On My Drowing Day, He Announced His Bonding to Her Chapter 05
The water pouring into my mouth and nose wasn’t as terrifying as I’d always pictured it.
I thought about seven years ago, how Lily had twisted
around to keep looking at me while he carried her off.
Turns out she and I had that in common. We were both so easy for him to let go of.
My body sank heavier by the second.
My mind kept slipping further away.
Somewhere in that fog, a small black shape came cutting through the dark water toward me.
She swam hard, clamped her teeth into my veil, and
hauled with everything she had.
Her eyes were exactly as bright as they’d been seven years ago.
Lily.
But my body kept dragging downward anyway. The veil weighed too much.
I couldn’t take her down with me.
I used the last of whatever strength I had left to shove
her away, and let the dark swallow me whole.
I don’t know how long passed after that.
When I came to again, the whole world had lost its color.
Everything around me sat in shades of gray.
I opened my mouth to talk and what came out instead was a whine.
I looked down and found a pair of black, furry paws
where my hands should’ve been.
That’s when it hit me. My soul was inside Lily’s body now.
And right then, I was standing on the bank of Black Hollow River.
The whole bank was crawling with wolves.
Pack members dragged the water for my body, a few small boats cutting across the surface.
John was soaked through, screaming my name over and over.
“Violet! Where are you!”
“Come out! Stop this! I’ll bond with you, I swear on the
Moon Goddess, I mean it this time!”
I stepped out of the reeds and snapped a dead branch under my paw.
John spun around.
The moment he saw me, he lost it completely and ran
over, scooping me straight into his arms.
“Lily? You’re alive?”
His tears hit my fur, scalding hot.
Scarlett’s face went white.
She stumbled back, refusing to believe it, and slipped,
landing hard in the mud.
“That’s not Lily! Lily’s dead! She died!”
John turned to comfort her instead.
“Scarlett, it’s okay.”
“Maybe the Moon Goddess was watching over her.
Maybe she got swept downstream and made it. Isn’t it a good thing she found her way back to us?”
I wasn’t done with her yet, not even close.
I broke free of his arms and lunged straight at Scarlett,
barking like something feral.
I bared my teeth. I wanted nothing more than to tear her throat open.
She scrambled backward on all fours, crying, hiding behind John.
“John, get it away from me!”
“She was never like this before! It’s Violet, she sent the Groom after me!”
The Pack members around us scattered.
“Moon Goddess have mercy, the Groom’s gotten into
that dog. Something unclean’s in her now.”
“That’s some bad karma right there. Violet must have
gone into that river with real hate in her heart.”
John stared down at Scarlett shaking in his arms, and something in his face shifted.
“Scarlett.”
“Why were you so sure she was dead?”
Scarlett’s crying cut off. She grabbed his sleeve.
“I just figured, after all those days in the water, there was no way she’d survived.”
“Don’t look at me like that, John. You’re scaring me.”