I wake in a bed I don’t recognize, in a room that is definitely not the airplane, feeling both well rested and sick to my stomach.
It’s far too luxurious to be one of the dorm rooms, there’s no mistaking the wealth behind every piece of furniture, right down to the softness of the pillows behind my head.
I’m instantly freaked the hell out.
‘You’re safe, Oleander. Atlas and Gabe stepped out to shower and find food. I told them I’d watch you.’
God-fucking-dammit, I know exactly whose mansion I’m in.
I look over to find North sitting in a plush chair on the far side of the bed, his jacket off and his dress shirt unbuttoned partially down his chest. The sleeves are rolled up to show off his forearms and I think this is the most casual I’ve ever seen him, except for that one time I’d seen him shirtless but I can’t think about that without drooling a little.
His eyes are as intense as ever.
I can’t believe that he managed to talk Atlas out of this room, and I’m a little bit pissed that I was brought here in the first place. What’s the point of giving me a room here if I’m just going to be shoved into random beds when everything goes to hell?
North continues watching me, his eyes getting sharper the longer I stay silent. “Do you need anything? Water or the bathroom? You’ve been asleep for forty-eight hours, we were starting to get worried.”
Yes to both, but it feels weird to talk about peeing with this man. Gah. I shake my hands out to stop them from shaking before I push the blankets aside. He watches my every move and when I pause for a second to get my bearings and clear my spinning head, he stands to walk around and help me.
I can’t deal with his hands on me at any time, let alone while I’m feeling this terrible, so I wave him away. ‘Just point me in the right direction and I’ll be fine.’
He scowls at me, his eyebrows drawn in tight, and then waves a hand at the far door. ‘We need to talk once you’re out. I’ll get you some water.’
I bite back a groan and get moving. The bathroom is stunning, all marble and expensive fixtures, and I feel like I’m in a freaking palace. When I wash up after I take the longest pee of my life, the soap is lightly scented, and I close my eyes as I take in a deep lungful. Something settles in my chest, like my bond is happy about this smell being on me, and then I realize it’s North’s soap and North’s scent.
Well, fuck.
Of course he would bring me back to his goddamned bedroom and of course he lives in this level of luxury. Of-freaking-course this is all his. I try not to flinch as I amp up the heat of the water to try to clean some of the smell off. Doesn’t matter that my bond is craving it. Doesn’t matter if it feels right to smell like him.
He hates me, all the way down to my core, and I’m not a fan of his either.
I need to grasp at the distance so my heart doesn’t get ripped out any more than it already has been.
I try to tame my hair a little and then when that doesn’t work, I smooth a hand down my silk pajamas.
Uhm.
Wait, what?
Silk. Fucking. Pajamas.
I’m wearing a pinstripe, luxurious-looking, long-sleeve pajama set in a deep navy color that makes my skin look amazing. Hell, even the silvery tones of my hair look gorgeous against this color, but all of that shit is besides the point here. Who the hell changed me? I check and, nope, my underwear is gone too. Someone got me naked while I slept, the fucking perverted bastards.
I charge out of the bathroom ready to yell at North, however terrifying that may be, only to find all of my Bonds there now.
Atlas and Gabe are both on the bed, Gryphon has taken North’s seat on the far side, and Nox has pulled up another to sit beside his best friend, scowling at me like he always freaking is. North stands at the small table by the door, pouring out a coffee that has my heart thumping a little off kilter in my chest.
Coffee.
‘Take a seat, Oleander. I think we can both agree that there’s a lot we need to discuss.’
Joke’s on him, there’s absolutely nothing I have to say to him right now… or anytime in the foreseeable future. Even if I trusted him, I wouldn’t tell him a single thing about myself, and with all of the shit he’s put me through, there’s no chance I’m telling him anything.
My skin prickles at the five sets of eyes that take me in with varying degrees of interest and a little disgust, but it’s no surprise to me that Nox is throwing that shit my way.
