Unbound

by April Vine

  The three sisters sat huddled together on a white sofa in his study. Nick and Zach had kept them company and were now organizing some food.

  “The color of her eyes changed. What does that mean?” His question met foreboding silence. He plowed his hand through his hair and rubbed his stubbly jaw as he stared at her quickly paling aunts, years of control training deserting him when he needed it most.

  “What color did they change into?”

  “Red.”

  “Oh, this is our worst nightmare come true. There’s nothing that we can do now,” they whispered.

  “Once her eye color changes, we can’t go back and fix it. It’s impossible. We never thought it would come to this.”

  Worry lined their bubbly faces. He hated seeing Michelle’s aunts so helpless and scared.

  “What will we do, Sebastian?”

  All eyes turned to him, fearsome and pleading.

  “What will happen to her now?” Sebastian tapered his voice and curbed his impatience. He raged with the helpless feeling inside him, driving him desperate enough to want to shake her aunts into giving him the information he wanted immediately. His power of command died a quick death. Was he going to lose her forever?

  “She’ll shift.” Lindie wiped tears dripping down her face.

  Esmie offered further explanation. “The lust spell requires incantations pertaining to animal lust instinct as we said before.” Seized by a flood of tears herself, Surtie took over when both her sisters were unable to continue.

  “We are able, through magic, to instill those chemicals that make animals behave instinctively sexual into a human subject…in this case our beloved Michelle. It’s what the lust spell is, basically. She’ll change and it’s all our faults.”

  “Into what?” Did it even matter into what she shifted? He still stood to lose her.

  “We can’t say for sure. Feline. Canine. There’s no bringing her back from this.”

  “What’s happening to her right now? She said she feels normal, as if the spell had passed. Could she be in pain now?” His voice was in direct contrast to the vicious, violent storm brewing inside him, quiet, leveled, restrained. He clenched his fists, squeezing the blood from his hands to stop him from turning over every piece of furniture in the room.

  “Nothing is happening to her right now,” Esmie said. “At this moment she is her true self, as she says. The lust spell has worn off for sure. She is exhausted as she is and will sleep for a few hours more, but then give or take a few more hours or even a day after that…”

  “No human, animal, witch or wizard can bring our Michelle back, Sebastian, not even you. She will shift. There’s nothing we can do for her.”

  “Now only she holds the power to change this except we know she won’t use that power even if her human life depended on it.”

  “What would she need to do?” he asked.

  “She would need to accept the shift, nothing can be done about the initial shift, it must be realized first. And once in her shifted state, only then can she accept herself as a witch. Become one with the Goddess and return to us.”

  “How long will her becoming one with the Goddess take?”

  “We can’t say. A minute. A year. It all depends on Michelle.”

  “We have tried, incessantly, for twenty years to bring her around. We were shocked she even allowed us to cast a spell on her in the first place. She had to be susceptible to the lust spell or she could have rebuffed our efforts until the end of time. Only she can change this and we’re worried she won’t want to.”

  He knew Michelle well enough to know she’d never take on her ancestry, even with something as serious as this. Damn, she’d prefer to die in the wilderness than meet her true self.

  “Oh, what have we done to our beloved child? This is the point of no return for us.”

  Chapter Six

  Point of no return.

  Michelle kicked the covers off her body as she thrashed around the bed. Her sweet dreams had morphed into a horrible nightmare. Darkness slashed through the fairy-tale images she happily dwelled on in her sleep. The smile on Sebastian’s face turned into revulsion as he looked at her. He dropped his hands from her body, too disgusted to keep touching her, kissing her.

  Point of no return.

  She was changing into an animal. She couldn’t stop the transformation. Couldn’t bear to see the abhorrence in his eyes. She ran away from him…on four legs.

  Michelle sprang from the bed. She looked at her hands and feet and sighed in relief as she lowered herself back down onto the pillow. She scrubbed her face with both her hands and tried to shake the doom crowding out her coherence. But her memory kept playing snippets of information past her mind. She let her thoughts flow and pieced together her dream only to realize she hadn’t been dreaming at all. The images in her sleep had been a simulated reenactment of a conversation she had overheard in her conscious state, the one she could still hear coming from Sebastian and her aunts. A conversation only a human with unnatural hearing abilities could hear.

  Patent shock drilled her limbs into the mattress. A heavy cube of cold steel sat against her throat, blocking her passage to breathe. She shrank and suffocated under her forced immobility at the same time as a foreign voice, a voice once her own, screamed the truth at her.

  She was shifting and nothing could be done for her. Nothing at all.

  She pried her lips apart and gulped down a mouthful of air. The oxygen bolted through her body, lifting her spine clear off the mattress. She stumbled off the bed, gasping for breath as she crawled to a floor-length mirror. With the help of the armrest of a chair, she balanced her weight and rose to her feet, trembling uncontrollably. She examined the rest of herself by lifting the cotton nightshirt Sebastian had dressed her in. Human skin still covered her body. She dropped the nightshirt in relief then raised her heavy hair away from the rest of her face and shrieked softly.

