It’s difficult to wrestle my bond back into the recesses of my mind, but as the shields come down and the non-Gifted town comes into view, I have no choice. There’s already markers everywhere around the perimeter where the law enforcement had clearly been trying to stop anyone from interfering with the monstrosity of the Wasteland. There are also men lining the edges of the destruction, their weapons pointed in our direction.
I reach up to remove my helmet and pull the neck gaiter down my face when Gryphon grabs my arm to stop me.
“They don’t look as though they’re ready to have a rational conversation, better that we get out of here and contact them in a more formal manner,” he says.
I glance down at my Tac uniform and grimace at the mud, grime, and blood that coats me. I had been further away from my shadows when they were attacking, but there’s no stopping them from spreading their meals around everywhere when they’re dealing with our enemy, particularly now that the full extent of what had happened to our Bonded has come to light. I nod to Gryphon and then glance back at Nox to where he’s standing just behind Oleander, hovering over her in that particularly protective way that he has now.
When he feels my eyes on him, he glances my way, and I’m struck with the alarming fact that it’s his bond in control and not my brother.
“It’s going to be tricky to move them,” I murmur. Gryphon nods, flicking a hand signal at Kieran to get his attention. When his second-in-command comes over, they’re quick to mete out a plan.
Kieran moves over to where Sage has been helping to dispose of the bodies, burning them away to nothing more than ash, and he makes quick work of getting his Bonded and Gray back to the Sanctuary.
Both of them did well today.
This was more of a trial run to see how everyone would do working together and whether or not Sage and Gray could handle being on a mission. As expected, they’d both passed with flying colors. Even at the sight of the rotting corpses, Sage had done little more than swallow back bile before she got to work. I didn’t expect anything less from the girl who has stood by my Bonded from the very first moment they met. Though I’m worried about her safety, I’m also happy to have another trusted and capable body alongside us in the fight.
Gray has always been a contender for TacTeams, only his parents’ obsessive protection had stopped him from joining years ago. Now that we’ve found his Bond, he has enough skin in the game to really become an asset.
Things are finally falling into place for us.
Kieran pops back into existence and nods at us that he’s ready to take our Bonded Group back as well. I join Gryphon in attempting to coax Oleander back out of her bond. Nox doesn’t react to our words, his bond just staring down the law enforcement only a few hundred feet away from us, but we’re all careful not to touch him anyway.
Brutus sits patiently at Oleander’s feet, snapping a little at Gabe when he steps over to help out, and August is quick to join in. We move cautiously to not startle the bonds, so it’s slow work. We’re making good progress until the shouting begins.
I don’t know whether someone has recognized one of us or if they just assume that all Gifted are the Resistance, here to hurt them, but in the blink of an eye, there are dozens of guns pointed in our direction. Non-Gifted men are shouting for us to surrender and sirens sound as more cars arrive around the perimeter.
Atlas is quick to slide in front of Oli, and his body widens as he stands firm as a barrier. Her bond doesn’t react any further than placing a warm palm between his shoulder blades, a small acknowledgement of his protection of her.
Nox’s bond looks down at her, and I do not like the look that they are sharing.
“You can’t kill the non-Gifted. They’re not a real threat here,” I say firmly, and they both ignore me for a minute. I’m about to say it again, to start a full-blown argument with a god who wears my Bonded’s body as a damn vessel, when it finally turns her face towards me.
“We need to leave then, because if any of them dare to hurt my Bonded, I will not contain myself.”
I nod and gesture at Kieran to come closer, all of us moving around until we have circled around him. The movement seems to alarm the law enforcement, and the shouting gets louder, more demands for us to turn ourselves in. I look up, but I can’t see anything that might need my attention, my shadow creatures staying put inside my chest.
Right as we all move to touch Kieran and get out of here, a single gunshot rings through the air.
Before I have the chance to panic about where that bullet ended up, Atlas grunts, wincing as the small lead pellet bounces off of his shoulder as though it was nothing more than a penny being thrown at him.
I sigh at the argument I’m about to have with my Bonded’s bond, but I don’t get the chance to. I don’t get the chance to do anything.