I grumble under my breath as I stalk back to the bed, crossing my arms over my chest to try to hide the fact that I’m sans bra.
Atlas grins at me, ignoring the presence of the others as though they’re all beneath him, and he lifts the blankets and tucks me back into the bed beside him. His arm comes up and around me as if I was made to be molded against him. I glance around the room again and suddenly I’m glad he’s all over me like a hot rash. There’s too much intensity in the eyes of everyone around us. They’re all too focused on me.
I hate it.
North hands me a glass of water and I frown at it. ‘I’d rather have a coffee.’
‘You’ve been unconscious for two days. You can have the coffee after you’ve had the water.’
I feel like if I murdered this man right now, I could argue my case in court and have it be counted as justifiable. I have to force my jaw to unclench to force the water down my throat, but I down the entire lot in one go. When I hand him back the glass, his eyes narrow at me and Atlas’ arm tightens around my shoulders as he pulls me in closer to his side.
Finally, North takes a step back and grabs another chair from the huge walk-in closet to sit where he can watch my face. I’m always a fucking subordinate to this man. If I could run screaming from this room and find some sort of escape, I would do it. In a heartbeat, I’d freaking do it.
I also realize that right now, even with two of my Bonds sitting on the bed with me, I’m outnumbered because I’m sure Gabe and Atlas want some answers as well.
North’s eyes flick over to Gryphon’s and when he nods, North starts in on me. “Right. There are a whole list of questions we have for you, Oleander-‘
I cut him off. ‘Can we not? I’d rather just go back to the way it was before I was taken. You ignore me and I go to my classes like a good little slave. Sorry I got jumped when I went after Sage, I’ll do my best to never let it happen again. Are we good?’
His eyes flash at me, the first sign he’s pissed. Good, I’m fucking livid right back at him.
‘No, we’re not good. You lied to us. Again. You knew you were Gifted and lied to each and every one of your Bonds. This is going to stop. Right now. What else are you keeping from us?”
Gabe shifts uncomfortably beside me and I can’t look up at him. I don’t need to see the hurt in his face when I never owed him the truth about myself.
This isn’t about him.
I pull away from Atlas to carefully climb out of the bed and gesture at the pajamas. “Who did this? Which one of you got me naked while I was unconscious?”
Atlas rolls off the bed as well and grabs a bag from where it’s tucked under the end of the bed. I hadn’t even noticed it there.
He grabs my hand and says, “North did it. We got back here and he just took off with you, refused to put you in your own bed, and made Felix heal you here. When I questioned him about your outfit change, he said it was no big deal.”
North doesn’t even flinch under the savage glare I level at him. “Good to know my naked, non-consenting body is no big deal.”
North’s jaw clenches. “Fallows-”
Great, back to Fallows. “No. You don’t get to sit there and tell me how bad I am for keeping this from you, when everything I’ve done has been to keep us all safe. That’s it, that’s all I’m saying about this. If you want any more information, then I’m sorry to say that you’re going to be left hanging.”
I step towards the door, forgetting for a second that Atlas is holding my hand, until I accidentally tug him along with me. He doesn’t hesitate though, just steps up with me to leave this ridiculously perfect room.
“Fallows, you can’t just walk out without telling us anything. What exactly is your gift and what else can you do? Why did you hide it from us? How did the Resistance know about it?” North snaps, his voice getting deeper the angrier he gets, and I almost slam into the wall that Atlas makes behind me as I spin around again.
I point a finger at him, ready to tear into him, when Nox cuts me off. “Leave it, brother. She’s still just a pathetic little child who runs away the second it gets hard.”
I hate him.
I hate him so fucking much and it only grows stronger when his eyes flick back up to me as he drawls, “Go on then, scurry away to find a little dark hole to hide in. You’re the same worthless Bond we had a week ago, only now we know you had the option not to be. You could have really been something and instead, you chose to be nothing.”
I could kill him.
My bond even considers wiping him from the face of the Earth, no matter the connection between us, but instead, I turn on my heel and stalk out.
