Falling asleep after Oli and Nox had disappeared from her room is almost impossible. When I wake up the next morning, I feel as though my head is full of air and not much else.
I lie there for a minute, looking up at the unpainted ceiling of my half-finished room as I get my shit together enough to get into the day.
There are a lot of reasons I don’t want to get moving right now.
When I’m dangerously close to being late, I head back over to Oli’s room, to the only working shower in the house, to get ready for my morning session at the Tac Training Center.
There’s an itch under my skin at my Bonded’s absence, the same one that had been there when I’d woken up in the chair and found them both gone. As badly as I want the two of them to figure out their Bond, for Nox to come to terms with the fact that they are tied together no matter his feelings on the matter, there’s still a large part of me that just wants to hold her and be reassured by the steady beating of her heart.
The moment that she had saved Nox’s life by shoving his soul back into his body and taking hers with it, starting the soul-bonding process and doing what was necessary to save his life, had been the most terrifying experience of my life.
One I never want to experience again.
I’d felt the moment that her body had begun shutting down. I’d felt her heart slow to a stop and her breathing get shallower as her body no longer had the essence of life in it required to go through the mechanics of staying alive. We had all felt it, being her Bonded, but something about my ability to read her and connect with her mind had amplified the entire situation into a living nightmare for me, one I’m sure will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I take twice as long as I usually do in the shower as I try to scrub the memory away. I had barely bothered showering over the last few days while our Bonded Group had been dealing with Nox’s death and subsequent resurrection, so I’m careful about making sure I do the job right this time. My head is under the hot stream of water so I don’t hear her coming until the shower door opens and Oli’s body slips in beside mine.
I’m not used to her being the one to initiate, usually I’m the one demanding her time and her space and her presence, but I’m sure my longing for her had called out to her bond like a siren, something that she couldn’t ignore. As tired and worn out as she looks, I can’t feel guilty about it.
She’s alive, and she’s here.
“You’re not gonna get all weird on me now, are you?” she says with her usual brand of sass. All I can do is stare at her with a sense of awe and marvel for a full minute.
I scoff at her and grab her, pulling her into my body until I can feel every soft and perfect inch of her against the hardness of my chest. “I’m pretty sure you promised me that you would stop running off to your own death, so I’m allowed to be as weird as I want to be.”
She scoffs right back at me and does that little wriggling, squirming thing against me that drives me insane. “There was no running involved, I will have you know. It was all very passive, lots of thinking. If I can do it lying down, I don’t think it counts.”
I kind of want to shake her, but I also don’t want to piss her off and have her walk out of here. So instead, I clamp my hands around her thighs and pick her up, enjoying the small squeal that lets out of her lips as she wraps her legs around my waist.
“Stop trying to die early, Bonded. Can we just have a few weeks of you not trying to die and kill us all with you? Because I had a full five minutes of knowing what life felt like without your heart beating, and I am never going to live in that world.”
She sighs as though I have made some romantic declaration to her, not just laid down the honest-to-God truth, and then buries her head into the crook of my neck. As badly as I would like to press her back into the tiles and fuck her against the wall of this shower stall, something I have already done at least a dozen times but will never be enough for me, I’m already running late for my morning sessions, and I already know who is down there waiting for me.
It’s something I need to speak to my Bonded about, but I also want to protect her from it for as long as possible because this is going to be a nightmare situation.
“I’m late,” I murmur, regret drenching my voice, and she sighs again as she unwraps her legs from around my waist, ducking her head under the water as she pulls away.
She arches her back a little until I have to use every inch of my will to not fall to my knees and eat her out as I watch the water run down her incredible body. She grins at me as though she’s reading my mind and pushes forward to press a kiss on my chest.
“Maybe tonight can be your night,” she says with a saucy little wink, and I give her a quick slap on her ass as I step out of the stall and grab a towel.
“I doubt anyone is going to let tonight be my night, but I’m more than willing to share.”
She giggles at me and quickly gets back to washing herself off. I get dressed in my Tac gear, arming myself and pulling my boots on before I take the time to pull my hair back away from my face, using a hair tie to secure it.
Oli knows something is up the moment I do it.
The longer we’re Bonded and the more time we spend together, the easier it is for her to read me and know when something is off. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t love it, the fact that she’s going to know everything there is to know about me and how I act over the years that we’re together; it’s exactly how things should be.
