping against my legs, and finally the tree line takes me in.
I reach the first tree and my claws extend with a soft snick, digging into the bark as I climb. The wind hits my face harder up here, pulling my hair back in a wild tangle. My dress catches on a limb and I hear it tear and I don’t care. My tail works behind me for balance, whipping left and right as I change direction. Low branches whip past my ears, leaving scratches I’ll feel tomorrow.
I have to do this. I know I’m doing the right thing.
Or that’s what I’m telling myself.
6
Aaron
One Week Later
Time doesn’t mean shit anymore. I’ve been staring at the same lesson plan for thirty minutes, the words blurring together into nonsense. The classroom is empty. The last student left ten minutes ago, but I haven’t moved.
The mate bond is eating me alive from the inside out.
A constant pull toward Mara that I can’t answer. Last night I woke up with every object in my suite floating off the ground. I couldn’t bring them down for almost an hour.
I’m falling apart at the fucking seams.
I look down at my hands. They’re trembling. I press them flat against the desk, trying to steady them, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works. The only thing that would help is the one thing I can’t have. Mara in my arms, her scent filling my lungs, her tail brushing against my skin.
Is she feeling it too? The pull? The physical ache of being separated? I’ve tried to reach her every day this week. The Lion Shifter Wing might as well be a fortress. Meekah standing guard like some massive, smug soldier, Mara’s brothers flanking him with their claws out and their tails lashing.
I tried using a portal yesterday. Headmistress Ebony caught me halfway through the spell and shut it down.
“You will respect her boundaries, Mr. Blackwood,” she’d said, her voice cold. “Or you will find yourself suspended from this Academy.”
Exhaustion weighs on me. I haven’t slept more than two hours at a stretch since Mara left. Every time I close my eyes, I see her face. The hurt in her eyes when she realized what I’d done. The way her tail had gone limp behind her.
The whole Academy feels different now. Students who used to greet me in the halls now look away when I pass. Colleagues who once stopped to chat now find urgent reasons to be elsewhere. Even Seth has been avoiding me, though that changed today.
Everyone is afraid of me.
I can’t scent emotions the way shifters can, but I don’t need to. It’s in the way they hold themselves, the way their eyes dart away, the hushed conversations that stop when I enter a room. They know a piece of me broke when Mara left. They can see the cracks spreading.
I pick up a pen, twirl it between my fingers. Blue-gold sparks dance along the metal. I drop it with a curse.
“Damn, man. You look like you’re about to crack.”
I lift my head. Seth is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, watching me with that half-concerned, half-wary expression he’s been wearing all week. I didn’t even hear him come in.
“Do I?” My voice sounds off to my own ears.
Seth pushes off the doorframe and walks into the classroom, stopping a few feet from my desk. His eyes are soft, sympathetic in a way I’m not used to seeing from my little brother.
“Look,” he says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I really hate seeing you like this.”