I INSTANTLY REGRET STORMING out of the room when I find myself in a hallway that I’ve never seen before with no idea of how to find the room North assigned to me.
When I blanch, Atlas immediately scoffs at me and takes the lead, shaking his head with a grin. “You really have no sense of direction, do you?”
I shrug and focus on keeping my legs steady under me because my stomach is still churning a little, even though I also feel starving and cranky and, fuck, okay, I feel a lot of conflicting things right now.
Right as we turn the corner at the end of the hallway and I find myself staring at my own door, because of course North has me sleeping within a second of his own room like the utter control freak he is, I hear his door open and slam shut behind us.
I don’t want to deal with whoever is coming after us right now.
I don’t want to go another round with North or to have some more barbs thrown at me by his charming brother, and if Gryphon shows up here to stare at me until I crumble and start crying, I might just throw myself out of the window to get away from all of this.
Atlas presses a key into my palm as he covers my back, checking behind us as I find that it is actually my copy and get the door opened.
He scoffs. “We don’t want you here, Ardern. Go find some catnip to keep yourself busy.”
I let out a breath of relief that it’s Gabe and not one of the others as I get the door open and walk into the room. It doesn’t feel like my own, not really, but there’s a lock on the door and one of my Bonds has a copy to get in without my permission. I’ll take one over five of them any day of the week, even if it is North.
Atlas moves to fill the entire door frame, blocking Gabe from my view right as he says, “I think I’ll hear from my Bond whether or not she wants me here. You don’t speak for her, and you definitely don’t get to tell me what to do.”
Great, they’re no closer to being amicable, even after they’d joined forces on the plane against the others.
But I don’t want them arguing and even though I distinctly remember healing Gabe on the flight, I’d still like to get a look at him properly to know that he’s okay.
“Let him in, Atlas. As long as neither of you harass me about my gift, then you guys can stick around.”
He doesn’t argue with me, just turns and walks into the room. He’s already been in here before and slept in the bed with me, so he just walks over to drop his bag on the bed and start rummaging through it.
Gabe shuts the door behind himself and locks it, wiggling the handle a little to make sure it’s secure before he starts looking around at the room. I’ve done nothing to the space at all, and my tiny little duffel bag of clothes is stashed away in the closet, so it just looks like a very well-decorated spare room.
I take a breath and then the wiggling of my chest reminds me that I’m still in the freaking pajamas without a bra, so I take off towards the ensuite. “I need a shower. We can… hangout or whatever once I’m clean. Try not to break each other or any of the furniture while I’m gone.”
They both make some kind of noise in agreement, that total boy way of agreeing without actually saying they do, and I leave them behind to scrub myself down.
I’m happy to see that North didn’t actually clean me, he just changed me out of the filthy workout clothes, because it seems so much more invasive to think about him washing my naked body while I slept.
I’m also just a little bit pissed that my bond was totally fine with what he was doing and didn’t kick in to wake me up or shove him away. I’m going to pretend that means he was respectful because if I find out he wasn’t… murder. Pain. Chaos and bedlam until the world burns down to the ground around us.
I’m happy to find that the soap in here is different to North’s soap, so even though my bond gets sulky about it, I get to clean away the smell of him from my body. I scrub out my hair as well, the scent of smoke still clinging to me a little, and by the time I step out of the stall, my body is pink and practically sparkling with how clean I am.
It’s a freaking amazing feeling.
I scrub my teeth twice and drink down another huge glass of water that also feels pretty lifesaving. I’m still starving, but the idea of leaving this room is abhorrent to me right now, so I guess I’m just going to continue starving until tomorrow.
When I finally step back into the room, wrapped up in a towel because I forgot to grab clothes before I went in for the shower, Atlas and Gabe both look up at me the second I step out.
There’s way too much going on in both of their gazes and I’m instantly trapped by them, frozen to the spot until Gabe gulps and breaks the spell.
