The Soul Bond (Werewolf High Book 4)

by Anita Oh

  The Soul Bond

  Werewolf High #4

  Anita Oh

  The Soul Bond

  Werewolf High Book 4

  © Anita Oh 2016

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places or events, is purely coincidental.

  This book, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  To my homies

  Werewolf High series

  Book 1: The Truth Spell

  A dastardly spell. Mysterious billionaires. An ordinary girl thrust into an extraordinary world.

  Lucy O’Connor is more IT girl than “it girl” but even though she’ll never fit in, the scholarship to elite Amaris High is an opportunity she can’t refuse.

  The day Lucy arrives at Amaris, she sees her best friend, Sam Spencer. But Sam had died three years ago, on the night that had changed Lucy’s life forever. The more Lucy looks for answers, the worse things get for her, as she makes an enemy of the richest, most popular boy in school, Tennyson Wilde.

  When the entire school is hit by a truth spell, it seems like the perfect chance to find out what Sam and Tennyson are hiding, but the closer Lucy gets, the more she realizes that the truth is stranger than she ever imagined.

  Book 2: The Tiny Curse

  A powerful enemy. An estranged love. And only one tiny girl to make things right.

  Life isn’t going so well for Lucy at elite boarding school, Amaris High. Classes are a struggle. She has no leads on the evil magic user. Sam’s avoiding her, and the entire student population hates her.

  But someone hates her more than the rest. Rumors start spreading that lead to Lucy being bullied worse than ever before. Just when she thinks she couldn’t feel smaller, she’s hit with a spell that shrinks her down to only two inches tall.

  Forced to rely on Sam, Tennyson and the other Golden to survive, Lucy is determined to get to the bottom of things once and for all. But the more she learns, she finds that being tiny might not be her biggest problem.

  Book 3: The Body Swap

  A shocking betrayal. An impossible deadline. Everything is about to change.

  Lucy's world is turned upside down when she learns that her enemy is the one person she never suspected.

  Although she has Sam and the Golden on her side, she no longer knows who to trust. Then, when she's hit with one final spell, she has no choice but to put her faith in the person the she despises the most.

  Stuck in Tennyson Wilde's body, Lucy and Tennyson must work together to break the curse or risk becoming each other for real. But in order to fix things, Lucy will face the greatest betrayal of all.

  Book 4: The Soul Bond

  A new threat. An unexpected ally. And a spark of unwanted power.

  Sophomore year isn’t shaping up to be the cake walk that Lucy had hoped. Everyone still hates her. She can’t forgive Sam for his secrets. Her father is back and she can’t forgive him either. There’s been no sign of Hannah, and Lucy can’t help but resent her new roommate because of it.

  And Tennyson Wilde is everywhere. In the dining room. In her dorm. In class. Even inside her head. She thinks it’s just a residual effect of being in his body, the fact that she can hear his thoughts, feel his feelings. But the more it happens, the worse it becomes and it seems to be awakening something inside her.

  Lucy never wanted powers. She never wanted to be anything but a normal girl, but the longer she stays at Amaris, the more impossible that seems.

  A Very Werey Christmas: A Werewolf High Short

  When Lucy runs afoul of the Spirit of Christmas, he teaches her a lesson and transforms her into a reindeer. If she ever wants to be human again, she has to make three Christmas wishes come true before midnight on Christmas night. Can she do it before time runs out?

  Chapter 1

  I woke to the sound of screaming.

  For a moment, I didn't move. My brain was sleep-fogged enough that I wasn't entirely sure where I was or why someone would be making that awful noise. Then my brain kicked in and I remembered. I was at home, in my own bed. Nobody was getting tortured; the screaming was my little brother, Hamish. Summer was over, and he was determined not to go back to school. He wouldn't tell anyone why, but he'd been saying for weeks that he wouldn't go. Nothing could make him. And now it was the first day back at school and he was obviously being stubborn about it. I groaned and rolled out of bed.

  The house was in chaos. I followed a trail of school clothes and books down the hallway to the kitchen, where my eldest brother, Liam, was staring blankly into the fridge. My middle brother, Fletcher, was chasing Hamish from room to room, waving a shoe above his head for no reason that I could see.

  "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!" Hamish screamed, ducking around Liam as he ran through the kitchen.

  I caught him up with one arm and flipped him up over my shoulder. He wrapped his arms around my head like an octopus.

  "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!" he yelled in my ear.

  Fletcher caught hold of Hamish's leg and jammed the shoe he was holding onto Hamish's foot, which seemed pointless, as Hamish wasn't wearing anything else apart from his underwear.

  "What's for breakfast?" Fletcher asked, looking up at me proudly. He was already showered and dressed, and I'd bet he had everything he needed in his bag as well.

  "Um," I said. "Hotdogs?"

  He rolled his eyes. "No, Lucy. You can't have hotdogs for breakfast." He walked away from me, shaking his head, and joined Liam at the fridge.

