Page 6 of Shattered Stars

“I’m pretty sure he will have felt it happen.”

“You think?”

He shrugs. “He’s not going to be angry about this, Rhi. It’s what he wanted.”

“We still need to tell him.”

“You’re right. I’ll talk to him.”

“No, I think I should do it.” He nods. “And Stone …” I hesitate, but he reads the thoughts in my mind anyway.

“I know, Rhi. I know I have a lot more to do to make things up to you. I know I treated you like shit when I should have been treating you like the most precious thing on Earth. I know I fucked things up and I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“You’d better,” I say with a stern frown. He bends his gaze to mine, giving me his best remorseful puppy-dog eyes, and I can’t help but laugh.

Then he kisses me, a long lingering kiss that tells me just how reluctant he is to let me go. A feeling I experience as strongly all through my body. But soon, I’m stepping out into the gray morning and, with my tracking senses alert, tiptoe along the less well-trodden paths towards my dorm.

I needn’t have bothered being so cautious, though. Campus is as dead this morning as it was the day after Founders’ Night. In fact, I make it all the way back to my dorm without meeting one single person.

When I reach our room, I wave away Winnie’s locking spell and creep inside the room. Winnie stirs from her sleep as I tiptoe inside, stopping to bend down and stroke my palm over a sleeping Pip’s form.

Winnie rolls over and rubs her eyes. “Rhi, is that you? What time is it?”

“5.25 am Winnie. Go back to sleep.”

She doesn’t though, instead she bends her elbow and rests her cheek on her palm.

“Were you with Stone this whole time?”

After a string of increasingly anxious messages demanding to know where I was, I’d confessed to Winnie I was with Stone. I neglected to include any details in my messages though.

“Uh huh,” I say, stepping out of my dress and into my pajamas.

“Oh no you don’t, Missie. I was up half the night worrying about you. You just … disappeared. I was about to call the man in black and have him search for you.”

I flop down onto the floor beside Winnie’s bed and she peers into my face and gasps.

“What?” I say.

She sits upright.

“You sealed the bond. With Stone. Didn’t you?”

“H-h-how the hell–”

“It’s your eyes. It’s something about your eyes. I remember they looked a little different after you bonded with the man in black. Brighter somehow. I don’t know. I can’t describe it. But now they’re even clearer.”

“Really,” I say, standing and walking to the mirror and staring at my reflection. All I see is a girl with very flushed cheeks. A girl who’s just had more orgasms in one night than she’s probably had in her entire life.

“Do you think I’m crazy? For doing this?” I ask, meeting her gaze in the reflection of the mirror.

“No, I don’t,” she says earnestly. “I think it’s the opposite of crazy. Resisting your mate, going against the forces of fate, that would be crazy. In fact, I think that could drive you to the edge of insanity. That’s what they say, anyway.”

I think of Stone’s mom and nod.

Then I think of the others. The way it isn’t only Azlan and Stone I feel drawn towards.

I return to my spot on the carpet beside Winnie.