WHEN OUR FEET touch the Sanctuary ground, I wait until Gryphon has eased the sickness in Oli before I take her hand and lead her away from the group for a moment.
My eyes roam over every inch of her that I can see to check for wounds, but she was guarded closely while we were there, and there isn’t a scratch or bruise to be found. Her eyes are bright as she looks me over the same way, a soft smile on her face, and I move to wipe a smear off of her cheek. It’s just a small spatter of blood, but I don’t want her to see and get upset when she returns home. I want nothing more than to fix every last one of these problems so I never have to see that anguish on her face ever again.
“How are you feeling? Tell me the truth, Bonded,” I say.
Her smile turns into a grin and she bounces on her heels. “I should probably feel bad about how good I feel, shouldn’t I? They were just regular souls, so I feel as though I’ve just slept for a month straight, and I’m ready for more. More hunting, I mean. I only wish we’d found that god-bond.
I nod my head, stripping my helmet and gloves off before throwing them on the ground, careless for once in my life because nothing matters to me except this perfect girl standing in front of me.
“I can’t go back up to the house with you just yet. There’s something I need to do first, but I need you to go up there and be safe.”
Her eyebrows furrow for a moment, but she nods her head, leaning forward to press her hands against my chest as the others begin to murmur behind us. I want to tell her before I do it, but I don’t want to start another argument with any of them either.
Instead, I lean forward to press our foreheads together and then send through just to her, I’m going down to speak to the god-bond. I’m going to offer it something to get more information out of it, and when I’m done with that, I’m going to have a meeting with the rest of the council. I need you to know that I’m getting rid of it. I’m done with that. Our people are done with that.
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t pull away from me, instead leaning in even further, like she’s trying to crawl under my skin. It makes me want to scream, not at her, but at everything else for keeping us apart. All I want to do is lift her into my arms and carry her back up to my office, lay her out on my desk, and eat her out for days. Worship her in the ways that only I can.
I’m a selfish and terrible man, but I want to lock the door and have her all to myself for as long as she will let me.
If that’s what you think is best. Just promise me that no one is going to try and stab you in the middle of the night for suggesting such a thing. That will definitely make my bond cranky.
I smile at her. As if anyone could get past all of us. As if anyone would try, Bonded.
She shrugs and then leans up on her tippy-toes to kiss me, a simple press of our lips together. But the moment she touches me, my control snaps. My arms band around her waist as I deepen the kiss, ignoring the groans behind me.
“We’re out in the open! You’re the one who calls the rest of us out for that,” Atlas snaps, and I find myself acting completely out of character when I do nothing more than lift a finger up to him, flipping him off.
I enjoy the giggle that Oli lets out at my expense. When she breaks away from me, breathing hard and her eyes twinkling, I glance over to find Kieran standing with his back to us both, his fingers in his ears as though he’s trying to completely remove himself from this situation.
The savage look on Gryphon’s face explains why, but Nox is staring at Oli with the sort of hunger that he only just allows himself to show around her, and it tempts me to abandon my plans and just drag her upstairs instead.
She gives me a coy smile, patting my chest for a minute. “We have time, Bonded. We have a whole lifetime ahead of us. Go and do what you need to do. I will wait for you back home.”
She’s the perfect Bonded for me and for everyone else, there’s no question of that.
I WASN’T EXPECTING the cells underneath the Tac Training Center to fill up so quickly with people that we can’t process because of their relationship to my Bonded Group.
As I walk down the long hallway, still covered in the blood and gore of the Wasteland, I peer into each of the cells at the people that are our biggest issues to work through at the moment.
Gryphon’s mom is in one of them.
Aurelia is in another, and Jericho is rooming next to her.
They stare back at me with varying levels of distrust as I walk past them, their eyes tracing over the filthy Tac uniform I’m wearing, a clear indicator of where I’ve been today and the lives I’ve taken. Gryphon’s mom stands from the bed and walks over to the glass, pressing her hand against it as she stares at me with distrust written all over her.
I would rather not have this confrontation with her right now, but I know how much she means to Gryphon and Kyrie. The fact that she had brought Oli’s parents’ ashes home without question for her son, even when the General had tried to refuse, also makes my steps slow a little. I bite my tongue and step forward to speak with her.
“Are there any other survivors? Anyone at all?”
I shake my head, the corners of my mouth turned down in disgust, but I try not to let it show, another concession. I shouldn’t have to hide the repulsion I have for this woman, but I do it for Gryphon.
“Why did you go? You could have stayed here, just refused to leave the house. He would still be here raging about it, and the rest of those people would be here too.”
It’s not fair of me to say. The entire catastrophe that has taken place isn’t exactly her fault, but some of the blame can be laid at her feet. With no one else left to share that burden, it’s placed all on her.
