Page 47 of Bonding Beasts (Bonding: The Ultimate Guide #3)

Once the door closes, my flirtatious mood dissipates. People will have questions for me, and I don’t want to answer them. I’ll have to, though. For the missing, if nothing else.

To stall, I open the hidden cubby across from Ben’s room and grab a pillow.

He is seriously obsessed with the damn things.

A blanket, a towel, and a bar of soap. I check to make sure it doesn’t smell like Ben’s because, for some reason, the thought of Mike smelling like him bothers me.

Nope, it’s plain soap. I guess for emergencies like this one.

I go directly to the door Mike is hiding behind, trying to ignore the people at the table, and tap lightly. When he doesn’t respond, I open the door. For some reason, it freaks me out that he didn’t answer. Did he take the opportunity to get out of here while he still could?

No, he’s asleep. On his belly on the hard floor with his head pillowed on his arms. I understand that level of exhaustion, so I quietly tip-toe over and spread the blanket over him. Then, I set the towel and soap on top of the pillow next to him.

When I leave, I quietly close the door and see four people staring at me. I try to ignore them for as long as possible, but Mal interrupts that process.

“He gets a blanket and pillow while the rest of us do without?” I can tell he’s trying to make a joke out of the comment, but his voice is strained as if he can’t tell how the question will be received. Who would have thought that the rage-filled dragon would be so sensitive to emotion?

I shrug and meet his eyes, trying to smile and probably failing. “His bank accounts are probably hacked by now if not totally depleted. I’m sure you don’t have to use a bank to access money. I doubt he has that option.”

“Hacked?” Mal asks in surprise.

“Yeah,” I frown back at him. “You know. Box him in? Remove access to his funds so he has nowhere to go that isn’t a familiar routine to him?”

He stares at me blankly.

“It’s literally the first thing the Delegates did after my arrest. Ten years’ worth of savings, gone.

” I’m still pissed about it. “No money plus no outside contacts equals a sitting duck if I escaped. They would expect me to go to you guys for help .” I emphasize the last word with finger quotes and an eye roll.

Mal and King look at each other with matching frowns.

This is what I’m working with. I’m doomed. “Guys, it’s not brain surgery.”

I walk into the room between Mike’s and Ben’s to retrieve the copies I made of the missing person reports, just in case. Never hurts to have duplicates. I bring it back to the table and move Ben’s normal seat to the head of the table before dropping it and sitting down.

“Where are the folders Mike brought?” I ask and look at Mal and King. I kind of feel superior right now, sitting at the head of the table. Like they’re my minions, and I’m the supervillain boss demanding status reports. I’ll take any confidence boost I can get.

“You want to see them?” King asks warily.

“Yeah. I noticed something.” I stare at him pointedly.

“I wouldn’t think you noticed anything,” he mumbles, not entirely under his breath .

“Just because you’re having a panic attack doesn’t mean you can’t retain information,” I quote. The Old Man went over that extensively when he began locking me in the basement to find ways out without panicking.

King hesitates as he looks at me and nods once. He goes into the room directly across from Mike’s and picks up the folders to bring back.

“What did you notice?” Mitri asks, and I shrug without looking at him. I don’t want to talk to him, and I don’t want to see him right now, logic be damned.

“Maybe something, maybe nothing,” I reply while my lip curls without consent, “I’m not sure yet.”

King brings them directly to me, lingering momentarily at my side with his hand hovering near my shoulder. I stiffen even though I can tell he’s trying to decide if I’ll accept the comforting pat he intends to give. He withdraws at the reaction and goes back to his seat.

I take a second to organize my thoughts before I open the first one. I try not to see the pictures, but it’s difficult. I flip the page and focus on the typed-up reports instead. I refuse to look at the names because they aren’t real without names. They’re little figments of my imagination.

First up, a witch. Specializing in hexes. The report doesn’t say what type, just if it was a pass or fail in whatever procedure they were trying. Most of them are failures.

Next, a werewolf. There is no label for what kind of testing, just failures and punishments. There are a few other werewolves as well. All failed.

Three different Mages were brought in to create portals. Two of them pass and get transferred to an unlisted facility. The third fails and dies.

