Bind Our Loving Souls (8 page)

It seemed that on his planet, which was
called Cyron, the clans with great power and prestige were hated
and envied by everyone else. They were the only ones with access to
the technology of their world, which made them powerful and
dangerous enough that no one else dared to do anything about
it—unless they found one of them wandering around on their own.
Then the clan members were at the mercy of those who hated them so
much.

Their world had no justice system. There was
no punishment for any crime committed, except for revenge by those
or the family of those it was committed against. And that was
exactly the way their race preferred it.

Enock’s sister and parents had been found
away from the safety of their city, their weapons, and their
numbers, and were tortured to death because of who they were. When
it happened, Enock was nearly at the age he should have been to fly
with his father and Kristoffer to the big city for the first time
and begin his learning, another thing only those of higher clans
had the privilege of doing.

It was customary for fathers to teach their
sons everything. So without his, Enock had never left the Halvandor
city except to come to earth. Women never left it at all. Outsiders
were only brought in to be made servants, hunters, or to be
considered for marrying a Halvandor when there wasn’t a distant
enough cousin for the job. Those brought in for either of the first
two reasons spent their lives in the Halvandor’s service in
exchange for protection, plenty of food, and any other basic
necessities of life, which was far better than what most could ever
dream of.

I saw things like the food, plants, and
animals of his world, and Enock’s relatives, who were the only
friends he ever had. I saw his love of books and learning
everything he could, which is what led to him coming to earth.

The only thing that seemed to be missing was
anything about the woman I’d seen him attack, and any sort of
romantic history for him. What I saw of romance among his people
showed that they did connect and fall in love, but it was so much
more than that. When two people fell in love, their lives seemed to
revolve around one another. They formed a bond that made them able
to understand each other as they understood themselves.

When all this had passed by and I felt I had
experienced nearly all of Enock’s life myself, that all-consuming
feeling of forgetting everything except how much I was deeply and
uncontrollably in love with him returned. It washed over me even
more powerfully than before as my breathing became deep and
slow.

Reality rushed back as my hand fell, and I
regained control of my body. The world of scarlet vanished, but the
feelings of euphoria lingered as Enock’s blue face entered my
vision.

He was leaning forward to kiss me, the
blinding yellow light from his eyes warming my skin as they closed.
I reached around him and sat up, meeting his burning lips with mine
and feeling my eyes water at the powerful rush of emotions. He
lifted me from his lap, pulling me closer, and kissed me until it
felt like I couldn’t breathe and he was breathing for me. I sat
there, caught in an insane and unworldly kiss, until I felt a sharp
stinging in my back and managed to gasp and lean sideways, away
from the pain.

“Ouch!” I said, reaching for my lower back.
First I felt the rip in my dress, then I felt something wet, so I
held my fingers up to see a drop of blood.

“I’m sorry,” Enock said, taking my hand and
revealing the one bloodied claw that must have cut me. “I didn’t
mean to.”

“It’s okay. It’s just a scratch.” I put a
hand over it to stop the slight bleeding. It really didn’t feel
like it was that bad.

Enock watched me for a minute or two. “I’m
glad you don’t mind my true form,” he said with a smile.

“I prefer it, actually.” Even if he was a
hundred times hotter as a human, it wasn’t really him, and I was
seriously attracted to the darkness of his kind and their
world.

“I know…If you could bind your soul to mine,
would you?”

Still drunk on feeling his love and not
thinking clearly at all, I nodded, because nothing else seemed
important but him.

He took the hand I held over my cut and laid
it over his heart. Then he laid his hand over my chest. His eyes
began to blacken, but my attention was diverted to how bad my hand
was hurting. I looked at the one against his chest and watched my
fingertips dissolve into his skin. It was difficult, but I ignored
the pain in sheer amazement. It was impossible to ignore, however,
when I felt the pain in my stomach, pressed against his, as it
seemed to melt into him as well. I screamed and pulled my hand
away, pushing myself free of his arms and scooting away, completely
awake and aware now of what I was doing. “What was that?”

