2. Seven Days Until Bonding
Chapter two
Seven Days Until Bonding
Laurel
With trembling hands, I rip off the mask, and everything blurs. I blink, then blink again. By the time my vision clears, Silas’s bus is already gone.
Ashford House rises before me, stately and ominous. White columns. Slate-gray roof. Peaked dormers, each window burning with light. I can’t believe it. I’m back where it all began.
I rise and stumble toward the place I’ve called home for the past six months.
As soon as I open the heavy mahogany door, I hear it.
A sharp crack. An odd sound, familiar, but I can’t quite place it.
I follow the noise, winding down the stairs into the belly of the house, to the dining hall where I kissed Carrson for the first time.
Once again, the massive hewn tables have been shoved aside, clearing the center of the room like an arena.
The ancient grey stone floor is rough and uneven beneath my feet.
The stained-glass windows lining the hall are black mirrors tonight, the outside world too dark to share its light.
In their absence, chandeliers flare overhead and sconces flicker along the walls, casting restless shadows.
The glow should be warm, but it isn’t. It feels staged, as if the house itself is preparing for spectacle.
The room is packed. Every single Brother and Sister must be here, hundreds of them, with adults I don’t recognize scattered among their ranks.
They stand shoulder to shoulder, with their backs to me, pressed so close it’s as if they’ve fused into a single organism, one heaving, silent wall of humanity.
Desperate to know what they’re looking at, I search for a gap I can squeeze through, but it’s no use.
Still, I try. I press my palms against shoulders, shove at elbows, wedge myself between bodies, but I make no progress. They don’t even notice me. Heat presses in on all sides. The smell of sweat, perfume, stale air—it all combines to smother me.
My pulse pounds high in my throat.
Panic claws up my chest and then…
“Laurel!”
Samantha bursts through the crowd. My mouth drops open when I see the tears that streak her cheeks. Sam never cries. “You have to help him!”
“Who?” I ask, looking around. “What’s happening?”
Crack.
The crowd inhales as one.
Sam’s reached me now. She grips my arm so hard it’s painful and drags me, shoving people aside. With both of us working together, slowly we reach the front.
What I see nearly shatters me.
Carrson.
Kneeling on the ground, shirtless, head bowed, with his back toward me. Behind him stands a dark-haired man who raises his arm and then brings it slashing down.
Crack.
A whip. That’s the sound I heard.
The lash kisses Carrson’s skin. A red line blooms and crosses a dozen others. Blood threads and merges, running in thin streams until his back is a road map of suffering.
“The High Father.” Sam lets out a ragged sob. “Carrson’s dad.”
The words slam into me, wrenching the air from my lungs.
Carr Ashford.
Returned at last from whatever mission in the Middle East had kept him away. The day Carrson has dreaded has finally come.
Carr looms before me, but I don’t let myself look at him. I can’t. Instead, my gaze stays on Carrson. His arms hang loose at his sides, unbound yet limp, as if shackled by something worse than rope.
“I don’t get it,” I whisper to Sam. “Why is he just sitting there? Why isn’t he fighting back?”
“When you’ve spent your life on your knees,” her voice wavers, “you forget it’s possible to rise.”
Carrson’s dad raises his arm again. High above his head, poised to strike.
I don’t think.
I move.
I hurl myself between them. Throw up my hand and yell, “Stop!”
The coil of leather snaps downward, and I squeeze my eyes shut, every muscle bracing for the explosion of pain. I can almost feel it already, the air splitting, the sting about to tear across my skin—
One second.
Two.
Nothing lands.
Silence swallows the hall. Deprived of vision, my other senses sharpen. I can smell it. The bite of oiled leather. The iron tang of Carrson’s blood. Long minutes pass until I look.
He stands before me.
Carr Ashford. More legend than man.
Rich brown hair. Eyes black as obsidian. Carved jaw. His features are achingly familiar, but this version is older, colder.
He’s Carrson.
If Carrson were made of stone.
The resemblance is so striking that my stomach lurches. Bile rises in the back of my throat. My body wants to recoil, but Carr stares at me with an anticipatory gleam in his eyes like he can’t wait to watch me break.
Fuck that.
I force myself still.
I remind myself of the damage he’s done to Carrson. Of the nightmares Carrson won’t talk about, the shadows and scars etched into him that come from this man’s hands. I think of those things, and I lock my body in place. Not a single twitch.
If Carr Ashford is stone, then I will be steel.
“Laurel?” The voice behind me is ragged.
I turn, and my hands fly to my mouth. Carrson’s lip is split and bleeding. Bruises bloom across his chest and stomach like dark, rotting flowers.
“Thank God you’re alive,” he mumbles, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth. I can’t tell if it’s from his split lip or something deeper, more internal. He drags in one uneven breath, wobbles, and then collapses at my feet. Unconscious.
The whip hisses upward again.
I throw myself over Carrson, shielding his body with mine.
“What are you doing?” My voice cracks, but I don’t move.
Cold eyes rake over me. “Punishing my son for disobedience. And who, exactly, are you?”
“Laurel Turner.” Determined to stand up to this monster, I lift my chin.
“Ah yes.” Recognition lights his expression. He flashes a cold smile. “The source of all this trouble.” The whip moves back up. “Now get out of the way. He has ten lashes to go.”
I don’t budge.
No one moves. So many people, yet it feels like it’s only me and him, caught under a microscope.
“He’s hurt.” I keep my eyes fixed on Carr. “Your son needs help. Medical attention.”
“My son,” he says, “needs discipline.”
“I won’t let you touch him,” I grit out, meaning it with every cell in my body.
“What?” He scoffs. “Are you going to take his punishment for him?”
The words ignite something feral in me. A fury that straightens my spine. “I will,” I spit out, voice burning. “If you get a doctor.”
