Page 5 of Broken Ties
North’s gaze flicks to follow mine in assessing his brother before he finally answers me.She’s in the holding rooms,waiting to be moved to the Council offices. William just arrived, he’s going to oversee her transport, and I’ve called Gabe to meet him over there to guard her while we deal with this. I’m hoping we can divert Nox’s reaction into a tactical response, find out what they’re looking for and figure out what Davies is planning. The fight should level him out before they meet and, with any luck, we’ll find enough clues of their plans to keep his mind busy elsewhere until he… adjusts to her.
With a curt nod, I turn on my heel and move over to the lockers to get my uniform without wasting another second. None of this is going the way I thought it would, the way I want it to, but there are no other options left. I don’t trust William the way North does, but I do trust Gabe to keep our Bond safe. I trained him myself and he’s already able to go out with teams if we’re short on personnel. No matter how badly I want to be the one watching over our Bond, I can’t deny that North’s plan is irrefutably sound.
There’s also no doubting the fact that we can’t stick Nox in a room with our little runaway Bond the way he is right now; the shadows will eat her alive. Jury is still out if she deserves every seething inch of his hatred or not, but I refuse to believe she’s done anything that would warrant that sort of death. Frustration writhes in my gut that I won’t know the answer to that until I get my Bond in front of me.
A hush falls back over the room the moment I step back into the office, my hands still checking over my weapons in an old tick I’ve never been able to shake. There are half a dozen extra Tac personnel in the room, Transported in from the front lines, and even blocking me out, I can tell they’re all rattled. I glance back up to find North’s eyes have shifted, his fists pressed against his desk as he struggles to get control of himself.
Nox and I are the only two people not shitting ourselves at the sight of his void eyes, the anomaly of the Draven bloodlinethat sets them apart from the rest of the Gifted community, no matter how hard they try to assimilate.
Nox turns to me, his voice a scathing drawl. “They detonated a Trigger. The entire town is gone.”
It takesus two days to deal with the aftermath of the Trigger.
There’s nothing I want more than to Transport back to Draven and finally,finally, get my eyes on this Bond of mine, but no Resistance attack ever happens in a vacuum. Four other towns are hit at the same time, only without a Trigger to make a clean sweep of it, and there’s no way I can just turn my back on the innocent civilians while the Resistance picks them off by the dozens.
We’re forced to deploy Gabe with one of the teams, leaving William to watch over our Bond, but resources are stretched thin and there aren’t enough Top Tier Gifted within the TacTeams as it is. Gabe’s not supposed to even go out on missions, let alone lead them, but Makai and Harrison are good about backing him up and North sends him to the safest option of the four zones.
He comes back without a scratch on him, but he’s absolutely been damaged by his duties, some young and naive thread stolen from him by the senseless violence of the Resistance. I remember the moment it was robbed from me in the same way with a sort of clarity I don’t think I’ll ever really shake.
After we’ve all washed the grime and violence down the drain, as though there’s any amount of hot water and soap that could clean away the horrors, we Transport back to the Council offices and I’m swamped with dozens of streams of consciousness the second my feet hit the ground. I filter through it all on reflex, searching for something out of the ordinary butthere’s nothing. Frustratingly, I can’t hear my Bond, and it only irritates me more.
North and Nox’s uncle meets us at the door to the interrogation room with a carefully stifled yawn that grates on me.
I'm keenly aware that he’s a far better man than the head of any of the other Top Tier families, but that bar islow. I don't know if it’s the immense wealth he’s always held or if it’s the fact that he’s well into his fifties now and has never found his own Bond, but there’s no doubt in my mind that William Draven is out of touch. He’s too careless and casual about things, bordering on apathetic, and the way he’s all but thrown a tantrum about North’s priorities moving to his own Bond Group makes me see red.
Most of this I know thanks to my Gift, so I’m forced to bite my tongue about it for now. North loves him and, though I definitely wouldn’t call Nox’s feelings love, the damaged Draven I call my best friend is certainly fond of the man as well.
“She’s fine, other than being bored out of her mind in there. Honestly, North, you could’ve let the poor girl wait back at the house.”
There are at least a dozen reasons why that’s a fucking terrible idea, and William should be able to figure out at least five of them for himself. Gabe shoots me a look the moment he’s sure no Draven will spot it, pushing his thoughts at me as he covers the irritated curl of his lip with the coffee cup in his hands.
When I got here to watch her before North called me in, William was too busy yakking it up with Hannity to notice I’d arrived. I told North about it and he called to ream him, but I don’t think we should trust him. Not unless we have to, I mean.
I jerk my head at him to follow me into the observation room, sending back,I’ll speak to North about it. Our hands weretied this time, but I agree we keep everything within the Bond Group from now on.
Gabe nods back but it’s a distracted action, half-hearted, like he’s barely listening as he stares into the interrogation room with every emotion he’s feeling written plainly across his face. I scrub a hand over my own face, heart thumping in my chest wildly, before I finally look up and see my Bond for the first time in the flesh. All of the noise from the thoughts and brain patterns within the building are drowned out instantly.
She’s fucking stunning.
At first glance, she looks just like the single photo we’ve got of her, the photo I still have tucked away in my card clip, where it’s stayed the entire five years she’s been gone. I’ve looked at that tiny square countless times. I know it better than I know my own face at this point, and nothing about her big blue eyes, dark lashes, high cheekbones, or full lips has changed significantly. Just sharpened a little.
The longer I look, the more I find that the stark color of her hair isn’t the only significant change.
Her skin is ghostly white, so bleached of color it almost glows under the shitty fluorescent lights of the interrogation room. I can’t understand why Kieran called it eerie though, irritation rippling through me again at the thought. I can’t look away from her.
She’s fucking perfect.
It takes me a minute to see beyond my obsession with her and to realize she’s dressed like she’s homeless. Kieran told me he stowed everything they found of hers in my office back at the Tac Training Center, so it’s obvious someone has picked out shit for her. It looks as though they grabbed whatever the fuck hit their hands first, the sweater at least three sizes too big for her and hanging from her like a sack.
She’s not wearing makeup and she looks exhausted, but her hair is braided intricately to one side. The glow of it is just like my Second had promised; unearthly. No matter how ridiculous she looks in the getup, there’s no hiding that she’s certainly something else.
When the door behind me opens again and North steps in, I try to keep my shitty attitude out of my tone.
“Who did you send to get her clothes?”
He pauses in the doorway, using his wide frame to keep it open, so he can keep an eye on Nox while still getting a look at our Bond. “Olivia. Her reports of Oleander weren’t promising. We’re going to have a fight on our hands.”
Scoffing, I shake my head at the idiot. “You sentOliviain to speak to her, North. Look at what she’s wearing. You should be impressed our Bond didn’t give her the same treatment as Black.”