Page 23 of Burdened Bonds

I peer at my wrist watch. Where the hell is my father? And how much longer will he be? I want to be away, out searching for Rhi with the others.

“Are you going to tell him about Rhianna?” my cousin asks as if reading my thoughts. She’s as aware as I am that he isn’t going to like the news. It was one thing Azlan – his wayward nephew – bonding to an unregistered girl from the wastelands, but his only son? His heir?

It’ll also spark his interest, arouse his suspicions. A girl with not one but two Kennedy mates. He already suspects there’s something unusual about her. Now he’ll be determined to find out what.

“No, I don’t think that would be a very good idea. I’m going to break the news about mom and then I’m leaving. I need to help the others find Rhi.”

Ellie swirls the liquid in her glass. “Why were you so mean to her, Tristan?”

“My mom?” I don’t want to think about her. We moved her to the bedroom together, laying her out on her bed as if she’d just taken one too many of her pills, and once she’d slept them off, she’d be awake again. Back with us. “I tried to be a good son. I tried to protect her from him, like she tried to protect me.”

“Tristan, I don’t mean your mom,” she says gently. “I mean Rhianna, your mate.”

I fold over in my chair, scrubbing my hand in my filthy hair, the glass shaking in my other hand.

“You have no idea what it’s like to come face to face with your fated mate, someone destiny wants to bind you with for eternity, and know nothing about them, nothing at all. Not even their voice, not even their name. It was … it was a shock.”

“One most people would find incredible, Tristan,” she says, with a little more firmness this time.

“Most people haven’t had their life mapped out in front of them from the day they were born. Most people don’t have expectations, the burden of their family, resting on their shoulders.” I peek up at her through the curtain of my hair. “I knew from the moment I met her – Rhianna – that my life was going to change. And I guess I was …”

“Scared?”

I snort.

My cousin rolls her eyes. “Oh because no one in the Kennedy family ever gets scared. Or at least they’ll never admit to it because that would be admitting weakness.And one thing this family has to remain at all times is strong.” She slides her glass onto the coffee table. “Well, let me tell you something, Tristan. I was absolutely petrified just now, scared out of my mind that we were going to lose you!”

I can feel the corners of my eyes dampen with tears and I wipe them away with my fingers.

“But your mom, she sacrificed herself for you, and you know what that means now, don’t you?”

“What?” I say.

“You have to do better. Better than you have done in the past. You have to be a better person, Tristan. For Rhianna, for Azlan, for the people in this family that matter, probably for this entire country.”

“I’m not sure I can be.” I’m not made that way. I was molded by a cruel man with only his purpose in mind.

As if reading my thoughts for a second time, my cousin says, “You’re not your father, Tristan.”

And as she says those words, we hear the front door slam back and we both know it’s him, like he’s arrived just so he can argue against that very damn point.

We look at each other, the color the liquor had brought to Ellie’s cheeks draining away.

I down the remainder of mine, slam the glass down and stand to my feet. Ellie does the same and we climb the stairs back to the main entrance of the house together. My feet are heavy and loud on the wooden steps and I have the peculiar notion that I’m a condemned man, approaching the gallows, ready for his fate, for his doom. I shake the notion away, push the door open and find my father in the hallway, tugging off his leather gloves, his black cloak already discarded on the floor.

He spins around at the sound of the door, hands raised,ready to strike, then seeing it’s only me and Ellie lowers his arms.

His shirt is torn at the shoulder, the skin underneath singed and there’s a gash across his forehead, his usually slicked-back hair loose over his brow.

“So you’re alive then?” he says, sounding neither pleased nor distressed by this news.

“Only just,” I say.

“You’re lucky to have made it out,” he says, threading a finger through the rip in his shirt and touching the burned flesh below, healing it quickly. “I hear that the academy fared much worse than the capital.”

“Is it over?” I ask him, searching his face for clues on the outcome of the attack.

“Yes, for now it is over. The forces from the West have retreated.”