Court of Frost and Embers (The Pair Bond Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Court of Frost and Embers

  By

  Leeann M. Shane

  The Pair Bond Chronicles: Book One

  Copyright © 2020 Leeann M. Shane. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner, including electronically or mechanical, photocopying, or by an information and retrieval system, without written permission from the Author/Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblances to the actual persons, alive or deceased, business establishments, events, or locales, are entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 9798692395252

  Court of Frost and Embers

  Romance, danger, and magic collide in this dazzling new world by Leeann M. Shane.

  When seventeen-year-old Emmie Tealson is condemned to live in Port Inlet, Washington with her distant, cat-loving grandmother, she thinks her life is over.

  Little does Emmie know her life is finally about to begin…

  It all starts on a dark road. It ends with Emmie running for her life from a boy who was reported missing.

  That boy is Maxell Heathestone. Star quarterback. Life of the party. And pronounced missing after disappearing on a school trip over the summer.

  But he isn’t just missing. He isn’t the same anymore either. He’s pale as snow. He’s faster than light. He’s more dangerous now than ever before.

  Maxell isn’t missing. Maxell is a vampire.

  And Emmie is his pair bond. An ancient irrevocable bond that catapults her into a world dripping with lure and lies. She doesn’t know what to believe. Her heart or her nightmares?

  First love comes with a bite in this thrilling fantasy about two souls who are either doomed to frost or fated for fire.

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  About

  Epigraph

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Announcement

  Stay connected

  For when I touched ice, I knew my own fire.

  And when ice touched fire, he knew life.

  PREFACE

  The witch didn’t look like any witch Maxell had ever seen before.

  Not that he had ever met one in real life until that moment. He would’ve been satisfied never having done so again.

  If real life was any place to draw back on lately, he’d never met anything like himself either. He shouldn’t be as surprised as he was.

  Maxell didn’t know much. It was one of the many side effects of losing his life. He didn’t know who he’d become—if he could become anything anymore; his lack of soul made it difficult to foresee his future—and Maxell didn’t know who he was…

  But he knew who he wanted in his future. He at least knew that much. And that fragile grasp of knowledge, big or small, was all he had. His lack of soul was made better because he’d never sacrifice hers. His pair bond. His beating heart…

  Emmie Tealson.

  He didn’t know what she’d done to be paired to him. What travesty she must’ve committed to be so doomed. He also didn’t know what spectacular act he could have possibly done to deserve forever with her. Sometimes the universe was tilted like that.

  That unjust imbalance made it so a girl as bright as the sun got paired to a boy born in the darkest part of night.

  The witch circled him.

  The door burst open a second before he broke free of his chains.

  For one complete second he saw her again. He saw the fire in her eyes. The life pouring out of her like a broken faucet. He had never been thirstier in his life. The temptation of forever lay constantly on the tip of her tongue; he could listen to her and never tire. He was certain he’d never seen anything more beautiful than her. He was uncertain of everything in life, but she would always be the one thing he was sure of.

  “You will unsee until the stars open your eyes. Say your last words, for they will become lies.” A flash of light exploded from the end of the witch’s wand.

  The light was too bright to withstand, and even though he knew closing his eyes was a bad idea—deep in his bones—he couldn’t help them from sliding shut.

  The light was able to get inside his brain. It pulled his deepest desire from him, taking all the jumbled confusion and senseless want and compounded it into three words. “Emmie. You’re mine.”

  Finally, he was sure of something.

  But when Maxell opened his eyes, he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Were we all guaranteed a purpose in life?

  For some it was glaring.

  For others it was dim.

  And then there were people like me, Emmie Tealson, completely purpose lacking, positive that they weren’t guaranteed to all.

  After the year 2020, life changed. It’s hard to go back to normal after learning that normal is no longer an option. My parents lost their jobs and then my parents lost their hopes. Whatever bonded them together no longer did so.

  During divorce, things also changed. Goals settled like dust. Promises went up in flames; instead of putting the fire out, new infernos were created. Old passions became new memories; sometimes they were fond to think of, mostly we didn’t bother.

  I was one of those old passions.

  At some point, my parents stopped caring about me and started hating each other. They were much better at hating each other than they were at loving me anyway. They were the casualty in their war. I was the aftermath, their very own rubble.

  Which was why I found myself where I did. Condemned to Port Inlet, Washington. Twenty-eight miles from the Canadian border, and three-thousand miles away from my home state of Florida. The population was a whopping eight thousand, and though I hadn’t seen the sun since I got there, there were a million times more trees than there were people.

  One of those people was Londa Tealson. She was my seventy-nine-year-old grandmother. Dad’s parents were overseas; I’d never met them to begin with. When my parents lost custody of me, there were only two options. Foster care or Granny Londa.