“Sorry— I forgot— just give me a second!” I sputter as I dart over to the closet and start rummaging through my bag for something to cover up with. There’s no door on the closet but I’m tucked around the corner well enough that I can throw on one of Gryphon’s sweatshirts and a pair of yoga pants without flashing the two very hot-blooded men sitting around in my room.
Lusting after me like I’m their next meal.
Look, I get it. I mean, I’ve been staring at all of them for months like they’re my last meal on death row, but it was easier to ignore it when I hated them all and when they all thought I was a useless, giftless reject.
That’s not the way things are going anymore.
Those two definitely don’t hate me, and I’m not willing to admit how much I want them right back.
Gabe came after me.
Atlas attempted to as well.
Both of them stood up for me against the others, Gabe took on the Resistance to find me and bring me home, and both of them shielded Sage when things got rough.
It doesn’t mean I can Bond with them or give them any answers, but it means something.
When I step back out of the closet to find Gabe standing with his back to me as he stares out of the window and Atlas lounging on the bed with his phone in his hand, I feel awkward as hell as I walk back over to the bed, trying not to feel self-conscious in the baggy clothes with my hair still dripping down my back while both of them look as though they’ve just stepped out of a magazine for sports models.
They’re both really freaking hot, okay?
“Come lie back down, you’re as white as a sheet, Sweetness,” Atlas murmurs to me as he shifts over and pulls back the blankets for me. I feel like after two days of sleeping I should be totally sick of being in a bed, but it’s too tempting to crawl between the sheets and just die there.
Gabe watches us both with a sort of seething jealousy, but he doesn’t say a word as he pulls one of the huge, ornate armchairs over to sit beside me.
Neither of them say another word and I start to think I’m going a little crazy. “I’ll be fine here, guys. You don’t have to babysit me. I’m not going to run off, I swear.”
Gabe huffs and I get ready for him to say something particularly cutting to me but instead he snaps, “Neither of us think you’re a runner, Oli. Nox is a fucking asshole, he’s projecting like a motherfucker right now. If he speaks to you like that again, I’ll kill him.”
Atlas scoffs back at him. “Oh really? How exactly is a shifter going to go up against a Draven and his nightmares? If either of us are going to kill him, it’s me.”
I really don’t want another pissing contest to start up but if I let them both run their mouths, then I might actually find out what Atlas can do without having to ask him.
I’m not sure why I’m still so against speaking to them about what they can do, probably because if they ask me anything about my own gift, I’ll feel like an utter bitch for refusing to tell them a thing.
It turns out I don’t have to wait long.
“Being strong won’t help with the nightmares either. You can’t wrestle them into submission, they’ll just consume you,” Gabe snaps, and Atlas chuckles at him.
“I’m indestructible. They can consume all they want, it won’t hurt me or do a goddamned thing to me. I’m fucking bombproof.”
Huh.
That’s handy.
I’m also very clearly such a broken and terrible person because instantly my gift wants to test his theory, test whether or not I could take him out.
I have to shove it away and remind it that we do not hurt the Bonds and we definitely don’t hurt the two Bonds sitting here with me.
Before Gabe can reply with some new jab as they work out who is the alpha around here, there’s a knock at the door and we all turn as one to look at it.
It’s not one of my Bonds, I can’t feel them there at all, but I still don’t want to face one of the staff members either. What if North sent them up here to collect me for another round of questioning?
No, thanks.
“Don’t open it,” I mutter, but Gabe gets up and braces his shoulder against the wood like he’s planning on physically holding down the fort.
More points to him.
“Who is it?” he calls out.
A small voice replies, “Kitchens. Mr. Draven sent us up here with food for Miss Fallows.”
Thank God.
I don’t want to give him a point as well, but my stomach growls at the very mention of food and Atlas jerks his head at Gabe to get him to let them in.
Dish after dish of seafood and fish are rolled into the room and I swear to God I almost orgasm at the mere smell of it all.
I eat enough for three people.
Atlas and Gabe don’t touch a thing until I’m done.