I’m expecting hundreds of bodies to hit the ground. I’m expecting to deal with the aftermath of dozens of non-Gifted being killed. I’m expecting the emotional aftermath of Oleander waking up to the devastation of what her bond has done.
I’m not expecting it to be Gabe’s eyes shifting as his own bond kicks in.
I’m definitely not expecting them to shift to black either.
The only thing that saves us is Kieran’s quick thinking as he slaps a hand on Gabe’s shoulder and transports us out of the Wasteland. He’s smart enough to take us directly to the Tac Training Center and into one of the meeting rooms.
We must have some good karma out there in the world because no one spots us as we reappear. The moment that our feet land on the cleanly tiled floor, Gabe lets out a roar as his body begins to shift.
I yank Oleander away from him and behind me at the same time as Gryphon and Atlas both dive in front of her, but her bond is still in control. It stares at Gabe with the unnatural blankness that it has, its eyes rounded as it takes in the gruesome sight of Gabe’s arms and legs snapping and elongating, his skin giving way to black, shiny scales, and giant wings bursting out from between his shoulder blades. His clothes are shredded into pieces and the sound of his labored breathing and groaning slowly turns into an animalistic snarl and in only a few short minutes, we’re left staring down at the dragon.
The dragon with black void eyes.
I glance around at the rest of the room, but any words I might have dry up in my throat at the sight of the beast. There’s no point in speaking to anyone about it anyway. No one but the three gods amongst us might actually know what the fuck is going on here.
None of them are reliable in answering though.
What the hell is that? I have to try to ask my own bond the question, even if I’m expecting nothing from it.
It’s quiet for a moment before it answers, It awakens.
I stare over at Gryphon. He is splitting his time between looking at me, processing my bond’s words, and staring down the dragon as it begins to pace, its eyes glued to Oleander without blinking.
Its void-like eyes are the marker of the god now living within him.
No matter what we try, we cannot get Gabe to shift back.
Nox and Oleander are also both still in their bond state, standing and staring at the beast from where it paces on one side of the room, barely able to take three steps before it’s turning and taking three steps back. It’s clearly agitated but unwilling or unable to be reasoned with.
After we get Kieran out and Atlas positioned next to Oleander, ready to pounce in case something goes terribly wrong, we decide to just wait them out, but after an excruciatingly long hour, nothing has changed.
“Can you get into his head? Can you see anything?” I mutter quietly to Gryphon, and he shrugs back, a white ring around his irises as he stares at the beast.
“I can get in there just fine, but there’s not much I can tell you about what’s going on. All I can tell you is that his bond is different now. It’s more than it was before.”
I groan and look between the three bonds, eyeing them as the dragon huffs and it continues its pacing. “How exactly does a bond suddenly become more?”
Gryphon hesitates for a moment before he shrugs. “Did Oleander do this? She told him to think ‘bigger’, and suddenly he can turn into a dragon. Did her bond somehow spark this?”
I’ve never heard of something like that happening before. Never. Not even in the worst of the Gifted rumors or whisperings of the Resistance urban legends.
I reach out through my mind connection to Oleander, but her bond shuts me down before I get very far, my own bond clawing at the edge of my consciousness as it tries to get out to be with her.
Gryphon and Atlas couldn’t handle my bond right now, let alone mine, Nox’s, and Oleander’s all at the same time with the new complication of Gabe’s dragon.
“It’s different,” Gryphon mutters.
I nod. “You said that.”
“No, I mean, it’s different than Oli’s bond. It’s not thinking in human terms, only in animal needs and desires. It only wants her.”
I don’t even want to think about what that means though. The predatory look in its eye tells me more than enough, and I don’t like it one bit.
“We need to get the three of them back to themselves before this gets out of hand,” I snap, my frustration finally boiling over.
Atlas shrugs from across the room where he’s standing half covering our Bonded, and he leans into her ear to murmur something to her quietly. The bond finally looks away from the dragon to stare at him before her eyes flutter shut for a moment. When they open again, Oleander’s beautiful blue irises stare back at Atlas. The animation is back in her face as she moves, her arms winding around his neck as she tucks herself into him closely.
“What did you say to her?” Gryphon asks, his tone a little harsh with relief.
