Perielle steps closer, and I ready myself for anything. I’ve decided. Iwillbreak her nose if she pushes me.
“Lock your door tonight, cunt,” she hisses before turning on her heel, flicking her hair, and stalking away.
Conversation picks back up around us. No doubt, I’m the subject of most of it. I sigh internally and settle back in my seat. Izabel touches my shoulder briefly before I set about cleaning up after the queen’s tantrum.
So. Pack bonding is going great.
The tension from breakfast follows me for the rest of the day. I keep catching glimpses from people around me. Not all of them are scornful—some are more curious—but the constant hum of attention is as annoying as the winter winds banging against a window late at night.
Our first wolf communication class with the Kryptos instructor, Gamma Samson Whyte, helps to divert some of the attention. We all pour into a room together. His voice is clear as he projects across the auditorium.
“Rawbonds always ask how exactly the connection works, because even if you’ve seen your friends and family communicating with their wolves, you don’t truly understand it until you experience it for yourselves the first time. So let me ask you, is your wolf in your head at all times, seeing through your eyes?”
Izabel’s hand shoots up first, as usual. “No, sir,” she says. “The connection works by linking together our thoughts and our emotions. The direwolves are not actually in our minds or our bodies, it only feels that way because they hear it all.”
“Correct,” says Samson. “Well, mostly correct. The most powerful direwolves can see through their riders’ eyes, but that is very rare and requires an enormously strong bond. For therest of us, it’s just an unending exchange of thoughts and emotions.”
Unending. Great.
“It must seem right now that you and your wolves have an open channel of communication that can’t be turned off. It’s constant, yes?” he asks, pacing around the front of the room, his white-blond hair a shock against the blackboard behind him.
Based on the head nods and the knowing noises, yes, the majority are in agreement.
Well,shit. An open channel? Is that what everyone else experiences? No ice-cold, merciless wall to smack up against every time they try to reach for their wolves?
Just me, then?
“Your thoughts and your direwolf’s thoughts, right now, are likely passing back and forth regularly. However, that’s not the true way of it,” he explains. “It only feels that way, as your bond is weak and you’re seeking to strengthen it. But both wolves and riders can control their level of mental connection.”
He turns to the blackboard and draws crude figures of a person and a wolf, with two horizontal lines connecting them. Then, he draws a thick vertical line intersecting the connections.
“Your wolves don’t want to know what you had for breakfast any more than you want to be bombarded with their every passing thought,” Samson goes on. “The strongest bonds are selective.” With this, he circles the dividing line.
Selective. Well, Anassa is about as selective as they come. Namely, she’sselectednever to speak to me.
The class becomes a guided meditation. Samson instructs us to close our eyes in our seats andthinktowards our wolves. Clear everything out but our connection. Seek out the path between us and follow it to its conclusion, then begin to manipulate and navigate it.
Build up walls. Drop them. Shape the connection like guiding a river.
It’s mercilessly pointless.
“By now, you should sense a wall in your mind,” Samson calls out.
Now, always, what’s the difference?
“You can use that to control what you do or do not let your wolves experience. Imagine lifting the wall, and then bringing it back down. If you can’t lift it, think a way through it—imagine you’re creating a hole in it.”
Anassa is impenetrable, and I’m not making any progress. Whatever dent I might manage to make floods again with cold disregard an instant after I open it up. Before long, my head is starting to ache with the effort.
By the end of class, I’m drenched in sweat and exhausted. It’s not just a mental effort. I feel like I’ve been physically banging my entire body against a metal wall for two hours.
My mind is raw. My thoughts sting like scraped skin exposed to the air.
And Ihatethis eternal sense of rejection.
But I have to master this connection with my direwolf, whether Anassa likes it or not. It’s the only way I’ll be able to find Saela.
“Anassa,” I think toward her, unsure of what she’s receiving on her end, if she can even hear me. “If this is some sort of test, fine. You should know that I never give up. I’m going to keep slamming against this wall until you eventually let me in, you stubborn wench.”
