Page 24 of Bizarre Bonds
I hesitate in the doorway. Maybe I can use our connection to my benefit for once.
Concentrating on Hail, I summon a surge of urgency, an anxiety about something undone that needs to be addressed.
I’ve only been stewing in that feeling for a few seconds when Hail’s head ticks toward me. Our gazes lock.
A shiver that isn’t exactly unpleasant passes over my skin, but I ignore it and jerk my head toward the doorway.
The winter fae’s mouth twists with reluctance, but he says something to his companions and gets up from his chair. I slip out the doorway before they can see me waiting for him.
Hail ambles into the hall after me with his hands slung in the pockets of his dark jeans and his gaze even more searing than it was at a distance. “What do you want now, Cream Puff?”
He’s still not back to calling me pipsqueak. That’s some kind of victory, isn’t it?
But the fact that Hail is the most annoyed by the bond I’ve forced on him is the exact reason why I picked him for my proposition. “I have another way we can try to get rid of the mark and break the connection.”
A jolt of exhilaration, sweet but tangy like lemon soda, passes into me, although Hail’s eyes narrow. “I’m not going to say no to that. Is it something we can do here in the hall?”
A few other beings meander out of the cafeteria. An itch of self-consciousness wriggles through my nerves. “Um, let’s find an empty classroom. It might take a while and look a little strange.”
Hail’s expression stays skeptical as he follows me down the hall. “What exactly are you thinking we’re going to do?”
I peek through a doorway and determine the room beyond it is unoccupied. As I motion Hail inside, my stomach knots.
Looking at him right next to me, tense as his gorgeous face is, I’m struck by a pang of loss. Which makes no sense at all, because this is the closest he’s been to me in days.
I can’t ignore the niggling question that rises up. What if this bond isn’t a mistake?
I tip forward with a swift inhalation. Hail’s crisp, foresty scent that fits him so perfectly fills my nose.
He blinks at me. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I— Checking for tingles.”
“What?”
I don’t think he wants to hear a full accounting of my internet research into fated mates. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just making sure.”
I tap my fingers against his arm, but there’s definitely no zap. Smelling him didn’t make me any tinglier than I already was with him so close, which is quite a bit. And unfair, since if he’s at all tingly about me, he’s suppressing that feeling very well.
Maybe because I’ve completely bewildered him. “Look, Cream Puff, either tell me how we’re supposed to break this bond or?—"
I guess there’s nothing else to do but lay it out.
I lift my chin. “When I was talking to Riva—you know, the woman shadowblood?—we came up with an idea. Since the marks formed when I was feeling really happy, maybe if we provoke enough negative emotions between us, that’ll sort of… burn it away. Make it fade. Or something.”
“Or something,” Hail repeats, but his tone has gone distant rather than cutting. He studies me for a few seconds that feel horribly long. “Why did you decide to try this experiment with me? Don’t you think that lug of a basilisk shifter would jump at the chance to help you?”
I open my mouth and close it again. I don’t have any gentle way of answering that question either. “I figured that you’re theone who has the most negative feelings toward me already, so it’d be easiest for you.”
Something shutters behind Hail’s dark eyes. He looks down at himself, toward the glowing spot I know is hidden behind his shirt, and then back at me.
I hurtle onward before he needs to reply. “So if you can just dwell on all the things about this situation that annoy you, and I’ll do the same as well as I can, we’ll see if it has any effect on the connection between us.”
Hail releases his breath in a rush. “All right. Fine. That should be simple enough.”
Of course it will be, for him. I start to push away the ache his words prompt in my chest and stop myself.
No, that’s exactly the sort of emotion I need to focus on. All the ways his remarks have stung me over the past few weeks. All the cold shoulders he’s given me. All the times he’s acted like I couldn’t possibly do anything important.
