Chapter Thirty-Seven Rosemary

My evenings, after dinner, belonged to Sinclair. To my astonishment, I had quickly come to enjoy his company. The cold alpha that still reminded me so much of a spider sitting on the edge of a web, waiting for prey to fall into his trap, had seemed like the last person I might view as an ally in this pack. Ivan worshiped the alpha mage, so I knew he had to be clever and powerful. Aside from that, his eyes often held a cruel, calculating glint that scared me.

Before I started the lessons, I'd imagined talking to him for any length of time would be a wretched chore, where he would say very intelligent things and I would pretend that I knew what he was talking about, if he bothered to ask for my input at all.

Instead, I found him fascinating. His hands waved in elegant swoops as he explained the background of every spell, as well as the purpose of it and how it related to what we had already learned. He dug into each spell so thoroughly that I felt I'd already practiced for days by the time it came to the actual casting. He praised me rarely, but each time he did, it seemed like he really meant it. Pride would shine in every line of his face, and he would describe what I had done right as if he knew me better than I knew myself.

And he didn't just teach me magic. He asked after customs and local plants in my country, gossiped with me about people in the castle and in my home village, asked my opinion on every matter under the sun, and actually listened to my replies.

It made me realize how rarely anyone had ever listened to me. Ivan loved me, but I was his sister, and my life had been stunted in ways he knew all too well. Whenever he had visited me, he told me about his life, but never asked about mine. I didn't expect him to. What was there to say?

But Sinclair asked.

Instead of crushing me under his own intelligence, he made me feel like I was his equal.

Was it all a farce? I knew it probably was, but even if I could see the ruse, it didn't seem to matter. I felt my guard slipping further and further every moment I was around the alpha mage.

However, much like Lynter, Sinclair hadn't shown me a hint of carnal interest. Once or twice I thought maybe I had caught him staring at my lips as I spoke, but it could easily have just been him concentrating on my words. I certainly stared at his lips while he spoke… and honestly, quite often when he didn't. His lips were thin but I found them sensual. His voice was smooth and lyrical, similar to Bastian's, but not quite as deep. It had a quality of confidence that made me shiver. It made me wonder, altogether unwillingly, what he was like in bed. Would he order me around? Was he… deviant?

My sole experience of such perversions came from the muttered words of the horrible men who had paid my father to sniff and paw at me, and an occasional teasing hint in my adventure books, right before the scene faded to black.

As fascinating as I found his lessons, I often daydreamed of Sinclair saying darker things to me. Of him doing dark things… until suddenly I would feel a gush of slick and be forced to press my legs together for the rest of the lesson.

"Please pay attention, Rosemary. Your concentration today is abysmal."

I winced, and dragged my mind back to the lesson. I had no idea what Sinclair had been saying, only that it involved a lot of pursing his lips.

"Does it have to be Davos who bonds me?" I blurted out.

He stiffened as if he'd been stabbed, then slowly relaxed.

"Probably," he said, but he didn't look at me. Instead the alpha stared at the book in front of him, as if he were searching for something in the text, but his eyes were fixed in place. "If he decides on bitten bonds then… yes, he would need to bite first, if anyone did."

"Probably?"

Sinclair paused and met my gaze, his face blank. I could tell he was working out what he was allowed to say to me and felt a flare of frustration. Sinclair was a powerful alpha, and yet even he had to bow to Davos. Why did the packlead have to ruin everything?

"There are other kinds of bonds," Sinclair said, finally. "A true bond is preferable when possible. It doesn't have a hierarchy, so it doesn't matter who makes it first. However…" He stopped talking and looked at me appraisingly.

"What do you think of Davos, Sunberry?"

I blinked in surprise at the abrupt change in topic. We'd talked about everything under the sun, but the alpha mage had never asked me directly about his packmates. I'd assumed he asked them anything he wanted to know about our time together.

Or perhaps he spied on me all day like Cantor did.

The thought of the two of them accidentally running into each other while trying to discretely stalk me suddenly flooded my mind and I had to swallow down a giggle.

A giggle . Since when was I this comfortable with Sinclair?

"I don't know," I said at last, realizing he was still waiting for an answer. "Aside from seeing him at meals, and that one time he tried to enslave me forever, I haven't really spoken to the man."

Sinclair rolled his eyes. For a second I thought he was finally condescending to me the way I always expected him to, but then he shook his head, muttering about pig-headed alphas and I realized the person he was mad at was Davos.

I frowned at him and wondered if now was the time to ask him why he had stopped his packlead from bonding with me, when no one else seemed to lift a finger.

I couldn't quite bring myself to do it.

"What do you know about bonding, Sunberry?"

"Not much," I admitted. "It wasn't really a thing people did at home. Everyone was betas. We didn't have packs, and if partners, uh… committed to each other, they just got married."