She sighs, looking thirty years older than she had only a week ago. “No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t listen to me about this. He never did. I can have all the regrets in the world about what happened, but he never would listen.”
Her eyes fill up with tears, and I have a sinking feeling in my chest. I’ve seen Bonds lose their Central before. I’ve seen it a lot, unfortunately. They turn into an empty shell. You can see that the person left behind has had everything good sucked out of them. All their past joy is forgotten and every future opportunity is torn away as well. There’s no hope for that light to return, no chance of ever feeling anything positive ever again.
It’s not like this.
This is the regular kind of grief, the grief that says you’ve lost someone very important to you. Someone you shared a life with and had children with. This is not like losing a piece of your soul, something so vital to you that without it, your life is rendered meaningless.
This is not how Gabe’s mother reacted when his father died.
Trying not to arouse her suspicions, I get out my phone and send a quick message to Nox, something I don’t usually have to do anymore thanks to the mind connection. I don’t want to force Oli to keep secrets from her Bonded though, and I don’t want Gryphon involved just yet.
I’ll rely on technology for now.
“Is there anything that I can do? Anything except sitting here in this cell and rotting?”
I give her a cold look and shake my head. “There really isn’t. Everyone that could be spared went out to the Wasteland to fight, but it was too late. You’ll just have to wait here until we can decide what we’re going to do with you.”
Her eyebrows dip down low at that, confusion clear on her face. “What are you going to do with me? It doesn’t make any sense to leave me in here. I was a victim of the Resistance out there, you know.”
I shrug back at her apathetically. “You’ll stay here until a decision is made. I can’t exactly let you out now that we all know what you think of my Bonded and the rest of the Draven Bonded Group, now can I? We can’t very well let someone who was part of the defection freely roam the streets. If harm came to my Bonded… Well then, you might finally see the monster I can be.”
Her jaw drops open a little as she glances around, but I continue, “Gryphon went home with our Bonded to break the news of the General’s death and what we found in the Wasteland to Kyrie. He deserves to get some rest after everything that’s happened. He doesn’t have time to come down here and coddle someone who left him.”
She closes her mouth and opens it again, no sound coming out.
I lean forward and lower my voice, my rage clear in my tone. “You did more than just leave your children. Every time the General snapped his fingers because he was so angry or jealous about something that his son was doing, instead of feeling proud of him, you left. You told Gryphon and Kyrie you were doing it to get him away from them, to give them a break, but you never even tried to stick around. Your son is far more understanding than I will ever be. Loyalty means everything, and you have plenty of it—just for the wrong person. Now you really can rot here for all I care.”
I turn on my heel, and she slaps her hand against the glass to get my attention. “You’re never going to pick someone else over your Bonded, Draven. You can’t judge me when you haven’t been put in that position yourself.”
I turn to look back at her, shaking my head, aware that Aurelia and Jericho are watching this entire exchange and finding that I just do not care anymore. I really have lost the ability to put up with people’s bullshit. Something inside me has snapped, and it won’t ever go back together.
“I will never have to make that decision because I will never let it come down to a choice between my Bonded or my child. I will sacrifice everything else instead. I will never, ever do that to my children, and I already know my Bonded feels the same way because she’s a good person… The very best. I will never put myself before them. All you’re proving is your weak character. I hope you rot down here, but know that if you do get out, you should stay very far away from me, because it was not at my request. I will let my shadows consume you the moment they see you.”
I stalk back down the hallway, ignoring the challenge in Jericho’s eyes as I do, the way that he leans against the wall separating him from his Bonded.
I hate the whole lot of them.
Sometimes I wish that we could fill this entire space up with gasoline and light a match just to be done with it all. Some things aren’t that easy.
I find the god-bond sitting at the small table, his palms flat against the wood as he watches me enter the space. He doesn’t try to speak to me or comment on the little display he’s just watched. He just stares until finally, with a sigh, I reach out to the Crux, offering him my body in exchange for the information that I require.
THE CRUX
THE GOD-BOND LOOKS TOO healthy sitting in the seat across from me as I take over my vessel. It looks too well-fed, too taken care of here, too pampered, considering the threat that it is to my Eternal.
I raise this complaint with my vessel, but it gives me the paltry excuses of the human folk, things like ‘the Geneva Convention’ and ‘acts of war’ and ‘setting a good foundation of expectations’ and ‘making us different from our enemy’.
I do not care for any of that.
I especially do not care about the mistreatment of those who would harm us. They deserve death, blood-soaked and gory. They deserve pain and torture before my Eternal eats their souls and turns them into nothing more than a life source for us, something to increase our power and our hold on this earth.
They deserve the worst that we’ve got.
“I thought you had been here for longer? You’re not very good at hiding how you feel yet, or hiding the robot nature.”
