Page 7 of Bizarre Bonds
My stance has gone rigid as the sensation ripples through me. I recognize it and set it aside, knowing the fox shifter probably doesn’t want to be reminded of the waysI’veinadvertently confined him.
Fen sidles up beside my desk. “Hey… Are you okay? You’ve seemed pretty distracted.”
I have to smile at her concern. The water nymph is the only real friend I’ve made at the academy other than the men I’m now treading on uncertain ground with.
“It’s just all the…” I wave my hand vaguely toward my chest, not wanting to talk about my unique situation out loud in front of our classmates. I told Fen last night what’d happened, so she’ll be able to fill in the blanks. “I don’t want to tune it out completely—and I can’t really—but it’s hard paying attention to everything at once.”
“Of course it would be! I can’t even imagine.” Fen links her arm with mine as we head out of the classroom. “I was thinking—maybe we should look up mate bonds and all that stuff on the internet. There are computers in the library. A lot of the information on supernatural phenomena is pretty silly, but some humans have figured out useful facts. We’d at least get an idea of the possibilities.”
My spirits lift at the thought of getting a better handle on the weirdness I accidentally created. “That’s a great idea. You don’t have to help—I could do the research on my own. If you were planning on doing something with Brine.”
I think I’ve managed to keep any sign of jealousy under wraps. I shouldn’t mind that Fen found another friend, someonewho understands her unique challenges as a water-based shadowkind better than I can. And I don’t want to overstep and take up all her time.
“Oh, that’s fine. I want to see what we can find out! And we’ll hang out with her at dinner anyway.”
“Great.” I aim a grateful smile at her.
Most of the reform building students are glad to be done with classes and have no interest in taking on additional work. All but one seat by the two rows of computers are free.
Fen and I sit down at a machine, and I stare at the screen and then the keyboard. “I, um, haven’t actually used one of these before. I’ve seen people use them, but I’m not sure where to start.”
“Oh! Here, I’ll show you.” Fen clicks on one of the little pictures on the screen, which opens up a big white square that takes up most of the space. She taps the keyboard to type a couple of words into the narrow rectangle at the top of the square.Mate bonds.
A bunch of text pops up on the screen. Who says humans don’t use magic?
I peer at it avidly. “There’s all kinds of information about them!”
Fen cocks her head. “I’m not sure what all this is referring to. Look, those two are talking about fae. This one mentions werewolves. It looks like some of the pages are lists of books—made-up stories. But then humans think that shadowkind are all kinds of made-up ‘monsters’, so something useful could come up there too.”
She scrolls through the search results, clicking on one line of blue text and another so we can scan the write-ups they lead to. A lot of the “pages” include a whole bunch of words and names that I’ve never heard of before, so I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with my powers.
The farther we go, the deeper the puzzled furrow digs into Fen’s forehead. “Do you have some kind of special scent thing with the guys? Like their smell makes you feel… tingly or something?”
I remember Raze’s tart but musky scent. It’s delicious, but that’s not the part of him that’s really made me tingle.
No, that would be his hands… and lips… and tongue… and?—
I can’t restrain a giggle. “I guess I notice how they smell when we’re close to each other, but there’s nothing magical about it. And the impression I get hasn’t changed since the connections formed.”
“Hmm. It seems like a lot of these bonds supposedly happen with animal shifters. You can’t shift into any kind of creature, can you?”
“As far as I can tell, I’m still human-ish looking even in shadowkind form, just shinier.”
Fen taps her mouth. “Raze and Mirage are shifters, aren’t they? And Hail is fae.”
“Yeah, but Jonah is human,” I point out. “And the bond marks came fromme. I don’t even know what I am for us to search for that.”
“There’s a bunch of talk about fated mates. Was there, like, a magical vibe that drew you to all of them before the whole marking thing happened? Did you feel a jolt when you first saw them or a zap when you first touched them?”
That sounds painful. Who would want zappy bonds?
I shake my head. “Before I got to know them, I was friendly with them for the same reasons I’ve been friendly with everyone else, as much as I can. Nothing different happened. I started to like them more as I got to know them. Just like with you. Except…”
My hair flickers with a brief ruddy glow.
Fen grins at me. “Except you want to cuddle up with them.”
“Yeah. That part.” I squint at the screen. “It seems like in most human versions of how magical bonds work, they can decide to talk to each other in their heads and things like that. That seems a lot more useful than just getting hit with emotions all the time.”
