Page 6 of Moonlight Bonds (The Nexus #4)

Chapter

Three

R hodes.

Commander Rhodes of the Vian Army.

My mate…who betrayed me.

He’s here, standing in front of me like nothing’s changed.

Rhodes looks as heartbreakingly handsome as always, with the same smile I’ve grown to expect, the same kindness that I once fell for like a stone dropping into a lake.

His green eyes are sharp and vivid, staring at me like we are still the same.

The way he has always looked at me, right until he didn’t.

I never expected to stand in front of Rhodes and feel like he is a complete stranger to me.

A stranger who shattered my heart into pieces and made no apology for it.

Gods, if I thought it hurt before, it’s nothing compared to how much it hurts right now to see him.

His scent carries on the wind to me, wrapping around my senses and making my betraying heart beat faster.

He’s still my mate, and I wish somehow he weren’t.

I wish the world ripped out the bond along with my heart that once beat hard for him.

All the memories of us, all the things I thought I knew about him, trusted about him, are gone and tainted with lies.

Now all that lies between us is just an empty, fractured shell of what our relationship was before.

Time seems like it freezes as he stands there, so still, so silent.

A million emotions are shooting through his eyes, but I can barely breathe through my feelings.

I’ve never broken like I did when he betrayed me.

I’ve never screamed at the stars to change a single moment, but I did in Wales.

I screamed, I cried, and I picked myself back up afterwards.

I knew I’d have to face him at some point, but I’d hoped for more time.

For me to be stronger and not to feel anything when I look at him.

“Give me a chance to explain.” His voice cuts through me. A voice I used to search for to make me feel better. Now I just remember him handing me to the Vian king. It makes me want to cry. Breakdown. Unravel.

My Nexus brushes across my mind. “I am here, and he will bow. He will suffer.” She burns as brightly as a dying star. “I will begin with cutting off his?—”

I cut her off before she finishes that train of thought. My hands are shaking, and Rhodes glances at them, his jaw tightening. “I won’t hurt you. You never have to be scared of me.”

Finnegan steps out beside me, pulling out a dagger marked for death. He points it at Rhodes. “No, she won’t, because you’re already dead.”

Before he gets another step, Rhodes lifts his hand and Finnegan at the same time.

I reach for Finnegan, but Rhodes sends him straight back into the tent, smacking into the desk with a massive bang as it breaks into pieces.

He tries to get up, but Rhodes’s power holds him down, even as he shifts into his bear and roars for the world to hear.

“Let him go, Rhodes,” I cooly reply, barely trusting my voice to be steady.

“He’s not dead, just angry, and I want to speak to you alone.” He clears his throat like he is nervous. He should be. “I never meant?—”

“Are you really beginning this with more lies? You never meant to what? Hurt me?” My laugh is hollow and fractured.

“Oh, or is it kill me ? Should I expect the Vian king to be around the corner with Georgina to finish the job? Did they send you, their little half-breed pet, to capture me?” I narrow my eyes.

“This time you won’t find it so easy. You shocked me last time, Rhodes, but this time I see you for exactly what you are.

I’ll kill you before you get a single chance to take me to them. ”

“That was never, ever the point. I’ve never wanted you dead.” He shakes his head. “They aren’t here. Gwen…I’m sorry for what I had to do. It was the only way.”

He takes a step forward, and a warning growl echoes out of my throat. I let my Nexus flash in both my eyes, my hands turning into long claws. I can feel my hair changing colour, my skin draining of any life. “Take one more step and see what happens.”

“Fair enough. I deserve your hatred. I deserve every inch of what you’re feeling right now.” He puts both his hands in the air in front of him. “I’m not here to fight you. I’m asking for a minute to talk.”

“I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say.” I wave at the market. “Leave before I make you. Let Finnegan go.”

I turn to go to Finn, keeping my senses wide because I can’t trust turning my back on Rhodes at all.

Not when he could stab me in it again. But then he says something that stops me.

“The first time I met your mother and the man that brought you up as his daughter was when you were in her womb. She turned up in the Vian city and told me that my mate was—my mate is—her daughter, and you were going to be born to a world that would kill you at every chance it got. She told me of prophecies that had been said, of your fate, of your future. The four of us planned to save you.”

“Four of you?” I turn back, my voice catching. He met my parents when my mother was pregnant with me and Georgina. How could my mum possibly have known who my mates were before I was even born?

“Hollis.” Figures that asshole knows. “When we both found out, everything changed from that moment. Everything. All the sins I’ve done since may portray me as your enemy, may make you hate me, but you’re alive.

That was the only point to all of it, and I would do it again.

I was selfish just once, when I came after you when you ran out of the house after we got you back.

Hollis and I agreed to keep our distance and make you hate us because it would be so much crueller to lie to your face every day, but fuck, when I got close to you, I couldn’t stop.

I was addicted to you from the moment we met, and I fucked it up. ”

“You gave me to the Vian king!” I shout back at his “holier than the Gods” shit.

“You let Georgina carry me to the sky and kill hundreds of thousands of my people! Your people!” He says nothing.

“You’re half Nexus and they’re your people too, and you let him—you let both of them—do that to me.

” I feel my heart cracking. “You killed Howard. He was kind and innocent, just a boy trying to do the right thing and help people. You did that.”

“I didn’t kill him. Just drained him enough that he passed out.

” I glance at Rhodes’s clothes for the first time, the dark purple academy-like leather that clings to his body, the thick black cloak falling from his shoulders, the heavy boots.

There is a gold chain hanging low on his chest, with a symbol of a moon with a star cut into it in the metal.

Vian clothes. “If we had taken him with us, someone would have actually killed him. He wouldn’t have been safe. ”

“Oh, and that’s meant to make it better?

” I roll my eyes. “What about the rest of Starlight City? What of the children and babies who cried out as my magic killed them? What of them, Rhodes?! You could have stopped it all, and now you have ruined us both. I will never close my eyes and not see the death on my hands. You did this to me. You hurt me so badly that I’m not sure what there is left of me to give anyone. You fucking did this!”

Tears roll down my cheeks as the air stills as he kneels in front of me. “I’m sorry…I’m so fucking sorry, Gwen.”

“Get up!” I snap at him, angrily brushing my tears away.

He looks up at me as he rises. “I did what I could to make sure you lived. How do you think Prince Severi got high enough to grab you? He doesn’t have the power to fly or float.

I shot him up there with my telekinesis power.

Hollis made sure everybody else was distracted from seeing it was me.

Severi took the full blame and claimed to have new powers to protect us, because he knows what is coming. We need each other. All seven of us.”

“I don’t believe you! I can’t trust you!

” I wave my hands out, exasperated and furious.

Gods, I’m still crying. “I can’t trust anything that you say ever again.

You lied to me. You betrayed me. Do you know the first time that I ever felt safe was with you?

Not once with my parents, on the run, at Harry’s house or any other time.

Do you remember the first time that you told me that you didn’t fear me, that you would wait for me to tell you everything?

It was the first time…” I touch my chest, my rapidly beating heart.

“That I felt something in here that wasn’t pure fear.

It was the hope of a future that we possibly could have, and then you ripped that away.

You took it, and you just—you could have told me the truth from the start about who you really are.

Is the story about what you said about your mother true? ”

“Some of it. She was killed by Vian. But it’s complicated,” he admits.

“I imagine so.” My voice is cold.

“She wasn’t really my mother in any sense,” he adds. “I didn’t grow up with parents, friends or anything other than Hollis.”

“What does that mean?”