Psionic. Mind reading and moving objects with the mind. All passes, but this one died too. Suicide, unassisted. They actually noted that down, assholes .

A warlock. The male version of a witch. This one can nullify powers. All of his procedures passed whether he was conscious or not.

The Berserker. Given some sort of serum daily to study the effects.

His tests passed, but his general attitude and the destruction he caused while there are noted in vivid detail.

He also had been building up a resistance to the unknown concoction even when they doubled and then tripled the dose.

“Mages,” I ask out loud. “What do they specialize in?”

“Transportation,” Mal’s lip curls.

“Is that it?”

“They can also warp the reality around you,” King answers.

“Like putting someone back in their seat with the seatbelt buckled like they never left the truck,” I muse.

“Oddly specific,” King raises a brow with a half-smile. “But, yes. That would be a lesser warp.”

“Lesser,” I scoff with a shake of my head.

I flip back and forth between Mike’s folders and my pages, hex witch for hex witch, mage for mage, psionic for psionic, berserker for berserker.

The currently missing group of people lines up with the layout of the races I was imprisoned with.

There are no werewolves that I know of, but a vampire when there wasn’t one previously.

Wait, wouldn’t a shapeshifter count as a werewolf to a Human?

There was no immortal back then, either.

The differences are minor. The similarities are anxiety-inducing.

“They’re recreating their experiments,” I mutter with disgust. “Almost exactly. The only difference is the vampire and the immortal. What could she do that was special? Ugh, I have to go back there and ask.” I don’t want to go back to that club.

Whatever Mitri did left a mark. I doubt I would be welcomed back, safe harbor or not .

“Go back where?” King asks with a frown.

“The club-”

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Mal interjects as if he’s throwing me a bone.

“Oh, I won’t be,” I assure him sweetly with a malevolent smile. “You’re all helping, whether you like it or not.”

Ben enters the room at that point and places a kiss on the top of my head before he takes the seat next to Mitri. The fact that he can hear everything that has been said at the table means no repeating myself. And he’s being a buffer between me and my frenemy. It’s so nice.

“Oh, are we?” Mal sits back with a smirk and crosses his arms over his chest.

I toss my files to him, “Look at those faces and remember that some of them may still be alive. If they are, would you help them? If they aren’t, would you get revenge? Make sure it doesn't happen again?”

I know, out of all of them,he would. There’s something about Mal, like how hard he hides behind a mask of anger. He seems like the only one with a sympathetic bone in his body. Hopefully, it isn’t broken.

“I don’t need to look,” he growls back at me, fixing me with a level-five scowl.

“I’m in,” King interrupts whatever Mal was going to continue with, and I look at him in surprise. There’s a level of anger in his face that is more than I could expect. It’s almost like this is personal to him.

I meet his eyes and nod once. “Good.”

“There is something else,” Mitri says in his dead tone. It matches his personality perfectly. Cold and devoid of life.

Damn it, I have to stop that. Ripping him to shreds mentally will not get me anywhere.

I twirl my first two fingers to get him to continue and pretend to study the paperwork in front of me so I don’t have to look at him.

I notice him place his hands on the table from my peripherals, fingers tensing on the surface before he speaks. He’s feeling emotional about something. Hopefully, he’s about to share with the class.

“One of the scientists still alive is Fyodor Makarov.”

He drops that bomb as if it’s inconsequential, and I suck in a sharp breath before releasing it slowly, rearranging things I thought I knew with this new version of truth.

Guess that answers the whole how is he still alive question. But can an immortal make it out of being ripped to pieces? What are the limitations of their power?

“How would you stop an immortal?” I look at King as I ask.

“There are no known ways to do so,” Mitri answers, and his fingers flex until the tips whiten.

“It isn’t like being a vampire,” King lectures. “There is no specific way to kill an immortal. There are no steps to take or spells to cast. They don’t work.”

“There’s always the Bowels,” Mal says with a level three scowl. “I’ve heard that’s what it was made for.”

“Hmm,” I reply noncommittally and shudder. If Ben and I could get out of there, then that asshole would also be able to. He’s intelligent and willing to do anything to entertain himself. The Bowels aren’t the best plan, but it could be reserved if nothing else pans out.

“The Delegates and Humans have been working together on this for a long time then,” Ben changes the subject.