She shuts the water off and climbs out of the stall, a frown tugging at the corner of her lips. “What’s going on? What happened?”
I could lie to her, even if it tastes like shit in my mouth, or I could dodge the truth fairly easily, but I want her to feel secure in our Bond. I want her to know how much I value her and her opinions in our Bonded Group, even if the truth sucks.
“My parents got here last night. I avoided seeing them because of everything happening here, but I have a debrief with them this morning. They’ve been working with a few of our TacTeams to dismantle the Wastelands that are cropping up on the East Coast like a plague.”
Oli blinks at me.
I stand there and try not to burst out laughing at the mini crisis that filters over her face as she realizes that we’ve never discussed my family beyond my sister.
I also haven’t told her that Kyrie is the only person in my family who I can speak to without wanting to stab myself directly in my eyeball just to get away from.
“You didn’t think I had parents?”
She looks at me sheepishly. “You never mentioned them so… I guess I assumed they were dead. Sorry, that sounds so shitty. I’m the worst Bonded ever!”
I tug her a little closer to me and kiss the top of her head. “Don’t say that, and don’t worry about it, Bonded. I don’t exactly talk about them, and the rest of the Bonded Group try to avoid reminding me about them too. They’re not… abusive or anything, just a pain in the ass that none of us want to deal with.”
She nods and rubs at her hair with the towel, biting her lip a little and still looking way too guilty for my liking. “Are there… any other relatives I should know about? Does Gabe have a secret brother or something?”
I grin at her and take one last minute to check over my weapons, more of a soothing action than really suspecting I’ve forgotten something.
Right as I’m about to leave, Oli bends down to dry off her legs, and I spot the bruises all over her lower back and her ass, a small smattering of fingerprints over the pale skin there that leave very little to the imagination of how her night went. There’s a moment of gut-wrenching fear in me before my brain kicks in and I remember that Oli is standing here with me, whole and grinning widely. So if anything had gone… wrong between them, I would know about it.
There’s a reason I was there when they’d Bonded, and it had a lot less to do with seeing Nox through with it than making sure Oli wasn’t hurt than Oli probably believes.
I run a hand over her ass and say teasingly, “You might not want Atlas to see you naked for a few days, Bonded, not unless you want him to fuss over you like a hot rash.”
She gives me a startled look before spinning around to check herself out in the mirror, groaning and blushing when she sees the marks Nox left behind.
“Shit,” she mutters, and then another sheepish grin stretches over her lips. That’s all I need to know about what happened between her and her most damaged Bonded.
The rest really isn’t my business.
I kiss the top of her head, trying to avoid getting water all over myself, something else my father would bitch at me over, and I take one last second to reassure her.
“There’s nothing wrong with being with any of your Bonds. Don’t let Bassinger bully you into thinking that you owe anyone an explanation. It’s none of his business.”
She sighs and nods. “He’s just protective. He hasn’t come to terms with the fact that I don’t need to be protected from Nox.”
I nod back and swoop down to give her one last, blistering kiss before I leave her in the bathroom to get herself ready for the day and finally face my fate of dealing with my parents at four a.m. on a Tuesday morning.
The Tac Training Center is more alive than I’ve ever seen it, bodies moving around the spaces with a frenetic energy that only ever happens when the big players are back in town. Usually, when the world isn’t going to shit so completely, this only happens once a year at most, but over the coming weeks, we’ll be seeing all of the strongest Gifted we have on our side.
Lucky fucking us.
The moment I walk through the doors, Kieran meets my eyes across the room and grimaces at me, a very overt action to let me know just how fucking obnoxious it is to have these people in our home. We’ve worked together and been friends for long enough that he knows exactly how I feel about my family. He’s not looking forward to dealing with any of this any more than I am.
It’s not that I don’t love my parents.
They were good parents. They took care of me and raised me without any of the trauma that my friends and Bonded Group all seem to have, but once I was old enough to join the TacTeams and work my way up to the top, things changed. Working with them has become a nightmare, especially since the revelation of exactly who is in my Bonded Group.
There was a reason I hadn’t been quick to call them home to meet Oli.
I walk across the foyer area, letting the savage look on my face part the sea of bodies for me, because no matter how excited the TacTeam personnel might be, none of them want to get on my bad side.
