The Golden Lycans (Ella) novel Chapter 47

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*Ella***

I grab some chilli con carne for dinner from the food station and happily take a seat at our usual table.

“You seem…bouncy,” Annabelle says, eyeing me curiously.

“I may definitely seem buoyant as I tried air for the first time today!” I exclaim brightly, “it was really fun.”

“Uh huh….and this good mood you’re in doesn’t have anything to do with the hot mess you’re having fun with, does it?” she asks, arching one eyebrow. I am genuinely surprised by what she is

implying.

“Will? Ha…Oh, no, we are just friends, strictly greenhouse friends only. Please don’t call him a ‘hot

mess’, you don’t know what he’s been through,” I reply, laughing awkwardly at what Annabelle is

implying.

“What’s gotten our resident faerie looking so darn awkward?” Freya asks as she puts her tray down

next to me.

“I was just teasing her about possibly having the hots for Will, not that I’d blame her in the slightest.

I had a very enthusiastic dream about him, only last night,” Annabelle says. Freya makes a sound of

disgust and then throws me a furtive look.

“You don’t do you?” she asks impassively, “I mean you guys do spend a lot of time together lately.

Like…every day.”

“Time spent productively,” I reply, defending myself, “and no, I don’t have ‘the hots’ for him, AB. Yes, he’s very good-looking, but we really are just friends.”

Freya looks like she wants to say something for a moment, hesitation flickering across her face, but she shakes her head a little and decides not to. I steal a glance across the room, my eyes landing on Austin’s table. He’s deep in conversation with Ollie and Dominic, oblivious to my gaze. It’s been so long since we last spoke, and I miss him. He’s kept his distance out of respect, but I catch him looking at me almost every day.

And every day, it cuts a little deeper.

I hated the mate bond.

I had initially found the idea of it romantic; this destined connection, this pure and unwavering force-but where was the choice in that? Why couldn’t I have fallen for a nice, normal human?

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Someone uncomplicated? Someone who wasn’t likely already set aside for one of the stunning Lycan girls who seemed tailor-made for him?

As if sensing my inner turmoil, Austin suddenly turns. His dark brows crease, just slightly, before his expression softens, and then he smiles at me. Warm. Familiar. The kind that used to make my

heart race.

And just like that, the pull returns.

Stronger this time, more insistent, like invisible hands nudging me forward. My body reacts before my mind can stop it-I shift toward the edge of my chair, drawn to him in a way that makes no

logical sense.

I tear my eyes away, staring down at my plate instead. A heavy sigh escapes me as that familiar, aching soreness blooms in my chest again. It’s distracting, and bordering on suffocating.

I thought I was moving on.

But my heart, stubborn and traitorous, clearly wasn’t ready to let go.

The next day it is raining very heavily, as if the weather was indeed sensing my complex mood. I got to the greenhouse earlier than intended to try and distract myself from my continued heartache over Austin and focus on something that was making sense and also making me happy.

I run to the double doors from the sports hall to avoid getting wet as much as possible and I survey the greenhouse. There was still a large patch of earth at the very end of the greenhouse that I wasn’t sure what to do with just yet. In fact, I had been avoiding it. I felt like I was leaving it for a particular purpose, but what that was, I didn’t yet know.

Looking around, it is still quite messy in here, so I conjure up a little bit of wind and have some fun trying to ‘sweep’ the dead leaves into a pile for cleaning up.

I hear Will enter the door five minutes later, cursing slightly as he shakes off a load of water droplets.

“It is raining so heavily today,” he exclaims, ruffling his wet hair to shake out as much water as

possible.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I reply absent mindedly.

“Sorry? Ella, it’s raining, there isn’t much you can do about that!” he replies with a laugh.

“Apparently there is…” I mutter, as I watch him curiously. He appears to be running a red hot hand over his clothes, actually drying them with magic.

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“Okay, now that is something I need to learn!” I say excitedly, as he finishes up at the end of his

trousers. He immediately makes a very disgruntled face.

