Page 12 of Moonlight Bonds (The Nexus #4)

Annie. I touch her hair clip, guilt flooding me.

I haven’t found her, no one has any knowledge of where she has gone, and knowing what Georgina is now…

she could be in the Vian city. Only, I think if the king had her, he would have tried to blackmail me to come to him for her by now, so it doesn’t make sense.

Clutching the box, I leave the room and quickly head through the house, hoping to avoid people.

I just want to be alone. Hollis, Franklin and Nibbles are sitting on the sofa.

Franklin is cuddling Nibbles, who wags her tail when I go past. “You okay, Gwen?” Hollis asks.

“Going for a walk,” I tell him. “Severi woke up, and he is resting now.”

Hollis climbs up. “Alone?” I walk to the door when his next question comes, nervous this time. “Can I come with you?”

Being alone with Hollis? Fuck no. I’m not ready for that.

I begin to tell him no when Onyx walks out of the kitchen, a thick jumper covering his chest, old jeans hanging low on his hips and his hair still a little damp from a shower.

I’ve not seen him so casual before. I think I like him this way more than the suits.

“I’m going for a walk to gather firewood. I’ll come with you.”

I make sure he can see how thankful I am as I clear my throat and look at Hollis. “Another time, Hollis.”

Onyx joins me as we leave the cabin and breathe in the cold air, letting it relax me.

The sky looks cloudy, but it doesn’t look like rain today.

After we have walked for a good ten minutes, with Onyx picking logs and branches up as he goes, I reach out my senses to find his Nexus.

Nothing. His Nexus is so very silent, almost like it isn’t there anymore.

He doesn’t so much as flinch, and he doesn’t react in a way I would expect. Damn.

I slide the box into my pocket, knowing I can be alone with it another time. My Nexus knows we will need it.

“What happened to you?” I say after a while, giving up trying to sense his Nexus for now. My own Nexus is curious too. “Where were you when I…when Starlight City fell?”

Onyx nods at the cliff edge coming up. “Let’s sit first.” We head to it and sit down, piling the wood next to us. Even the wind seems silent as he tells me. “I was with my mother.”

“Oh, where is she?” I pause when I realise, when I hear the sadness in his voice. Oh Gods. I killed his mother. My stomach turns, and I push down the urge to cry.

I whisper, barely managing to speak. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry for something you didn’t choose to do,” he corrects me, but it doesn’t help.

The guilt is smothering me once again. It was easier to process it all when I couldn’t imagine the pain it caused so many, when it wasn’t someone close to me.

Now it’s overwhelming me. “She wouldn’t leave, and she kept trying to pack.

But I realised even if I’d got her in the car, it wouldn’t have made any difference because I couldn’t have gotten far enough away.

” He reaches for my hand, and I pull it away.

“I killed your mother, and I—” He moves closer, pulling me to his side and gripping my chin.

“No. Gwen, no. Listen to me, and this is the last time we are going to speak about this. You are not guilty. There isn’t any stain on your soul, you’re not a monster, and you do not need to suffer for what you were forced to do.

The king and Georgina used you. Did you willingly want to hurt anyone?

Did you go up there with Georgina and wish for all that death? ”

“No.” I shake my head, feeling tears pouring down my cheeks onto his hand.

“My mother was a casualty of an attack, and you were used as a weapon—an unwilling one. The Vian king and Georgina are the ones that must pay.” He lets go of my chin only to cup my cheek.

“After my mother died, I think I passed out. I’m sure I heard a voice…

but I can’t remember. I can’t hear my Nexus anymore, and my powers are…

strange. Reacting in a way I’ve never seen.

I think there was a consequence for surviving the Starlight City attack and walking free…

but I can’t remember what it was. I woke up weeks later, with no memory, and my father was dying in front of me. ”

For a moment, I’m pulled straight into his mind, into a vision.

A room covered in blood, his father bleeding out, and his hands are drenched in blood too.

There are dead Nexus in here…the guards the alpha had.

All of them are dead. Onyx’s father reaches up with a shaky hand.

“Please let me say goodbye…to them both.”

“Both?” Onyx slams to his knees in the blood. “You only have me, father. What happened to you?”

