Unbound (Unbound, Book 1) ~Formerly Casting Power~

Chapter 10

My mother began to laugh.

I tried to push back against the mound of fur and was pressed harder in return, landing on my butt for the effort. My mother laughed harder, the kind that hurt your gut and brought tears to your eyes.

"Onyx, Opal. Sit," Zach commanded with a slur in his deep voice, and I was free to slide towards my mother's legs.

"I went by the pound today and, well... I brought home some pets." She flicked her hand. "Aren't they cute?"

My mouth opened but no sound emerged. For years I had asked for a pet. A dog, a cat—hell, even a hamster—but she had always refused. I was too busy with school and her with her shop and 'other duties' to care for one. It had always been a closed subject in our house. After the first thousand refusals, I stopped asking.

"Cute? Mom, those are not dogs." I stared at the beasts, one black, and one white. Both looked back at me with their tongues hanging out the sides of their mouths so that the light glinted off their sharp teeth. "Those things are like wolves or—or... something."

"Opal here," Zach said, petting the black dog's head with hands covered by fingerless gloves. It was a new addition to his attire. "Opal is a black upper mid-content wolfdog. Onyx is an Alusky."

"What the hell is an Alusky?"

"Language, Nora," my mother warned, but Zach continued unfazed.

"An Alusky is a dog—half Siberian Husky and half Alaskan Malamute. Both of her parents are purebred."

"Why are they so big? Are they rabid or something?" I eyed them. Nothing tame could be so large, even if they were gorgeous.

"Of course, they do not, nor have they ever had, rabies. This is just how they are." My mother clicked her tongue and the black wolfdog danced over to sit at her side, panting as my mother ran her hands through her fur.

"You realize you named them backward, right?" I looked from Zach to my mother, then down to find the white Alusky, Onyx, staring up at me with black-rimmed, intelligent blue eyes.

"I like it." My mother sat on the floor and Onyx rolled onto her back to expose her stomach.

"Whatever happened to 'you're never getting a pet, Noreena?'"

"Vavila—"

My mother looked up, quieting Zach with a sharp look. "With how tense things have been, I thought a nice, protective dog would fit in around here. You're getting older now. I guess I thought you could handle the responsibility."

"It didn't occur to you that I might want to pick one out for myself?" Onyx tilted her head at me as if asking why I didn't want her. "Besides, they're huge and will need tons of exercise, not to mention food. They'll shed all over the place and what happens when I graduate? I doubt I'll be able to bring a pet to college."

"Opal is my dog. Onyx is yours. We can cross that bridge when we get to it. You haven't said anything about wanting to go to college before, so I thought you were thinking of taking a year off."

"Oh, no. It's coming," I mumbled under my breath, eyeing my dog with a slanted grin I couldn't seem to shed. She appeared so well behaved now that she wasn't pushing me off balance.

"What was that?" My mother looked up, narrowing her eyes.

I cleared my throat. "You're going to have to put up a fence in the backyard so that they don't escape."

"They are trained, Nora." Zach laughed almost as deep as our new dogs could bark. "They will not escape."

"I thought you got them at the pound?" My hand paused mid-stroke through Onyx's fur, and I looked at Zach.