“Ohh…not yet, young padawan,” he says jokes, before his expression turns serious, “fire is complicat ed, and you need a certain mindset to induce it, and it’s overwhelming if you’re new to it.”

“What kind of mindset?”

He snorts a little and then looks a bit uncomfortable.

“Well, the best results usually come from two very different emotions. One being anger, undoubtedly, fire is angry. But, fire can also be sexual, a strong love, a burning passion, so to speak. Lust. Invoking those sorts of feelings taps you that much quicker into being able to conjure fire and just yields better results,” he replies.

“Interesting…so what were you doing? Were you thinking of some hot celebrity in order to dry your clothes off?” I ask in amusement. He grins and shakes his head.

“Not quite, I have enough anger about some things in life to last a lifetime of starting fires. But…after practice, you can have a passion for a lot of things, it doesn’t have to be a person. I can just be the will, the need and the desire for what you want to achieve. But that takes skill. Strong emotions come first,” he explains. He looks awkward for a moment.

“Learning fire…well, I hadn’t expected it to affect me the way it did. My mentor didn’t tell me that it tends to amplify the feeling you used to invoke it; particularly when it’s the first time you’re doing it, in which case it amplifies it a lot. I was in Thailand at the time and there was a young woman who worked in the local bar. I had a bit of a crush on her, she was gorgeous; it was her who I thought of when I tried to invoke fire for the first time. It… was unexpected, the abundant increase in desire I suddenly had for this gorgeous eighteen year old Thai woman. She had apparently taken a bit of a shine to me too. It was too much, that evening, and I ended up losing my virginity to her on a table after the bar had closed. Something that seemed momentous at the time, but is now something I bitterly regret. Blind lust is not love.”

He turns away awkwardly for a moment, and I am unsure what to say, at first, one fear in my mind

in particular.

“Okay, well I will definitely leave fire for a while, then,” I reply, thinking that I really didn’t need to be sliding myself onto Austin’s lap at one random mealtime, when I was trying my best to move on. I couldn’t think of any other thing remotely close to the sort of passion I’d felt during the two times

I’d kissed Austin.

What else would I use?

Will suddenly lets out a childish chuckle.

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“Something tells me you’ve got something or someone you’re hoping to avoid,” he teases. I sigh and roll my eyes a little.

“Yeah, it’s just…it’s complicated,” I mutter.

“Evidently. Your aura has become very messy since we were here yesterday and even more so in the past twenty seconds,” he says with an edge of sympathy, “who is he? Who is the idiot who has

declined Ella Reva?”

“It’s not like that,” I shoot back, feeling on edge, “it’s not him, it’s…me. But I don’t want to talk about

it.”

Will nods and looks up at the rain on the roof for a moment.

“Fair enough. But your aura suggests you need to vent, Ella, so I’m here for you when that happens,” Will says quietly.

“I’ve seen yours before, you know,” I say with an eyebrow arched, changing the subject. He looks surprised at my words.

“Really? What makes you think that?”

“Your first day, when you asked me to clear my mind and focus on what was around me. I saw it. It was so beautiful. Do you not remember me saying that?” I say a little wistfully.

“Ohh, yes you did say I was distracting. I didn’t realise you could see my aura, though. I thought it was just the comparison of energies in the room. I thought you called me beautiful, because I am,” he replies casually.

“Wow. You’re such an alpha. Maybe one day you can teach me to read them,” I say with a hopeful expression. He makes a face.

“Well, it’s not something that has a key, they’re all different and how an aura appears depends on the person who is reading it. Someone’s aura could look so different to us both. Reading someone’s aura also takes a lot of intuition about people and knowing how to relate what you’re seeing to what you’re also subconsciously picking up from the person. Their expression, their body language…. It’s a proper skill that takes time to learn and it’s a rare one at that,” he explains.

After an hour or so of practice Will checks his watch, “I feel like it’s definitely food o’clock?”

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