  "We're out of milk," Liam said, giving me a disapproving look from over the fridge door. He'd been looking at me like that for days, and I was sick of it.

  "And you're telling me this now?" I asked, swinging Hamish around so that he hung off my back. He was getting too big for that kind of shenanigans, but there was no telling him that. I got some bread out of the bread bin and put it in the toaster. "Do I look like a dairy cow? If it's not on the list, I don't know we need it."

  Liam huffed, slammed the fridge closed and stormed out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard the shower turn on in the bathroom.

  Fletcher opened the fridge again and kept staring inside as if he could materialize food through sheer force of will.

  "Can I have honey on my toast?" asked Hamish, kicking me in the side.

  "Sure," I told him, leaning over to see if the toast was cooking. It seemed to take forever otherwise.

  "Honey and PEAS!" Hamish said, squirming around.

  "Ouch, Ham. Stop kicking me. Why would you want peas on toast, you little weirdo?"

  "PEAS PLEASE!" he yelled in my ear.

  "You can have peas if you tell me why you won't go to school," I said, with little hope he'd take the bribe. I'd tried everything I could think of to get him to tell me.

  "NO!" He dropped off my back and ran from the room. He stopped in the doorway and turned back to me, his face screwed up in determination. "If you're not going, I don't have to either!"

  I sighed as I listened to him stomp away. The toast popped up, and I started spreading it with butter. Fletcher came to stand beside me, peeking around my arm to wait for the toast. I slid the plate over to him.

  "He thought that school would make you rich," Fletcher said, taking the plate and wandering over to the table. "He thought you'd come home and bring us all bikes and PlayStations and we'd be having cakes for every meal."

  "It's just a school. It's no better
than Greenville High."

  Fletcher gave me a skeptical look from over his toast.

  "And it's better if I'm here, with you guys," I continued.

  Fletcher shrugged. He'd heard all the arguments before. He'd heard nothing but the arguments about it for days. Changing from one of the most elite schools in the world to our local high school wasn't exactly a decision I'd taken lightly; I'd been back and forth about it all summer. I'd only decided for sure a few days ago, and the Amaris High withdrawal papers were still in my desk drawer. I hadn't even enrolled at Greenville yet. I planned to go in after I dropped the others at school this morning; missing the first day wouldn't matter. As far as I was concerned, where I went to school was my decision and none of their business.

  Before I could say anything else, a bell rang. I put some more toast in the toaster and went to answer it.

  I tapped on my mother's door before opening it. The room was dark, but I could see the outline of her in the bed, propped up against the pillows.

  "Are you okay?" I asked her. "Do you need anything?"

  She normally only rang the bell if there was something wrong.

  "Hamish sounds upset," she said. "What did you do?"

  "Nothing," I told her. "He's just being a brat."

  She shifted in her bed and sighed. "I suppose if you're there anyway, you might get me something to drink. My mouth is so terribly dry."

  I moved farther into the room. "Didn't Liam top up your pitcher this morning?"

  He was normally pretty responsible, and I didn't think he'd start slacking just because he was annoyed at me. I picked up the pitcher to find that it was mostly full.

  "He did, but it has an odd taste."

  I shrugged. "You know I'll just be filling it up with the same water."

  She got like that sometimes, asking for things just for the sake of it. I figured she must get pretty bored just lying in bed all day, so thinking up errands was her hobby.

  "You should eat something too," I told her. "What would you like?"

  She didn't answer, just groaned and turned away. Getting her to eat was always a struggle, and getting her to eat something healthy was even harder.

  I left to fill up her water. Liam and Hamish were both eating toast at the table with Fletcher. Hamish still wasn't dressed. I ignored them all and looked in the cupboard for something to feed our mother that she might actually eat.

  As I stood there, I began to feel strange.

  Everything around me dimmed, became kind of fuzzy and unimportant. All of my focus was on this strange sensation inside me, one that felt like a ball of light or energy, growing bigger and bigger. It sat just behind my breastbone, so bright and clear and warm. As it grew, I felt it was filling me up completely, merging with me and becoming part of me. Even though it felt strange, it was somehow familiar, comforting.

  I knew it was coming before I heard it — the knock on the door. And I knew exactly who would be on the other side.

  "Stay there," I told my brothers as they looked up curiously from their toast. I backed out of the room with my eyes still on them. They would definitely try to spy on this, and I didn't want them to see or hear anything to do with that other world. "I'm watching you. I am always watching you."

  I paused in the hallway before opening the door. I did not want this. I wished there was some way to skip over the next ten or so minutes without having to actually live them, like the dud song that’s on everyone's playlist. I didn't even want this on my playlist. I wanted to delete it from my whole library.

  The knock came again, even louder this time. There was no avoiding it.

  I swung open the door and there he was, standing on my doorstep just as I’d known he would be. Tennyson Wilde.

  For a moment, I stood there in shock, gaping like an idiot. How had I known he would be there? That was not normal. And not only that; the image of Tennyson Wilde there on my doorstep took me a moment to process.

