Forced Bonds (The Bonds That Tie, #4)(91)

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.”