What I wouldn’t give for Gryphon and his pain manipulation, brain-mojo while Felix slices me open with nothing but a tiny bit of worthless numbing cream on my skin.
Ironically, he feels the bolt of pain through our Bond and immediately floods me with his own bond to figure out what the hell is going on. I have to work overtime to cover it up, sticking to things that are completely true.
I’m fine! Don’t freak out, I’m just clumsy as hell sometimes.
His reply is instant, What the hell is going on? We’re only a few hours out, I can get Kieran here to bring me back.
I try not to puke at the intense look of concentration on Sawyer’s face as his eyes flash white, all of his focus on stopping the killing chip from, you know, killing me.
I swallow and work at keeping my reply steady and sure, No need. Felix is about to patch me up, so I don’t need any extra mother hens around here. Forget about me, just focus on your job.
His bond stays with me, the pain lessening by the second even with the tweezers digging around under my flesh. When the chip finally pops out of my neck, Felix removes one of his gloves to press his palm to the side of my neck until the wound is completely healed up.
The entire room exhales.
No more hurting yourself, I’ll come back and there will be hell to pay, Bonded. Just stay at the manor and study until you go see Kyrie. She’s expecting you sometime before lunch. Straight home after, promise me.
I have to be really careful about how I answer so he doesn’t know that something is happening here, his ability to tell if I’m lying is a complete fucking nightmare. I promise that I’ll only leave here with my Bonds and your TacTeam protection detail.
His bond slips away from me, slowly and like a caress, and I take a deep breath. Lying to him, even in this sort of round-about way, makes me feel like the worst goddamned Bonded in existence, but I’m sure if we told him, he’d be on his way back here in a freaking second.
Whatever help we can be to get rid of the Resistance, we’re going to do it.
When Felix finally moves away from me, taking the other glove off and wrapping up all of the used medical supplies, I look over to find Sawyer holding up the tweezers with the GPS chip in one of his hands as his glowing-white eyes squint at it.
“Is there anything you can tell about it? How does your gift work? Give me something here, Benson,” I say, and he shrugs.
“It’s still transmitting. There’s nothing to say that it’s been doing anything except to track you, but I’ll run home to get my laptop and I’ll trace the signal. Once we know where it’s going… we can go from there.”
I nod and glance at my watch, finding that it’s still early enough for me to grab a shower and look half decent before I meet my Bonded’s sister.
I feel sick to my stomach about it.
Gabe is still a little quieter, a little subdued, thanks to the killer GPS chip reveal, but I thread our fingers together as we head back up to my room. Atlas takes a call from his mom and agrees to meet us up there, pressing a kiss to my cheek and striding ahead of us to his own room.
Gabe waits until we’re alone in the elevator before he speaks. “I feel like a complete piece of shit. No wonder you fucking hated us all. I can’t believe they put that in you.”
I shrug and lean into the solid weight of him, letting my face tuck into his chest as I breathe him in. “Honestly? I thought it was all North. I didn’t even think about the rest of you guys being in on it. The guy who did it, he just kept talking about how great North was and how embarrassing this was for him. He was the one… he told me that I just had to lay down and submit to you all. He seemed very pro-force-the-Bond.”
A nerve in his jaw flickers and when I look up at him again, he shakes his head. “I’m trying not to lose my fucking shit in a tiny elevator, but it’s pushing it. North will… fuck, North is going to tear the council apart over this. To find out that most of your anger and pushing back at us was over some bullshit that Noakes did? Fuck, North will let his nightmares devour the slimy fuck for this.”
I desperately want to believe that but… “North once told me he’d chain me to his cellar by my throat if I tried to run, so I want to believe you, but I still have some reservations there.”
Gabe curses under his breath as the elevator doors open, rubbing a hand over his face as if he hoped he could rub this entire conversation away if he applied enough pressure.
I get it.
“We don’t deserve you. None of us do. We’re all fucking this entire Bond up, and you deserve so much fucking more,” he murmurs, his voice breaking, and I swallow around the lump in my throat.
