Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

appeared. Now I was back to being brown-eyed and dark-haired, though my natural tight curls were well past my shoulders now.

There came another knock on the door. I frowned in response to the way Gwen bit her lip and stepped aside.

“Come,” Max said. The door opened and my breath hitched.

A shifter stepped through, his lithe frame at odds to the dangerous glint of malevolence in his almost-black eyes.

“Noah?” I asked, seeing not the well-built man in front of me but the wiry, dark-haired boy who had once haunted my existence in the Zambian compound. My friend Jerome always asked me why I was so jumpy around Noah.

“It’s not like you had anything to do with his pack,” Jerome kept insisting. I always pointed out that being forced to live in the compound and then not feeling bad about Noah’s pack was a contradiction. Nine years ago, Noah had left the compound to go roaming. He was a lone wolf through circumstance. I’d heard he’d taken up with one of the outlying packs. And now here he was. A ghost come to haunt me.

“Hello, Sophie,” he said, voice completely neutral.

I swallowed hard and couldn’t help glancing at Max.

“Charles and Noah are going to guard you while you’re here,” Max said. “You’re not to perform any kind of sinister magic except when you’re at Bloodline.” I almost laughed in his face. The hard glint in his eyes said he knew all about who Noah was. If I even said the words sinister magic in front of Noah, I would probably be dead two seconds later.

It was either poetic or really messed up. I was accused of committing the same crimes as my great-grandfather and Max had assigned a man whose whole pack my great-grandfather had murdered to guard me.

8

Max seemed entirely unconcerned about my history with Noah. “Move her belongings from Bloodline to the mansion,” Max ordered his brother. For once, Charles didn’t talk back. When the door shut behind him, I was aware I was rapidly becoming hemmed in on all sides by shifters. “The circle is gathered, boss,” Noah told Max.

“Go,” Max nodded. “We’ll catch up.”

Without a word, Noah left with Gwen.

Before I could lose my nerve, I opened my mouth to speak, only for him to cut me off. “You understand what a pack circle means?” he asked.

Sometimes, when I was around him, what he said was so ridiculous I often second-guessed what I had heard. “Beg your pardon?”

He leaned forward again, balancing on his fist. “Pack circle,” he spoke evenly like I was demented.

“No.”

A raised brow. “No, you don’t know what it means or–”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Just no in general. No to pack circle. No to mating. Just no.”

He locked his eyes on me, the grey warping into red-tinged gold as I watched. The alpha stare. It was the primordial focus of a merciless predator sighting its prey. It would have been far less terrifying if he were marking me for death. Despite my resistance, all of my muscles locked. Inside, the corresponding sphere of the mating link flared. The colour matched his bleeding eyes so perfectly I wanted to weep.

Biting my tongue raw, I forced myself to hold his attention. That too was a mistake. This thing he was projecting wasn’t about dominance. I wasn’t challenging his rule as alpha. Staring at a dominant shifter too long resulted in one of three possibilities: absolute submission, death, or...sex.

I dropped my gaze, feeling heat clawing its way up my neck. Lucky my darker skin meant blushing was harder to place on me. “You can alpha stare all you want,” I said, my conviction unwavering. “I’m not going to back down.”

“So I heard,” he said, moving to the door. He opened it and waved me forward. “They’re waiting.”

“Let them wait. I’m not going.”

To prove my point, I planted my butt on one of the chairs. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest. Sunlight drenched his shoulders casting his features in shadow. I had to focus somewhere other than his face or I’d get caught in his allure again.

“The circle will decide how much freedom you’ll have while you’re here,” he informed me. I was well aware of what pack circle meant. The Zambian wolves had taught me everything, knowing that I was stepping out into a world overrun with their kind. Only those closest to the alpha were allowed to attend. By rights, I should have been below the bottom rung of the hierarchy. They could have had this conversation without me and ordered me to follow their directive afterwards. That I was being made to attend had all kinds of implications that I was not willing to accept.

“While you’re temporary alpha,” I hedged, “your word is the law. You decide how much freedom I have in the Reserve.”

Just saying it out loud made my hackles rise. Jorah had the same power in Zambia. As a kid, I didn’t question it too much. It helped that he had been alpha for a long time. While he might not have been as physically imposing as some of the younger wolves, he had wisdom, experience, and intelligence to recommend him. My parents and the other humans followed his directives without question.

Max was young and had been thrust into power through the brutal attack on the Reserve. With Alistair and the other clan alphas trapped in the alpha link, he was making decisions by the seat of his pants. If he didn’t have the support of the remaining dominant shifters, it would be impossible for him to hold the hierarchy in place. And now I had been thrown in the mix.

“My pack needs to know you’re not a threat,” he said.

“Tell them I’m not a threat.”

“Sophie.”

I could see why Lex always bristled when somebody said her name like she was a three-year-old. “You know why you have to be there. This isn’t about you and me anymore.”

Biting my bottom lip, I hazarded raising my chin.