As much as I would like to continue to hide away in North’s office with him and make myself useful, I know that I need to get back into training to make sure that I don’t lose all of the hard work I’ve already put in.
I’d been so proud of my efforts during the recovery mission and proud of not being overpowered by the heavy gear or the long hike, so I find myself incredibly motivated to be able to pull my weight even more.
I refuse to be the liability.
Gabe and Atlas are both still going to their training sessions at the Tac Training Center each morning before they head off to help in the rebuilding efforts, and I force myself out of the incredibly comfortable bed to go with them. I need to be ready for the next time we get called away from the Sanctuary, and I don’t want to rely on my bond to do the heavy lifting for me.
A few days after the council had threatened North during the meeting, I wake up to the sounds of Gryphon getting up to head off for the day. When I move to head into the bathroom to get myself ready to go with him, North grumbles in his sleep, his arms tightening around me, making it even more difficult to get out. I’ve come to learn that he’s the worst of all of my Bonded when it comes to waking up.
You’d never guess it from all of the suits.
Once I’m dressed and ready, I meet Gryphon, Gabe, and Atlas on the front steps of the house to head down to the Tac Training Center together. The jog down there has become one of my favorite parts of the day.
Gabe and Atlas start to get very competitive with Gryphon and me, and it’s not long before our slow warm-up run turns into an all-out sprinting war over who is going to get down to the center first.
It’s childish and stupid and the perfect distraction that I need so desperately these days.
I arrive at the Tac Training Center with the taste of blood in my mouth, my lungs screaming, but, to my great joy, the three fully grown men running with me arrive seconds later.
I beat them all, finally.
As I catch my breath, I find Kieran and Sage waiting for us outside. I almost burst into tears at the sight of my best friend, my eyes watering the second I realize it’s her standing there, and when she gets a good look at me, she does the same.
She hesitates for a second, as though she’s not sure how I’m going to react to her, but I fling my arms around her neck and cling to her desperately.
I’d spent the last few days messaging her constantly, trying to get her to agree to meet up, but every time she’d answer that she was spending time with her Bonded and getting her feet back underneath herself.
I wanted to be very respectful of her Bonded Group and give her what she needed, instead of just taking what I wanted from her, but it’s been the hardest few days. Almost as hard as the admittedly few days her loyalty had been in question.
“Thank God, I honestly thought I was going to have to come and fight Kieran for your honor.”
She snorts into my shoulder, a very wet sound that I will not judge her for, and mumbles, “Sawyer beat you to it. We tried to keep him out, but he just used his Gift to unlock the doors and bitch me out for the state of myself. He’s dragging me to dinner tonight with our parents. It’ll be the first time that Kieran is coming to see them in a formally Bonded capacity, so feel free to snatch my soul right out and get me the hell out of that situation.”
I bite my lip and glance at Keiran, ignoring the way that he glowers down at me, as if daring me to say something.
Joke’s on him, I give zero fucks about his feelings on the matter.
“Meeting the parents! Do you feel nervous? I should probably let you know that their opinions on their daughter’s Bonds have always been pretty weird, so you’re gonna have your work cut out for you. I can totally give you some tips though. I won them over pretty damn quick. How do you feel about walking into burning buildings?”
Sage grimaces and buries her face in her hands. “Don’t remind me! My dad is still falling over himself trying to get my forgiveness. Even after this whole ‘Neuro hacking into my brain’ debacle, he’s been even more protective about it. He’s trying to convince us to move into the same house as him, my mom, and Maria, but I honestly can’t think of anything worse.”
Gryphon greets Kieran with a clap on the shoulder and then reaches past us all to scan his card to get access to the building. Gabe and Atlas are squabbling over who beat who in the running race, and I throw an arm over Sage’s shoulder to tuck her into my side tightly, already feeling like today is going to be a million times better than yesterday, thanks to Sage’s appearance.
We step into the center together and out of reflex, I duck my head so I don’t have to see any of the curious and wary looks that I know will be slung my way.
I distract myself with my bestie. “So, are you here to see me to do training or because Kieran refuses to let you out of his sight, because he’s a typical boorish Bonded man?”
Sage scoffs and kicks her feet against the concrete. “A mix of all three I suppose. I heard about Atlas’ power surge, and I’m interested to see if Gabe has one too. I hope you guys don’t mind having an audience. I can go back home, if you want some privacy.”
I glance back at Gabe, just to check in, but I’m also desperate to hang out with her, so I’m sure all he’s seeing on my face is that.
He shrugs and replies to her, “There’s still no sign of my power surge, which I’m taking as a sign that I was already the most powerful shifter on record and there’s no upgrading what’s already perfect.”
I smile back at him, and Atlas makes a gagging sound of annoyance. Their friendship is mostly a competition of who can be the most childish. “You’re so full of shit, Ardern. You just need to have a bit more patience, or maybe we need to drop a bathtub on your head again without me saving your ass and see if it finally draws something out of you.”
Gabe clutches a hand to his chest. “I would, but your Gift got in the way last time without you even trying, so I doubt it will work.”
Sage turns her head until her lips are close enough to my ear that they won’t hear her and whispers, “Since when have these two been best friends? It’s weird.”