“Don’t think like that, Gabe. You don’t know about all of the terrible things I’ve done.”
IT DOESN’T MATTER that I’m dressed to absolute perfection, my hair and makeup done by Sage before we’d left, my hand shakes as I reach for the door handle of the Hellcat to get out and meet Gryphon’s sister about a job.
What if she hates me?
Just meet her, she’s not going to bite.
I huff and cross my arms over my chest, pouting like a child. Well, if she’s not so scary, then why haven’t I met her already? She probably hates me! Fuck, I’m not doing this. I’ll just start mooching off of you.
His power is unreal because he sends me through a chuckle, perfect in pitch, and goosebumps break out over my skin at the sound of it.
We both know you won’t. I’m pretty sure you have a running tally in your head with everything you owe North so far. If you don’t want a job, then I’ll call Kyrie and cancel it. You can meet her when I get home, she’s been asking about you. I didn’t want you meeting her until I was sure about you.
I swallow at the implication that he’s sure about me now, that something more than just our Bonding has swayed him to think that I’m worth meeting his sister.
Fine. If she hates me, I’ll never forgive you for sending me in there alone though.
“Stop flirting with him and let’s go get some decent coffee,” Gabe grumbles, still on edge about our conversations today. I get it. I’m not going to give him shit over it because clearly it’s on my behalf.
Atlas shoots him a look though, not happy about the tone he’s using in my direction, and I get a hand on his wrist to settle him down. Tensions are high and we need each other more now than ever before.
When we all get out of the car together, Atlas checks his pockets to make sure the GPS chip is still there, specially wrapped by Sawyer so that no one realizes we’ve taken it out yet. I’d offered to carry it, because there’s nowhere I’m going that I haven’t already been so far, but Atlas and Gabe had both shot that idea down fast.
Neither of them want me touching it.
Gabe does another once-over of my outfit, simple black jeans and the leather jacket Gryphon had left me over a tight black tee with my long-lost-loves boots, before he throws an arm around my shoulders and murmurs into my hair, “Kyrie is cool, stop freaking out over this. She’ll only give you shit for not working with her in the first place.”
I scoff at him, dragging my feet a little. “I tried! The lady I tried to give my resume to said I wasn’t allowed to work here.”
Atlas shakes his head at Gabe’s roar of laughter, stealing me off of him and dragging me over the threshold of the cafe.
It’s only a billion times better in here than in Gloria’s place.
Okay, so I’ve seen it before and I’m totally prejudiced about it, thanks to her firing me, but the entire feel of the place is clean, warm, and inviting.
It’s also bustling with a lunchtime rush of people buying sandwiches and coffees, the tables are all full and the takeout line is overflowing. I almost feel bad for interrupting the busy shift by coming in here.
“Hey, Vicki! Is Val in? Gryph sent us,” Gabe says, a warm smile on his face as he approaches the same older woman who’d sent me away last time.
I try not to hold a grudge about it because I know for sure it was North’s directive, but my bond still isn’t happy about it.
Vicki nods and points towards the back, opening the section of the counter for us to make our way back there.
“Who is Val?” I murmur and Gabe smirks at me.
“Valkyrie. Gryphon always says his parents were sadists for naming them both, but Kyrie is better about it. She’s Val to the general public but Kyrie to family.”
Holy shit.
Okay, but they’re cool as fuck names. At least they’re not named after poisonous flowers, an omen of what was to come for me. My mom once told me that she’d dreamt about me for years before I was born and my crib was always filled with oleander flowers.
I always wondered if she was a little bit psychic.
Gabe leads us through and pushes his way into the back room where we find Kyrie moving giant bags of coffee beans for grinding. Atlas moves over to her immediately, taking the bags from her and moving them to where she’s directing him.
She watches him as she catches her breath, an apron wrapped around her waist with an order book half falling out, and she looks the same as that picture in Gryphon’s room, just a little bit older.