When I finally reach Kieran, he slaps me on the back and steps in to murmur to me, “They’re in with Unser now. The medical personnel finished up with him and discharged him last night, but I don’t think he should be down here yet. He’s not in the right frame of mind for this. Vivian agrees with me, but there’s sweet fuck-all we can do about it when the General asks to see him.”
The General.
The code word for my father, who is definitely not a General, but we enjoy calling him that behind his back anyway. Kyrie had started it back when we were kids and I didn’t yet understand why she was pushing back against him so hard. He’d always treated her differently than me, and I’m ashamed to say that it took a very long time to see where my sister was coming from.
The doors of the center open again, and I glance back, expecting to see North striding in but finding Kyrie there instead, as though my thoughts had summoned her. She’s looking as though she’s been hit by a train.
I frown at her as she tucks her coat into her sides a little closer and stomps her way through to me. The crowd of people part just as easily for her as they do for me, and I feel a small glow of pride at her for having these trained personnel so terrified, even though most of them have never seen her shoot before.
They’d be shitting themselves if they had.
“What the fuck is the General doing back?” she snaps as soon as she reaches us, and I raise an eyebrow at her attitude. It’s a lot more pointed than I thought she’d be, more venomous than her usual attitude.
Kieran chuckles under his breath and leans into whisper to me conspiratorially, “Kyrie has been enjoying the attentions of some of the builders Gabe has been working with, and finding that she might have to explain some of these actions to mommy dearest and daddy dearest is not going over well with her.”
I groan and rub a hand over my face as she shrugs at both of us, completely unrepentant. “I don’t give a shit what they think about what I’m doing. It’s no one’s business but my own. I’m Unbonded, remember? The problem here is that we’re trying to pretend that everyone in the Sanctuary is so united and happy to be here, and putting the General in the mix is not going to be a good thing. Have you warned Oli of what’s about to go down? Hell, has anyone thought to tell her bond about him? Because it can’t even handle any of us side-eyeing any of her Bonded, let alone when North and Nox end up in the same room as Dad.”
I drop my hand away from my face and give her a look. “I have considered that, obviously, but what am I supposed to do? Tell him he is not allowed to come here? Because that would be so easy to do. North agreed to let him here to give his latest debrief. He’s only supposed to be here for a night or two. It’ll be just long enough that we can wave Oli in his face briefly, and then continue on with our lives.”
Kieran nods along as though I am giving him so much ammo for later ribbing, and Kyrie presses both of her hands against her temples as though she is suffering from a giant headache, though I doubt it could possibly be as big as mine.
“And how exactly are you convincing the Draven brothers to let their Bonded be in the same room as the General without them? Because the only way that we’re going to stop her bond from coming out and tearing his soul out through his nostrils is for her to not know about their issues.”
Kieran glances between the two of us and then chips in. “I don’t think we’re gonna have to worry about Nox giving a shit. He seems to be pretty fine with Oli doing anything that might get herself murdered, maimed, or kidnapped.”
This is not how I was planning on having this conversation with either of them, but I murmur, “That might not be true anymore.”
Both of them look at me, startled, and I shrug. “She saved his life. It involved a soul-bonding, and they seem to have found some common ground.”
Kieran snorts at me as though I’ve told a great joke and claps me on the back again. “Sure, sure. Nox Draven gives a shit about his Bonded. I believe you, one hundred percent. It’s definitely what’s happening here and not just that he wasn’t thinking clearly post, y’know, death.”
Kyrie seems a little bit more hesitant to argue with me, but she shrugs and glances around the room, her back straightening with a snap as her eyes fall on our parents as they walk back into the room. Vivian and Unser are with them, both looking as though they’ve been chewing on sour grapes, though I’m sure Unser’s appearance has more to do with the fact that he isn’t even twenty-four hours out of the medical center.
“Yeah, it can’t be that bad. We’re going to be fine here,” Kyrie mutters under her breath, and I shrug because it doesn’t matter. We’re going to have to speak to them whether we want to or not.
The doors to the training center open again and North steps through, confirming that today is going to be a complete shitshow for me.
Surprisingly, he doesn’t look as though he’s just spent the last three days at the bottom of a bottle of bourbon, none of the horrendous hangover he must be experiencing showing on his face. His suit is perfect, his hair is slicked back in the very structured, councilman way that he has, and only the thin band of black smoke around his wrist shows that he might not be so happy about this situation.
Kieran leans into me again to murmur, “Ding ding, round one.”
