Soren stood up.
His body didn't want him to.
His legs felt like they were made of wet paper, but he stood up because lying on the floor while Yara Hale materialized in his bedroom was not how this conversation was going to go.
The bed where Grimm had been curled around him was empty.
The wolf was gone.
Because the wolf was standing in the corner of the room with white hair and red eyes directed at Selah.
That was the thing nobody told you about bonded beasts with humanoid forms.
When they shifted, you lost the version of them that felt safe.
Selah hadn't moved from the bed but both her hands were open at her sides.
The blue glow from her fusion was brighter now and the room smelled like winter.
"You know who I am," Yara said to Soren.
"You're Grimm?"
Something crossed her face.
"I'm what Grimm is becoming," she said. "I'm what she was before you found her."
"Shadow Goddess of the Veil. Mythic tier six. You were supposed to bond with Troy Minden."
Her smile widened. "You really knew everything."
"I just know that you're dangerous."
"Only to people who aren't my master."
She took a step forward while Selah's ice cracked loud enough to make the windows rattle and the temperature dropped another five degrees.
Yara stopped.
She looked at Selah and then she looked back at Soren and the emptiness filled up with something he wasn't ready for.
"Master," she said. "I told you I'd find you. You keep collecting women and you haven't even ranked up yet."
She tilted her head.
"How am I supposed to protect what's mine when you keep making it harder?"
"Yara," Soren said, and he used the name from the original novel. "Sit down."
She turned her red eyes on him fully.
"What did you say?"
"I said sit down. On the floor away from Selah. You showed up in my room at four in the morning and you're scaring my people, so sit down and tell me what you actually want, or go back to being a wolf."
The room went quiet.
Selah's eyes flicked to him and then back to Yara.
Yara stared at him for five full seconds, the same creature that slept on his chest every night and pushed her blind face into his neck and called him master in a voice that cracked with need.
She was standing in front of him in the body of a woman who could unmake this building.
Then she sat down on the floor.
She crossed her legs, folded her hands in her lap and her wolf ears flicked once.
She looked up at him from the floor with an expression that was halfway between worship and fury.
"You're different," she said. "The man I waited for wouldn't have told me to sit."
"The man you waited for doesn't exist. I'm who you got."
"I know." Her voice dropped. "That's why I can't stop."
[DING!] — Entity [Yara Hale/ Grimm] has manifested humanoid form. Obsession Index remains at 49/50. Communication channel restored in humanoid state. WARNING: emotional output in this form is unfiltered. Soul erosion rate increased by 340%.]
'Three hundred and forty percent?!'
Every second she stayed in this form she was burning through him faster than the wolf ever could.
His nose started bleeding and he wiped it on his sleeve before she could see it.
She saw it anyway.
Her red eyes tracked the smear of blood on the fabric and her hands tightened in her lap so hard her knuckles went white.
"You're hurting," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You're lying! Every time I speak in this body it costs you, and you're standing there pretending it doesn't because you think I'll leave if you tell me the truth."
"Will you?"
"No! I'll never leave. That's the problem, isn't it?"
Soren crouched down so they were at the same level.
"What do you want?" he said.
"I want you to bond with me, fully, not the half-bond we have now where I'm the wolf during the day and this during the dream realm so I can stay."
"My soul is at seventy-six percent, You're already at forty-nine out of fifty. The system says if I bond you fully right now I have a thirty-one percent chance of surviving."
"I can suppress it, I can hold back, I've been holding back for three hundred years, master."
"I know you can. I'm not saying never, I'm saying not yet."
"Then when?"
"Thirty days. I rank up, my cap goes to sixty, my soul recovers, and then we do this right not a crash bond in a dorm room at four AM while I'm bleeding from my nose. Right?"
Yara's hands were shaking.
"And the ice girl," she said.
"Selah stays."
"She's bonded to you."
"Yes."
"I should have been first."
"You were first, you just have to wait a little longer."
Her chin dropped.
Then she leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his knee and stayed there, wolf ears flat, shoulders tight, ten seconds without a word.
Soren put his hand on her head.
It was the same spot he scratched when she was a wolf, right behind the ear, and when his fingers touched her hair she made a sound that wasn't human, wasn't animal and wasn't anything he could name.
When she pulled back her eyes were dry and her face was the face from the forum illustrations, cold, perfect and sharp.
"Thirty days," she said. "I'll protect you until then from everything."
She looked at Selah.
"Even from her."
Selah's voice came from the bed. "I don't need protecting from."
Yara smiled. "Wasn't talking about protecting you, ice girl."
She stood up.
She looked at Soren one more time and her red eyes held everything she wasn't saying, then she stepped backward into the shadow on the wall and was gone.
And where she had been standing, on the floor, the wolf reappeared.
Grimm, with her white fur, sealed eyes and silent.
She walked to Soren and pushed her head into his chest and he held her, the difference between the woman who had just pressed her forehead to his knee and the wolf who was pressing her face into his ribs was nothing at all.
"Soren," Selah said.
"Yeah."
"That was Grimm."
"Yeah."
"Your blind wolf puppy is a Shadow Goddess?"
"She's getting there."
Selah was quiet for a moment.
"Obsession Index," she said. "That's what this is? The wolf, the goddess, me. We're all... what. Attached to you by some system mechanic that measures how much we..."
She stopped.
"How much we what, Soren?"
"How much you need me," he said. "And when it gets too high, it starts killing me."
Selah stared at him.
"So the wolf at forty-nine. That means she's been..."
"Eating herself alive trying not to break me. That's why she stopped talking, because every word was a point of pressure she couldn't afford."
Grimm made a small sound against his chest that wasn't a word.
Selah looked at the wolf and something crossed her face that she didn't shut down.
"And mine is?" she asked.
"Twelve and climbing."
"What happens when it gets higher?"
"You start wanting things you can't explain. You start making decisions that don't make sense to you and if it hits the cap before I rank up, the friction kills me."
"So I'm going to..."
"Want me, more than you think makes sense and the wanting is real, the system just amplifies what's already there."
"I already wanted to help you," she said. "Before the bond."
"I know."
"So the bond is amplifying..."
"What was already there? Yes."
She looked at her hands.
The frost was fading.
"Twenty-nine days," she said.
"Twenty-nine days."
"Then we get you to Rank E."
"You don't have to..."
"Shut up, Soren Kane! I'm bonded to you. My sprite is fused with my body because of you, I'm in this."
She lay back on the bed and put her arm over her eyes.
Soren sat on the floor with Grimm in his arms and looked at the shadow where Yara had disappeared.
In the dark, very far away, he felt something that wasn't Grimm-the-wolf and wasn't Selah.
[DING!] — Quest timer: 29 days remaining.]
[DING!] — Obsession Index: Grimm/Yara 49/50. Selah 14/50. Full bond: NOT ESTABLISHED.]
[DING!] — Soul integrity: 74%.]
[DING!] — Notice: Joan Sawyer has filed a request for thermal anomaly records in the dormitory east wing. Records include tonight's temperature drop. Estimated time until investigator arrives at your location: 9 hours.]