Sinclair nodded. "Honestly, not many people understand it here either, even though it's common among packs. They know a few rules, a few dos and don'ts, but not the why's of how it works. Even I didn't really look into it until recently."

I nodded. That kind of almost willful ignorance seemed to be the norm for most people. It was one of the reasons I had warmed up so much to Sinclair. He liked building an understanding of subjects from the inside out, and it was something I deeply appreciated after a lifetime of being told "that's just how it is".

"Bonds are like strings that exist in a different space from where we exist. They tie together a bonder and their bitten." The brown-haired alpha tapped his chin for a second and then picked up a thick book and displayed it for me, his slender fingers wrapped around the brown leather cover.

"Imagine our world is contained in this book." He opened it and flicked to an illustration of what looked like a king. A faceless man on a throne, with a golden crown. "Each person inside the book only knows the story that's written in there. They don't know there's people reading the book, or that another world exists outside it. Understand?"

"I think so?" I said, not sure exactly how that related to bonds.

He nodded and left a finger marking the page with the king, then flicked through the pages to another one with an illustration of a shepherdess. She was also faceless, but still gave the impression of beauty, her dress and golden hair brushed by the wind into curving shapes. Sinclair used his finger to draw a half-circle over the pages between, from the king to the peasant. "Bonds exist somewhere outside the book. They aren't affected by distance. No matter how far away in the book this man and woman are, if they are bonded, they feel the bond just as strongly as if they were right next to each other."

Now he drew out a couple of short, colorful laces from his pouch. He draped one over the book so the ends fell into the two open parts.

"Most people experience bonds as strings, which can be tugged or…" He glanced at me and then away. "Used to bind. To control."

He searched for another picture in the book, finding one of a pig sitting in a mud puddle, which made me giggle. He grinned briefly at me, and the sight of his dark blue eyes lighting up, even for a split second, took my breath away. All too quickly, he flicked them away from me again.

The alpha draped the second string so it connected the girl and the pig.

"The first bite takes priority. We don't know exactly why." He tugged gently at the bottom string so that the top string was moved as well. "Davos is our packlead. Our bonds were arranged so that he had priority over all of our bonds. His is what's known as the superior bite. Alphas can usually only take two bites, so it's a bit tricky but…" he draped a few more laces on top then tugged again at the bottom one, demonstrating that all the others were balanced on it, and moved by it.

"So he can control any of you?"

Sinclair rocked his hand from side to side, in a so-so motion. "If he had to, perhaps. Alpha-to-alpha bonds are very easily broken. If he ordered us around haphazardly, the bonds would break in days, if not candles. Ours are very stable for alphas, in fact. We've only had to renew them once or twice a year so far."

"So they aren't permanent?" I asked. He looked at me with surprise, then his eyes widened. "Oh no, sweet girl. Bitten bonds aren't ever permanent. Even from alpha to omega, although those last longer." I gaped at him, blown away by this revelation.

"They have to be renewed," he continued. "The stronger the positive emotional bond between the biter and the bitten, the more time can lapse between renewals."

He shrugged. "It's actually a point of pride for some alpha-beta couples when they don't need to renew the bite for long periods. It proves they have a strong connection. However, the very longest I've found in my research still lasted only for about a year or so. The bond thins over time, the bite heals, and eventually it's gone."

He snapped his fingers, the harsh sound echoing through the room like the crack of a stick in a forest.

Something in me loosened and tears prickled my eyes. I had assumed something so drastic, something that left a physical scar, for the gods' sake, was permanent. Everything I'd heard in Lutin described a bond as for life. But it wasn't true. Even if Davos did bond me tomorrow, I might still get out of it eventually. It wasn't a death sentence. Or a life sentence.

"The problem is," Sinclair continued like the perfect killjoy that he was, "once you've been bitten, a smart alpha… or omega, I suppose, since they can make bonds as well, can just keep biting whenever needed and ordering you to stay put. Omegas are particularly vulnerable to this kind of enslavement because their bonds last a lot longer, even if they have no emotional connection to the biter. They also have less ability to defy an order in general, and an alpha bark from a bonded mate would be impossible to resist."

"Well that's just perfect," I mutter. "Omegas get all the best stuff. Where do betas fit in here?"

"They can be bonded but not compelled by the bonder," Sinclair said. "And they cannot make a bond. Only alphas and omegas can make a bond."

"Why would anyone bother then? You just said there are alpha-beta pairs. If they can't be commanded…" I frowned.

"It's… good. Being bonded," the alpha mage said it slowly, as if feeling out the words. "When it's to someone you trust. You feel closer to the person. You can feel their emotions and, to some extent, where they are in the world. If they are feeling pleasure, or happiness, you can share it. If they're sad or angry, you can bear it with them." He shrugged. "It's not really something I think about very much. It's… It's just what packs do. It also protects you from being bitten by someone with evil intentions."