I incline my head at it. “We’re not here to discuss me. You have information that I want. You can either give it to me without blood and pain or we can make this very fun for me and very unpleasant for you.”
He stares at me for a moment, looking me up and down. “Why do you and the Corvus always look the same? Why are you always born into the same family, untouchable to the rest of us? The Draven bloodline has protected you all for generations. Even when the others tried to stop you from coming, you still found a way.”
They were behind the manipulation of the Bonded Groups, the pairing of Gifted to people who were not right for them in an attempt to stop us from cycling.
All it did was make us stronger.
The vessels that we were born into now are more powerful than they ever have been before. I brought the shadow creatures to my vessel, but they are not the only weapon in our arsenal now. I know that the Corvus has even more abilities lurking within him. I don’t know how my brother managed to win over his vessel so quickly, but he has access to it all without there ever being a fight.
The truth of the matter is that my vessel doesn’t want me taking over, so I have not learned yet how to act in the way that the Gifted do in this time. I haven’t had the opportunity to mimic them. Instead, I have nothing but the long and shifting sands of time under my belt, the old and tired soul who desperately hopes that this is it. That this is the last time I will be here. That this will be the one perfect lifetime that I will get to have with my Eternal before we all go to rest together in whatever comes next, finally finished cycling.
“Are you going to answer my questions or not?”
The god-bond in front of me sighs and shakes his head, muttering under his breath, “You haven’t even asked any yet. Do you know how to make friends, or is that too hard for you in this lifetime as well?”
“I don’t need friends. I have a Bonded Group and the Eternal. That is all I need. Tell me which gods are awake, which gods are here. Tell me who has already woken and died. Tell me everything you know in this lifetime.”
He sighs again, splaying his hand out on the table and staring down at the scars there as though there are a hundred stories behind them, a whole life that he has lived here on this earth this time along with his vessel.
I care for none of it.
“When I woke, there were six of us. Now there are only four.”
My eyes narrow at it. “Including yourself.”
He nods. “They killed my Bonded, and your group took out another. They were hunting for you from the beginning. They knew you were due back, but none of them guessed that you’d all arrive together. They made a mistake.”
Of course they did, but I cannot blame them.
The Draconis was not due to wake again for another hundred years or so, his cycling taking much longer than anyone else’s. The fact that he has awakened in the first place is a miracle of its own.
“That’s why they took the Eternal and didn’t just kill it. They wanted to see how far they could push things, what they could force it to do. They really didn’t think the rest of you would find it before they had taken their fill.”
The room around me explodes into darkness, the shadows forming so suddenly and completely around us both that the god-bond is choking on them. The black smoke curls around him, smothering him, engulfing everything until there is nothing but perfect night around him, the sort of darkness that is terrifying in its completeness.
“Which one? Which one took it and did that to it? They are all marked for death, but I need to know which one.”
It makes a gurgling sound as the words squeeze out. “Pain. Pain has always been the ringleader. It’s always pulled the strings and done everything it could. It doesn’t just wield pain. It is pain. It cares for nothing but suffering for all of us. It doesn’t want its Bonded. It wants everything to burn, over and over and over again. While the rest of us search for completeness, it wants nothing but destruction. The last cycle, it killed its own Bonded, and if its Bonded comes back again in this lifetime, I’m sure it will do the same. It wants nothing. Madness like that needs to be dealt with swiftly, or it will swallow the rest of us whole.”
My vessel agrees completely, eager to be done with all of this.
“Tell me how you did it,” the god-bond says as the shadows leak away, slowly drying up as they filter back into my body.
He’s shaking like a leaf, his teeth chattering together. Even in this state, he begs me for what he truly needs. “How did you all wake up together? How did you keep the Eternal safe? How? I just want my Bonded. I just want what you have.”
I shake my head slowly. “You’ll never have what I have. When we are done with the rest of them, the Eternal will kill you and consume you too. You’ll never cycle again.”
I stand to leave and he stands with me, his hands flying out from his sides. One of the Gifted watching from their own cell startles at the sight of it. “I’m trying to help you! There’s no use in killing me.”
“You said it yourself… You’re tired. You want this to be over with. We’re going to make sure that that happens. This time, we’ll make sure it’s permanent. You should be thanking us. The time of the gods warring on this earth is over. There will be nothing but peace for my Eternal.”
He shouts again, trying to get my attention to beg for his life, to stop me, a hundred other things, but I let go of control of my vessel as we exit the cell, creeping back into the dark recesses within his mind as I plan.
I plan to deal with everything to give the Eternal a better life. The life that it deserves, where it knows nothing but joy and pleasure, a life that they both deserve.
The Eternal and the perfect vessel it lives within.
Both of them mine.