She wipes a hand over her forehead. “Perfect timing, we’re about to drown under orders. I fucking hate that old hag Gloria, but at least with a second option around here, I didn’t have to deal with frat boy trash. Now I’m up to my armpits in stinking misogyny.”
She glances over at me, a quick once-over like she’s assessing me, and then she ducks down to grab an apron. “You can start now, right? Gryph promised you were good for the old bitch, so I’m sure you’ll be good here too. I told him he should’ve sent you earlier, but he’s a secretive little dick.”
I snort with laughter, slapping a hand over my mouth as I reach out with the other one to grab the apron. “That about sums the situation up. I’m Oli, by the way. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
She gives me an assessing look and then her eyes soften the tiniest bit. “Kyrie, don’t ask me how my parents came up with it because it’s full of trauma for me that we don’t have time to unpack. Gabe, can you and Mr. Strong here unload the boxes for me please, usual places. Oli, if you can follow me out and start running orders, that would be amazing.”
Atlas’ eyebrows rise at her no-nonsense demands but I’m not at all fazed by it. She sounds just like Gryphon to me, and I really need this job, so there’s not going to be any complaints outta little ol’ me.
The cafe runs like a well-oiled machine.
Kyrie has five other employees and they all accept me into the fold without a problem, helping me out whenever I have questions and complimenting how quickly I pick everything up. There’s signs all throughout the kitchen to show where things go and the proper way of doing things and I’m incredibly grateful for them.
After they unload boxes, Kyrie has Gabe and Atlas put together furniture in her office and then help to restock the kitchen fridges from the cool room out the back, and they both do it all without complaint.
I forget about all of the problems we’d run into over breakfast and just enjoy working my ass off somewhere where it’s not only noticed but appreciated too. There’s no Kitty trying to weasel her way into my Bonds’ lives, no frat boy bullshit, and instead of having watchful Bonds in the booths, there’s a TacTeam protection detail discreetly waiting outside to vet people as they come in.
I enjoy myself.
I should really know better by now.
When the power goes out while I’m elbows deep in dishwater, I’m not too worried about it. The cook, Marigold, doesn’t seem fazed either as she turns off all of the burners and the oven as a safety precaution and moves the half-cooked foods over to the side to wait for the power to come back on.
Gabe walks into the kitchen, sweating from all of the manual labor, and Atlas comes in behind him looking unruffled and as clean as he was when we left the manor this morning. Super strength comes in handy, I guess.
“Do you guys know what’s happening?” I say, and Gabe shakes his head.
“Let’s find Kyrie, see if she needs any help keeping the customers calm and not stampeding out of here.”
I nod and dry off my hands, moving with them both right as the windows at the front of the shop are blown out, screams and bullets flying everywhere around us.
My back hits the ground as Atlas covers me, his arm softening the blow a tiny bit, and Gabe drops to his belly beside us. I stare into Atlas’ eyes, stunned at whatever the hell is going on, and then the screams get louder around us.
The Resistance is here.
There’s a popping sound and Kieran appears in a crouch next to us, holding out his arms for us to grab and when I squirm away from him, he just grabs my wrist to drag me along too.
We leave Kyrie behind.
The moment we appear again out in the back alley, I’m ready to chew him out but he just slashes his hand at me. “I’m going back for her now, Fallows, calm the fuck—”
“Too late,” Atlas says, and I jerk my head up to see Kyrie struggling between two Resistance soldiers.
My power explodes out of me and they’re both dead on the ground in a flash, one of them knocking Kyrie down. I exhale and start to move towards her when there’s another two pops, so close together that I don’t have a chance to see it.
A Transporter has taken her.
She’s fucking gone.
Kieran curses under his breath and gets onto his comms, barking out orders and directives but fuck that, I’m going after her.
Atlas’ arms band around me like iron bars, utterly immovable as he snaps, “Don’t even think about it, Oli. I’m not going through your savior complex all over again. Leave it to the trained professionals.”
I let my rage out, just enough that my bond gets some release without coming to the party. “They can’t kill me! You know it, I know it. Fuck, if they got an eyeful of me, half the fucking Resistance would know it too! But they’re taking people again, I can’t just sit by and let that happen.”