Atlas shrugs and then watches as Oli slips her hand into Nox’s without a word, leaning into his side without touching him, and slowly his eyes shift away from the voids until his lip turns up in a snarl and my brother is back in the room with us.
“A Soul Render can’t just turn someone into a god,” Nox says as he watches the dragon pace, diving straight into the issue before us.
Gryphon runs his hands through his hair, irritated. “Well, what other explanation could there be? Bonds don’t just become more.”
My Bonded chews on her lip for a moment, and it’s clear she’s keeping something from us, the guilt in her an almost palpable thing. Finally, Atlas takes her free hand and faces us. “Oli ended up in Gabe’s head after they went to sleep the other night. She hadn’t had the chance to tell anyone yet, and now she’s feeling guilty about it.”
She huffs and throws her hand out around the room. “Appearing in his head didn’t just make this happen though. I don’t have the ability to do this. Even if I did, I think I’d remember it. Right? Or at the very least, my bond would remember it, and it swears that it hasn’t done anything. I did meet his dragon in there though. I met it, and we both knew that it was different. It was very different to his wolf and his panther.”
The beast stares at her with unblinking eyes and moves towards her slowly.
The first step we allow.
It could just be a deviation in the circuit he has been walking up and down the meeting room, but the second step is too much, and we all make some sound of caution to get him to stop. Atlas shifts more fully in front of Oli, and a dozen extra shadow creatures burst out of Nox, his hands flexing at his side as though he’s preparing himself to physically grapple with a mythical creature come to life.
Oli is the only one who doesn’t seem concerned.
“I think he just wants to talk to me.”
Gryphon turns and pegs her with a stern look. “And if you think that we’re going to allow that to happen, then you have another thing coming. We’re not going to just throw you in its direction and hope for the best, Bonded,” he snaps, and though she looks a little more subdued about it, she still ducks around Atlas.
“Let me at least try to talk to him.”
“Stay right there. Do not move even an inch further, Bonded,” I snap. She nods, raising a hand up as though she is trying to placate the dragon.
“What do you need? Tell me what’s bothering you, and I’ll fix it,” she tries, but the dragon only cocks its head at her.
With the void-like eyes, there is none of Gabe left in him, nothing familiar about the form at all. I have to struggle with myself to remember that the Bonded Group’s golden child is somewhere underneath all of those scales and fire.
She tries a few more times, but when it’s clear that the dragon either cannot understand her or refuses to speak to her like this, Oleander reaches out to him through the mind connection instead.
That catches its attention.
It lets out a long breath that smells of sulfur and heats the room around us. Gryphon shoots me a look as he steps towards our Bonded, but the dragon speaks as though none of the rest of us are there.
Mine, it says in a voice that is nothing like Gabe’s but everything like my own bond’s and the one that lives inside of my brother.
Mine.
It takes another full hour before Oleander can coax the dragon into letting Gabe back out.
It’s difficult, but we have to get him back up to the house to sleep off the shift without anyone noticing our change in transport zone and the way that he’s so fatigued, and we all tuck in early for the night. I can’t spend the next few days watching over him for more changes though.
I have to leave that to Oleander and Atlas, thanks to the new situation we have to attempt to sweep under the rug.
With the revelation that my Bonded may have the ability to change the bonds within her Bonded Group, the last thing that I want to do is to go meet with the non-Gifted senators and law enforcement to run damage control about the Wastelands. Unfortunately, part of keeping my community and, more importantly, my Bonded Group safe is putting out these sorts of fires.
It’s a tough choice, but I decide to leave Nox behind in the Sanctuary and take Gryphon with me. The decision had already been made for us to operate in pairs, especially now that there’s the potential for Gifts to be changing. Although Nox argues with me, Gryphon is still the better choice to take.
The Resistance might not know that my brother survived their killing attempt, and any sort of element of surprise that we might have over them is worth an argument with him.
Meeting with Senator Oldham would also likely test Nox’s very limited patience.
