Tragic Bonds (The Bonds That Tie, #5)

by J. Bree

I try because I don't want him to wait until next time to figure out how we can love each other. I want to figure it out in this lifetime. I want to know everything. I want to see everything and accept whatever it is that I need to accept. I want to learn how someone like Nox Draven can be loved and accepted, and then I want to spend the rest of my life doing it.

Oleander’s bond manifesting and tearing the souls out of everyone within a ten-mile radius is. Her entire family included.

Nox stares at me for a second, his eyes so dark that I think for a second that maybe his bond has come out, and then he says slowly and oh-so-carefully, “If I didn’t want you here, I wouldn’t have brought you with me.”

“You saw every part of me, and I, you. I have no questions left, no unknowns. You can leave now if you want to, but don’t go for my sake because… I’d rather have you in here.”

It’s then that I see, more clearly than ever, that no matter how much Nox Draven has hated me in the past, no matter how much he might still resent me now even despite himself, that the person he hates the most is himself.

Recovery isn't about wiping the board clean. Recovery is learning how to function around all of the scars and open wounds inside of us.

“Not even death can keep us apart. Every part of you belongs to me, and I will tear any man apart who dares to get in my way. Bond or not.”

“Stop trying to die early, Bonded. Can we just have a few weeks of you not trying to die and kill us all with you? Because I had a full five minutes of knowing what life felt like without your heart beating, and I am never going to live in that world.”

I can’t right now, Bonded. Not with everyone here, because if I look at you right now, after what you did for my brother… after what he did for me… I will make an absolute fool of myself. I’m supposed to be the strong one for us all.

I’m too pent up to stop, too angry at the council and these useless Gifted at the weight they put on my Bonded’s shoulders. How dare they all question and judge every little thing that we’re doing while there are men like this being given all the leeway in the world? Disgusting.

It’s like a pressure building up inside of me, bubbling under the surface until my skin and bones can no longer contain it, like my power is building and building and building as it focuses on what those people would do to us all. What they will do to us all. Those words echo in my head as I feel my Gift slip out of my control. Murderers. These people would take everything from us. They would take what is ours. Mine.

I let it go instead, watching with my void eyes as it disappears into nothingness. The man who haunted my every waking minute, the monster in all of my worst nightmares, is dead. Nox Draven killed him for me.