Page 18 of Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part Two (The Lines of Ebrus #2)

Eighteen

Hayle

S he smelled like him. It riled the beast that lived inside me, until I swore he was about to rip out of my skin.

They weren’t even trying to hide it, not really.

Anyone with eyes could see the way their gazes lingered on each other, the small touches, the way he was protective of the Ninth Line conscript.

It meant people gave her a wide berth, almost as wide as the one she gave me.

If she saw me coming, she turned and went the other way.

If I was in the same class as her, she’d sit on the other side of the room.

She was avoiding me, and it made me both angry and despondent—a completely unreasonable response.

She didn’t owe me anything. I barely knew her.

I knew more about her family history than I did about Avalon herself.

Braxus growled beside me, but it wasn’t an alert to tell me of a threat. It was the kind of growl he aimed at pups who were doing stupid things that were going to get them hurt, or who needed to be corrected. It was his annoyed sound.

“ What? ” I snapped at him, and he clacked his teeth back at me. He might be considered my hound, but no one owned Braxus. We were partners, up until the time he decided he was done with me. “Sorry, Braxus.”

Sighing heavily, he cast an annoyed expression at Alucius, which was how I knew the message they wanted to impart was going to be about feelings. Braxus tore apart my enemies, but Alucius helped me navigate the beast within.

She sent me an image of her and Braxus snuggling. They were a mated pair; it’s why they were so good at their job. Then she sent me an image of me and Avalon snuggling too.

I looked down at her. “I know that I want her, but I can’t just steal her from the First Line Heir. She has free will.”

Alucius huffed and looked at Braxus, who nipped my fingers, no doubt on her command.

“Ouch. That was out of line,” I grumbled down at them both. It didn’t really hurt, but I was beginning to get the impression that they were frustrated.

Alucius sent me another image, this time of her and Braxus standing side by side, strong and united, followed by a similar image of Avalon and I, shoulder to shoulder, with me looking down at her adoringly.

That had definitely never happened, so she wasn’t sending me something she’d seen in the past.

Walking around me, Alucius licked at Braxus’s muzzle. They were mates.

Oh.

Ohhh.

“You think she’s my mate?”

Alucius nudged my hand anxiously.

More? I blinked down at my loyal companion, and she gave a look that very clearly expressed that I was being a silly pup. “No, I understand, but also, it can’t be. You think she’s my soulmate? My Soul Tie?”

She licked my hand with her long tongue, the same way she’d congratulated her puppies when they learned a new trick.

I shook my head. “I can’t be her Soul Tie.

” I thought about the pulling in my chest that had almost been instantaneous.

Like my soul knew hers and wanted her more than anything.

“She basically runs the other way anytime she sees me. Also, she’s with Vox, and while I find that aggravating, I don’t want to rip his face off the way a soulmate would, if they saw another male with his hands all over his Soul Tie. ”

I mean, I’d been tempted to tear his face off more than a time or two, and since Avalon had arrived, that impulse had basically doubled.

But not enough. I’d heard stories about Soul Ties, about the way their bodies had found each other in each life—sometimes as lovers, sometimes as adversaries, but forever twined together.

My grandparents had been a Soul Tie, and my grandfather had once ripped the arms of a man who’d thought to touch my grandmother without her permission.

Braxus tilted his head, the universal hound gesture for I don’t know or possibly did someone drop you on your head as a pup?

I shrugged. “She would make a fine mate; no one’s arguing that. She’s beautiful, and like…” I struggled to explain how my heart felt when I was near her. “Like that feeling you get after a long run in woods you know like the back of your hand.” Like home.

Alucius huffed and trotted away, her tail high, so I knew just how annoyed she was with me.

Braxus stayed by my side as I made my way toward our battle history class, thinking about what the hounds believed.

I trusted them in all things. Well, almost all things—Braxus had once let me chase a polecat as a kid, knowing I’d get sprayed.

It had been a valuable lesson, I guess, but I’d stunk for a week afterwards.

The hounds had been with me so long that I could hardly remember a time when they weren’t by my side. If they believed that Avalon was my Soul Tie, I owed it to them to try, right? Owed it to myself?