  Her ears had changed their shape. They’d become larger and pointy. She hurriedly concealed them again with her hair and scrambled about the room with new energy, not knowing what to do, too afraid to see the evidence of her alterations, yet unable to resist touching her ears again.

  She sat on the bed and held her head, willing her body to reject the change. But the more she denied the change, the more she craved it. She forced her blood to curdle, sourness to rise in her throat, eager for any human reaction to her shift—she’d become a mangy animal for crying out loud. Again, her body refused to corporate. A flood of dual emotions vied for domination. Willing her to receive the change graciously, keenly, lovingly or fight it with every ounce of human strength she had in her until she died. There was no contest. Her strength failed miserably.

  She couldn’t stay.

  She slipped off the bed and hunted down writing material then sat down and began a letter to her aunts. She didn’t have much time, didn’t expect them to leave her alone for very much longer without checking on her. She’d have to ensure she wasn’t confronted before her escape. Seeing her aunts and Sebastian again would weaken the little fight she had left in her.

  Dear Aunts, she began writing with a rushed and shaky hand, keeping her tears at bay to see her words better.

  Please know that this is not your fault. I am entirely to blame. Promise me one thing, if nothing else, that none of you would carry the blame through your lives for what is happening to me. It is what it is and this must be goodbye.

  I wouldn’t want any of you to see me as anything other than human. I can’t seem to fight the change so I must accept it. Don’t try to find me—you will only prolong what is a very difficult situation for all of us already.

  I know I have been haughty at times and well, no fun at all really. I regret not laughing as much as I should have with you. But you must believe me, I couldn’t imagine my life without any of you in it even if I said otherwise. You must know how dear you are to me. All in all, I can say I have lived a better life because of you.

  Strang
ely, my future, whatever it entails, fails to scare me. It’s my fate. Ironic when it was brought about by magic in the first place.

  Be well and stay safe.

  My love, eternally.

  Michelle

  Everything happening to her still felt surreal, like a dream within a dream. She folded the sheet of paper in half and propped it against a gold-rimmed lamp in plain sight for anyone to see. She’d miss her aunts, their antics included, but the burden in her heart escalated as she caught sight of Sebastian’s watch on the desk. The thought of writing a note to Sebastian turned her fingers into lead. What would she say to him? That she loved him almost all her life? That not being with him was her biggest regret in this whole sorry situation of shifting? He might have helped preserve her life thus far, perhaps out of courtesy to her aunts, maybe even out of courtesy to her long-lost friendship with him. But this brutal change from human to animal, what kind of courtesy could he possibly come up with? Offer for her to stay in his backyard? A brittle smile spread across her lips. Sebastian could not go any further than this for her, even if he loved her.

  She picked up his watch and ran her fingers along the stark, expensive metal, straining for a glimpse of heat he might have left behind. Only coldness greeted her. She placed it back on the desk then glanced out the glass doors leading onto a balcony—her means of escape. Leaving him would be her greatest human regret. But it was also because of him that she was leaving. He could never see her degraded into an animal. Never.

  Determined now, she changed back into her skirt and t-shirt. She snatched Sebastian’s wallet off the side table and extracted a thick wad of money, which she stuffed into the pocket of her skirt.

  “Goodbye, Sebastian.” Her gaze swept across his room one final time before she walked out onto the balcony. Tears rolled down her face as she climbed onto the ledge and, without hesitating, jumped to the ground. She didn’t question the animal instinct instructing her lithe movements. She landed firm and soft on both her feet and hands.

  * * * * *

  Sebastian crushed the waves of helplessness stifling his thoughts. Only one option remained available to him.

  “Do the spell on me.” His quiet command stumped the tears of Michelle’s aunts.

  “No, Sebastian. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “I can change with her.”

  “You don’t understand. It isn’t the lust spell that’s the cause of all of this. It’s the reparation spell gone wrong, the one she blocked because of her feelings for you.”

  “Even if we cast the lust spell on you, there’s no guarantee whatsoever you’ll shift too. You might not be able to block the reparation spell. Her feelings for you are of love. You might not resist it the way she did.”

  “I will.” He ignored their gaping silence. “Prepare the spell.” He pushed away from the desk in his library, his motions brisk and decisive now that he had the upper hand. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” He strode toward the door then turned around. “One more question. If I shift with her, will she recognize me?”

  “She’s bound to you for life and thereafter in every shape, size and form. This wouldn’t have happened had you not been her soul mate, Sebastian. But—”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” he said, cutting Surtie off. “Prepare the spell. Double the dose. I’m not waiting for things to kick in.” Michelle belonged to him for life and beyond.

  He jogged down the long passage to his bedroom, desperate to see her again, to touch her and feel her against him. He swung the door open and roared when he stared at his empty bed and Michelle nowhere in sight.

  Michelle’s aunts, Nick and Zach burst through the door immediately. Nick and Zach tried to restrain him from leaving the room in search of Michelle while her aunts found and read her letter.

  “Dammit, she’s gone. I have to find her. She can’t be far.” He yanked free. Nick and Zach let him go but her aunts pleaded with him to listen before he left the room.

