IF I DIDN’T ALREADY THINK that Atlas’ upbringing was exorbitant and spoiled as fuck, seeing his house seals the deal. He’d casually opened up a wall to enter a set of stairs hidden in it, weird and freaking creepy in my opinion, and then he’d led us down to the basement as though it was all nothing. I wouldn’t have believed that houses like this really exist, and now I’m in a Bonded Group with three men brought up with this sort of wealth.
Hell, I’m sure the other two have mansions in their families too. I just don’t want to think about that right now though.
We’d found one of his sister’s Bonded, the last one left alive and free, and two other Gifted in here. They were attempting to hack into the computer systems and purge any information that might be incriminating to them, and to find extortion material on other high-ranking Resistance members. The moment we’d stepped around the corner to find them wrapped in shadows, their eyes glowing white as Gryphon’s Gift manipulated their brains into complete compliance for us, I’d had the air knocked out of me at the sight of the archives down here.
Atlas hadn’t been wrong, Nox is jizzing himself over all of this and, sure enough, he stalks past everything else in the room as he makes his way over to the large stacks of archive boxes and a huge pile of computer equipment. I can’t even begin to guess what half of that stuff is, but I’m sure the power bill here alone would be enough to make a grown man weep.
North gets on the phone with Sawyer immediately, gesturing to Kieran once North has confirmed it can’t be done remotely, and the Transporter pops out of the room to go and collect our mouthy Technokinetic.
Gabe leans down to murmur to me, “We should make bets on which one of them is going to nut themselves over this first, because my money is on Benson.”
Atlas throws him a look over his shoulder. “Are you looking at the same Draven I am right now? There’s no way that computers will do that much for Sawyer.”
My eyes drift over to Nox and get stuck on him as he starts tearing boxes open, leafing through the pages there and making piles as he begins to categorize them. He’s methodical about it, taking photos on his phone before he touches anything. It’s as though he is a fussy, old librarian making sure that none of us are going to fuck with the cataloging system.
“None of us would dare to approach him as he works. I like my head exactly where it is, and I have no intention of having it ripped off my shoulders,” Gryphon drawls as I sidle up to him.
“You’re reading my mind again,” I say as I tuck my hand in his, but he just shrugs at me.
“I don’t need to know what you’re thinking. This is going to take forever, but it’s best if Nox does it for himself. North might be able to help, but I’ve also seen Nox tear him a new asshole for doing it wrong, so it looks as though Kieran’s just gonna be Transporting all day today.”
I can only guess at how his second would react to that news, but it has me grinning anyway.
I glance down at the Gifted at our feet, but their faces are still blank. I don’t recognize any of them, but the dirty looks Atlas keeps throwing at one of them makes it easy to figure out which one had been the abusive dick to his sister.
If killing hundreds of people wasn’t already going to send me to hell, I am pretty sure my boot stomping on the fucker’s hand and snapping it underneath the thick heel might be enough to get me there.
Gabe roars with laughter as Atlas smirks at me, his eyebrows raised when I shoot him a sheepish grin. I turn to North to find him staring at me like he’s never seen me before. I send him a sweet, flirtatious smile as I shrug.
I would lie and say that my bond made me do it, but there’s a literal lie detector in the room, so instead I say, “I’m sick of fully grown men thinking that they can hurt the women around them without consequences. My only regret here is that he’s not coherent enough to know who did it to him and why.”
Gryphon clamps one of his big palms on the back of my head to gently pull me towards him, smacking a big kiss on my forehead as he mutters to me, “I’ll make sure he knows, Bonded. Don’t worry about that. I’ll make sure they all know.”
Kieran pops back into the room with an armful of Sawyer, snapping at him the moment his feet touch the ground. “You really should stop being a fucking pussy about this!”
Sawyer is immune to anyone’s censure, that shit just bounces straight off of the asshole. “I’m no use to anyone if I’m dead, dickhead! Setting up a remote working bug isn’t even that fucking hard! It would’ve taken me three minutes to figure out how to do it, and then I wouldn’t have had to come here! I told you guys that the Wastelands was the last time I was doing it. I’m not built for camping.”
I gesture around the room at him with a snarky smile. “No one’s camping here. Besides, if we had to, we could just sleep in one of the rooms upstairs. This place is practically a fucking castle. It’s not like you would have been roughing it.”
Atlas snaps at us both, “No one is sleeping here. We’re going home.”
All of the fun and games fizzle right out of me, but before I can get too far into my own head about overstepping, Nox calls out, “Black, you need to start Transporting these back to North’s offices. Lock them in the safe there as you go. No, not that one. Use your eyes, they’re clearly in piles! You need to take them in order, starting with that one. That one, Black! Prove to me that you have a functioning brain here.”
Atlas chuckles under his breath, and I bite down on the smile trying to form on my lips. Sawyer, ever the ass, bursts out laughing as he gets himself settled in front of the computer.
Nox starts really getting into a mood about everything, and Gryphon gives my hand one last squeeze before he goes off to Kieran’s rescue. He snaps at Nox to settle down before calling Atlas and Gabe over to help as well, each of them lifting as many boxes in their hands as they can. They keep them perfectly in the order that Nox needs them to be as Kieran Transports the three of them in one trip.
I feel as though I should be helping with that, but when I offer, North shakes his head at me, gesturing me over to stand with him instead. I’m secretly grateful. If Nox snapped at me like he is at the others, we’d either end up in a screaming mess of vitriol and rage… or I’d cry.
I’m leaning towards the rage, though.
It’s almost a surprise to me that Gryphon’s Gift keeps the prisoners under our control even as he Transports in and out of the house, but the Soothsayer’s words still bounce around in my mind. There is nothing we cannot do now that we are all Bonded. We are unstoppable together.
