Tragic Bonds (The Bonds that Tie Book 5)

They want what is mine.

The moment the Transporters start to appear, bringing with them dozens of men who would take my Bonded from me, I take control from my vessel, a roar bursting from his human lips as the shift takes hold. I come out to protect what is ours; mine and my vessel’s and the others who were made to worship and covet the god that walks with us.

The other Bonded begin to move into place to protect the girl and my bond who lives inside of her. There’s the chaos of war breaking out around us, too fast for my shifting eyes to take in, but I cannot be distracted from what needs to be done.

Kill them all.

Burn them all.

Dozens of Transporters are appearing around us, each carrying a Gifted with enough power that the Neuro begins to look around for an exit strategy.

There will be no exit for us now.

They have come for our Bonded, and we cannot let them take her from us. The god within him needs to awaken and take control before the vessel loses the fight for us.

My Bonded is covered by the Cleaver, his body an indestructible mass between her and our enemies. It has been a long time since I’ve been here, but the last time I was, the Cleaver was here too. We work well together, sure in our job to keep our Bonded safe.

He’s worthy to be left protecting her.

I move to take flight, entering the skies above them to gain an advantage.

The sound of gunfire rips through the air, unfamiliar to me, but the vessel knows it and directs me to move evasively, curving my body this way and that. The moment it stops, I turn my head back to spit fire on the row of tents at the center of the camp, taking out dozens of enemies inside as their screams fill the air.

Pride swells in my chest at the sounds.

The sound of my enemies dying torturous deaths for daring to go after my beloved Bonded. Mine. My Bonded. The Bonded I’ve waited millennia for, the one who completes me and is the reason I keep returning to this wretched place.

The heart that beats outside of my own chest.

Mine.

The rapid, pattering sound of the bullets starts again, but I’m already on a steady course, unable to veer away without risking hitting my Bonded and the others with the flames, so I stay on course and accept that they might hit me. I might be shot out of the sky. As long as my Bonded lives, it will be a good and worthy death.

The tiny pieces of lead hit my tail and one of my wings, stinging but not endangering my life. The three bullets that hit the soft underside of my belly are the real danger, and I let out a roar of pain as hot streams of blood rain out from me onto the battlefield below. It’s not a mortal wound, not right away, and so I circle back to take out another long line of tents. I have to be sure not to hit any of our own men and women as I spit out liquid fire.

There are hundreds of Resistance being transported in faster than my Bonded can pull the souls out of. The god within the vessel is consuming what it can and channeling power through to the rest of the Bonded as fast as it can, but the sheer volume of bodies is overwhelming.

I can’t stay up here forever, especially not with the wounds I have now.

I start my descent, curving my body so that my circle tightens up, and there’s another round of bullets fired into the air around me. The panic of the enemy at my approach is a palpable presence in the air.

This time, one hits me on my long neck, a larger target on me than my vessel, and the taste of blood floods my mouth and my lungs as the bleeding gets worse. Another roar tears out of my jaws, bitten out from between my fangs as I spiral faster to get back down onto the ground. I’d rather be there, tearing these puny humans apart with my claws and jaws than burning them.

I’d rather be close to my Bonded if the bullet wounds kill me and once again take me from her before our time.

My feet hit the ground, and I swipe my tail out at the men who run towards me, guns and hands raised, spearing two of them on my tail spike. The others all scream, but when they turn to run, I burn them alive with nothing more than a single breath of fire.

Pathetic, all of them.

Unfortunately, what they lack in skills and spine, they make up for in numbers.

More Resistance appear, Transporters popping in and out dozens of times as they bring with them the best of what the Resistance has to offer, all of them ready to kill us. Whether it’s for power or morals or simply for the pleasure of killing is irrelevant.

They want us all dead.

I take a deep breath, ready to burn them all, when suddenly, they all drop dead around me, their bodies crashing to the ground as one, soulless and gone.

My Bonded destroys them all.

Before I can exhale or catch my breath, the next wave of Transporters arrive with more Gifted, this wave even stronger than the last. This time, I’m hit with a long stream of ice as one of the Elementals strikes out at me, thinking faster than any of the others as they just stand there, looking at me in varying degrees of horror.

I breathe a long stream of fire at them, killing most of them in a single breath. As the flames die down, I find that two Gifted have survived it. One of them is untouched, even her clothing is unharmed, while the man standing only a few feet away is holding a battered shield to protect himself. They either knew about me already, somehow surviving the Wasteland, or they were counting on coming up against a Flame. Instead, they found a Shifter of mythic proportions.

I swing my tail around to spear them, but they’re both fast, quick to jump out of its path. They’re battle-trained, not just grunts to be used as fodder in the fight. Whatever they can do, it’s powerful enough that the Resistance poured their resources into them.

They might even come from a family worth noting, but I don’t give a shit about any of that. I only care that they’re on the wrong side of this fight, the side that wants my Bonded dead.

Or enslaved.

A burst of power hits me, my skin burning as it begins to stitch itself back together. My blood heats up, and my heart, now an eight-chamber monstrosity in my shifted chest, thumps so hard that I’m sure the Gifted fighting below must think that war drums have begun to beat.

My Bonded is healing me.

Both of the Resistance standing in front of me watch with horror as my skin knits back together as though I was never touched by their weapons, and they see the power of my Bonded right there in front of them. There’s no question that we are the most powerful Bonded Group. I’m sure they were debriefed before they got here and knew about it, but actually seeing the ability that my Bonded has to heal me, even from across the battlefield with death and destruction all around us, must be something else.

For the first time so far, I see the enemy hesitate.

I doubt that Davies had prepared them for this.

I swing my tail out again. This time, the very end of it clips the man with the shield, but he’s quick to twist his body, protecting himself from the spear as he falls to the ground with a grunt.

The untouched woman runs to one of the tents that is still on fire, yanking out one of the construction poles and hefting it onto her shoulder and hand as if it’s a spear of her own. She’s faster than I’m expecting, and when she launches the pole into the air towards me, I am barely able to move out of its path before it skewers me.

I’m a much bigger target down here, and though I want to stay on the ground and continue to fight in close quarters, I am most useful to them in the air, that way my Bonded won’t have to continue healing the damage done to me.

I need to take flight again, burn hundreds of them at a time.

I don’t want to run away from these two though, I’m not one to leave a job half done.

They’re not expecting me to be as agile as I am, and with a swipe of one of my clawed talons, I’m able to pin the man down, the satisfying crunch of his spine as it breaks beneath me sending a shiver across my wingspan. I press down even further, just to be sure he’s gone, and the way that his body bursts is both fatal and satisfying.

The woman turns to run to another tent to grab another pole, desperation making her movements jerky, but I use my wings to glide as I jump up, my neck stretching out as I catch her in my jaws and bite down. Her screams are ear-splitting as my mouth fills with her blood.

I don’t enjoy the taste of human flesh, but I don’t stop chewing until I’m sure she’s dead. Then I spit her back out onto the ground, nothing more than a bloodied mass of flesh and broken bones, and I stretch my wings out to take back to the air without a second thought.