“The binding of our souls. Did I hurt
you?”

“Yeah, that was the worst pain of my life.” I
realized I was breathing way too fast. When I tried to stand up, I
felt dizzy and fell over sideways.

“You need to lie down.”

Enock turned his head as he blew burning wind
through the air, stinging my skin and sending the little leaves on
their way.

Then he grabbed my coat, pulled it around my
shoulders, and picked me up to hold against his chest before he
leaned over and began running toward the manor with one arm and
both legs. He looked and was acting like he was angry, but the
speed with which he was running made me too nervous to say
anything.

The distance it took me so long to cover took
him less than a minute to travel. And then we were on the
tree-dotted side of the hill where I began.

“You’ll have to get back to your room on your
own. We can’t be seen together.”

I nodded and began climbing over the hill,
wanting him to stop me, or at least to say good-bye. But he didn’t.
And when I looked back, he was gone. So I let myself cry all the
way back to my window.

Chapter
Seven

The longer I sat on the edge of my bed, the
deeper what had just happened sunk in. Enock and I had almost been
married the way his people did it. I had almost done the most
intimate thing of my life, and there would have been no turning
back from it.

I was relieved that I hadn’t gone through
with it, but I could also understand why Enock was so upset. We
could never bind ourselves to each other. He could never have the
thing he wanted most with me.

It was even worse now that I’d seen every
part of his life and who he was, and had truly felt love for him. I
felt like I’d known him my whole life and maybe I could spend
forever with him. I just wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment
yet. But now it wasn’t even an option.

I sincerely hoped he could forgive me for
being human and be content with the way things were for now,
because it was all I was able to offer him.

The way he’d acted and looked so frustrated
before he left me kept playing through my head, though, and I
couldn’t help but cry for my broken heart. Not knowing what would
happen after I’d gotten unimaginably and impossibly close to him
hurt so badly.

My bedroom door opened just then and my heart
lifted, hoping it might be Enock. But it was Helena who poked her
head inside. “Are you all right?” she asked, looking worried.
“Everyone in the kitchen really wants to talk with you again.”

As she stepped into my room, I noticed the
cherries she’d woven into a matching necklace, bracelet, and ring,
which almost made me smile.

I stood up, smoothing my stray hairs back.
“Not really, but going to the kitchen might be the perfect way to
take my mind off it.”

Helena took my spot sitting on the bed. “Did
something happen at breakfast?”

“No offense, but I’d rather not talk about
it. Let me just change my dress.”

“But you already changed. What happened to
your back?!”

I put a hand over the rip. “Oh, I was taking
a walk in the forest. There are a lot of sharp branches out
there.”

“Why did you take off the other dress?”
Helena raised her voice as I disappeared into my closet and picked
out a simple blue one.

“You should try it on some time.”

When I finished changing, I moped beside
Helena to the kitchen. And once we arrived, there was so much going
on it was difficult to think of much else. Everyone was so excited
to see me. And I got to taste-test a dozen things at least, most of
them amazing.

A guy dropped by to see Helena, and that was
interesting. His name was Eddy. A little lanky and extremely
awkward, he was adorable with her. The awkwardness was clearly due
to the crush he had on her. His wide dark eyes hardly left Helena
the entire ten minutes or so he was there.

“Is Eddy your boyfriend?” I asked her quietly
as we walked outside through a back kitchen door.

“No, I haven’t got one,” Helena giggled.

I nodded and gazed around at the open land
boxed in by three long walls of manor. There was nothing there but
perfectly trimmed grass, a large stone picnic table, and a little
birdbath full of sparkling water and a few bluebirds ducking their
heads in the water and wiggling around so it would run over their
backs. It was very serene, and the air had become pleasantly
warm.

We walked toward the back, where the walls
opened up to rosebushes and grandfather trees bursting with
enormously heavy limbs. Even though the trees were well spread out
over the grounds, the branches blanketed everything with shadows,
creating a beautifully sorrowful-seeming place.

