Page 97 of Broken Ties
The girl’s chest is heaving, her cheeks flushed perfectly—invitingly—and my hand is dripping with her release, the smell of her arousal enough to send me to my knees, to taste her, to draw out more, to hear her screaming and begging…
I want the girl.
My Eternal is everything to me, and, though it’s true I’ve found some connection with the vessels in the past, none have driven me to madness like this. None have called to me as this one does, nor sent me into a frenzy with such ease. The shadows claw at my control like they’re ready to consume me to get to her, any sacrifice deemed worthy for that honor.
The Bond might not have been established, but I feel no anger or violence filling me. Instead, for the first time in countless lifetimes, I’m filled with purpose.
The Eternal likes its vessel.
Ilike its vessel—and my own.
Even better, both vessels are strong, far stronger than any who have come before them.
I didn’t dare to hope, not after so much heartache and destruction in the past, but there’s always been somethingmoreabout my vessel. No matter what vile and reprehensible evils were wrought on him, the boy never broke. He thinks he did, he’s been molded into a vicious shape by it all, but I’ve seen what it means for a vessel to truly break and this isn’t it.
Even now, he speaks to the girl to ensure she doesn’t discover that he also hides a god beneath his skin. His voice drips with disgust, with hatred, with utter contempt, and the girl only stares back at him. Her face is a mirror; the longer we gaze into her perfectly azure eyes, the more of himself my vessel finds laid bare between them.
She’s perfect for us both.
We’re going to end the cycling. We’re going to be together, all of us, finally, after centuries of aching voids and deaths at the hands of the other god bonds. They’ve failed to destroy us, our loyalty winning out just as we hoped it would.
We’re going to kill themall.
TWENTY-SIX
NORTH
Of all the days to have Nox and Gryphon get drunk at some dive bar at the edge of town, tonight was possibly the worst choice.
After a day of dealing with Atlas Bassinger showing up at my Bond’s dorm room doordeclaringhe’s attending Draven University, then threatening me with legal action—that will hold up if it ever made it in front of an unbiased council or judge, depending on how far he managed to take it—I almost dismiss Julian Benson’s urgent request to see me.
Three missed calls from the Gifted in under an hour was strange enough that I called him back, expecting something about funding or his work on my blood samples, only for him to completely derail my plans for a quiet evening of figuring out how to neutralize Bassinger’s threats.
“My son, Sawyer, has found something. I can’t speak about it over the phone, but I think you’ll want to see it for yourself. North, it’s… it’s urgent. I’m not being an alarmist when I’m saying it warrants your immediate action.”
Julian could be called a lot of things but an ‘alarmist’ wouldn’t be one.
Sawyer Benson is a Top Tier Gifted, extraordinarily powerful and intelligent, and a complete nightmare to work with. Mouthy,irreverent, and utterly shameless, he’s also painfully aware that he’s one of only three Technokinetics in the country. Given that one has just enough power to turn lights on and off, while the other is a Resistance grunt who is constantly chasing Sawyer’s digital trail because the kid has been running rings around him since grade school… well, Julian’s son is in an entirely different ball field.
He has never let anyone forget it.
Not me, not the council, not even Nox when the two crossed paths last year in Gifted 101. It was only after Sawyer saved Nox’s digital archives and then wrote an entirely new program for them that my brother called a truce with him. Even now, Nox trusts him with any technological requests, and he even came to me to get Sawyer a security clearance level that would make him most useful to us all.
Despite being young, mouthy, and too arrogant to put into words, he’s as loyal as they come. Even now that he’s sitting in his father’s labs, surrounded by hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment, blood samples from the country’s most elite Top Tier Gifted, and far too many empty energy drink cans, he’s waging his own war against the Resistance in a way that very few can.
He’s also winning it, which is more than what I can say about any other front.
Julian has spent the last five years quietly campaigning for me to allow Sawyer to run the data from my blood sample and Nox’s. When he first called, I assumed that was what it was about. Or gaining access to my Bond’s blood, which has been sitting at the back of my mind since Vivian first showed me that security footage. I’m tempted to bring it up with her, but I’m also fairly certain there’s no real point. She would never agree to it and I’d never force her to.
I’m busy weighing my options to broach the topic with my Bond when I arrive at Benson’s lab right after it closes, and he meets me at the front door to let me in. He’s never been particularly chatty about anything other than his work, but the silence between us seems fraught. It’s clearly not aimed at me, but by the time we’re stepping out of the elevator into his lab together, he’s practically twitching.
Sawyer is at his computer, hands working furiously across the keyboard, and when he doesn’t acknowledge our arrival, it’s clear he’s completely engrossed in his task. Julian doesn’t interrupt him, either, which means it’s something related to his big discovery. Within a minute of us arriving there, Julian’s phone rings. When his son huffs at him, he makes his apologies and takes the call in his office, quietly shutting the door behind him.
Sawyer waits until his father is out of the room before he speaks to me, but I’m not sure if that’s intentional or just that he’s come out of his data mining enough to realize I’m standing near him.
“Have you met the Bassinger kid yet?”
Fuck. Me.