Soul Bound

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-three

They separated us. The moment I surrendered, they dragged River out of the room. Cara came back in, telling me I made the right decision—that we all have to do our part to stop the Order. Faustus assured me that River would live. I have to believe him.

Cara leads me through the infinite stone hallways. I can see that some rooms are filled with bunks and personal items, with posters hung on the walls and pictures of families on desks and dressers. Like some kind of dorm room. We pass a big room filled with refrigerators like the ones in the Bank.

My mind and body are already feeling the effects of this setting: the lack of sunlight and fresh air, the hard, cold stone, and the absence of plants and trees. It's sickening. Wolf is anxious. It feels like she's right under my skin, ready to break out.

You keeping an eye out for exits? I ask, trying to distract her, and myself, from what's coming.

Yes.

Find any?

No, she admits.

There aren't even any scents that would give away the route to the exit. And then suddenly there are many. A mix of cotton and blood and sterilizers.

A small herd of people, a mix of humans, vampires, and werewolves, surround us. They all have white lab coats on with clipboards tucked under their arms. They look like doctors or something. "Is she the one?" "She has the werewolf soul?" "Her blood can burn our flesh?"

They ask the latter as if it's a new thing. And I'm assuming they're talking about Ramsey's eyes. Can't all binder blood do that?

"Follow us. We need to get her hooked up right away," a vampire woman says.

They speed ahead of us, chattering away to themselves about what my blood might or might not be capable of. I tune them out as soon as they start discussing the best methods of extraction.

Cara keeps her distance from them, her eyebrows furrowed at their excitement. "Garrick called them blood bitches." There's the barest of smiles across her face as she twists the wedding band on her ring finger. She looks at me and the smile vanishes as she stuffs her left hand in her pocket.

There are a pair of heavy steel doors ahead of us, bolted closed. The whitecoats ahead of us unlock the door and shove through it. Cara and I follow anxiously behind them. We can both smell what's ahead of us, and the quickly growing headache is a tell for who it is.

The moment I walk through the door I collapse. There are too many binders here, challenging the disconnection between Wolf and me. My skull feels like it's splitting in two and my hands push on either side to keep it whole. I know I'm screaming, can feel the strain on my throat, but I can't hear anything. My mind is full of the memory. Of the forest, the screaming, the growling, the two children.

And then something snaps. I can feel it inside me. We become one, Wolf's soul no longer just bound, but merged with my own, tangled in each other. I can see it all, her memories, her entire life, flashing before me—the woman she was.

We're in a room. The smell inside is sweet and fresh, like milk and air-dried linens. We're looking out the window, at a thick green forest past the glass, yearning for it. But we can't. Not yet. The babies are too young.

There's a cooing beside us, a gentle, soothing sound. The babies are asleep, little hands grasping each other's shirts in their tiny fists. Our heart swells with pride. Our daughter coos to herself and her brother, comforting them both in their sleep. Only a month old and already we can see the spirits in them, the earth in her eyes, the trees in his.