He made it sound so innocuous. Which, I guess, was the point. Of course he was beating a drum for bonds.

"And what about this other kind of bond? A true bond?"

He looked at me, his dark blue eyes filled with some kind of strong emotion I didn't understand. He looked almost… sad? Until he blinked and his eyes were cold once again.

"That's where we start getting even trickier," he said. "A true bond can happen between certain kinds of alphas and omegas who… well, I suppose they love each other." He sneered the word, as if it offended him, his change in demeanor taking me by surprise. I opened my mouth to ask what certain kind of alphas he meant, specifically, but he kept talking.

"The bond starts to grow even without a bite," he continued, "but a bite cements it. This kind of bond is supposedly permanent, or at least self-sustained if the emotional bond remains. They also increase magic a lot more than a normal bond. They are mutual and equal. So there's no compulsion. No one is… as you always so pointedly put it, enslaved by the biter."

By this point I had learned that Sinclair liked things to be logical. Of course he would hate the idea of something as wishy-washy as love affecting a bond. Of course he would sneer at the idea of it.

For some reason it made my chest ache.

"Well that sounds good…. So what's the catch?"

He sighed. "A true bond takes precedence over every other kind of bond… if any one of us makes a true bond with you, for example, our existing bonds will give way to the true bond." Not willing to let his silly metaphor drop, he slid a lace under all the others, true bonding the girl and her pig.

"Soooo… anyone in the pack that I true bonded with would be able to command Davos?"

Sinclair smirked. "I'm not exactly sure. True bonds were so rare, even back when we knew more about bonding. I know you can't form a true bond with an omega if the omega has a bitten bond. I don't know what would happen if Davos tried to bitten bond you after a true bond had formed either. Or how his existing bonds would work. Maybe if you true bond with, say, Cantor, and then Davos bonded you with a bite, you would be able to command Davos through his existing bond with Cantor."

I gaped at Sinclair. I was barely following this twisting mess of a lesson but surely he didn't really mean that I could seize leadership of the pack through a single bite.

"Should you even be telling me this?"

He rolled his eyes again. "No, probably not, but only because our packlead should be telling it to you himself."

I sat for a moment, trying to figure out how to process all this information and what it meant. Why did all this bonding stuff have to be so complicated? Especially since I didn't want any bond- bitten, true, false, or coated in sugar.

Still, it sounded like a true bond might not be all bad, and it would block Davos-or anyone else- from enslaving me. Maybe my little seduction plan could work after all. Just not in exactly the way I was expecting.

"So, hypothetically, if Cantor and I were, uh, in love, how would I form a true bond with him?"

Sinclair growled, the sound harsh and sudden, and I stiffened in surprise. His eyes widened in shock, and he gulped as if trying to restrain himself. After a moment where neither of us spoke, the big alpha patted my hand stiffly, as if in apology.

"Maybe we can talk about how to form a true bond next time," he said. "It's probably time for you to get some sleep."

I glanced out the study room window, realizing that the sun had long-since set and he wasn't exactly wrong. However, I also knew a dismissal when I heard one. And I wasn't ready to capitulate just yet.

"Is it difficult? Making a true bond, I mean."

"It's complicated," he said and waved his hand. "There are a lot of, uh, variables that come into play. It's not something you can just do without a lot of planning and… so on." He pulled one of the bigger books toward himself and opened it, seemingly at random. Then he peered down at it as if it was fascinating.

"Did you need anything else?"

I stared at him. He'd never been this abrupt with me before. He'd never been this… obvious with me before. I had a strange urge to laugh at how fervently he suddenly wanted me to leave.

"I guess not," I mumbled and rose to my feet. I told myself that I was taking pity on him, but really I was shaken by how suddenly he'd changed his demeanor.

It reminded me a little too much of Carlile.

Sinclair nodded and stared at his book. He shifted in his seat, as if struggling with something, then turned and gripped my wrist as I edged past his chair. His hand was gentle, but the hot, damp touch of his palm made me shiver, and I wasn't sure if it was a good shiver, or a bad one.

"Sunberry," he said, his voice low. "I know it's hard for you to believe, but… but Davos is a good man. He's made some bad choices, but I know he can do better." Sinclair paused, as if picking his words with care. "Don't fear him." He blinked at me, and I found myself captivated by the intense look in his eyes. "Don't fear our pack either. They're all good men. Good alphas. They'll protect you."

" They will?" I whispered. "What about you ?"

The alpha mage withdrew his hand, and gave me a self-depreciating smile.

"I'm not a good man, Sunberry, but for you I'll do my best."