Forced Bonds (The Bonds That Tie, #4)(6)

Sawyer tracks every last second of our morning, even when Atlas wants to murder him for all of the snide comments he makes about the two of us spending the night together out in that cave. That now feels as though it was a million years ago, but we find nothing out of the ordinary.

Sage woke up in her bed super early, said goodbye to each of her Bonded as she went on her routine morning run, and then made her way over to one of the wall security outlooks.

Then she killed our Shield.

There’s nothing else there for us to pull apart, no one approached her or injected her with some mind altering substance. She woke up and… chose murder?

“It has to lead back to Giovanna. She’s the one who is into mind control and fucking us all in the ass with a fucking cactus for the Resistance. We’ve let that situation stew for too long, and now they’re using the only in they have with us,” Sawyer rants, his fingers a little more frantic as they fly across the keyboard than they normally are.

Gabe pulls a face and leans back in his seat, still frustrated at how little we’ve figured out in the time we’ve been stuck here. “Could Giovanna really do that? Do you think she has enough power to go through Riley to Sage, even though they’re not Bonded? That’s… a lot of power. A lot more than I ever thought that manipulative bitch ever had.”

I glance at Sawyer but he doesn’t look away from his screen. “She’s always masked how much power she has because she was using so much by messing around in Riley’s head. I’m not ruling it out. Someone needs to go after her, rescue Riley, and drag her back here until we can rule it out. If it’s not her… I’ll keep digging.”

Atlas side-eyes me like he’s sizing me up and figuring out exactly how I’m going to react before he adds in, “And what are we going to do if it turns out that Sage is a turncoat? I don’t want to believe it either, but someone needs to say it.”

I shift in my seat uncomfortably, mostly because it’s been the one thing circling in my head this entire time, and the guilt might just eat me alive.

Sawyer, ever the unpredictable sass-master, shrugs and snaps, “If she’s evil, then I guess she’ll be dealt with. I’ll also need to hand myself in for being the most gullible and blind dickhead in the entire Gifted Community for not seeing it, so you’ll lose us both in one fell swoop. Oli, make sure you take care of Gray for me.”

Gray shoots Sawyer a dry look, like he’s a little insulted, but Sawyer just grins back at him. It’s not a proper grin, a little tense around the edges and it definitely doesn’t reach his eyes, but I can appreciate his effort to fake it until we get out of this mess.

I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. “Okay, so we just need to convince North and Gryphon that moving in on Riley and Giovanna is the only priority moving forward so that it happens right now, at the latest. That can’t be that impossible, right?”

Gabe grimaces next to me, pulling a face, and Sawyer smirks at me. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

And that’s how I find myself heading back over to North’s office.

It's not the easiest thing to do, but I managed to convince Atlas and Gabe to let me walk over there by myself. I'm sure they only do it because Atlas is in my head the entire time talking to me and joking with me. Plus, with Brutus and August padding along silently next to me, there's not really much they can say about my level of protection.

No one would ever attempt to approach the shadows, especially not immediately after the carnage they’d just wrought all around us. Even knowing they’d done it to defend us and drive out the Resistance from the Sanctuary, I’m sure the other Gifted are practically shitting themselves over my precious babies as we walk the streets together.

The offices are only a few hundred yards away, but the walk over is good to clear my head a little from the conversation with Sawyer and Gray. The streets are still bustling with people clearing away the debris or heading to the dining hall for something to eat. It’s good to see that they’re all resilient enough to get on with life once they’ve been given the all clear. I try to memorize the faces around me, to remember the people who have a backbone around here, but there’s too many.

I smile softly to myself and take a second to pause, tipping my head back and letting the warmth of the sun overhead soak into my skin. There’s a tiny whisper of a breeze that flutters my hair just a little, but it barely touches against the bright rays falling over my face and neck.

I take a deep breath, then another one for good luck.

Everything feels like a mess and completely overwhelming, but there's also a part of me deep down inside that relishes the opportunity to finally do something in this fight.

Being stuck on the sidelines, coddled and protected as though I am some precious, breakable possession of my Bonds, has been incredibly frustrating. Especially with my own bond whispering dark and blood-soaked plans at every opportunity. I already know I'm the greatest weapon that our side has.

Now I just need to convince North and Gryphon of that.

Brutus butts his head against the back of my legs in a play for attention, so I crouch down a little to scratch him behind his ears. August had come to a heel a step in front of me when I’d stopped, always putting himself between me and any potential threats. Both of his ears are standing straight up at sharp points and as he looks around, I’m struck with the thought that it's not often that I'm reminded that they aren't actually puppies but that they are shadows made from my own Bonds. The stillness in him is an echo of the deadly calm in North.