I giggle and pull her with me towards the training room. “It’s freaking bizarre, and they figured it out all on their own. We’re very proud.”
When we get into the training area, I immediately move over to the mats to start stretching out, something that is even more important than it was before, thanks to our competitiveness running down here. Sage drops to the mats next to me and follows through my stretching routine with me. She’s a little more subdued than what I’m used to, more like the shy girl that I had first met when I got to Draven, but I’m not surprised at the change in her at all.
There are a lot of TacTeam personnel eyes on us.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they’re all put off by Sage and I being here. I’m used to them all looking at me, but today I’m hyperaware of it because I don’t want anyone making her uncomfortable now that she’s finally ready to join us out here again.
Kieran and Gryphon both notice it too, and while my Bonded is good about ignoring it most of the time, his second-in-command is not quite so calm. Within the space of the time it takes the two of us to stretch out, every single TacTeam personnel who dared to side-eye us is put on some sort of terrible job, groaning and muttering under their breath as they are sent off in all different directions.
Sage grimaces as though she feels bad for them, and I give her a sardonic look back. “If they were smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves, they wouldn’t be in this mess. That hasn’t got anything to do with us.”
She shrugs. “I don’t blame them though. They’re all just looking out for Kieran. I can’t blame them for that, can I?”
I shrug back. “You can because their superiors have told them to get the fuck over it, so they’re not the good little soldiers they should be, are they?”
Gabe scoffs at me from where he is stretching out next to us. He’s not usually so enthusiastic about it, but I think that the extra attention has him on edge as well. “Since when have you been a good little soldier, Bonded? You’d have to keep your opinions to yourself for that.”
I smack him on the leg gently, hurting my own hand more than him, and shrug. “I haven’t heard any complaints yet. I’ll have you know that I am very good at keeping my head when things go to shit around me, and I’m more than willing to learn new ways to fuck up the Resistance. I think that makes me a fantastic soldier.”
Sage leans forward to grab her feet and stretch out her legs. “I didn’t think that I would ever be able to fight or be much help in this, but I think that the option of sitting around and letting everyone else do it for me isn’t viable anymore. I only used to show up here to learn defensive techniques, but I think if we find the person who got into my head and made me do those terrible things, I will happily throw a fireball at them.”
I give her a gentle pat on the back. “That’s the spirit. Looks like you’re working your way through the stages of grief really well. Next thing you know, you’ll be compartmentalizing like a pro, and we’ll be able to swap war stories.”
She huffs a small laugh under her breath, and then her eyes flick up as Gryphon and Kieran approach us again. They both look pissed off, but I doubt that it has anything to do with us. Nope, it’ll be whatever updates they’re getting from the other TacTeams that are currently deployed out in the Wastelands.
I’ve learned not to ask about it.
Gryphon takes a quick look around at us all before barking out his orders. “Sage, you can work through the last workout that you did under Vivian’s tutelage. Gabe and Atlas, you’re both working on figuring out your extra powers. Kieran will work with you both. You’re with me, Oli.”
My eyebrows shoot up my forehead, but I get up and nod obediently, waiting until the others move off to follow his directions before I murmur, “What are we learning today that’s so different? I thought I was going to be doing hand-to-hand combat again.”
Gryphon shakes his head and hands me a bottle of water for our session. “No, if our run-in with Davies at the Hail Mary has taught me anything, it’s that you really do need to learn how to keep people out of your head. Keeping your mind blank and your thoughts to yourself isn’t enough. It’s time to learn how to shield yourself.”
It’s utterly shameful, but no matter what Gryphon does to try to teach me how to keep him out of my head, I can’t do it.
We work through the entire training session together, with him explaining in a dozen different ways how to build a wall up in my mind to keep him out, but nothing that I try works. I’ve never failed so miserably in front of any of my Bonded before. I have to say, I hate the experience.
One by one, as each of my Bonded and friends finish off their training circuits, we collect a little crowd of them sitting around, offering advice to me as though there’s some small thing I’m missing to be able to make this work. None of their suggestions help, unsurprisingly.
“You have to see him as a foreign being, trying to get in your head,” Atlas says, curling himself around me and pulling me against his chest.
Gryphon gives him a stern look, as though he suspects he’s trying to distract me, but what he’s saying actually makes a bit of sense to me.
It doesn’t make it any less impossible though.
“I can’t though, can I? We’ve Bonded. I can’t even sense when he is entering a room anymore because my body is so used to him that it doesn’t give me warnings like it used to!”
“You used to be able to sense us?” Gabe asks, his chin propped up on one of his knees from where he had just stopped mid-stretch to join the conversation.
I give him a little nod. “Of course. I always knew when one of you was around. Over time, I started to figure out which one of you it was, but now you can all sneak up on me and scare the shit out of me while I’m innocently trying to take a shower.”
I shoot a glare at Gryphon, and Atlas scoffs from behind me. “Maybe we need to get a different Neuro in to try and get into your head. You can practice against them.”
Gryphon immediately shuts him down. “There isn’t anyone strong enough to get into her head that we have access to. It’s me, and it’s Silas Davies. That’s it.”
