Her promised? 

The blood coursing through my veins felt like it had frozen solid as I stopped dead in my tracks. Pounding loudly in my chest, my heart beat sped up instantaneously. So quick, I feared it would leap out of my ribcage if I didn't get a hold on myself. 

All these emotions were threatening to implode inside of me. My walls were regrettably permeable, no matter how much energy I used to thicken them. 

To make them sturdier. 

They were never quite impenetrable.

"You can't be serious," I deadpanned.

She must be joking. To all the gods out there, please, do not let this be true.

Finally her gaze landed back on me.

Her cheeks flamed red.

"I am. Catherine, I am! But—I don't know for sure just yet. I think so though!"

 A broad grin stretched over half of her face and something equally weird glistened in her eyes. 

She'd called me Catherine, too, which was truly an indication that something was badly wrong.

She's being honest...

Kendra stood there as stiff as a board, her fists clenched. I furrowed my brows as I followed the direction she was looking at.

Suddenly, a wave of charged tension washed over me. Frantically I looked back and forth until my eyes finally fell upon one man in particular, standing close to the entrance of the Iarhus. His eyes were fixed on Kendra as his body stiffened to stone.

Oxygen gradually left my lungs like a balloon losing air. The emotions swirling around us in the atmosphere were gravitating towards me, my core pulling them closer and closer. Because they were charged emotions—emotions felt on a deeper level, one I hadn't explored enough yet—they literally suffocated me, sucking out all the strength I had trying to keep them out. 

This couldn't be happening.

Not to one of them...

Kendra Denn, my Maecena, had just found her promised. 

And I was witnessing and still battling the entire bloody thing.

Now I was really hating the fact that I had the ability to feel other people's emotions.

An abnormal intensity buzzed through my body, vibrating inside my bloodstream. Because it was foreign, not meant for me, jolts of pain surged along with it. My body went rigid as I tried to figure out how to deal with it—it wasn't really an emotion, there was no shape or colour I could detect. 

The only thing I felt was a strange, alien force course through my veins as if I'd been injected with some kind of strange substance. Raking my mind for any signs of emotions, I was surprised to find nothing but the buzzing sound in my ears and the vibrations in my body.

Was this what the Promised Bond felt like? 

What Kendra thought felt like gold, instead felt like this?

Of all the stages, I learned that the first ones were the most intense. While all of them were life-changing in every sense of the word, the first ones had the largest impact because it changed one's soul in a way no one had experienced before. 

Not even the Maecena Bond could be compared to the Promised Bond. It tied two souls together with each stage a little more until with the last, it became one. Having that kind of connection inside of me without it belonging to me could mean a serious kink in the bond between the two it was supposed to connect. 

It could probably destroy my own soul... Or worse, theirs!

But I couldn't be sure—I still knew too little about the actual essence of the Promised Bond. Unfortunately, asking the council was not an option, considering they weren't supposed to know about my family's gifts in the first place.

Kendra remained seated, with her body facing the man that harboured the second half of her soul.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, I tried to sort out my thoughts before I burst out of here and left Kendra to deal with all of this on her own.

How could Kendra be promised to one of them?

What if they're the ones that broke in? And now she is bonded with one of them?

I wanted badly to up and leave, to hide someplace and wait until this problematic situation had been magically dealt with. I could hardly tell Reece about it--it would only add to the many problems he already had.

Right now it was hard even comprehending the possibility of Kendra's bond to the outsider. He was human. How on earth could she, as a shifter, be promised to a human?

Oh—her grandmother. Madame Esmara, the supreme elder, would shun her.

She would shun her without a second thought!

I had to figure out something. Quick. The council couldn't find out about this!

When I opened my mouth and glanced to Kendra, I noticed her attention was entirely elsewhere. I detected no concern, no worry, only my own. And it threatened to swallow me whole. 

Nudging her, I sighed when she remained motionless and continued to lock eyes with the outsider.

It was strange sitting here, trying to get her attention when she was there, lost in another world that I wasn't part of.

The second time I nudged her, she finally reacted, though her attention was still anywhere but here. Though her body arose and her feet moved when I tried to steer her towards the cafeteria entrance, her head never did. Neither did the stare falter with which she looked at him.

Once I managed to get her to move more consciously and she broke off the eye-contact, it was like her consciousness slammed down to Everett Valley after being hidden behind the clouds, high above our heads. 

Kendra cleared her throat and stumbled over her words.

"Where are we going?" she asked curiously.

Trying hard to keep my feelings balanced, I refrained from scowling at her. How could she be so careless? 

So worry free? How was she not full of concern and fear? 

Who knew what the council would do to her! 

Where they would send her!

Leaving the Iarhus yard, I headed directly into the building and rushed through the halls with my mind full of taunting thoughts, ignoring the intense, sweaty smell that wafted through the air. One of our pack mates called after Kendra as we drifted past her, but I didn't find the strength to turn around and answer. 

Kendra, as it seemed, wasn't quite levelled enough to answer yet. 