  He didn't belong in the real world.

  He'd grown taller over the summer, which made him look too thin and brought a gauntness to his features that made him seem much older than sixteen. Even though it was the end of summer, his skin was still super pale, and it made the bright blue of his eyes almost seem to glow in the morning light. He didn't look human, and he definitely didn't look as if he belonged there. It felt unsettling, like vertigo.

  "Why are you here?" I asked him quietly, so my brothers wouldn't overhear.

  "Why are you?" he said, pushing past me and stepping inside.

  As he moved, I saw the others standing behind him. Tennyson's sister, Althea, was leaning against the porch rail, looking as if she were posing for the cover of a magazine. Nikolai Volkov was standing on her other side, taking everything in with gleeful eyes. That made me notice all the junk sitting around on our porch: Hamish's broken fire truck, discarded sporting equipment and muddy shoes. Everything in their lives was immaculate, perfectly positioned. I couldn't even imagine what they thought of the chaos of my house.

  My heart skipped a beat when I noticed there was someone else standing at the bottom of the porch steps. Sam Spencer. He wasn't looking at me, but rather at the house next door, where he used to live. The house where his family had been murdered. I was still so angry at him for betraying me, for selling me out to my father, but I could be angry and still care about him, and the expression on his face hurt my heart.

  "You can't come in here," I told him, trying not to sound too harsh. I hadn't told my brothers that Sam was still alive, and I didn't want to have to explain it now, not when I didn't have any good answers for how or why. No way was I telling them about werewolves. They did not need that information.

  When Sam looked up at me, his eyes were full of pain.

  "I know," he said. "I just wanted to…" He shrugged and turned away.

  "I'll stay with him," Nikolai said, then went down the steps to follow Sam as he walked over to the curb where a long black limo was parked. "I'm not sure I can stomach the inside of a commoner house after all."

  "It's not catching, you know," I called after him, rolling my eyes.

  "Don't mind him," Althea said, pushing off from the railing. "That's how he shows love."

  I followed her inside, to where Tennyson had made himself at home in the living room.

  He looked so fresh and crisp that he made everything around him seem shabbier in comparison. He was only wearing a simple black t-shirt with jeans, but something about the way the clothes sat on his frame made them look like works of art. I couldn't help but notice the way the t-shirt stretched across his shoulders, like he'd gotten broader since he'd bought it.

  I looked away.

  "This is where you live?" he asked.

  "Obviously." Did he not realize I had better things to do than stand around while he made judgments about my life?

  "We were worried when you didn't arrive at school last night," said Althea, sitting primly at one end of the sofa. "Is something wrong?"

  I shrugged. "Everything's fine," I told her. "I'm transferring to the local school here."

  Tennyson gave an annoyed little huff. "I can see how that might make sense, given your socio-economic situation, but you have to see that that's impossible now."

  I narrowed my eyes at him. "Don't tell me what to do."

  "Somebody needs to! You're obviously incapable of making rational decisions on your own." He crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at me from beneath his thick eyebrows.

  "How is it irrational to want to be safe? To want my family to be safe?" All of the arguments I'd had to bite back when I'd been fighting with my brothers, I could throw them at Tennyson Wilde — hurl them at him and hope they struck. "I made it through last year from sheer dumb luck, and you know as well as I do that some people didn't."

  "You're part of our world now," Althea said softly, as if she was trying not to startle me. "Whether you're here or at school, it's not something you can avoid."

  I stared down at my fee
t. I didn't want to argue with her, but she was wrong. I could avoid it all I wanted. I was safe at home. Before I went to Amaris, none of this werewolf stuff had been an issue. Everything had been fine.

  "Sam's family wasn't safe here," Tennyson said. "They found him easily enough."

  What was he, a mind reader?

  "And your father is mixed up in all this as well. You're better off at school where we can keep an eye on you and make sure you don't do anything stupid."

  "I never do anything stupid." I muttered.

  He raised his eyebrows as if just saying it was stupid enough.

  "Tennyson's right, Lucy,” Althea said. "There's all sorts of safeguards up at school, and we'll be there to watch over you as well. It won't be like last year; nobody will curse you or anything."

  I nodded. "Right, and why is that again? Oh, yeah, because those creepy things came into our school and snatched Hannah right from under our noses."

  Tennyson said, "I can't understand why you even care about that evil little…"

  Althea silenced him with a glance. "I know Hannah Morgan was your friend, Lucy. We've been looking into her disappearance, and I think I've found something."

  "Really?"

  Althea nodded. "If you come to school, I'll show you everything."

  I snorted. "You're bribing me?"

  "Well, you won't listen to reason," said Tennyson. "And it's not as if we can have you running around, with you knowing all our family's secrets."

  "Oh," I said. I shouldn't have been surprised, but the realization felt like a punch in the throat. "That's what this is about."

  "No!" said Althea. She rose up from her seat and grabbed my hands. "It's not like that at all. You're our friend, and we're worried about you. We want you to come back to school."