  I was grateful for Granny Londa. Even if she got me too late.

  I was grateful that even though every root I’d ever put down was torn up, I still had one person in my life who cared.

  Even if she slept more than her cat, and most of the food in her pantry was canned tuna, I had my own bedroom and bathroom upstairs, and I was seventeen as of last week. Which meant I only had a year in Port Inlet before I could wrench up my newly planted roots and put them down somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  Even Mars would do.

  I went over to the window in my bedroom and peeled back the curtain, looking for the fourth planet from the sun, even though I already knew I couldn’t see Mars. Even if I tried with all my might, until my eyes were so exhausted I started to see things, there was no way out.

  A dark swath of shadows moved within the tree line below a second after I decided to pull back. The shadow bent and wavered in the shape of a tall body, and there was a flash of
purple, but I couldn’t be sure what exactly I saw. The shadow retreated as quickly as I’d seen it. My heartrate picked up, but I was a logical person, and didn’t want to panic. I had to be logical, what with my emotions no longer trustworthy. If I relied solely on my emotions, I’d be crying myself to sleep every night and cramming ice cream down my throat. It was probably a hunter—there were a lot of hunters in Port Inlet.

  The animal population thrived there. The bigger game, like black bears, wolves, and deer were in abundance. I was pretty sure hunting was the only part of tourism in Port Inlet, minus the occasional sightseer.

  It was a beautiful place.

  In a breathtaking, insurmountable kind of way.

  Beauty in such high doses muddled the brain. Too much green, too much oxygen, too much nature—I made sure to take it in in small doses.

  By staying inside and cramming my face into library books. So far, my self-preservation techniques were going well. Words were a much safer bet.

  The next morning, after a fruitless sleep—I hadn’t slept well in months, before everything changed—I was awoken by a banging noise.

  My room was dark. The sun hadn’t risen yet. The digital clock on my nightstand broadcasted that it was four in the morning in neon green lights. I sighed, staring up at my ceiling as the shutters over my window clapped off the side of the house from the wind.

  The weather in Port Inlet was unique. Unique in the sense that it had three different aspects of winter. All year long. It was either snowy, dreary, rainy, or all three at once. I heard in the summer the sun could show its face for a few hours a day. I missed the sun.

  I missed… a lot.

  Not wanting to dwell—if I did that, I might not pull myself free of the rotting, lonely thoughts churning around in my brain—I got out of bed. It wasn’t like I didn’t have things to do today. Summer break ended last night and today was my first day of school as a junior at Port Inlet High School, home of the Wild Wolves.

  For the record, I wasn’t excited.

  School was one aspect that sucked no matter where you went. I didn’t expect PIHS to be any different than my last school. My incredible social life should be just as enthralling here as it was there.

  I tiptoed into the hall, watching the cat snoring at the top of the stairs. “You have a bed,” I whispered.

  Martian opened his eyes, as green and wide as two gemstones. Though he couldn’t speak, his expression was clear. “Bug off,” I pretended he said, before closing his eyes and burrowing down deeper on the top of the stairs. The throw rug he slept atop was the color of mulberry wine.

  “You have no manners,” I replied, highly aware that talking to a cat was insane, and pretending the cat talked back was beyond that.

  He peeked one eye at me. “You have no purpose,” he would have said, had he been able to talk, of course.

  I went downstairs, brushing his nonsensical ridicule off my shoulders. It rolled down them and joined the dust mites in the corner of the stairs. Lost forever.

  Granny Londa was snoring raucously on the sofa, the glow from the TV turning her already pallid skin blue. I carefully passed her for the kitchen, not wanting to wake her up. I tried my hardest not to disrupt her. She wasn’t cold per se, she was simply not the biggest fan of mine. I didn’t get in her way because I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t know the truth. I was in her way. She was a quiet recluse living in the middle of nowhere out of choice. She never asked to raise her daughter’s daughter.

  She never asked for me.

  I made a bowl of cereal and ate it standing up, looking out the window over the sink. There wasn’t much to see. The sun wouldn’t rise for another hour. When it did, it would filter through the low hanging mist that never quite left the city. It turned everything silver, it made the green that much greener.

  After I could put it off no longer, I went upstairs to shower and dress. My clothing options were slim. Most of the clothes I’d brought with me couldn’t withstand the weather. Granny had taken me to the thrift store when I arrived a few weeks ago, and the weather hadn’t changed much since I’d gotten there; I had a feeling pants were my new wardrobe. I shimmied on my jeans and a black hoodie, putting my hair into a ponytail.

  Granny was still snoring by the time I tiptoed past her for the front door. The moment I closed it behind me, I sucked back a sob. I missed my family. Usually, first days of school were a big deal. Mom would make a heaping stack of chocolate chip pancakes and Dad and I would stuff our faces. I didn’t dread my first day of school then. But I did today.

