Forced Bonds (The Bonds that Tie Book 4)

The meeting with the returned TacTeams is less frustrating than sitting in on one of North’s council meetings, but it’s still an exercise in restraint.

All of the men here deserve my respect.

Every last one of them has chosen a career that involves them risking their lives over and over and over again for members of our community, not all of whom respect and appreciate that. The problem is that all of them think guns first, brains second, which is the entire reason that North, Gryphon, and Vivian are so high up within leadership roles.

They think like tacticians instead of soldier grunts.

“Just go in, set your Bonded off, get her to do whatever it is that she does, sucking souls out of all the men like some sort of—”

“I’m going to stop you right there before you say something that has a shadow creature ripping your head off your fucking shoulders,” Vivian says, cutting in.

Marcus stares over at him before flicking his eyes in North and Gryphon’s direction, finally sensing that he might have worded things a little bit on the disrespectful side. I’m sure I look nothing but bored, but he still gulps when his eyes land on me as well.

There’s nothing quite as terrifying to anyone who has met North and I before than staring down a Draven. Something useful our father had left behind was a legacy of rabid shadow creature beasts, and while that isn’t the case, the perception of them being that way sure does come in handy at such meetings.

“Our Bonded Group is newly completed. That means that our powers have not had the chance to settle yet. It was only at the Wasteland yesterday that Gabriel Ardern discovered what his power growth had done for him. It is still a risk to have my Bonded go.”

Marcus rubs a hand over his chin and speaks again, reckless as ever. “I have heard rumors that he shifted into something else. I didn’t think the boy could give us any more surprises.”

The boy.

I reach forward to grab the bottle of water in front of me, wishing desperately that it was whiskey to take away some of the sharp edges inside of me. There will always be a level of superiority in this man when it comes to anyone that he deems below him, and that grates on my last nerve.

While his Gift isn’t at any of our levels, he has years of experience on the TacTeams, and it means that he is quick to lord that over anyone around him. The fact that Gryphon hasn’t called him out and thrown his own weight around is a minor miracle, especially considering that Marcus is his uncle.

Family reunions are never pleasant.

North clenches his teeth together for a second, visibly calming himself down before speaking again. “I’m not saying we aren’t going to go in. I’m merely saying that we need to have a plan before we do.”

Vivian rubs a hand over his short, cropped hair, looking a decade older than he had a week ago. Watching his Bonded feel the pain of Unser’s torture had clearly been an ordeal for him overnight, and he looks as though he is ready to fight alongside us. I know that North would prefer for him to stay behind at the Sanctuary and keep an eye on things here, but I get the feeling that this time he is going to insist.

One does not merely say no to Vivian Wentley.

“It’s not that difficult. There’s only one Transporter spot to get into any of the Wastelands—”

“The camps are different though,” North cuts Marcus off. “They don’t have Shields on them in the same way and, though I’m sure there is added security wherever they’re keeping Unser, they’re not going to waste that many people while they are on the offensive elsewhere.”

“Do we know which camp they’re keeping him at?”

North’s eyes flick over to me at my question and he gives a sharp nod, but it is Vivian who answers for me. “It’s the one they kept your Bonded at. That’s the one that Davies prefers, where he keeps all of his ‘special’ and ‘important’ guests.”

My bond does not like that. I can feel the shadows in the room and darkening, and I take a moment to check in with the bond and tell it to calm down.

I’ve become an expert at reasoning with it.

We will go to this camp, we will set the creatures on everyone. We will torture the man responsible for these things. We will do everything that it wants to do, but we cannot start that here.

There’s an audible gulp out of one of the men further down the table, and North and Gryphon both stare at me for a second, subtly enough that no one else can tell that they’re both checking in with me in a very shocked manner.

Surprise, my bond is obsessed with the girl and the god living inside her.

Things move quickly as soon as it’s been agreed on that our Bond Group will go with a smaller TacTeam to retrieve Unser and take out the Resistance camp. We had lost more than thirty operatives at the Wastelands, a number far too large for how limited we already are, and the decision was made to send in a smaller but more powerful group.

As I suspected, Vivian refuses to be left behind this time.

None of us want to leave Marcus in charge but in the end, it comes down to splitting up the Bonded Group to stop that from happening, or having everyone together.

I know which I would rather, and I have a suspicious feeling that when we arrive at the camp and come face to face with Silas Davies, the man who was responsible for kidnapping and torturing Fallows, it will not be North or I facing him.

Our bonds will insist on taking over.

With such a small group going, it’s easy to coordinate and move out. I change into my Tac gear at North’s offices before everybody else arrives and triple check that all of my weapons are clean, strapped in correctly, and fully loaded. Then I run through all of my shadow creatures, checking in with each of them and making sure that there aren’t any signs of danger or weariness in them. It’s a necessity, especially since I’ve only had a few hours of sleep on the couch at North’s office between arriving home and heading off to the TacTeam meeting.

