Unbroken Bonds (The Bonds That Tie #6)(72)

Atlas curses and moves Oli into his arms to get her away from me, but I'm grateful he does when a bullet whirrs past him and buries itself in my scales. It must be a reasonably low caliber because it doesn't quite penetrate my skin, but I feel it all the same.

My bond lets out a roar. I hear the chatter of everyone around us, but the Draconis doesn't care for any of it. All it cares for is my Bonded and eating every last one of the Resistance until we're sure that she is going to be safe.

There's a rumble all around us as we begin to move, and I have to prompt it not to step on any of our own people. I remind it that they are just as invested in keeping our Bonded alive as anyone outside of our Bonded Group can be. It's not particularly happy about making such concessions, but it does tiptoe around them until it has enough room for our wings to take flight.

I get the same rush as we take to the air as I did the very first time I’d shifted into a small bird when I was a teenager, the same shot of adrenaline to the blood. It’s addictive in the best way.

The Draconis looks around the area, hunting for our prey. Curiously, the buildings here aren't burning. Every other fight we've gone into has been full of ash and fire and smoke that burns my lungs for days afterwards, the taste of it sticking in the back of my throat.

It's not until we do our first pass over the city block that I see it. The god-bond is an Elemental, but it's not using fire, if it even has access to it.

There's an entire suburb here that’s been frozen solid. Watch out for ice, I send through the mind connection to everyone, and the Draconis is very unhappy with this.

I reach out to it and it sends back a small snippet of memory, something that it can't explain in words but can show me through images. A god-bond sent icicles that were sharpened to a point flying through the air. They skewered the Draconis that was already injured and unable to access its fire. Then there was a long, slow arc through the air until it came crashing down to the ground, a slow and painful death at the hands of a god who murdered our Bonded.

A vengeful god who wants nothing more than everyone to suffer, the madness of living so many lives alone having eaten away at it until there was nothing but chaos and destruction left.

The Draconis doesn't want to kill the god.

It wants to find it, snap every bone in its body, disable its power, and then deliver it to the Eternal to feast on. It wants to destroy it in such a way that it will never exist again, and with the painful memory of the impact of those icicles fresh in my mind, I can't agree with it more.

Let's hunt.





I leave the Draconis to hunt as it knows best, instead shifting my consciousness to keep track of where Oli and the rest of the Bonded Group are. I do it just to reassure myself that she’s safe at all times, because honestly, letting the god-bond take over makes me feel a little bit useless. I watch, though Atlas and Nox stay with her at all times. They make a surprisingly adept team at protecting her while she moves through the rubble with Sage and her Bonded Group as they work together to find Kieran.

He's in there somewhere, trapped by the god-bond as bait for the rest of us.

Gryphon and North take up the mantle of finding it, using the path that the Draconis is taking as a guide for where to look. I find myself surprised for a moment that Nox isn't also insisting on proactively looking for it as well, until it occurs to me that he doesn't have to; the Draconis fills in the blanks here for me.

The gods have always gone after the Eternal first.

They enjoy nothing more than breaking our spirits. If he stays with her, the god-bond will simply come to him. This way, he’s able to keep an eye on our most treasured Bonded and have front row seats to whatever it is that the god-bond is planning.

I watch as the Draconis takes out legions of the Resistance, all of them staring up at us in horror as we fly over and breathe pure fire on them.

I already knew that the entire Resistance would know about the Draconis by now, but hearing about a lizard the size of a bus that can fly and breathe fire and seeing it in action are clearly two very different things.

I feel like Oli’s bond now, a savage satisfaction at seeing the awe and horror on their faces. They deserve every second of their fear, and they deserve the fiery death I’m going to give them too.

I feel nothing as they burn.

I don't feel any sort of guilt or sadness, but I also feel no joy either. I feel nothing but hollow at these brutal acts of war, perpetuated and manipulated by the madness of those who continue to return as we do.

It's not until I have a vast section of the Resistance cornered and burning that they finally set a plan against me in motion, sending bullets and some sort of projectile that looks like a fucking harpoon through the air. They’ve clearly been tailor-made just for me, the design an echo of those from the past.

The Draconis moves into a rolling spiral to get away from it, dodging everything that they shoot at us and moving faster than ever before. They were prepared for the creature they had faced in the past, but not this one. Not the one that has the power of my Bonded thrumming through my blood as I cut through the air with ease.

A bullet finally skims the soft underside of my belly, but as quickly as I feel the burn, it heals. The power my Bonded sends pushes into me, healing me as she takes souls from the Resistance that make their way through the rubble towards them. All of it is making me feel as though I am as indestructible as the Cleaver as well.