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“She’s alive. She’s breathing, I can’t see much else, but he’s with her, so no one will get within spitting distance without him consuming them. Take a breath, Gryph, she’s alive.”
I’ll come back to you all, I promise. Tell North I didn’t run. I don’t know why it’s so important to me to tack that onto the end there, but I do, stupidly thinking that at least if Silas loses his mind and kills me off, at least North might… believe that I wasn’t the worst choice for a Bond. God, what a depressing thought.
“I have endured too much for you to speak his name here. Don’t ever speak of any of them.”
“You’re protecting them.”
“Always. Everything I’ve done has been to protect them. Every action, every word I’ve bitten back, every minute I spent running from them. If you’re not terrified of that man, then you don’t have good enough intel… or you haven’t been paying attention to it. He’s evil incarnate.”
“I did break. I let my bond take the pain for me. I let it become the monster instead of me.”
“Welcome to VIP life in the camps, Black. As my Bond, you’ll be fed three hot meals a day. You won’t be beaten or attacked in the showers, and if anyone attempts to incapacitate you, they'll answer straight to the top man himself. All it will cost you is daily torture sessions and being forced to put up with lines of questioning that will have you considering suicide just to get it to end.”
“Keep her safe. No one touches her, jumps her, without your protection. Leave no evidence behind.”
We stare at each other for a moment, a moment of recognition because we were made for each other, made out of each other before we were separated and put on this Earth, only to seek each other out eternally.
“Take it. Take whatever you want, just don’t fucking leave me again.”
“You were kidnapped from the hospital. You were held in a Resistance camp for two years while they tortured you for information about your gift and your Bonds. You gave them nothing. You escaped when Silas Davies left, and your bond took over to get you out. You then spent three years on the run to lead them away from us. You slept in halfway homes, sublets, and the streets while you were barely more than a kid because you didn’t want them to get access to us… or your gift. That’s what’s changed.”
Karen liked this
If I haven’t scared him off so far, then I’m sure it’ll be me weeping over a fucking shower that’ll do it.
“Whatever it is, you’re sure it can’t wait? I’m not entirely above begging, Bond.” Interesting.
“If it tries to bond with you, kill me. Or get Gryphon to knock me out. You can still contact him, can’t you?” I pull a face at him. “I think I’ll lead with knocking you out. No need to kill you over a little bit of sex, North.”
He doesn’t belong here at all, and yet the pull in my chest that aches for him says he’s supposed to be with me. No matter where that is. “Mine. You’re mine. No one will hurt you again. Not me, not the others, not anyone. The shadows cannot harm you, they belong to you, as I do. We all do.”
I never really wanted gentle. I want desperate and raw. I want to know that they’ve been craving me just as badly as I’ve needed them. I want to know that the great councilman North Draven has been dreaming of what my pussy would feel like and that having it now is everything he’s ever wanted. I want to be the center of his fucking world, the only thing that matters to him.
It feels more like two halves of a soul coming together again. Like my bond has known about him forever and been waiting to feel whole again. Like the shadows have gone feral waiting for me and now that we’re together again, maybe the storm in North’s heart will calm.
I have been waiting for you forever, little Bonded.
I waited for you too. I waited for all of you.
There’s a throb of longing there in my chest, a sign she’s been missing me just as bad as I’ve missed her, and it makes me angry. If you need me, I’ll break down this door to come find you. I’ve been toeing the line because I didn’t want to start an argument and put you in the middle of it but, baby, if you need me, I’m coming to find you.
There is nothing in my life that I want to keep from you. There’s a lot of ugly, a lot of bad shit, and shit I’m ashamed of. But I would never hide it from you, not even if I thought you might think less of me. I’d rather you hate those parts of me and never doubt what I’m saying, than for us to live with this thing between us. Not having you and your trust isn’t an option for me, Bond. It’s not an option.
“You could live your dream too, you know. You’d probably be making a bunch of his dreams come true too,”
Because if dad were here and mom was gone, he’d be mourning her just as hard, but at least he’d take care of himself. Sometimes I wish it was her who died.
She’s fucking gorgeous, made perfectly just for me, and the more she opens up, the more of her perfection I find.
pressing our foreheads together how she likes. Something about our noses being pressed together makes her grin like a child, so I do it as often as I can.
So I planned out how I was going to find you and be with you on the run, and when I say that I had everything planned out, I mean everything, Sweetness. From moving my trust fund into an offshore account so that my dad couldn’t trace the money to knowing the exact whereabouts of all of the Resistance camps and having them mapped out so we could stay away from them.”
“You withstood two years of torture without ever giving any of us up. No one deserves our loyalty more, Bonded.”
I’m going to let my bond kill as many of them as we can find. Gryphon’s voice pops into my head without warning. That’s my girl.
“It matters because you’re mine, and I’d never let you do it. Killing to protect yourself? Fine. Killing to wipe out the enemy who hurt you? Great, do it. Them? Never. Not you, not ever.”
Me hearing it, me rejecting her, me telling the others and them all turning on her. My head had felt as though it was about to split from everything screaming out of my Bonded, and every protective instinct in me kicked in. I wanted her safe and secure in my arms, a million miles away from this place, and I’d barely made it through watching the interrogations without dragging her out.
What am I going to wrap around my fist when I fuck you from behind if you so much as trim it? You’d look good with the pink, the purple was hot too. Just don’t touch the length.
I shouldn’t be surprised that more of them are adopting the form of puppies and other sweet creatures. They all want her to love them. It’s sickening.
I’m the one who breaks things, not the bond trapped in the girl who looks as though she was dragged out of my deepest, darkest fantasies and splayed out over my pillows.
“I know enough to make a guess about it, Sweetness. Don’t try to explain it. I already want to tear his arms off and shove them up his ass for having everything I want. I don’t need any more details.”
“Tell me I can get you naked now, Sweetness. Tell me that you want this as much as I do, because I’m going to have to take a walk otherwise.”
“Oli, I need you to listen to me right now, because I’ve never been so fucking serious about anything in my life. You’re my Bond. If you get stronger and burn the whole world to the ground, then I’ll be there at your side, watching it burn. I’m not the good guy, Oli. I’m not one of the Dravens or Shores of the world. It’s you and me, and nothing else matters to me.”
“Don’t cry, Sweetness. Don’t cry, because it makes me feel violent, and this whole town is going to end up rubble around us if I lose my shit right now.”
“Oli, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life… except for how badly I want you to be safe. I want you as strong as we can get you, even if that means your bond starts eating every soul it comes across. Does that make me as bad as my father and the rest of the Resistance? Maybe. Maybe, but that’s the price I’ll happily pay.
“The beast is back again? Shit. It’s okay, kids. He’s a friendly pup. That’s his mama over there. She wouldn’t let him misbehave. He won’t hurt you, he’s here for the bad guys.”
I can handle a lot of things. So I already know how much bullshit I can survive. Seeing Sage slit our first Shield, Dara’s, throat and then opening the gates to the Resistance, might not be one of them.