Carr Ashford’s mouth twists in disbelief. “Really?”
I’m already tugging down the straps of my tank top, letting it fall. A thin sports bra clings to my chest, flimsy armor against what’s coming.
The crowd presses in, waiting.
Carr lets the whip unfurl, the leather grazing the ground like a serpent testing the air.
At the sight, the fury that carried me between Carr and his son gives way.
I don’t remember sinking to my knees. I don’t remember pulling Carrson into my arms, his head cradled in my lap.
It’s as if I’ve slipped out of my body. I hover above, watching this moment unfold from a distant land, somewhere safe.
The whip falls.
The first strike pulls me back into my body with a wordless scream.
Fire sears across my skin. The second blow is worse, icy, slicing, leaving me shaking so violently my teeth clack.
On blow three, blood flows. It slicks my back, warm and sticky.
The rest blurs into a rhythm of agony, each lash detonating through me until I spasm uncontrollably, like my body is wired into a live current.
Through it all, I force my gaze downward and anchor myself in Carrson. In the familiar angle of his jaw. The cut of his cheekbone. The curve of his lip. I count his eyelashes like rosary beads, praying to any god who might listen to show mercy. To deliver us from this evil.
I told myself I wouldn’t cry, but I’m a liar. My tears rain down unchecked, striking his battered skin. They streak his cheeks as if they’re his own.
Time stretches until every lash feels like eternity. Then, the next one doesn’t come. Silence ripples outward, unnaturally hushed. The crowd, hundreds strong, stands frozen. I can feel their eyes on me, on the blood dripping down my spine, on the girl kneeling with the Ashford heir in her arms.
Carr studies me with an expression caught between disdain and intrigue. The whip dangles at his side, glistening scarlet at the tip.
“You bleed for him.” His voice is low, yet it carries, echoing through the vaulted hall.
My body trembles, but my voice stays steady. “Yes.”
A murmur stirs in the crowd, like wind slicing through dead leaves.
Brothers avert their eyes. Sisters clutch each other’s hands.
At the front of the crowd, Samantha stands next to a beautiful woman with her same strawberry blonde hair and aqua blue eyes.
Her mother, it has to be. The woman clutches Sam’s arm as if she had to physically hold her back during my whipping.
Sam’s face is chalk pale, streaked with tears.
“Tell me,” Carr asks, drawing my gaze back to him. He points at Carrson, using the whip. “Does my son’s blood call to you? Does your blood sing in return?”
I tilt my head, remembering that I’ve heard those terms once before. A month ago, a Sister had mentioned feeling that way about a Brother she loved, a man she wanted to bond with.
“I—it does—I do?” I answer hesitantly, not exactly sure what to say. If he’s asking if I’m attracted to Carrson, if I feel a pull toward him, the answer is a resounding yes, but I’m not sure if it’s safe to declare that here. Am I putting us in more or less danger by being honest?
He’s facing away from the crowd, so I’m the only one who sees the mix of emotions that passes over his face.
First suspicion, mistrust, followed by surprise, and finally, calculation.
Carr smiles, wide and brilliant. Not sincere, but close enough to fool most. He pivots until he’s facing the entire hall.
Then he lifts his arms high, whip dangling from his fist, like a priest offering benediction.
His voice booms through the hall. “Rejoice, Brothers and Sisters. Mothers and Fathers. We have a bonding, true and pure.”
A murmur spreads through the crowd as Carr’s statement is met with conflicting emotions.
Some people clap, press their hands to their chests and speak excitedly with their neighbors.
But not all are convinced. I see the distrust, the envy, the anger curdling in their faces.
The word “outsider” reaches my ears, whispered on the winds of their contempt.
I kneel here, bloodied and trembling, Carrson in my arms, and still, I don’t belong. I’ll never belong.
Carr claps his hands together, just once, and the crowd falls silent.
“In one week’s time, we will reconvene here for the official bonding ceremony.” His smile turns benevolent. “The evening before, a prebonding ball will be held at my estate. All are invited. Let us come together and commemorate yet another step on the path to perfection.”
The crowd’s murmur is happier after that announcement.
Apparently even bloodthirsty secret societies love a party.
Two women glide to Carr, one on each side, and hook their hands through the crooks of his arms with practiced ease.
They’re beautiful, eerily alike: long, pin-straight black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, bodies carved to perfection.
They look so similar they have to be sisters, not capital-S Sisters like the Rosewood Hall sorority, but sisters by blood.
Carr starts to lead both women away, but before they can leave a man’s voice rings out.
“I demand the bonding be sealed.”
Carr freezes. A grimace flashes across his face before he schools his expression and turns to the speaker.
“Jack.” Carr says the name stiffly. The man stands at the front of the crowd, tall and commanding, a deep scowl etched across his face. A face that’s all too familiar, because if Carr is an older version of Carrson, then this man is Jackson all grown up.
“No one seals a bonding these days,” Carr says with an impatient shake of his head. “It’s an outdated tradition.”
“Bonded by Blood. Sealed by Sight,” Jack recites, scripture-flat. Several heads behind him nod in agreement.
“I’m familiar,” Carr huffs, practically rolling his eyes. “The last one was in the early 1800s.”
Older Mothers and Fathers shift, their eyes moving between the two men.
“As you know, it’s in our bylaws and well within my rights to demand it.” Jack raises one eyebrow.
Carr’s fingers close around the handle of the whip, but he offers no rebuttal. “Fine,” he says. “We’ll perform the complete ceremony. In one week, back here.”
With that, he whirls and strides past me without a glance.
A week.
Seven days until the bonding. Until whatever sealing means.
Seven days until The Order decides my future.
I look down at Carrson and wonder if either of us will survive it.
Laurel protecting an unconscious Carrson. Art by: Momo Mitsuko