I WAKE UP WRONG.
I know exactly what it is even before I come to properly, the out-of-body feeling that’s slowly becoming familiar to me. It’s the sensation of knowing that I am not in my own vessel anymore, but I’m still safe, nestled happily within one of my Bonded. I’m comfortable and loved and home.
I hate how much I love it.
It’s an invasion of privacy, at the very least, and a violation at worst. I feel guilty even though I have no idea how I keep doing it or how I would stop doing it. It’s not like I’ve ever thought to myself ‘Hey, this nap would be a great time to go mind-hopping’, for God’s sake!
The only upside is that I instantly know whose mind I’m in. Gabe was perfectly happy for me to be here last time; I doubt much has changed since then. At least I know that I’m not going to trip over any nightmares in here, ones that Nox in particular would hate me having to see and experience alongside him.
I hear the familiar sound of the rumbling and know right away that it’s the sound of the Draconis sleeping, tucked away safely somewhere.
I sit down once again, not really understanding what exactly it is I’m sitting on or what anything around me is as I wait for my Bonded to appear.
It doesn’t take long.
“Everything okay?” he asks as he sits down next to me, and I smile up at him.
“Of course. I don’t know why I’m here, but I’m happy to be.”
“Something in me obviously called out to you. I’m sorry, Bonded.” He sighs, rubbing his head on my knees as he all but collapses on top of me.
We’re both going through the energy drain that comes with our god-bonds’ abilities, him still trying to adjust to the Draconis and its eating patterns while I am going through the aftermath of consuming not one but two god-bond souls.
I still don’t want to think about it.
The very idea of it still fills me with a sense of dread, my stomach roiling as though I’m allergic to it. I feel as though I’ve been tainted in some way, as silly as that sounds. It doesn’t matter how it makes me feel though, all that matters is that the god-bonds can’t come back now.
They can never come back.
So whatever it does to me, it’s worth it.
“I don’t think we should wake up,” Gabe says under his breath, startling a laugh out of me.
“I’m not sure the rest of the Bonded Group would agree with that idea, Bonded,” I say in a stern voice, a grin still flitting across my face jokingly, but he grimaces a little back.
“I’m not so sure about that. Not at the moment, anyway.”
The smile slowly slides off of my face, and I glance around, but I still can’t really see anything about the area we’re in. “What do you mean? What happened?”
He licks his lip and then forces a smile on his face, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It doesn’t matter right now, Bonded. We can deal with it when we wake up. Our Bonded Group is safe; don’t worry about that.”
The Bonded Group.
He just says that and nothing else. There’s a million other things that it could be, all of them sparking panic that floods my brain until I feel as though I’m going to vomit.
“I saw them get Kieran out of the rubble. I saw Felix Heal him enough for the Transporter to take them home, and he was okay,” I say, the words falling out of me in a stream.
Gabe fits his hands across my face, drawing my head down to his as he murmurs, “Kieran is alive. Sage, Felix, Wick, and Riley are all alive. They made it back. I shouldn’t have said anything, Bonded. Just rest now.”
My heart rate slows a little but not enough to distract me from everything that he isn’t saying. There’s a huffing noise again and he stands, pulling me to my feet. “Come see the Draconis with me. Let me distract you with my bond for a little bit. You know he’ll want some belly rubs if you’re in here.”
I don’t want to be distracted. I want to know what’s going on, but I follow him anyway, feeling selfish for my ability to stay ignorant while my Bonded is so conflicted.
“We’re asleep anyway, Oli. There’s nothing you can do. Just come and say hello to my bond, and enjoy the last few moments before we return and face it together.”
I take a deep breath and turn in his mind, following him into the deep, dark recesses until I find the beast waiting there. It’s crouched down as though it’s in a small space, but that doesn’t make much sense to me.
Nothing here does.
The moment it spots me, its eyes glue themselves to me, drinking me in hungrily. If I wasn’t so sure about him, I would assume I was about to be eaten. The all-consuming need the Draconis has for its Bonded is certainly not something to take lightly. It craves me in this form and every other.
“Do you think the Draconis can only shift into a dragon? Or do you think it’s just its favorite form?” I query as I lean down to drape myself over the beast, stroking its scales and enjoying the oddly velvety feel of them.
It rumbles happily, slowly moving its head side to side as it gets comfortable with my weight. I would move and find a better angle but the moment I try, it rumbles again, unhappy to lose contact with it in any way.
Gabe watches us both, enjoying the interaction without having to be a part of it. “It’s just its favorite form, the one that comes most naturally to it, and I suppose it’s the one that does the most damage. I can still shift to anything that I want if I take the reins, but my bond always chooses that one.”
I nod slowly, reaching out to scratch behind the Draconis’ ear, and again, the rumbling happiness vibrates against my belly. I take a deep breath and shut my eyes, letting myself soak in the moment as I feel my body get heavy the way it always does right before I wake up.
“I love you, Bonded,” Gabe says to me suddenly, his eyes tight and worried as he watches me.
I slip my eyes open for long enough to reply, “I love you, too. Whatever happened… that’s not going to change.”
The smile he gives me this time is sincere. “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about them breaking you. I’m worried about you losing something important.”
If my life has taught me anything, it’s that as long as it’s not one of my Bonded, I’ll survive. It might hurt a whole lot, but most things do.
I’ll survive it.
Gabe looks at me again and sighs, turning his head to look upwards. It’s the last image in my mind as I drift off to sleep, leaving the safety of his mind and returning once more to my own body, waking up to discover exactly what he was trying to protect me from, if only for a moment.
I WAKE up in my own bed back at the Sanctuary, nestled up against Gabe’s bare chest, his breathing slow and even as he sleeps.