Maybe the gods are right, maybe we will all survive this.
North’s shadows are thick in the room, helping Nox’s with the surveillance while his younger brother is focused so heavily on the piles of information, and I find August sitting at my feet as I come to stop behind Sawyer at the computer. He’s dressed head to toe in Tac gear, standard procedure for coming out in the field, but I still have to contain the smirk that threatens to spread across my face at the sight of him.
He used to play football, so he’s not exactly a small guy, but I’ve spent so many months seeing him in sweatpants in front of a computer now that I’ve forgotten that he’s capable of this sort of thing. I still feel sorry for Aro as his smart mouth starts to run.
“You guys need to get Bassinger into some fucking therapy, because this is just the tip of the iceberg of the Resistance propaganda, and it’s psychotic. The boy definitely has some demons hiding somewhere in his head.”
I scowl at him, but North pops him on the back of the head before I get the chance to come to my Bonded’s defense. “Worry less about what’s happening in my Bonded Group and more about how you can get all of this to the Sanctuary as quickly as possible. I’m sure those three aren’t the only ones who want access to all of this.”
Sawyer rubs a hand over the sore spot and grumbles under his breath, “It’s already being transferred. You know, you could be slightly nicer to me. I was planning on spending the day with my Bonded, not cleaning up after this bullshit.”
I sidle up to him and bump his shoulder with my hip in a friendly gesture, except I do it a little too hard because of his shit-talking to my Bonded Group. “You were planning on spending the day sitting in your living room playing video games in your underwear. Don’t lie. Being productive for an hour isn’t going to kill you.”
He gasps at me dramatically, pressing a hand against his chest, though his eyes stay glued to the computer screen in front of him. “Knock on some wood, Fallows, I’m not having you curse me right now. I’m worth my weight in gold, you know. The rest of you barely know how to open a laptop, for fuck’s sake.”
I know a bit more than that, and North and Nox are both well adept at technology, but I let it slide as I shift down onto my haunches to scratch August behind the ears and love on him a little. He presses his head into my shoulder, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he enjoys the scratches I give him. When Sawyer makes the sound of disgust at my loving, I amp it up even more.
“Sage told me she saw that thing eat like a hundred people in the Wastelands, and you’re sitting there telling it how much you lovey-wovey it? That’s fucking creepy, Fallows. Honestly. You should tone it down a little.”
I shake my head at him and talk to August as though he hasn’t spoken. “Should we get the others out? Should we play with the snake for a little while and let it test out the room too? It’s been such a long time.”
“Draven, if you get the snake out for her, I swear on my Bond’s life, I will be out of this room so fucking fast, none of you will even know which direction I left in,” Sawyer says in a panicked tone, a tremble to his voice that makes me cackle like a witch.
North shoots him a glare and snaps, “Just finish it.”
Then he shoots me a look, one that is much kinder than his glare at Sawyer. “Later, Bonded. You can play with the shadows when we get home. They’re needed here right now.”
I want nothing more than to play with every inch of that man—it’s been too damn long. My bond also wants him and the shadows, everything, and I have to bury my face in August’s neck to stop them all from seeing the color as my cheeks heat. North speaks to me directly, blocking the others out as he amps me up even more.
Later, Bonded. I’ll give you everything you want.
They’re on the fourth trip ferrying boxes back and forth to the Sanctuary, and I’m busy looking over Sawyer’s shoulder at the goldmine of information on the computer screen, when there’s a crash.
Nox snaps viciously, “What the fuck are you doing, Shore?”
I look over to see that Gryphon has dropped the boxes that he was holding to take back to the Sanctuary. When I get a look at his face, I find that his eyes have shifted to black and his features have gone blank as the Soothsayer takes control of the vessel.
Everyone goes dead still for a second, and then I hear Sawyer gulp.
“What the fuck is that!?” he questions, drawing the words out too slowly as he goes stock-still, as though any little movement will trigger the god-bond into a murderous rampage in his direction.
It must be survival instinct, something so ingrained in him that he isn’t aware that he even has it. Still, it’s weird to see the cocky Technokinetic act in such a way. Even when he’s been worried about the Dravens’ shadows, he hasn’t acted like this.
I dart forward, my arms out as though I’m attempting to calm a skittish animal, but the Soothsayer isn’t interested.
“They’ve come.”
North and Nox go on high alert immediately, dozens of shadows falling from both of their bodies as they send out more reconnaissance and enlarge the circle of protection around us. Kieran widens his stance and palms a gun while Sawyer leaps to his feet and ducks closer to my Bonded that’s closest to him, which happens to be Atlas.
“Who are ‘they’ and can someone please tell me why the fuck Shore’s eyes are black right now? I thought he was safe from this sort of bullshit!”
I’d forgotten that we haven’t told everyone everything yet, not even the friends who’ve become our family. North and Gryphon had made the decision that this information is on a need-to-know basis. We weren’t expecting Sawyer to be in the thick of it right now, maybe then he’d have been let in on that little morsel of information.
He glances up to Atlas, opening his mouth and flinging out a hand, ready to demand answers, only to make a yelping noise and jump back from him.
His eyes have turned black as well.
One by one, the god-bonds are taking over.
As the situation goes from an information deep dive to the defensive, I want to apologize to Sawyer for involving him in this, but I feel my own bond waking up inside of my chest, stretching out until it fills my limbs. In the last moment before my own eyes shift to the voids as it takes over, I hear Kieran snap, “Get your ass over here, Benson. I’ll get you back to the Sanctuary while all hell breaks loose. There’s nothing we can do to help the gods.”