I stepped into the auditorium and looked around at the other seated conscripts.

This was my last year, as well as Vox’s, and eventually, there would be a new wave of conscripts, who’d take over the mantle of the Kings of Boellium.

It was a quirk of fate that both Vox and I—Heirs to the two most powerful Lines in Ebrus—were both in attendance at the same time, starting in the same year.

When we left, there would be a power vacuum that I didn’t envy, and I hated the idea that Avalon would be caught up in it. That she would be unprotected.

She didn’t realize that the closer she got to the Heir of the First Line, the more jealousy and political bullshit would put her life in jeopardy. And she’d be alone.

Lucio had one more year, and I trusted him to watch her.

My other cousin, Carell, would arrive next year, but she wasn’t as strong as Lucio, let alone me.

There was a chance that the First Line conscripts would walk all over them.

Hell, there was a chance that someone truly powerful from the Fourth Line would rise up and take control of the whole school. Unlikely, but still a possibility.

“Take a seat already,” the instructor snapped, and I moved toward my family, my Line. I searched the rest of the room for Avalon, though, but she didn’t seem to be here yet.

The instructor stood behind the lectern to start his presentation, when she stumbled in, her face red and her lips puffy, her hair looking freshly fucked.

When Vox walked in moments after her with a smirk on his face, it didn’t take a genius to know that they’d been together, fucking, only moments earlier.

It didn’t matter that they pointedly didn’t look at each other.

It didn’t matter that they sat on opposite sides of the room.

If I sucked in a lungful of air, I could pick up her scent, and it contained traces of Vox’s.

He’d come inside her, and his seed was still leaking out down her thighs.

I growled long and low, and it echoed around the room. I could swallow it back, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to howl in pain at the fact that she was with someone else. Braxus eyeballed me, before his gaze landed on Vox, like he was contemplating ripping his throat out for me.

He must be communicating with Alucius too, because I suddenly got an image of her looking insanely self-satisfied. She’d been right. Avalon Halhed was my Soul Tie, but she also wanted nothing to do with me.

So what the fuck did I do with that?

I felt her eyes on my face, and I could almost hear her heartbeat from across the room. I stared at my feet, trying to calm my raging beast. This wasn’t the time or the place to lay bare my Line’s secrets. Breathing out through my nose, I waited until I had a firm hold on myself to look back up.

Vox Vylan was looking at me, and the triumph on his face made me want to rip his throat out. It was going to be a long class.

Two torturous hours later, Lucio followed me out of the auditorium.

He had a frown on his face that meant he was going to try and have a heart to heart, but honestly, I had no idea what to say to him.

How did I tell him that I’d found something so revered by our people, but that my Soul Tie was fucking someone else?

That she didn’t feel the same pull as I did?

So I didn’t say anything. I gave orders.

“I want to have a party. Make it bigger than the First Line’s.

Actually, let’s have it on the beach. I don’t want it restricted to the Upper Lines either.

Invite everyone.” I didn’t want to have to be in close quarters and smell his scent on her skin.

It had been fine when she’d just hated me and felt nothing for Vox, but I wasn’t sure I could cope with the idea of them having sex now. Of him fucking my Soul Tie.

Shaking my head, I pushed the thought down. “Make it a party no one will forget.”

“Fuck yeah,” Lucio hooted and ran off, properly distracted. If there was anything Lucio loved more than fighting and fucking, it was a good party. It would keep the whole Line distracted, and that meant no one would be looking too closely at the fact I was about to have a meltdown.

Why would the Goddess give me a Soul Tie from another Line? Someone who had no chance of understanding that for me, she was it. She was the only person I would ever love, the only person I could ever fuck again, without the beast inside me trying to rip out from my flesh?

I needed to run. I needed to let the beast free and speed through the woods of my home. I needed to talk to my mother.

Instead of any of those things, I turned back toward Boellium’s library. I couldn’t have the girl—not yet, anyway, though I wasn’t about to give up—but I could get to the bottom of the mystery of her family. The mystery of her.

The Ninth Daughter of the Ninth Line. She didn’t think it meant anything, but in my soul, I knew it was important. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why, but I would.