I stare down at him for a moment, and he must feel my eyes on him because, with a quiet groan, his own eyes flutter open. He looks at me the same way he does every day when we wake up together, that same soft wonder that he hasn’t just found me… he’s got me. We’re here together, and the simple pleasure of being with each other is everything to us both, the only thing that matters in the entire world.
Then whatever it is that’s happened filters back into his mind, and I see him slowly shut down as those shadows darken his eyes. Slowly, the joy and wonder disappears, and it’s replaced with the exact emotion I don’t want to see there.
Grief.
“What’s happened, Gabe? Tell me.” My voice comes out as a rasp.
He swallows and opens his mouth and then shuts it again, swallowing once more. My heart begins to beat like crazy in my chest, and he carefully brings an arm around my waist to hold me against his body, fitting us together as though he can hold my mind together the same way.
“The god we left behind, the one in the cells? It got out while we were gone.”
My heart thumps wildly, and though he can feel it against his own chest, I’m sure, Gabe continues ripping the Band-Aid off in one swipe.
“He used his Gift to do it, waiting until everyone was being fed down there. He killed the operative who went down there. He got Xander to shoot himself so that on tape, it looks like a suicide, but we know better. When the operative didn’t go back up… Vivian went looking for him. He checked the cameras, but he could only see Xander’s feet. We don’t know what he was thinking, going by himself.”
My heart leaps into my throat.
Gabe swallows again, his voice coming out all wrong. “The god-bond killed Vivian. The moment he entered the basement, he took him over and killed him, then it killed itself.”
My eyes fill with tears, my mind blanking out, the low buzz of white noise taking over. Gabe just keeps on talking, passing along all of the heartbreaking, devastating details to me.
“Sawyer found the bodies when he was doing a security scan of all of the areas. When he rechecked the security cameras, he found the god-bond muttering to itself in another language. When we arrived back, Nox translated it—it was an old dialect of Latin, some remnant of his time on Earth before. He figured out that we were consuming god-bonds. Their souls, I mean.”
He says ‘we’, but we both know he means me.
I can’t find the words to say that to him though. I can’t find anything in my jumbled mess of a brain.
“His Bond was already killed and returned to the cycle. He didn’t want it returning, only to be lost without him, and so he killed himself to be put back in the cycle as well. He just took Vivian and Xander out with him when he went.”
As per usual, the gods don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves and their own agendas.
The tears start streaming down my cheeks, and Gabe curses under his breath, wiping at them as he murmurs, “Unser was the one who went down there after them, before Sawyer could sound the alarm. He already knew Vivian was dead because of Adella’s reaction. He thought it was a heart attack or something, but when he got down there and saw it all… he went off. He’s a Trigger, you know, so he took out half of the training center. The cells were left standing, thanks to all of the work that Atlas and North had done to make sure that they could contain Aurelia. We didn’t lose any more operatives in the explosion, thank God, but everything is a mess. I Transported back here, and when I saw what had happened, I stayed awake long enough to make sure that there was nothing else I could do to help. The rest of the Bonded Group are down there now, figuring it out.”
“Figuring what out? How can you ‘figure out’ something like this?” I croak, and Gabe shrugs, a miserable look on his face.
“I know. I know there’s no way around it. I know that there’s nothing that any of us can say or do. What we’re figuring out is where to go from here. How to best support Adella, and Vivian’s kids and Unser. How to continue the training that needs to happen without a training center, because no matter who dies around here, we have to keep going.”
“That’s not fair… he deserves more than that.”
Gabe nods. “I know. We all know it, but what else can we do? This isn’t just a job for us, you know, this is life. None of us like it. None of us want to live it, but here we are.” He lets out a long breath again and presses the palms of his hands against his eyes. “Everyone blames themselves. North and Gryphon blame themselves for not letting the god-bonds kill it in the first place. Nox is furious that we didn’t know it could still use its power even with the upgrades to the room. We’re all feeling more than a little deflated about this one.”
I feel completely different from what he’s describing. It’s not deflation or even grief. It’s almost an out-of-body experience, the numbness that comes with too much loss culminating in losing someone who was very important to me.
I realize now how much I didn’t know about Vivian. I’m sure my Bonded Group knew more about him, having spent years with the older man. I only spent a handful of months with him learning how to trust my Bonded Group, learning how to defend myself, and learning how to grow a backbone in the shortest amount of time possible.
He had faith in me when no one else did.
He saw something in me and liked it enough to watch over me and stop people from giving me shit around him. He pushed me harder than anyone else, formed me into the person that I am right now, though I’m sure he would never say so.
“How many kids did he have?”
It seems like such a paltry question to be asking now, something that I should have asked ages ago instead.
“Their Bonded Group have three. They never really cared about paternity, but two of them were biologically his. Two girls and a boy. They’re all only a little bit younger than us. Adella made them both wait years before having kids until they were out of active duty and into a permanent position. She didn’t want to raise the kids completely by herself.”
A sob wrenches out of my throat. ”Well, I guess she’s going to now, isn’t she?
Gabe shakes his head. “She has Unser; that’s something. Trust me, I know.”
I stare at him for a moment and see the glossiness to his eyes as he processes all of this right here along with me. The loss of someone he respected as well.
I nod my head, swallowing roughly. “So what are we going to do about Vivian? What can I do right now to help? I can’t just… sit here.”
“I think Adella wants to bury him here. She has no intention of leaving, and she knows how much this place meant to him. As for our next move, I’m sure North has something up his sleeve. We all know this goes back to the Pain god. Three out of four are gone now. We only have one left.”
I nod my head again, and then I press my forehead against his for a second, murmuring under my breath, “Gene better hope he doesn’t wake up again in my lifetime. I will never forget this. I will hunt him and the rest of his Bonded Group down until my last day. I swear to God, I’ll eat his soul without a fucking word of complaint.”