  I took a few deep breaths, buried my emotions deep, and then I smiled. “Sometimes, a smile is the only weapon you need,” Dad’s voice whispered in my head, dripping of nostalgia and good intent.

  Where had his good intent gone?

  The walk to school took precisely twelve minutes and twenty seconds. Fifteen if I walked slower, and nine if I ran. I’d practiced the route all week purely to have something to do. There wasn’t much, if anything at all, to do in Port Inlet. If there were, I hadn’t figured out what it was yet. I wasn’t into hunting. Hurting anything for fun sounded sick and sadistic to me.

  If I hurt something, it would be because they were going to hurt me first.

  Port Inlet High School was completely indoors. I bet it made snow days impossible. Even the gym was indoors, with a track above the basketball court. The parking lot was directly in front of the stone steps out front, and it was surprisingly full. Teachers didn’t have their own lot, so I suspected most of the cars were probably theirs, but I did see a decent amount of people my age parking and getting out of the cars.

  People hugged, glad to see each other. Some hung out near their cars, chatting it up under the cloud-covered sky. A van pulled up and two girls got out. One was tall and blonde, in that cheerleader perfection kind of way. I never related. The other girl pushed the rim of her glasses up on her nose and waved enthusiastically at the person dropping them off before swiping the van door closed. The blonde didn’t look back. The girl wearing glasses sagged her shoulders when she took off, but she hoisted her backpack up and trudged determinedly up the stairs.

  A shrill bell rang out over the parking lot. Everyone ditched their conversations and made a beeline for the front doors. It was my only chance to blend in, so I cut across the parking lot and kept my head down as I joined them.

  I’d already memorized my schedule, not wanting to be the only person on campus running around with wide, clueless eyes like a few freshmen I passed in the hall.

  1. ENGLISH 11 – Mr. Greene ROOM 10

  2. ALGEBRA 1 – Ms. Graye ROOM 22

  3. PHYSICAL EDUCATION – Mrs. Gather GYM

  LUNCH – 11:15 – 11:45

  4. PHYSICS – Mr. Trenchston ROOM 44

  5. UNITED STATES HISTORY – Mrs. Erins ROOM 52

  6. ITALIAN 1 – Signora Bianchi ROOM 34

  I was nervous about my last class, but I’d already taken two years of French back home and PIHS didn’t offer it, so I went with Italian. I anticipated an F, but I was shooting for a C. Had to keep my expectations high.

  So high they were low.

  Giving myself a mental slap, I sniffed and forced myself to remember what my goals were. Blend in, limit any or all conversations with anyone who walked upright, and skate through life in Port Inlet until I could run far away from this place.

  It wasn’t a bad place, but it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. But at the same time, I didn’t know where that place was. That one place that was made for me. The one place that held the answers I couldn’t even form questions for. Those unformed questions left holes behind, aches that never quite dulled.

  The halls of Port Inlet High were the color of bland toasted marshmallows. I couldn’t decide if they were pale beige or parchment. Whatever color it was, it wasn’t comforting. The lockers were a shade darker, more khaki than white. Even the tiled floors were colored an off-beige. The overabundance of drab tones made my eyes hurt. The walls felt like t
hey were closing in on me, the floors and lockers, too.

  The only saving grace were the Welcome to the New School Year posters hung intermittently on the wall above the lockers. The pop of neon paint helped create the illusion that color still existed.

  Each floor had a specific area of expertise. Math was on the second floor, English on the first, and so on and so forth. I slipped between the bodies and came up on room ten. The door was ajar. I had less than a second to appraise the room before I had to become a part of it.

  It was partially filled; most of the room was still empty. The teacher’s desk up front was neat and organized, with a laptop and a steaming cup of coffee among the paperwork and stack of pens, and the lone stapler at the head of the desk. There were windows on the opposite wall, and all I could see for miles and miles was nothing but stretching endless trees.

  “English 11?” an unfamiliar voice said.

  I gasped, finding a man standing just behind the door, watching me watch everything. He had a kind smile on his face, but my heart still pounded having been caught. I blew out a breath and forced a smile. “Yes.”

  He extended his hand. “Mr. Greene at your service.”

  The polite thing to do would be to give him my hand and name immediately, but I was annoyed with myself that I’d already broken rule number two and was speaking at all to respond as quickly as I should have. I shook his hand and held in my sigh. “Emmie.”

  He released my hand and motioned at the rest of the room. “Good to meet you. You can sit anywhere for today. Tomorrow we’ll be seated alphabetically.”

  I turned quickly, happy to be done with the conversation. I sat at the first desk I came upon and took a deep breath.