Page 48 of Broken Ties
North sends her a look that has that smirk evaporating into thin air.
Gabe swallows roughly, too conscious of what’s about to break out at this table, but he clears his throat before he speaks to her, “North needs me to look over some paperwork, we can’t leave yet.”
She looks down as though she’s trying to collect herself, but her shaking voice as she replies says she’s probably losing that battle. “I’m walking back then. I’m not staying here with him.”
That’s not an option here.
“I’ll take you.”
She blanches at my reply as though it’s the last thing she was expecting, but she doesn’t look in my direction as she mutters a quick thanks. I get my ass moving out of that nightmarish room as fast as I can without actually jogging just to get away from Nox’s bullshit.
My Bond does break into a jog to catch up with me, muttering under her breath mulishly about how stupid this house and all of North’s demands are, and for once, I agree with her entirely.
My Bond’sscent still clings to my Camaro’s interior when I message Kyrie to meet me for dinner, my stomach growling viciously. There was no way I could eat anything listening to that bitch’s bullshit and the only reason I sat through it as long as I did was to prove my suspicions wrong.
It was a shit dinner on all accounts.
Instead of meeting me for something greasy, cheap, and fuss-free like I’m hoping, Kyrie tells me to head to her cafe. It closed hours ago, there’s no way she’s still cleaning this late into the evening, so I stop to grab a six pack of beer and a bottle of wine. The only thing that could possibly come close to dealing with Nox’s trauma implosion is taxes.
Sure enough, I find Kyrie at her tiny desk shoved in the corner of the storage room, surrounded by boxes of takeaway, coffee cups, and paper napkins doing her taxes.
Her eyes light up the moment they hit the bottle of wine. “Sometimes it’s very useful how well you know me. I’ve ordered Thai from the place down the block. I told them I’d walk down and grab it, but they’ve got Eddie’s younger brother working for them now. He took the order and said he’d Transport it over when it’s ready. Shit, it was like stepping into a time machine listening to him talk… makes me almost miss the asshole.”
Nothing on this earth could make me miss that fuckwit.
Kyrie’s first and last long-term boyfriend; she started dating him to piss the General off but then caught feelings and eventually moved in with him. Then one day, after five years together, he sent her a text to say he’d matched with his Central Bond and wouldn’t be coming back.
It’s a common occurrence and not something I’d hold against him, except that he did it by text, didn’t pay his half of the rent even though he knew our parents had cut her off, and then he went around talking down about her so his Central didn’t get pissed off about him shacking up with someone else before they’d met.
I dealt with it.
Eddie doesn’t come within a hundred miles of Draven anymore. Eddie is lucky he’s still breathing.
Kyrie scoffs at the look on my face, waving a hand at the stool in front of her desk. “I shouldn’t have brought him up; you look like you’re about to call Black and hunt him down again. I’m fine, Gryph. I don’t need you going after that idiot and giving Draven a new headache to deal with in the morning. I’m sure he has enough on his plate as it is.”
Fuck North’s plate.
A ripple of unease works its way through my stomach instantly at my own reaction. Jesus, my Bond coming back to Draven has changed everything. All of the hard work over the years we spent waiting for our bloodwork to come back, then the years of searching for her, all of it crumbling beneath our feet while we bicker and fight.
I take a seat, handing the bottle of wine over to Kyrie before I pull a beer out and set the rest down on the ground at my feet. “His plate is overflowing. I need to remember that when he does something so fucking stupid I want to hack into his brain and dredge up a whole new set of nightmares for him to battle.”
Ky raises an eyebrow at me, pulling a wine glass out from the drawer where she hides it. “Shit. What’s happeninng now? I thought things would settle down now that your Bond’s been back a few weeks.”
I almost empty the can of beer in one gulp. I barely had a college experience thanks to all of this, but chugging a beer isn’trocket science. The sole reason I grabbed a six pack instead of something stronger is that I knew Ky would ask about my Bond and I’d write myself off if given half the chance.
“Jesus, Gryph, what the hell has happened?”
I shake my head. “Nothing big, just—how much longer can I watch all of this play out without losing my mind? Walking through a minefield of Draven trauma, council snakes, Resistance scouts, and a Bond who doesn’t lie right… I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of losing everything.”
She blinks at me and then pours herself a glass of wine, filled to the rim and impossible to lift without spilling. “I wasn’t prepared to talk you off of a ledge, Gryph! I thought we’d bitch about the council’s new plans for a peace agreement or Nox’s latest public tantrum getting Rio’s hand bitten clean off by one of his nightmare beasties. Shit, it must be bad if you’re at your wit’s end—you have more patience than the rest of them put together!”
I open another beer. “Not even close. I usually just have more information than they do to work off of. It’s a lot fucking harder to keep my cool when I can’t get the answers for myself.”
Her phone buzzes and interrupts us, Ky shooting me a look like she’s worried I’ll turn my Gift on the kid in my foul mood. As tempting as that is to work off some of this frustration, I’m not a fucking monster. At least, not in the ways the council worries about… for now.
Settling back in my seat, I cross my arms and jerk my head at her in the only assurance I can give her right now that I’m not about to commit unwarranted murder.
No matter how much I might be tempted.