His arms don’t ease up in the slightest. “There’s enough TacTeam here to take care of it, I’m not letting you go.”
I want to kill him and I have to forcibly stop my bond from reacting to him as I hiss at him, “There’s not enough TacTeam and we both know it! Let me go right the fuck now, Bond! I wish I could be the Bond that lets you guys all protect me, but that’s just not who I am. I’ll keep in touch with Gryphon, but we’re losing this battle because… because we’re not using the best weapon we have. Fuck it, I’ll be the goddamned weapon!”
Gabe looks between us and then looks at the line of men moving through the street towards us, guns raised and masks over their faces. His hands unclench at his side like he’s about to shift and throw himself at them, but I’m not playing around.
I accept that I’m not going to be scared anymore.
I’m going to face my gift and I’ll let it protect us all, I can wrestle with the consequences and my morality later, because we already know that we’re fighting a losing game right now and I’m not going to let that happen. Not to my Bonds and not to our friends and family, not if I can help it.
My eyes shift to the voids, everything becoming clearer, and then I kill them all. No more incapacitation, no more brain melting horrors, I kill them instead. I let my gift touch all of their souls, gripping them tightly and feeling the agony they all experience as I rip them out.
Kieran doesn’t react, Carlin’s one word of warning enough to have him steady in his boots with nothing but a rough gulp.
Gabe? Not so much. “What the fuck is that?! Oli, what the fuck—”
Atlas snaps at him, “She’s a Soul Render, asshole. The brain melting? It’s a parlor trick to her, the lesser of her powers. It’s how she leaves people to wallow in all of the shittiest parts of their souls. Her real shit? Ripping their souls the fuck out. Instant death, a billion times more powerful than North fucking Draven because he’s limited to touch. Oli has no limit. Nothing. The infinite weapon.”
My skin crawls at those three words but Kieran curses under his breath before my mind can really process what’s being said. “Blind. We’re all fucking blind, of course you were in the documents. Codename: IW. Don’t burn out, let’s save that gift for the big guns for now because no gift is really infinite.”
Fuck the big guns.
I cast my gift out until I can feel every person on the block. All of their thoughts and emotions are too complex for me to decipher, but I can tell if they’re supposed to be here. I can tell if they’re here to murder and pillage.
And I kill them all.
Gabe’s eyes flash at me as he stares at the bodies as they hit the ground, their eyes all staring sightlessly from where I’ve torn their souls clean out of their bodies.
If I wanted to, I could tell the exact number of lives I’ve just taken, but even though my gift is writhing with joy inside my chest, I don’t want to think about it.
Or the small fact that I can’t even tell that I’ve used my gift; no exhaustion, no shaking hands, no lagging from the sheer amount of power it takes to soul-rend.
It’s barely touched the edges.
“Get the fuck behind me, Fallows, and stop with the void eyes.”
I scoff and throw my hands out around me, gesturing at everything I’ve just done. “I don’t think I need to cower behind you, Kieran. I think you should really be behind me.”
He shoves his gaiter down his face and snarls at me, “Over my dead fucking body, now get your ass moving. We’re getting you back to the manor, it’s more defensible than being in the open.”
Atlas nods and says, “Transport us all. Ardern, get your ass over here and let’s just get out.”
Gabe makes it two steps before the explosions start again and Atlas dives at me to crush me under his hulking weight, pressing me against the building behind us until I can’t breathe.
There’s more Resistance here, waves of them arriving as they attempt to take the campus. There’s screams everywhere around us, the sounds of them weird to my ringing ears thanks to the explosion.
“Fuck, they’re taking more Gifted from the streets. They knew the Dravens were gone, we’re being butchered from the inside out,” Gabe spits out. His eyes shift into his wolf eyes and Atlas’ eyes flash white with him.
We’re on the edge of losing control; there’s a big decision to be made here and I’ve already made my choice.
No one is going to like it.
