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.

I work at keeping my voice level and calm. Am I not allowed to make my own decisions about MY Bonded? There’s a very uneasy sort of silence in my head back to that, and I glance back over at Nox to see something wondrous and magical. He smiles at me. An actual smile stretches over his lips without a hint of sarcasm or derision. He just enjoys the hell out of me calling my other Bonded out on his hypocritical actions.

I have someone who has seen all of the ugliest, darkest, and worst parts of me, and instead of hating me— continuing to hate me, even— he’s chosen to love me instead. For the first time since I was fourteen, I can breathe without the crushing weight of my guilt and the what-ifs.

Why do they think that you will kill me? Why is he so sure of this? I'm expecting it to brush me off, to say that Jericho is grasping at straws to get Aurelia out of here. I might even have believed it to be the truth, but my bond has always been nothing but truthful to me, even when it hurts. Because I always have. Every last time, I have been forced to take over the vessel to get what I need. The other vessels were different. The other vessels were power-hungry or too stupid to speak to. You are different. You're the vessel I was waiting for, and now we’re going to have it all.

“North, don’t talk like that. I’m never going to leave you, we’re all going to be okay. My bond just proved that. Death can’t part a Soul Render from her Death Dealers. Or any of my other Bonded, no matter what.” I say it with a smile, but it’s true. No matter what, they’re mine forever.

It would have been driving him insane to not know something about her, anything. He would happily take up camp in her mind the way that Gryphon did just to know every little inch of her, because he is a possessive, obsessive asshole like that when something gets under his skin and, boy, did Oleander get under his skin. I can no longer throw stones. She's under mine as well.

“This community is not funded by the council or any other pooled resource point, ergo, no one outside of the Draven Family Trust has a say on how we vet people or the time in which it takes for that process to happen. You are all here at my discretion, every last one of you is here because my Bonded Group allows it. While we are happy to listen to any concerns that you may have, it's up to us whether or not we choose to act on such things. The alternative is, of course, returning to your homes.”

“I don't think Oleander’s bond made Gabe’s bond into a god. I don't think that's possible. I think it woke it up.”