Apparently she was still caught up in her own world.

Once we were at a safe distance, far away from the man she was promised to, I closed the double doors to the female lavatories. Pushing out the rest of the unfamiliar emotions inside me, I channelled them with the atmosphere floating around me like an invisible blanket that I wrapped around my shoulders.

Breathing in deeply, I closed my eyes. The ocean inside of me wasn't my own, deep blue. It was spotted with red, purple, green, golden and many more colours. Many more emotions.

None of them were my own.

My ocean would turn from blue, to green, to golden. The spots were intrusions. Although I could feel energy leave me, I tried hard to materialise the foreign colours and turn them into vaporised water. I created a blanket of light around my body, one that was supposed to suck the emotions into it like an air vent. The blanket served as the vent, while the emotions were the air. 

Blood trickled down my nose, it's sticky substance dripping onto my shirt.

Pushing harder, the blanket filled with the colours of Kendra and her promised's emotions. My head throbbed.

Once the blanket was completely drenched in colours, I willed it to dissipate. At least now the hardest part was already over.

The blanket thinned and descended into the air, followed by a serene moment of pure lightness. It was as if all the heavy weights on my shoulders had been set free, light the only residue of what once had been inside of me. And finally, the blanket became one with the atmosphere and the emotions were gone.

Now, the only thing left was the fact Kendra had actually found her promised. And the worst part of it was... 

The man was human and the bond therefore impossible.

☼

"As many of you know, one ruler was from the far north, one from the east, one originated in the south and one in the west. They formed a council, quite like ours, to rule over Espheros. Why, in your opinion, did it not work out?"

A few hands rose into the air, blurred as they were. My sight had left me after I'd gotten rid of the emotions and was returning painfully slow. 

Although I could have groaned, I tried to remain silent. What was this, history or philosophy?

"Because the power they meant to divide was too great for them to control," one mundane student answered.

"Yes, I agree, they couldn't handle it," another added.

Not groaning became increasingly difficult. Humans talking about the division of power. How ironic. Wasn't it humans who abused their power, no matter how great, with every chance they got? 

Besides, who knew if the four rulers had even been human. 

They must have been, though, considering they squandered their chance of ruling properly.

Miss Denn, our secondary history teacher, nodded in agreement.

"You do have a compelling point. However, it wasn't the power itself that caused them to destroy Espheros as it once was." Miss Denn paused, as if it would make this class any more interesting. "It was their ignorance to the natural order and their fight for dominance that ultimately caused them to fall."

During her continuing explanations about why a council was meant to stand together and not against each other, my concentration completely let me down and somewhere in the middle of it all, I zoned out. My vision shattered again, everything swimming in and out of focus.

With this frustrating malfunction of my vision, I heavily relied on my other senses until it would stop. Which was annoying, as it made the humans smell even worse—just sweat, body odour, and whatever perfume or cologne they rolled around in. 

It was hard to get comfortable in these metal chairs, and the sound of someone tapping their pencil irritated me more than the smell did, which was saying a lot. 

My exhaustion however overrode it all, and I even managed to finally nod off.

When Miss Denn, our teacher, cleared her throat, annoyingly loud and scratchy, I snapped out of it and found myself back in the class-room.

"I need everyone's full attention again," she spoke up, causing all of us to straighten in anticipation for what was to come next. 

Miss Denn didn't usually make announcements, that role had been attained by Mr. Markoff who loved being in the spotlight almost as much as talking about wars in places nobody had ever been. He was our primary history teacher.

"For now, the Thrakos family are not permitted to know our... customs... until the Council has decided what shall be done. All other classes are aware of this vital new rule, and so are your elders. If anyone speaks out of term, we will know. Breaking this rule will not be taken lightly."

Thrakos? Not even those on the other side of the Denhid Forest had names like that. Another strange and suspicious thing to add to the ever-growing list...

But how was the council going to find out who of two-thousand residents in Everett Valley talked to the Thrakos family, if anyone ever did? They'd have to have eyes on each of us during daylight and nightfall. 

Something about the whole thing wasn't quite right.

I groaned. They'd only been here a short while and already they were stirring up worry, secrecy and confusion.

"Why aren't they to know our ways?" Jaxxon, one of my pack mates, asked from in the back.

"Because we're not certain they can be trusted to maintain our rules within our borders. They've come to us from the east of the Denhid Forest. We suspect the outside Espheran folk are not aware of our supernatural kind. But enough of that. Turn your page to three hundred n' ninety-four."

And finally, I fell asleep.

Chapter Question: So Kendra's promised is supposedly human. Is Catherine right to be concerned? And if so, is she handling it fairly?

Reader Question: Sweet or salty?

I'm both. Funny thing is, if I eat salty, I need sweet right after. And if I eat sweet, I gotta follow with salty. Weird huh? 

I'm curious to see if anyone got the reference. If you know what I'm talking about, I love you already. 

Any thoughts on this whole secrecy rule the council has set up? Do you think it will work?

Share, share shareeeee! I wanna know all your gory thoughts