Blood Bonds(The Bonds That Tie #3)(45)

He grunts and catches my elbow, turning me slightly to face him more fully. “It’s not meddling, you’re practically screaming in my ear with your thoughts. It woke me up. I’m not doing it on purpose.”

I roll my eyes and murmur back to him, hoping North will go back to sleep, “Well then, teach me how to stop mind yelling at you. I should be allowed a little privacy, right?”

He raises an eyebrow back. “I would say yes, but I just found out you’ve somehow managed to astral project and weren’t going to tell me, so maybe we’ll keep you like this until you learn to trust me a little more.”

“Did he just say ‘astral project’? I need a coffee,” North says in a sleepy rasp that does things to my body. He shouldn’t be able to do these things to me without even trying, that’s not fair at all. I watch as he rolls out of the bed in one smooth movement and walks into the bathroom, the tiny boxer briefs he’s wearing doing nothing to help with calming my raging hormones.

This has to be a Bonded thing, right? I’m not going to be this horny forever… right?!

I glance at Gryphon and shove a pillow in his smug face when I find him smirking at me. “Shut up. Shut up and tell me how to get you out of my head. My brain has been shitty the last few days and… well, if I had’ve ended up in Gabe’s head or Nox’s, I probably would have told you about it, but you’re all on Team Atlas-Is-A-Spy, so I thought maybe we should figure that out first.”

Gryphon glances towards the bathroom door and then murmurs back to me quietly, “If you have any control over the ability at all, don’t ever try it with Nox. If you never listen to another word I say, Bonded, just listen to this; stay out of Nox Draven’s head.”

Even with the quiet, gentle tone he’s using, a chill takes over me as I nod back at him, swallowing roughly. “I didn’t do anything to end up in Atlas’ head in the first place. I just went to sleep and then woke up staring at his bedroom wall feeling so goddamned bored my skin was crawling. It took me a full minute to realize where I was and… I just spoke with him for a minute. That’s it.”

Gryphon nods slowly and North reappears from the bathroom, still looking tired and frowning over being conscious. It’s weird to see him like this because even when he slept in my bed before I went to the camps, I would always wake up first and head down to the gym before he woke up. I don’t even know what time he usually wakes.

Except for that one time that Penelope showed up—

Gryphon nips that thought spiral right in the bud and interrupts me. “Nope, we’re not thinking about her right now, and you’re definitely not going to get out of this conversation by thinking about things that make your bond murderous and send you both on a rampage.”

North moves a panel on the wall and a coffee machine appears, Rich Man Syndrome at its finest, and I make grabby hands at him just so that he’s clear on whether or not I want some. I highly doubt he has any decent flavors or creamers in there, but I’d take a black coffee at this point.

That’s how I really know that the power fog has lifted.

“It probably didn’t help that you Bonded in the middle of healing, that would’ve slowed things down. What extra powers do you have? Can you feel anything yet?”

I struggle to sit up, careful not to disturb August from where he’s lying on his back with his paws in the air and snuffling in his sleep. Brutus is tucked into his side and even though he’s awake, he’s not moving or disturbing his brother. It’s very sweet, and I fish around under my pillow until I can grab my phone and attempt to take a photo of them both.

The photo comes out black.

Like, completely black, as though I was holding my finger over the lens. I frown at it and try again, but the image still comes out with nothing. What the hell is that?

“Oli, this is important.”

I huff at Gryphon and take the cup of coffee that North holds out to me, juggling my phone around a bit. “Nothing. Nothing except waking up in Atlas’ head. Like, fully inside his mind. I could hear everything he was thinking and, if I wanted to, I could’ve seen any of his memories. Before you ask, I didn’t look at anything. That’s a gross invasion of privacy, and even though he told me to, I didn’t. I believe he’s on our side. I might not know all of his story yet, but I’ll hear it from him, not by rustling through his mind like a freaking psycho.”

North shares a look with Gryphon and then takes a long gulp of his own coffee, stalking back over to the bathroom with the cup still in his hand. When the shower starts up, I have to sigh at the sound of it, hot water and a coffee. He’s living my dream right now.

“You could live your dream too, you know. You’d probably be making a bunch of his dreams come true too,” Gryphon murmurs, and I shove another pillow in his face.

Then I take my coffee and do exactly what he suggested.





Chapter Fourteen





Gabe


Pulling my bike up to my parents’ house gets weirder and weirder the longer I live at the Draven’s mansion.

It’s not home anymore.

I feel guilty even thinking that, because my parents did everything to give me the best possible childhood. You only have to look at half the kids around me in my classes at Draven to know that I’m lucky. Half of them were brought up by parents so traumatized by what happened in the riots that they became overprotective to the point of smothering.