Page 7 of Broken Ties
Even more so when she looks back up and makes a slow assessment of each of us, starting with Gryph, then Gabe. She falters a little over North, something about my brother cracking her already damaged exterior, before finally she looks at me again.
I’m prepared for my bond’s reactions this time.
If you make a move on her—if we act outside of North and Gryph’s expectations in any way—they’ll kill us both. No matter what they might say, they belong to that girl.
It doesn’t like that at all, but it pauses for long enough that I can wrestle back some control before it finally answers me.They can’t kill us. No one can, not now that we have her.
Over my dead fucking body will that girl ever have me. It’s impossible to lie to a bond that lives within your own mind, I’m intimately aware of that, but there are many truths that it can’t deny either.
She doesn’t want us, and I don’t want her. I’d rather fucking die than touch her.
I’m still focused entirely on grappling with the seething nightmare within me when Gabe huffs and snaps, “Should we even bother asking where the hell you’ve been? Or why you left?”
Her breathing changes, my awareness of her sharpened to a knife’s edge, but she doesn’t answer him. Her gaze just keeps flitting between each of us like she’s trying to figure out who’s going to be the soft heart among us all, where she can find an entry point into our minds to ruin this Bond Group entirely.
Gabe’s nineteen. He lost his father in an attack, then his mother to the decline of Bonded grief, and he’s just spent two days cleaning up after the Resistance strikes. He hasn’t slept, hasn’t eaten, hasn’t been debriefed, and he hasn’t complained or questioned an order once. I’m not as close to him as I am Gryph, but that comes down entirely to the gap in age between us, not his character.
He deserves better than this pitiful girl.
North sees it too, diverting her attention away from Gabe with the effortless councilman charade he’s perfected. “You have been very hard to find. I’ve wasted a lot of resources tracking you down.”
She starts looking like she’ll cry, like some waterworks will get her out of this, and I’m too worried she’s right to let it happen without a word. “I did wonder at how you were surviving out there. I’m assuming you were selling yourself, there’s nothing else you have to offer. I'll have to wait for the test results to come back before I complete the bond and get what I’m owed from you.”
She drops the sad little girl act straight away, an indignant fire lighting in her eyes that burns the tears away so swiftly there’s no doubt they were just a part of her ploy to worm her way out of trouble. She’s seething that I’ve seen through her littlemind games, but she has no idea I’m better at them than she could ever hope to be.
My mother made sure of that.
She practically snarls through gritted teeth, "That assumes I want you to touch me. Not fucking likely, Draven.”
She doesn’t take rejection well, and goading her ego is immensely satisfying, especially when she reacts likethis. “And how exactly will you stop me, Bond? Your blood work didn’t show your ability, what teeth are you hiding from us? Or are you ungifted and a total fucking waste of space?”
The violence that flashes in her eyes is like a drug to me and my bond, but for entirely different reasons. It covets a bloodthirsty Bond to share our life with.
I want to use that violence toruinher.
Gryph shifts in his seat subtly, enough to warn me that he’s not happy with what I’m saying and will be intervening shortly if I don’t shut the fuck up. Gabe starts shooting looks at us both, nothing subtle about his concerns, but the girl just stares back at me. She doesn’t blink, doesn’t flinch away, and I hold that piercing blue gaze until I’m sure she knows exactly how much I loathe her.
She startles when North slaps an envelope onto the table, my brother deflecting and staring her down as he slides it to her. "This phone is to be on you at all times. If I call you, you will pick up. If I have to call you a second time, there will be hell to pay. If you fail to pick up, I will assume you have either run or been kidnapped and I will send every resource under my command to find you. Is this understood, Fallows?"
Her eyes narrow, rattled by him once again, before she spits out from between her clenched teeth, "Understood."
I scoff, enjoying her furious capitulation under his treatment. “You’re pretty agreeable to him. Looks like you’ll get to bond after all, brother.”
Throwing a look of disgust at me that rivals my own, she snaps, “I’m not touching any of you. If you try to lay so much as a finger on me, then you’ll be committing a crime, and I’ll happily stand in front of the Council and tell them exactly how much I don’t want any of you.”
If only that were true.
The flash of her eyes when Gabe practically runs from the room proves she’s lying, just like they all do, and I’m filled with vindication. I’ll never find myself at the mercy of another Bond. No matter how pretty the packaging.
The momentthe door of the interrogation room is locked behind us, North snaps, “She's lying.”
Gryphon doesn’t answer him, doesn’t so much as flinch in our direction, but he doesn’t have to for me to accurately read the waves of anger that roll from him; we’ve known each other for too long. He's seething at my brother for the unasked question hovering in the air.
“I’ve already told you what my boundaries are when it comes to our Bond, Draven; figure it out for yourself.”
I scoff at him, but North only shoots me a disapproving look behind Gryphon’s back as he replies, “Yes, Idoremember, I was just hoping you’d be open to negotiation given the seriousness of this…situation.”
I see nothing serious about this situation for either of them, only me. They’re both mooning after her like lovesick idiots already, falling over themselves to carve space in our lives for her poison to fill. Fuck, she could ask my brother for the heart beating in his chest and the idiot would get right to cutting it out for her, I'm sure.