“No, I have Annie too. She is my daughter and your sister too.” He croaks out. “I want yo-u to tell her. Go now, son, before it returns.”

In a blink, I’m back, my eyes wide as the cold air blows my hair across my shoulders. “Wait, how did you do that?” I shake my head, and I don’t give him a chance to answer before I blurt out another question. “Annie is your sister?!”

“Half-sister, but yes, apparently so.” Onyx blows out a breath.

“I’m not surprised my father cheated, but that he conceived a child and no one said anything?

My mother must have known; mates know if the other cheats.

It doesn’t matter right now, but both my parents are gone, so that makes me alpha now until a vote…

and there aren’t many to vote. Alpha of a half-dead city isn’t a title I wanted.

My father ran when the shit hit the fan, and now they have me.

What bad fucking luck Starlight City has.

” I sink my head into his hand. I think Starlight City, what is left of its people, is lucky.

“Somehow, I feel like we’re running out of time, Gwen.

I can’t explain why, but a clock is ticking somewhere. ”

“I will find out what happened to you and figure out why your Nexus is MIA,” I vow to him. This is my Onyx. “I’m sorry about both of your parents. I know what that feels like, and when it happened to me, all I wanted was to know I wasn’t alone. I was…but you’re not. You never will be.”

“Come here,” he demands. I glance at the cliff edge, at how he’s sitting on the edge of it.

Sitting on his lap would be a risky trust exercise, but I trust him.

He needs me to trust him with my life right now.

Onyx hooks his arms around me as I sink into his lap, my thighs spreading around his hips.

Blood rushes to my cheeks when we are flush together, when there is no space between us.

He runs his hands slowly up my hips under my hoodie, up my waist. His hands tighten, and every inch of me clenches.

“Let me have you,” he breathes against my lips.

“I’ve been desperate to have you since we met, Gwen.

I imagined you at every moment, every time you pressed that rune and drove me insane.

I didn’t sleep for two nights, but fuck, I couldn’t have, anyway.

I had my hand wrapped around my cock and coming every time you pressed the rune.

When we were parted and had to pretend…I couldn’t do anything but think of you to survive.

I don’t know what I can promise you in this fucked-up state I’m in, but I do know I need to feel you, taste you, know what it is like to have you even if it’s just once. ”

Gods, Onyx's pleading is…damn. I nod once because there isn’t a word I can give him to scream yes, scream that this won’t be the only time we are together and that I’m never giving up on him.

He is mine, and I know without a single doubt that I will find a way for us to have some kind of future.

I’m feeling more confident than I have ever before that I can control some of my future and keep my mates safe.

We can all keep each other safe. I slowly pull off Finn’s hoodie, dropping it on the cliff beside us, before unclipping my bra and dropping it next.

Onyx watches, eyes darkening as he takes me in.

“Better,” he barely murmurs, “you are so much better than my poor imagination, Gwen.”

“What did you imagine doing to me?” I ask innocently, the corner of my lips tugging up even though I don’t want them to.

His laugh echoes around us. “Many, many things, Gwenieve. I want to know what makes you burn, and then I want to make sure it’s me who feels you let go.

” He runs his hand down my bare back, the wind blowing between us.

Onyx lays me down on Finn’s hoodie, right on the edge of the cliff, but I’m not scared.

I’m with my mate, who never stopped loving me and believing in me, and there is nowhere else I want to be.

He looks down my body slowly, like he is committing every inch of my skin to his memory, and I know it’s because he believes this will only be once, that he won’t get a future with me, but he should know better.

I will fight for him, find out what is wrong with his Nexus and get it back.

His fingers hook into the top of my leggings that hang low on my hips, his eyes on my nipples, which have hardened not only from the desire of wanting Onyx but the freezing wind.

My face feels hot as he kisses my bare stomach, slowly up towards my breasts. I moan as he goes to my right breast first, licking around the nipple. Pleasure shoots down straight to my core, straight down my spine, and I can’t help but try to move my legs, try to get friction there.

“Onyx,” I breathe.

He hums against me. “Maybe I should ask Finnegan what you like.” I lift my head, confused. “Unless he’s going to hide in the shadows and just watch. I don’t mind either way, but it might be more fun for our mate if you joined.”