I can’t shut my eyes without seeing Fallows’ bond standing there in that robe and beckoning me towards her. She looked and smelled as though she had been thoroughly fucked by every last one of her Bonded, all of them except me. It had meant that it was a nightmare trying to go to sleep with my bond warring inside of me to go back to her.

I couldn’t though.

I couldn’t go back to her any more than I could have stepped into that room.

Azrael lets me know that they are on their way back to me, Fallows bouncing happily between Gabe and Bassinger as she celebrates her victory of being right about the girl we’d brought back from the Wastelands.

Another Bonded Group put back together by her intuition.

She’s smarter than I could ever give her credit for. Even without her bond, she pieces things together that other people just can’t see.

She is the perfect match for each of her Bonded. For North’s desires to love and protect and covet, but also needing someone who can go toe to toe with him. For Gryphon’s desires to have someone who can keep up with him and stand with him against anything that might threaten the Bonded Group. For Gabe’s need to have companionship and a friend as much as a lover. And for whatever it is that Bassinger requires, she clearly fits that mold perfectly.

There’s also a part of me that thinks that maybe if things had gone a little differently in my life, she might have been perfect for me too. Except, the hole in my chest that she should have fit perfectly into was destroyed, blown apart, taken to with a pair of scissors until there was no one on this earth that could take up the space there. Though I’ve blamed her over and over and over again, because of that stupid word, Bonded, I already know who’s to blame for it, and it’s not the little white-haired girl.

So I’ll leave her my shadow creature, the only part of me that can treat her the way she deserves, and I’ll stay as far away from her and the Bonded Group as I can. As far away from the people who understand me, love me, and accept me as I possibly can, because I know that my brother’s patience is wearing thin, even if he refuses to admit it.

Gryphon arrives first, always eager to get ready and be on the road as swiftly as possible. He ducks into the locker room to grab his gear and then comes back out to stand with me.

As he pulls his uniform off, he glances over his shoulder at me. ”Did you hear about the girl we brought back? She’s Sawyer and Gray’s Central Bond. You guys did good, finding her and spotting what she was.”

I shrug and run a hand through my hair. “Your Bonded found her, my bond just backed her up. For all I knew, she could have held information that we needed and that was it.”

Gryphon nods slowly and glances out the door quickly to make sure that we’re alone and he has time to say this. “She has a brother at those camps. We need to find him and bring him back as well.”

I do not like complications, and I definitely don’t want to be bringing more potential risks back to the Sanctuary.

Before I can protest, Gryphon mumbles, ”He’s five, Nox. What do you think they’re doing to a five-year-old in that place?”

I don’t want to think about what they’re doing to a five-year-old. I don’t want to admit that I know what they’re probably doing to a five-year-old, and I know for sure that I will not be returning today without that five-year-old.

There is a burst of noise as Oli, Gabe, and Atlas arrive together, all three of them bouncing off of each other’s energies as they stumble into the room.

Gabe grins and waves at both of us before ducking into the changing room with the lockers in it that are set aside purely for us, and Fallows looks slightly awkward as she glances between us with a smile and scurries after him.

Bassinger stares me down like he’s thinking about how exactly he’d cover up my murder, but that’s run of the mill for him, so I don’t give him any of thereaction that I’m sure he’s so desperately after.

When the locker room door has been closed and locked behind them, I turn back to Gryphon. “So the targets are Unser and the boy… Do we know if there are any other children there? Any other priorities?”

Gryphon turns back to me as he pulls the bulletproof vest on. He has a different type this time that covers a little more of his shoulders, and I’m sure it comes from knowing just how badly he’d panicked his Bonded, badly enough that she’d found Kieran and dragged everyone to the Wastelands after us.

It’s a good thing she did too, because he would be dead otherwise, maybe North and I as well.

“Aro didn’t know if there were any more children. They were separated as soon as they were taken to the camps, but he’d been brought in a few times to where they were processing her and used as a threat to get her to comply. The only reason they got her into the Wastelands to begin with was by using him.”

I know I don’t need to question it, but I do anyway. “And you’re sure she’s not lying about anything? There was no whiff of deception on her? Being a Central Bond doesn’t mean that she’s not a sympathizer being sent to feed us false information.”

Gryphon looks around again, which piques my interest. “I didn’t just use my lie detection on her. I looked into her memories. I filtered through every little part of her life for the last six months, and there is no way that she is lying. I don’t think even Davies himself could have planted that sort of complexity into her brain.”

I nod, and then a slow smirk stretches over my lips. “But you can.”

He looks up at me in shock and I shrug. “I know you think that I haven’t noticed any of your boundary-pushing with how far your Gift has grown. But I’ve definitely noticed some things.”

He bites his cheek as though trying to smother the grin, but he can’t. “I am going to tear Silas Davies apart, starting with the innermost part of his mind, and then I’ll work my way to his limbs.”

It sounds like a perfect plan, except…

I reach up a hand and he watches as my palm slowly turns black, spreading down to my fingertips and staining my skin until it slowly creeps up my neck.

“Only if you get to him first.”