I groan and cover my face with my hands. Sage walks over and tucks herself in beside Atlas and I, crossing her legs and taking a deep breath. “So you’re just going to have to learn how to block people out and hope that you’re doing it right when the time comes? That doesn’t seem very… safe. Or helpful.”
I groan again, the sound muffled, thanks to my hands still being over my face. “This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the person trying to get into my head didn’t already know how to trigger my power and turn me into a weapon of mass destruction! That kind of raises the stakes.”
Sage winces and rubs a hand down her workout leggings, like her palms are sweating just thinking about it. “Is the plan going to be just to keep you as far away from him as possible?”
“Yes,” all three of my Bonded say at once, and I roll my eyes.
“I’m not going to sit on the sidelines while my Bonded all have to fight. For one, my bond wouldn’t let me, and for another, I’m just not built like that. The problem is that Silas has done it before, and I don’t know whether bonding is enough to keep him out.”
God, I hope it is.
My bond definitely thinks it is enough, but there’s so much I don’t know about its limits or the lives it’s lived before. Has it ever gone up against someone like Davies before? Did we survive it?
Can I keep my Bonded safe?
It’s quiet for a moment, then Gabe says, “What did he do before? If you’re trying to figure out if you can keep him out, then that’s the part of your head that you need to keep protected.”
I don’t want to think about that.
I definitely don’t want to talk about it, not with anyone, not ever.
“It was twice, right?” Atlas says. “Twice you were taken out of the camps by a Transporter. Both times, I thought you were getting moved somewhere else, but after a couple of hours, you were brought back and you slept for days. I know now that that’s part of your recovery pattern from a big power usage.”
I nod slowly and I meet Gryphon’s eyes as he stares at me for a second before nodding, as if encouraging me to speak.
I really don’t want to talk about it, but I’m also aware that Sage is with us and that I’ve been encouraging her to let go of her own stigma around what had happened with Dara.
Maybe this will help her.
It’s a little more terrifying than taking out one person, although I didn’t have a close relationship with any of the people that Silas had forced me to kill. It doesn’t make it feel any less horrifying to me though.
I glance around to make sure that we’re alone here only to find all of the TacTeam personnel around us have a white ring around their eyes. None of them move other than breathing, their chests going up and down but their minds just shut off completely.
I glance back at Gryphon, and he shrugs as though the answer is obvious. “I’d rather not have any rumors of what is said here circulating on the street by lunch.”
I swallow, grateful that he was thinking that far ahead, and Sage leans over to hold my hand.
I try to lighten the serious mood that’s overtaken the room. “That’s an awful lot of people. Have you noticed how much your power has grown?”
Gryphon smirks as Atlas and Gabe both roll their eyes. “Oh, he’s noticed,” Gabe snarks, and I glance between them all, not understanding the joke.
“Like you, I have found no limit to my power yet, Bonded.”
No limit.
Is that going to be my legacy to my Bonded, the ability to use their powers with no restrictions or worries about personal consequences?
I clear my throat and find a small scratch on the mats to focus on so that I don’t have to look any of them in the eye as I let my terrible legacy tumble out of my mouth. “The first time… I was taken to an underground bunker. It was full of Gifted that the Resistance had taken from the streets and that all had their heads picked apart by Davies. Any useful information that they might have had was already extracted, and none of them had Gifts that the Resistance wanted to ‘utilize’… so they were nothing but cannon fodder to him. Most of them were so broken already that they didn’t even get up from their small, stinking little cots in their cells. But there were a few who got up to take a look at me. I think about them a lot, the ones who stopped to look.”
I take a second to swallow and glance up to see if any of them hate me yet. I trust them. I trust them all, but I also wouldn’t blame them for changing their opinions of me after hearing this. Gryphon holds my eye and nods, the white ring around his iris glowing, and I can feel North in my head, reaching out to me to offer what little comfort he can. Nox is there too, the same tiny remnant that I can feel of him now that we’ve completed the Bond, but he’s there and he’s listening.
Deep breath. “They wanted to test how far my Soul Rending ability could go. Silas was afraid that I had limits that would take me out. The strongest Soul Render in history… the one that he knew about, died because he pushed his power too far.”
Atlas nods behind me and adjusts his hold a little. “He killed twelve men at once. It burned him out, and he dropped dead at the same time as they did. He did it to protect his family, but it killed him all the same.”
Davies had talked about it enough that I already knew that little fact, and I clear my throat again. “There were four hundred people in the underground bunkers, and Davies had made a comment about how he didn’t want me burning out the same way but… I was already so tired of being stuck in the camps, and I didn’t want to be in pain anymore. So I asked my bond to kill them all, and it did.”
I swallow and look down at my hands, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. They’ve all seen my work before, seen me killing huge numbers of people at a time, but it had always been our enemy. There’s something particularly shameful about them knowing that I had done this to our own people.
“The second time they took me, I refused. My bond refused as well. It was only after Davies got into my head and manipulated my Gift that my bond took the people out just to get him away from us. That’s when he figured out that my bond was a separate being, and he knew that he needed to deal with it more than me. That’s when he realized that I could be the weapon in this war that he so desperately wanted.”