The woman is a thorn in my side. No amount of charity work or self-sacrifice is enough for her to trust the Gifted community. If it were up to her, I’m sure she would start an all-out war to get rid of us. Humans are drastically outgunned when it comes to the Gifted community. However, what they lack in firepower, they make up for in numbers. Realistically, humans are still a big threat to us. Unless, of course, Oleander’s bond could wipe them out completely.
It’s one of the reasons I think the Resistance wants Oleander so badly.
A Gifted with an unmatched range to dispose of the non-Gifted and Gifted alike, she’s everything they could’ve ever wanted.
Gryphon fidgets in the seat next to me as Rafe directs the car over to the private parking lot. This is an emergency meeting, and there’s very little press that we’ll have to make our way past, only a few men holding cameras, taking photos, and a couple of reporters with microphones. They’re clearly the only people in the area, and with such a short lead time, the usual vultures couldn’t make it, thank God. Usually when we meet, all of them show up, hundreds waiting for us, ready to stick their recorders in our faces to misconstrue the slightest thing that we might say wrong.
It’s concerning, to say the least, but I’m grateful that I might have a little more wiggle room with what I can say to the woman, because if anyone needs some home truths, it’s Oldham.
“Remember not to say anything. She’s going to do everything in her power to turn you into the horrible monster that she has fantasized we are, including talking about our Bonded.”
Gryphon shrugs, easily staring off into the distance as though he’s focusing on some conversation I can’t hear. His ability to read minds is also a plus here. Another tick in the box of why he’s escorting me and not Nox.
“I kind of figured that. If I snapped at every person who tried to use my Bonded against me, I wouldn’t have any hours left in the day for her. Don’t worry about me; just focus on your bond and keeping him in line.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Are you so sure it’s mine we need to be worried about? Have there been any changes with yours that you might need to tell me about?”
He sends me a dry look. “I’m not the one who keeps secrets about my bond.”
I hold back a wince as I mentally give him a point on a scoreboard that I never really keep track of.
He’s not wrong, I did lie to them all about my bond. To be fair, I was doing my best to lie to myself about it, just as much as I was lying to them. My own fear of what lived inside of me and the potential of what it could do to my Bonded and every other person I came in contact with had overridden my loyalty to my Bonded Group.
I’m not proud of it, but I won’t try to lie about it either.
“My bond is fine. Its number one concern right now is Oleander and making sure she never has to soul-bond with anyone ever again.”
He winces and nods. “Yeah, I think we can all agree on that.”
No questions asked. Neither of us have discussed what that moment felt like or the fact that I had completely shut down, but I also don’t feel any embarrassment with him about it either. Gryphon isn’t the type of man to judge me, and I have never felt any sort of extra shame around him any more than I have ever felt around Oleander or Nox.
He knows what that moment had cost me the same way I know what that moment cost him, and what’s the point of a unified Bond Group if we don’t have each other’s backs during the worst possible moments of our lives? He’s seen mine, and he knows all about Nox’s. I hope for his sake that we never have to see his.
Rafe pulls the car up as close to the building as he can get. Gryphon steps out of the car first, slipping easily into the old practice of him acting as my security.
We’re trained at the same level, we’re in the same Bonded Group, and his life means just as much as mine, but the non-Gifted don’t understand that, and it’s easier to act this way around them.
Rafe opens my car door at Gryphon’s signal, and we walk into the building together. The white ring is clear around Gryphon’s irises, and I murmur to him quietly, “Probably best if we don’t walk in there like that. Oldham will start running for the hills if she sees it. We won’t get the chance to explain that what you’re doing is for her safety as much as ours.”
Gryphon shrugs with the slightest smirk curling up his lips. “It’ll be a quick end to the day if we clear her out of the building though, won’t it?”
I shoot him a look. “We need to convince the non-Gifted that we’re not a threat here. If we just wanted to scare them away, I would have brought Nox.”
Gryphon looks around the building one last time before the white light fades from his eyes. “There’s no one here who is a threat. No one except the senator herself, who is convinced that we’re all trying to kill her, so have fun talking the crazy bitch out of that.”
I sigh deeply and roll my shoulders back before I open the door to the assigned conference room.
Give me a battle on the field surrounded by my own shadow creatures, with my Bonded at my side and the rest of our Bonded Group, any day over this verbal bullshit.
