A Girl Named Calamity (Alyria 1)

When I blanched, he laughed deeply.

“Welcome to bonding, sweetheart.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

TRICKED AND BONDED

“I don’t care about the stupid bond. I don’t feel any different and I’m leaving,” I told Weston as I walked away.

“Go ahead. Get on that horse. You will realize what you’ve done, and you’ll be riding back to me.”

I frowned. “Why would I do that?”

“Because the bond only allows a certain amount of distance between us. You get past that, and you will feel pain.”

He couldn’t compel me anymore, and he couldn’t use my blood. And somehow, I was still saddled with him? It was a vicious cycle that hated me.

“Why would anyone ever want to do this?” I asked.

“They don’t. It usually only happens accidentally.”

“This is stupid,” I muttered.

Weston laughed. “Go, find out how far the distance is that we can be away from each other. I’m hoping it’s at least out of hearing range.”

I glared at him and went to get on my horse. I needed to find out if what he was saying was actually true. I rode out of camp for a little while, anticipating the pain to hit me any moment. I only got half a mile out before it started.

I didn’t feel pain. I was shocked to feel what I felt instead. Intense longing. The absolute desire to jump into his arms and wrap my arms around him.

The feeling was so severe that I had to stop. I couldn’t imagine being without him. Why would I have ever wanted to be without him? I needed him.

This was worse than pain. It was heartbreak.

The minute I turned around, the feeling diminished. And I didn’t even want to test it again. It hurt too much, and I just wanted to go back.

When I got back to camp, I was expecting the I told you so from him. But the second I looked in his eyes, I knew he’d felt the same way I had.

“Why is our bond different than yours and Maxim’s?” I asked as I went and sat across from him and the fire he had started.

“Because I am a man. You are a woman.”

I rolled my eyes. “How enlightening.”

“I don’t know, Calamity. It’s just the way it is.”

“How do we get rid of it?”

“We die,” he said dryly.

I sighed. “Besides that.”

“There is no other way.”

I wouldn’t accept that answer. This was close to one of the stupidest things I had ever done, and I needed to fix it. I couldn’t be half a mile from an assassin without longing for him. It was far from ideal. “We have to find a way! Are you not concerned about this?”

“There is no way to fix this. I promise you. Maybe you should have learned a little more about it before you went around biting people.”

“Maybe you should have realized what you were doing when you took my blood in the first place!”