Forced Bonds (The Bonds That Tie, #4)(23)

I lift open the flap and hunch over to duck into the tent. I have to almost immediately find a spot to sit down. This thing is only made to keep us dry and unseen, not at all to keep us comfortable.

What did you find? Gryph says before I have the chance to address either of them.

He’s stripped off his jacket but he’s still fully armed. He’ll sleep that way too, always ready to wake with a gun in his hands. It’s saved our asses more than a few times. There’s a weariness etched into his face that comes with him using so much of his Gift, even with the extra boost he has thanks to his bonding.

I push the answer to the surface of my mind, the area that we had learned years ago that he’ll find without having to pry, and the only acceptable way I’ll allow him to use his Gift on me. He knows that boundary and has always respected it.

A lot of Resistance support and treachery, but not the targets. There are signs of them in the house though. I doubt they’ll be gone for longer than a day. His contact lenses are in the bathroom, and there’s a bag with her ID in one of the closets that I doubt she’ll just leave behind.

He nods firmly and sips at the bottle of water in his hands. When he sees me look at it, he leans over to grab another one out of his bag, tossing it over to me.

I down it in one go, and then finally, I look over at his Bonded.

Her hair sticks up in a fuzzy little halo of silver around her head, the cost of her Gift that no one has really commented on yet. The photo we’d originally been given of her showed a dark-haired little girl. Whatever experiments the Resistance had done to her, the testing of her abilities and the limits of what a Render like her could do, had leached all of the color away from her hair, and sometimes I wonder if it’s done it to her skin as well. She’s unnaturally pale, a stark comparison to the olive tones of North and I, but even Bassinger’s Eastern European lineage skin has more tone than she does.

The effects of a Render’s Gift is something I’ve been researching from the moment I’d found out that she was lying about being Gift-less. I’d known from the beginning that she was lying, everything I’d done was to bait the Gift out of her. Having her here was already a threat, but having her here with no idea of what she was truly capable of?

Unacceptable.

If she’d also had the shadows or something like them, there was a chance she could get the better of me, and there was no way I was sticking around for that. No way. North knew it too, he’d spent weeks telling me there was no way she could ever have a curse like ours.

Then her eyes turned black.

Then her bond had a voice of its own, a sentient being lives inside of her that makes its own decisions the way that mine can, if it so chooses. Every little mutter of reassurance my brother had given me was proven wrong. His little Bonded was exactly the threat I knew she would be.

Rahab sets a paw on my leg, sensing the dark recesses that my mind has wandered into, and I reach down with one hand to stroke at his head, ruffling his ears a little. I feel a wave of calm settle over me for a brief moment, and then the panic starts.

Panic because it’s time to get up and walk out of here, but my bond refuses to let me leave.

It doesn’t take over my body, not fully, but if I think about moving to get my body out of this tent, I can’t. When I shift my weight to get comfortable, I can, and when I move to take my jacket off, I can also do that.

Standing? Nope.

Oli and I are going to sleep. We’ll be up at first light. I didn’t set up your bedroll because I assumed you’d throw a bitch fit about being in here, but it’s over there if you want to grab it.

There is no form of torture of this earth that would make me admit to him that I can’t leave this tent right now. Absolutely no fucking way.

Except that is a problem in itself, because if I fall asleep, my bond will come out and go looking for hers. Then this whole mission will go to hell in a fucking hand-basket, because he’ll slit my throat for daring to breathe near his precious little Bonded.

So I roll out the bedding on the far side of the tent, as far away from them as I can get, and lie down on top of it while avoiding his eyes. He knows something is up, he knows too damn well, but I just lie down and let Rahab curl up over my chest instead.

They both tuck themselves in together, their bedding mixing up as the girl curls into Gryph’s body. He does what he needs to do to keep her glued to his side while also keeping all of his weapons attached to himself, and then he kills the lamp.

It’s fine.

Until it’s fucking not.

After an hour, the girl is sound asleep. Gryph is finally starting to wind down a little. The tension is still in his body but his breathing is evening out some. I’m still staring at the camo fabric above my head as I force myself to stay awake. If I can just stay awake until he’s out completely, we should be okay here.

Except then, the girl’s bond wakes up.

Gryph goes on immediate high alert, assuming there’s a danger here that we’re not picking up on, shifting her away from his chest as he sits up and reaches for a gun.

I stay exactly where I am and hope that I’m wrong.

I’m not.

From the corner of my eye, I see the bond move fluidly away from him, crawling over to me on her hands and knees like some sort of feline predator in the night. I sigh and push back at my own bond which begins to flood my mind, pushing and fussing at me to take control and get what it wants.