I have to take control of my thoughts and emotions immediately so Gryphon doesn’t catch wind of what I’m planning, but my bond thrumming inside me helps with that. I feel regret at leaving them all again, even for such a short time, but I can’t let this go.
I can’t just sit on my hands and do nothing.
I wait until my Bonds are busy looking around the street for more immediate threats before I lean into Kieran and murmur, “Are you really going to be cool with telling Gryphon that you watched them take his sister and did nothing about it? Because I’m not.”
He curses under his breath, his eyes still watching every angle he can see from where we’re wedged in. “No, but I got you out. My instructions are to protect you at all costs and I’ve done my job.”
“Wrong. You know what I can do, take me to the sorting camps. Don’t try to lie, I already know that you’ve found the new one. Just drop me off there and I’ll get her back,” I mutter and he stares at me like I’ve been mentally compromised.
Except he also looks relieved and I already know I’ve won.
He shoves his gaiter over his mouth, glancing around us, and murmurs, “Fallows, there is no fucking way that I’m taking you somewhere and leaving you there. Even if you weren’t Shore’s Bonded, I’d never do that… but we’re going to get Kyrie and then we’re coming back. You’re only coming with me because you’re handy in a fight thanks to your gift, and I swore I’d keep you within arm’s reach at all times outside of the manor. In and out, that’s it. Kill anyone who comes within five feet of us.”
No matter how low he’d pitched his voice, Atlas still hears him and turns to grab me but it’s too late. Kieran’s hand is already wrapped around my wrist and then the whole world is spinning as he transports us, the shouts of my Bonds lurching after us both ringing in my ears.
My heart hurts for a second but I push it away, regret won’t do me any good right now, I can feel shit about it later when Kyrie is back safe.
Kieran is a well-trained TacTeam member, a second-in-command, so he gets us to the edge of where the camp is without completely blowing our cover, but when I cast my gift out like a net to find Kyrie, I realize we’re fucked for about a million different reasons. I wasn’t prepared for the changes that have obviously happened since I was last in the Resistance’s captivity.
Olivia is here and immediately raises the alarm.
That’s not a huge problem, I could take that bitch out without fucking trying, but she’s standing with the strongest Shield I’ve ever met and I’m not totally sure I could kill Franklin, even with my extra kick of power thanks to my Bond with Gryphon. I was not expecting him to be in the sorting camps, he’s usually too far up the food chain for this sort of work, and my heart clenches in my chest in fear.
But instead of screaming and running like my life depends on it, I wait.
I’m willing to risk capture, torture, and death to get my Bonded’s sister out of this camp. That photo on his dresser told me a lot about him and his relationship to his family because it was the only personal item he had in the room.
He’s not losing her.
“Leave. Leave now before they get here. Go, I’ll find Kyrie and bring her home safe,” I murmur, but Kieran just shakes his head at me, shoving his gaiter back over his mouth as he grabs my wrist again.
Except he can’t transport us back.
Franklin has already pinpointed us and stopped us from moving, the welcome wagon is on its way to us. My legs get heavy, my gift recoiling at the feel of someone else’s power taking over my limbs, and the panic at who is coming pools in my gut.
Deep breaths, Oli. Don’t let Gryphon know about this too soon or you’ll lose them all.
I feel freaking terrible for doing this to Kieran and, knowing they’ll be the last words we’ll have together for a very long time, I mumble, “I’m sorry. Stay strong. Don’t tell them anything, and don’t worry about me. I’ve survived it before, I can do it again. Find Kyrie and get her out the second you have a chance to.”
He blinks at me but they’re already here, stomping through the longer grass as though a beacon is leading them to us. I guess that’s exactly what my gift is, a beacon for corrupt men to follow and attempt to own.
And then they appear in front of us, smirking like they’ve won something.
I thought that seeing Silas Davies again, the man responsible for all of my torture and degradation at the hands of the Resistance, would be the greatest punch in the gut possible… and it is bad.
But finding Atlas’ father standing next to him is worse.
