Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6) - Lan Chan (libby ebook reader txt) 📗

“What the hell?”

We reached the first-floor landing. He marched through the upstairs hall and opened the door into a room with distinctly masculine decor. “Chuck! Put me down!”

“With pleasure.” And then he slammed the door shut and left me inside.

Twisting the doorknob was useless. “I’m going to skin you alive!”

His laughter was a low baritone that gave me pleasure even as it fuelled my rage. Max’s masculine scent filled my nose. “Let me out right now!”

Silence. I kept rattling the doorknob to no avail. Breathing through my mouth, I forced my attention to remain locked to the solid oak door. It was all that could exist.

“Charles Atticus Thompson,” I screamed. “If you don’t let me out of here right now, I’m going–”

The door burst open. I put one foot in front of me and halted. Max stood in the doorway, his features tight. The threat died on my tongue.

“You’re in my room.” Husky words to add to the tension in his shoulders.

“Well, you can thank your brother for that,” I snapped, having had enough of the both of them. “Please move.”

To my surprise, he turned to the side and allowed me to leave.

“Sophie,” he said as I was about to tear through the house to murder Charles.

“What?”

“Don’t come in here again.”

The thing about being the reluctant belle of the ball for so long was that I kind of got used to it. It left me unprepared for the other side of his dominance. The side he showed to those who disobeyed him. The acid in his voice had me reeling.

“I would gladly leave at a moment’s notice!” I spat before marching into the spare room—yes, I knew where the guest rooms were—and slammed the door shut.

Throwing myself on the bed, I breathed out deeply into the pillow. Inside me, the mating link was a mass of insect limbs, trying to scratch and tear at the blood barrier. Frustrated, I shoved back and added another layer of protection. Away from his abrasive presence, it took about ten minutes to calm down. I sank into a meditation, repeating over and over the reasons why I couldn’t give in to the link, even though the urge to climb all over him was driving me out of my mind.

As dusk ebbed into night, there was a quiet knock on the door. Cloaking myself in serenity, I opened it to find Charles looking slightly bashful. “It’s time to eat,” he said.

There was nothing controversial in it, but I still wanted to break a vase over his head. “I’m not hungry.”

We both knew it was a lie. I hadn’t eaten all day. Come to think of it, maybe I was just lightheaded from lack of nutrients.

“Come on, Soph. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Thanks. How can I say no to that?” Yet I stepped out of the room. There was no scent of food coming from the kitchen. “What are we having?”

“The circle members are meeting up in the conference room.”

My feet ground to a halt. All those shifters watching me while I ate would just make the food clog in my throat. “No thanks.”

I retreated back to the room and closed the door. I could feel his presence for about a minute until he must have decided that I should be left alone. Without them, I ended up raiding the kitchen which was stocked with all of nothing. I had to make do with a cheese sandwich grilled over a flame of my own making.

I found my belongings sitting in a heap outside Charles’s room. After unpacking as best I could, I tried to force myself to sleep. Despite being physically exhausted, I couldn’t shut down my emotions and tossed and turned all night. I was still awake when I heard the front door open. Only one set of footsteps came up the staircase. I was still awake when the wolf sentries passed by the front of the house. I was still awake when the moon moved to cast long shadows through the gauzy curtain.

At about two in the morning, a growl rumbled through the house. “For goodness’ sake!” Charles snarled. He came thumping out of his bedroom. He made so much noise it sounded like a racoon had come down the chimney. My bedroom door opened.

I shot up in bed. “Excuse me!”

He threw something at the foot of the bed and then closed the door with an ominous click. The fir-and-sunshine scent hit me before anything else. Gingerly, I reached out and picked up the piece of clothing. I knew it was one of Max’s T-shirts before I’d fully laid it flat on the blanket over my knees. I’d like to have said that I thought long and hard before slipping out of my pyjamas and shimmying into the T-shirt, but I was so tired it didn’t seem like a fight worth having.

It wasn’t like Max had given it to me. Charles had taken it. Any concern I had about what it meant was washed away in a cloud of peace. It didn’t completely soothe the gnawing, but it was enough to hold it steady.

After about five minutes, I finally drifted off.

11

My great-grandfather was waiting for me inside a ritual circle when I closed my eyes. “Ba tata,” I whispered, using the affectionate Zambian term for him even though I had never known him.

He lifted his head from over the bubbling cauldron and smiled. Apprehension coated my tongue in bile at the flash of red throbbing in his dark eyes.

“Sophie. I’m so happy to see you, my girl.”

Not understanding why I was here at all, I moved closer. The pulse of the circle made my gut roil. The black was interspersed with deep maroon runes whose lines warped and pooled like liquid held in shape by unnatural magic. The runes themselves were a mix of necromantic symbols. Bones sat at the five points of the pentagram star. Not just one or two bones