Page 75 of Broken Ties
The Campbells lost all of their children in one night.
The siblings were taken from campus as the party disbanded. Nathan and Austin were in a Bond Group with their Central, Tamsin. Ben, a high school senior, wasn’t even supposed to be on campus, but he’d driven over from his parents’ mansion in the gated community to see his brothers.
When Gryphon finally emerges from the locker room, hair still wet from his attempts at scrubbing the failures of the night away, we both sit and watch the security footage with Vivian and the rest of his team. Vivian moves to take over on logistics after the first play-through, and Gryphon’s team slowly melt away over the next three, but we both sit there until the images are practically burned into my corneas.
There’s nothing new to learn from them, but still we watch obsessively as they follow the usual script, hoping something will finally jump out at us to reveal where they’ve taken the abducted Gifted. It’s only after we’ve scrutinized every frame that we accept there’s nothing.
Nothing except a runner.
The scouts always target Central Bonds first, using them against their own Bonded when they inevitably attempt to fight back. Submission is a natural instinct when the sole purpose for your existence is threatened, an honorable action. Then, if they’re still not satisfied with their ‘catch’, they’ll round up the witnesses and bystanders.
They never take the Gifted who run… but most don’t. I can count on one hand the number of Gifted who immediately run for their own safety without any other motivators in play, and every last one of them is on a watch list now. Not from a place of judgment, though disgust definitely curls in my gut, but because Gifted don’t run. Parents run to save their children. Centrals run to their Bonded. Gifted run to protect the wounded, the weak, those with lesser abilities—they never run for themselves.
Unless they’re Resistance spies.
It only takestwo weeks to uncover enough suspicious behavior about Vittorio’s eldest son to warrant action against him. Jaxon was already on our watch list thanks to his Parental Bonded Group, but children are never automatically classed as sympathizers solely based on their parents’ views. Upbringing and the culture of their childhood home may influence a person, but it isn’t everything. An abusive parent doesn’t guarantee the child will become an abuser.
Nox and I are both irrefutable proof.
Of all the council members who currently hold seats, Vittorio and Sharpe are the two we’ve confirmed beyond the shadow of doubt to be Resistance spies, their entire Bonded Groups along with them
As a Central with two Bonded of his own, Sharpe has been very useful in our efforts to find sorting camps and identifying other sympathizers within our community. His Bonded, Lois, was born into a well-known Resistance family from the East Coast, and they worked diligently to scour that stain from her image. I still remember the disgust on my father’s face the first time he met her and the way his eyes voided out whenever he spoke of her. Back then, I thought his bond was like mine, but now I know better.
The monster within me would’ve never allowed the Gifted of the council to put me to death, and certainly not for protecting a child the way my father was.
My bond ripples in disgust at the memory, irritated at the idea of comparing my bond to my mother. I’m in absolute agreement with it, a once foreign feeling that is quickly becoming a common one.
Vittorio’s reasons are so common, they’re pathetic. After the Riots, he saw the chasm within the community as ripe for exploitation, and he chose to sell his community out for money and influence. A spoiled asshole, he balked at sharing his Central. It didn’t take much thought to figure out that he was really pissed about having a Central to begin with instead of being one himself.
Many Top Tier families believe the ideal Bonded Group has a male Central with at least three female Bonded. Their arguments all hinge on the idea of ‘plentiful Bonded Groups’ but in truth, they’re self-obsessed men who’ve allowed contentious non-Gifted ideals to twist our own traditions.
For people who look down on them, it’s a bold position to take.
His son, Jaxon, has a large online presence and is vocal about his own views on the ‘perfect, submissive Bond’ he’s looking forward to having in the future. After months of listening to his father’s endless drivel on the topic, that statement alone is enough for me to move against him.
Gabe continues his close watch over my Bond while Gryphon takes up surveillance rounds on Vittorio, Eliza, and Jaxon with his team. Nox was reluctant to take this on after the mess of his own plans for finding the magnifier Gifted, but after we find evidence that Jaxon is using information about our schedules to gain favor with a group of Resistance scouts, he’s all in.
Neither of us doubt they’re planning another attack against our Bond Group, and as their so-called Infinite Weapon, the Magnifier will surely be showing up here again. The question isn’t if but when, and we have to be ready to deal with them then.
Having gathered enough intel, we decide to feed information to Jaxon to provoke him into action. After months of avoiding council dinners, I’ll attend one while Nox and Gryphon wait in position to follow Vittorio and Eliza out. Gabe and Harrison will tail Jaxon to the Shifter fights, his entertainment of choice for a Friday night, and then on to wherever he moves next. Once I arrive home without rousing suspicions, Black can Transport me to the others if they find something… or someone.
There’s no way I can possibly allow the trap to be set without ensuring my Bond’s safety, and short of having Gryphon knock her out and drive her unconscious body wherever the hell Vittorio and Eliza flee, by my side at the dinner is the next best option. The plan is picked apart, reformed, and scrutinized rigorously until I’m absolutely certain it’s safe, and only then do I inform the council we will both be in attendance.
Within an hour, every council member does the same. Given it’s been almost a decade since the last dinner without at least one member missing, it’s safe to say my Bond isn’t just the center of my interest but the entire community’s as well.
I loathe it with every fiber of my being.
I’ve never been so grateful for my own fussy nature because no one thinks twice about me choosing every item personally for my Bond. The dress takes far too long, but not because of the options. If it were only the two of us dining, a dozen dresses would’ve been a difficult task to choose from. Even if the rest of the Bond Group were with us, I’d have at least five I could bear to share her presence in. With the council in attendance, joined by a select few of their Bonded, the idea of them seeing my Bond in the Dior gown I finally decided on is barely tolerable, but the Versace one? Silk the same color as her eyes draping over her shoulders like water, her entire back exposed and a long slit up one of her gut-wrenchingly perfect thighs?
I’d rather chew broken glass.
The stylist I chose, Kelly, came back from dressing her, tutting like a matron over the color of her hair clashing terribly, but when I run into Gabe on the way down to the waiting car, he’s practically stumbling over his words as well as his feet.
“The dress is—she’s good. Shit, I don’t mean she’s good. Honestly, North, she’s pissed all the way off, but the council won’t be able to say a thing about her appearance.”
Gabe would know too, far better than Gryphon ever could, despite his Gifts’ advantages. He grew up on the peripheral edges of the Top Tier families within the community thanks to the distance his father, the General, has always maintained. It began because Gryphon’s mother was from a Lower Tier family and the community backlash over their Bonding, but the insufferable nature of the man only made a poor situation a thousand times worse.
Gabe was born into another council family, with his mother holding a seat for a decade of his childhood before his father was murdered and her mental state was irreparably damaged. As far as our Bond Group, his experience is as close to my own as any could get. At nineteen, he’s still far more knowledgeable about the underhanded tactics they employ and the way they’ll fall on any tiny detail of my Bond like rabid beasts.