“Do you want to play hide and seek?” Helena
asked unexpectedly.

“Um…how old are you, exactly?” I asked,
thinking how childish she sounded.

“Sorry,” Helena flushed. “You must think I’m
silly.”

“No.” I felt bad. I just didn’t know any
other teenagers who were still playing that game. “It sounds like
fun.”

“Really? You can tell me if you don’t want to
play.”

“No, let’s play.”

“Okay—how about if you be the one to hide and
I’ll find you. One, two, three…” she started counting. She got to
five before it hit me that I needed to hide.

So I ran off a little ways and dove into a
patch of stringy bushes, hoping they would hide me. It didn’t take
long to realize it was a terrible hiding spot, but I was more than
a little out of practice. And not knowing what number she was
counting to, I was scared to leave it.

As I waited, I felt the little leaves
brushing against my face and the thrill of a child playing a game
like her life depended on it. A smile crept over my lips as I
realized how badly I didn’t want her to find me. It didn’t take her
long, though, even with the large area she had to search. And the
way we both screamed when she saw me had us both laughing pretty
hard.

We ended up burning a lot of time playing
hide and seek, catching butterflies, and eating her cherry
jewelry.

Helena never said how old she was, but she
looked and acted mature enough to be my age. She just had a really
playful side.

Sometime mid-afternoon I got a little too
into the game, and wanting to find a really great hiding spot, I
ran too far into the thicker trees surrounding our undesignated
hide and seek area. I figured if I didn’t go too deep, I wasn’t
really doing anything wrong. So I found a unique-looking tree trunk
that was especially fat with four medium sized trees growing out of
it. There were enough vines growing all over them to make it the
perfect hiding place.

I barely had time to climb into it before I
heard the chilling voice of a Halvandor. My body froze as two men
came closer—Kristoffer and a man I remembered was Paul’s uncle.
Kristoffer’s hair began to swell as he became Anvilayan.

“It is forbidden to do that in the open,” the
uncle said.

“I know this, Mattias, but no one is near,
and I hate posing as one of these hideous beings. I cannot wait to
be free of this miserable world.”

“Always with the complaining. It’s all you’ve
done since you got here. Why don’t you just leave?”

“Not without Enock. And he’ll never leave as
long as the revoltingly filthy little Earth girl is here.”

“Earth girl?” Mattias looked absolutely
horrified as the hair of my arms stood on end. “What Earth
girl?”

Kristoffer growled angrily at himself. “No
one. I meant Halvandor girl,” he said, then turned to run away like
some wild beast.

“Kristoffer.
Kristoffer!
”
Mattias shouted before he took Anvilayan form as well and ran after
him.

How much Enock’s brother hated and blamed me
for his being stuck here began to sink in as I saw something out of
the corner of my eye. Helena was creeping toward me from behind a
nearby tree.

She was watching me carefully, probably
wondering the same thing I was—if what she’d just seen was all new
to her and if she was about to freak out and run away screaming.
She continued to keep her eyes locked on mine as she came closer.
“You can never tell anyone,” she said solemnly.

“I won’t, but why is it so wrong for a
Halvandor to love a human?” The question slipped out. She knew the
big secret and she was fast becoming my closest friend here, so I
hoped I could ask her about it.

“It’s wrong. You—” Helena gasped and covered
her mouth. “You’re the Earth girl.”

“No!” She couldn’t find out. “It’s not me,
Helena. I just want to know why it’s so wrong.”

Helena gave me the serious look I was
becoming accustomed to. Then she turned her head to stare through
the trees. I knew she didn’t believe me. “I want to show you
something, but it’s kind of a long walk…”

“Sure,” I said uneasily, wondering if she
wanted to lead me to a Halvandor lover’s prison or something. But I
walked beside her in the direction she was staring because I was
curious, and my instincts told me that it would be okay.