  “You’ll find her quicker if we do the spell on you. We don’t know if she’s changed already and if she has, none of your resources will be enough to find her in her animal form. You don’t even know what she is right now but with the spell, if it works, you’ll be drawn to her even if she is on the other side of the world.”

  Sebastian stopped in his tracks. His chest expanded with air. They were right. “Do the spell now.” He had to find her. Had to save them both.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Zach asked as his black boots pounded carefully down the staircase.

  “She’s shifting, Zach, and the only way I can be with her is if I shift as well.”

  “You must be fucking crazy. We’re not letting you shift into some animal. Sebastian, don’t you see, you’ll be better off here in your bloody human form trying to get her back.” Nick paced the length of the floor.

  “Nick’s right, Sebastian. Let’s look at this logically—”

  “We’re past the point of logic. I’m not letting her go through this alone. I’m not going to let her be out there in the fucking wilderness all by herself. Fuck it, how will she protect herself? I can’t allow her to be alone and scared, dammit, I love her. I didn’t spend eight years of my life in special forces for nothing. Some things will stick with me, I guess.” He banked on it. So he’d have paws instead of hands, teeth instead of guns, but skill was skill.

  His stomach lurched at the thought of Michelle having to face off alone with a bear or lion. And what about food? She’d starve to death rather than hunt and eat. He’d have no qualms about doing whatever it required for them to survive. “I love her and I’m not leaving her to go this alone.” But in that same instance of fear he felt for her, relief inundated his heart. He’d find her, with the spell, he’d find her and protect her and love her. The tension around them dissipated as his words sunk in.

  “Man, we said get a couple of heirs to take over the family business,” Nick reminded him.

  “We didn’t say they had to be human.” Sebastian smiled.

  “Fuck no, we didn’t.” Zach laughed. “You going to be okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  * * * * *

  “Where to, Miss?”

  “As deep into the mountain as you can go,” Michelle said without raising her head as she sat in the backseat of the red sedan-type car. She had walked from Sebastian’s home to the main road where she was lucky enough to procure a passing taxi driver.

  “Need to get away, huh? I know a lovely little bed-and-breakfast—friends of mine run it, very secluded, very private, the perfect place to put away your worries without being interrupted.”

  She glanced up and caught the taxi driver’s friendly glance in the rearview mirror. “Thank you. That’s exactly what I need.”

  “It’s a two-hour drive though…”

  “I have enough money.”

  “I’ll give you a special price anyway, all right? You look like you could use a break.”

  She murmured a thank-you and closed her eyes. Silent tears seeped from her closed eyelids. Two hours and ten minutes later, her eyes shot open, her heart beat in her eardrum. There was no going back from here.

  She paid the driver who wished her happiness and booked herself into The Wild Mountain bed-and-breakfast under a false name. Not that it mattered. Soon every trace of her ever being there would be erased forever, every human trace that is. Her nails had grown rapidly from their painfully blunt state and a dull ache had started in her back.

  She swung open the double glass doors of the small but cozy ground-level room and sniffed the clean mountain air. Vast, empty land spread beyond the room. Her new habitat beckoned. She pressed the flats of her palms to her eyes, feeling nothing inside except a dismal void. She climbed onto the bed and stretched out on her sore back, her head tilted toward the opened doors. She fell asleep as she waited for the transformation to complete.

  Michelle roused slowly. She arched her stiff spine and kicked out her legs. Her gaze slammed straight
into Sebastian’s.

  “Sebastian!” She jumped up from the bed, wobbly from sleep, distrusting of her own eyes. He looked comfortable in the chair, with his long jean-clad legs spread wide apart, his elbows resting on the armrests and the tips of his fingers of both hands touching in the center of his chest. His overwhelming maleness reawakened her senses to full alert.

  “How did you find me?” She widened the space between them, ready to run out into the open and disappear. He stayed where he was.

  “How do you feel?” He ignored her question.

  Hot blood rose to the surface of her skin. Strips of memory flashed in her mind. She saw herself with Sebastian, naked, keeping him inside her body, begging for his cum.

  His tall body unfolded from the chair. He came toward her, powerful, lithe, overconfident, freshly shaven and different. Something strange glinted in his eyes. Something dangerous. Something raw and savage.

  “Sebastian,” she cried, coming toward him and cupping his face. She stared into his eyes. Had she been contagious? Apprehension strangled her breath. “I think I infected you. You have to leave. You have to go back to my aunts before it’s too late.” She walked to the door. He stopped her midway. With his hand around her arm, he brought her back against his body.

  “You didn’t infect me, Glitterbug.”

  “Please, Sebastian, please go back home and let my aunts heal you. It can’t be too late for you. I’ll never forgive myself if I hurt you.”

  “Why did you run away from me?”

  “I…I…” The words stuck in her throat. Saying out loud she was shifting in front of Sebastian made it that much more real. “That’s not important. What is, is that you get help immediately. Please leave. Please. I don’t want you here…it isn’t safe for you here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  “No. Listen to me.” She clasped his hands, her shoulders jerking as she sobbed and pleaded. “I beg you. I don’t want you to see me like that. Give me that one last request, Sebastian. Please, don’t deny me the right to be left alone.”