Unbroken Bonds (The Bonds That Tie #6)(78)

“Do you think the Draconis can only shift into a dragon? Or do you think it's just its favorite form?” I query as I lean down to drape myself over the beast, stroking its scales and enjoying the oddly velvety feel of them.

It rumbles happily, slowly moving its head side to side as it gets comfortable with my weight. I would move and find a better angle but the moment I try, it rumbles again, unhappy to lose contact with it in any way.

Gabe watches us both, enjoying the interaction without having to be a part of it. “It's just its favorite form, the one that comes most naturally to it, and I suppose it's the one that does the most damage. I can still shift to anything that I want if I take the reins, but my bond always chooses that one.”

I nod slowly, reaching out to scratch behind the Draconis’ ear, and again, the rumbling happiness vibrates against my belly. I take a deep breath and shut my eyes, letting myself soak in the moment as I feel my body get heavy the way it always does right before I wake up.

“I love you, Bonded,” Gabe says to me suddenly, his eyes tight and worried as he watches me.

I slip my eyes open for long enough to reply, “I love you, too. Whatever happened… that's not going to change.”

The smile he gives me this time is sincere. “I’m not worried about that. I'm worried about them breaking you. I'm worried about you losing something important.”

If my life has taught me anything, it’s that as long as it's not one of my Bonded, I'll survive. It might hurt a whole lot, but most things do.

I’ll survive it.

Gabe looks at me again and sighs, turning his head to look upwards. It’s the last image in my mind as I drift off to sleep, leaving the safety of his mind and returning once more to my own body, waking up to discover exactly what he was trying to protect me from, if only for a moment.





I wake up in my own bed back at the Sanctuary, nestled up against Gabe’s bare chest, his breathing slow and even as he sleeps.

I stare down at him for a moment, and he must feel my eyes on him because, with a quiet groan, his own eyes flutter open. He looks at me the same way he does every day when we wake up together, that same soft wonder that he hasn't just found me… he's got me. We're here together, and the simple pleasure of being with each other is everything to us both, the only thing that matters in the entire world.

Then whatever it is that's happened filters back into his mind, and I see him slowly shut down as those shadows darken his eyes. Slowly, the joy and wonder disappears, and it's replaced with the exact emotion I don't want to see there.

Grief.

“What's happened, Gabe? Tell me.” My voice comes out as a rasp.

He swallows and opens his mouth and then shuts it again, swallowing once more. My heart begins to beat like crazy in my chest, and he carefully brings an arm around my waist to hold me against his body, fitting us together as though he can hold my mind together the same way.

“The god we left behind, the one in the cells? It got out while we were gone.”

My heart thumps wildly, and though he can feel it against his own chest, I'm sure, Gabe continues ripping the Band-Aid off in one swipe.

“He used his Gift to do it, waiting until everyone was being fed down there. He killed the operative who went down there. He got Xander to shoot himself so that on tape, it looks like a suicide, but we know better. When the operative didn't go back up… Vivian went looking for him. He checked the cameras, but he could only see Xander’s feet. We don’t know what he was thinking, going by himself.”

My heart leaps into my throat.

Gabe swallows again, his voice coming out all wrong. “The god-bond killed Vivian. The moment he entered the basement, he took him over and killed him, then it killed itself.”

My eyes fill with tears, my mind blanking out, the low buzz of white noise taking over. Gabe just keeps on talking, passing along all of the heartbreaking, devastating details to me.

“Sawyer found the bodies when he was doing a security scan of all of the areas. When he rechecked the security cameras, he found the god-bond muttering to itself in another language. When we arrived back, Nox translated it—it was an old dialect of Latin, some remnant of his time on Earth before. He figured out that we were consuming god-bonds. Their souls, I mean.”

He says ‘we’, but we both know he means me.

I can't find the words to say that to him though. I can't find anything in my jumbled mess of a brain.

“His Bond was already killed and returned to the cycle. He didn't want it returning, only to be lost without him, and so he killed himself to be put back in the cycle as well. He just took Vivian and Xander out with him when he went.”

As per usual, the gods don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves and their own agendas.

The tears start streaming down my cheeks, and Gabe curses under his breath, wiping at them as he murmurs, “Unser was the one who went down there after them, before Sawyer could sound the alarm. He already knew Vivian was dead because of Adella’s reaction. He thought it was a heart attack or something, but when he got down there and saw it all… he went off. He’s a Trigger, you know, so he took out half of the training center. The cells were left standing, thanks to all of the work that Atlas and North had done to make sure that they could contain Aurelia. We didn't lose any more operatives in the explosion, thank God, but everything is a mess. I Transported back here, and when I saw what had happened, I stayed awake long enough to make sure that there was nothing else I could do to help. The rest of the Bonded Group are down there now, figuring it out.”