Page 96 of Broken Ties
This fucking Bond.
Of all the times for her to refuse to back down, to dig her heels in, she chooses now. She’s going to get us both killed because I’d rather kill her than Bond with her, and my brother will murder me for daring to harm his precious little Bond… then he’ll kill himself in his own guilt. She’s about to snark her way to our graves just to get the last word in.
I hit lower than ever before.
"Maybe I should bond with you, Poison. Maybe I should try you out so the next time I fuck my girlfriend, you'll know all about it and you'll feel like your heart is being ripped out of your chest. It might help you to understand what you put the rest of us through when you ran off."
Even as I fight with my bond, it steps closer to her, but she doesn’t move away like she should. We’re not pressed against each other yet but it’s inevitable, and my hold on my sanity slips even further from me. The mention of another Gifted digs at her but not enough, not nearly enough.
I try to block out the heat of her body, the feel of her breath against my chest where my shirt buttons are undone, the sound of my own heartbeat thumping violently in my chest. “You can’t hide it, Poison. You might not have a Gift, but I can feel your bond, and it wants me.”
Finally, finally, she grasps what’s about to happen and panic flares in the deepest depths of her eyes, but then she does fuckingnothingto stop me.
Typical, indulgent, greedy Bonds.
A scathing barrage dies on my tongue as a wave trembles through her. Not a Gift, not power of any kind, but a bond. Only, it’s more. It has to be, it doesn’t feel like the others are supposed to. God, Gryph’s bond has been simmering at the surface for months in his fury at my treatment of her. Gabe’s has been pouring agony everywhere in her wake. They’re alive and real and nothing like mine.
But there’s something else inside her.
Survival instincts kick in, sharp despite years of disuse, and my focus centers on that scrap of information to keep some semblance of sanity as I disconnect from my body. It’s an old tactic, one that wasn’t ingrained into me but instead woven into the very fabric of who I am as that formation occurred. Even before my bond was able to take control, when it was just a voice in my mind offering me comfort and companionship, I was able to disassociate from all physical parts of myself and take refuge in my mind.
My bond practically gnashes its teeth at me in frustration, but it’s not until it has her backed up against the wall that I realize it’s trying to draw out her bond. She can’t be classed as a Central Bond without having a bond inside her. I know this, we all do, but I’ve never felt it before. I’ve never reached out to it, never had it reach for me, never wanted to even acknowledge its existence.
Strangely, it never factored into my trauma all that much, but then again, it’s not like the last Bonding I was forced to endure had the ability to form any connections like that.
My bond sends a pulse of power into her, only she trembles in response as though it was nothing more than an act of seduction. That alone marks her as dangerous; no one enjoys a Death Dealer’s call. Gryph can put aside his discomfort, Gabe has learned to endure it, but it could never be described as a pleasant experience.
She’s on the verge of begging for more, and I loathe her for it.
After isolating me, my mother assumed that she alone would control the threads at the loom, but my bond sat with her, silent and watchful as he slipped dark and vengeful threads into her hands without her ever being wiser. By the time my brother came calling, enough of that twisted and repulsive design was already established until there was no recovering the image of what could have been. The version of me that would want this girl pressed against her, who would enjoy wrapping his hand around her throat like my bond does and feeling her swallow reflexively, who would relish in the heat of her as my bond splits her thighs open with one of mine. Even as clinical as I am cataloging all of these actions, the panic begins to rise until I’m forced to shut down further.
She’s practically whining as she grinds all over me, the scent of her arousal impossible to block out entirely, and I try one last time before my bond can doom us all. “I want my power. I want what you owe me. I have waited five years for this. I'd been waiting five years before then. An entire decade I've been waiting to have my full power, and you're just going to come here and say no to us all? I don't fucking think so, Poison."
The surge of indignant fury from her washes over me but proves almost instantly to be too little, too late.
My bond takes control, forcing my lips against hers. In one last push against it, I snap and snarl at it,It’s my body. You can’t do this.
My bond’s reply is instant, iron-clad, and bone-chilling, washing over me as something wakes within her and sends my consciousness off to the darkest oblivion.
It is my vessel. The body is mine to command as I wish.
Nox’s Bond
The girl resists.
I’m expecting that, expecting this to be a struggle for power and control, but I’m not expecting what happens next at all. Hundreds of lifetimes, endless vessels we’ve inhabited, but this has never happened before.
My Eternalletsher.
Interesting.
I can feel power brimming within the vessel, an echo of every lifetime we’ve spent together, and the aching chasm within that opened up at the desolate existence without her slowly begins to fuse back together. The immense power surges up to the surface, as desperate as my own to bind us together and end this torturous separation, but the girl pulls away.
My beloved allows her to keep control.
The Eternal has devoured countless vessels for far less.
It doesn’t submit to her easily, not even close. It fights against her as though testing her limits and pushing them out further, but when, inevitably, it feels her reach the edges of her strength, it backs down. Quietly slipping back into the deep recesses of her mind, it coils up to lie in wait instead, leaving me with a lingering caress, an unspoken promise to return to me when the moment is right.