Page 3 of Snag (Conduit #2)

Rought settles his attention on the photo, his expression turning grim.

“I think my mother thought the Cataclysm wouldn’t drag us back right away if she stayed with him.

But no matter how many bastards he has …

we have half-siblings we don’t even know about.

Reck is his oldest. And Rath and I are …

” He doesn’t complete the thought, just stares at the picture for a moment.

“There are still things I don’t know all the details about.

It was Grinder who brought us to Ingrid, not my uncle.

The Outcast drove us to the estate, here, straight from California, but then left us at the gate.

I think the Club traded a favor with Ingrid for the healing.

All three of us needed it. None of us had our beasts then. ”

“Most shifters don’t fully transform until their late teens,” I murmur quietly, to let him know I’m listening. Intently.

He nods. “Grinder brought us to the main house first to speak with Ingrid, but we didn’t go inside. Then three days later …” He touches the photo, then looks down at me. “Yo u came out to the cottage in the woods, demanding to meet me, meet us.”

I laugh. And I realize that I’m here. I’m here in the now . With him. Just like I was for that moment on the front patio of the main house yesterday. The moment I first saw him, even if he’d first met me when we were both only nine years old.

I want to be in the now with him. I want to ignore the terrible revelations erupting all around me, and all the conclusions sure to come. I want to ignore everything I thought was the truth, that I’ve now learned was some sort of a lie, and skip forward.

I feel as if Rought would be more than willing to jump into the now with me.

“Your arm was in a cast. You asked me …” He clears his throat. “You looked at my leg, at the bruising on my face. Ingrid had to heal me in stages.”

“Me too,” I say quietly, not wanting to interrupt him.

“You asked me if my mom was dead too.”

My heart suddenly feels as if it’s lodged in my throat. “And what did you say?”

He chuckles darkly. “I said no, but that I wished my father was. Three days here, by the ocean, surrounded by people who actually fucking cared about me, and not worried what my next so-called lesson was going to be … and I already knew I never wanted to go back. Then I met you. And you just cemented all of that.”

“But you did go back.”

“I did. The Cataclysm didn’t let us get away that easily. But he let us come every summer, to train with our uncle, the Outcast, because he thought it would get him a foothold in Cascadia.”

“Why here? The Federation seems more his … style. ”

Rought snorts, then shrugs. “Power. It’s always about the accumulation of power, isn’t it? That’s why he …” He shakes his head.

“Why he … ?”

“Let’s put that on our list of things to figure out later,” he says, angling his head so he can look me in the eye. “Not that I enjoy looking back at anything other than you, Zaya.”

I flush, actual warmth threading through my chest.

“You want to know something?” he asks, all low and rumbly.

“Anything,” I whisper, like an utterly breathless, utterly beguiled idiot.

“You’ve taken my vengeance for that day. For all the beatings before and after.”

I blink, confused. “How so?”

“The Cataclysm enforcers who liked to beat the shit out of Reck, Rath, and me under the loose guise of training us? Of making sure we were the biggest, baddest shifters around? The best assets for our father? You’ve killed them both.” He laughs harshly.

He means Chains and Breaker. Breaker fell by my hand on the beach, albeit with Muta’s venom slowing him down first. And I snipped the threads of Chains’s future, his life force, to stop Presh from manifesting her powers too early. Too quickly.

“What a blow to their fucking egos,” Rought says with a smile. “To be put in their fucking place by a girl.”

“I am the Conduit,” I say wryly. But I rub my forearms, where I can still feel Chains’s threads of fate scoring my skin.

It’s usually not for me to question my past, my path.

But for a moment, I wonder if I would still be standing here, right now, with Rought, if I hadn’t rescued Presh from the two Cataclysm lieutenants.

If I hadn’t died on that beach. If I hadn’t snipped Chains’s threads before his time.

I was already heading for the estate, to claim it and to try to figure out what had happened to my aunt. But would there have been any reason for my path to cross Rought’s? Any reason to pop into the Outcast clubhouse, then — completely out of character — dance with a near stranger?

I don’t think so.

I shiver, rubbing my arms. Again.

Rought’s gaze drops to follow my movement, his brow thoughtfully pinched. But he doesn’t ask if I’m hurt or cold. “Others don’t understand power like what you hold, Zaya.”

“And you do?”

He pauses for a moment, actually thinking about it. Somehow, that makes me like him even more.

‘Like him.’ What an utterly trite way of encompassing everything I’m feeling.

“I’ll learn the new you,” Rought finally says. “Though I think I understood the you of before, so that’s not a bad start, right? For our threads?”

He reaches for my hand and ever so gently brushes his thumb across the smooth pad of my left thumb.

“If … if you were mine …” I whisper. The idea is overwhelming, mind-boggling. I never thought, never even hoped —

“If I was yours,” Rought says, “we would walk on the beach together, like this, hand in hand.”

“Yes.”

“Snuggle on the couch together …” His gold-rimmed eyes ensnare me. I can’t look away, as if he’s weaving some sort of spell between us. A binding. “Sharing our favorite films and snacks. Do you still like licorice All Sorts? ”

I haven’t had any in years, but —

He adds, “Not the jellies, though. Your favorites are the triple-layered ones, leaving me the coconut rings and the solid black licorice.”

I close my mouth. He’s right, of course.

He tilts his head, assessing me. Maybe seeing if I’m still with him.

I am. Completely.

“And we would go for drives up the coast, blasting music and stopping anywhere that serves milkshakes and fries. If I was yours.”

“Yes.” I exhale shakily. I’m not … that life … that’s not supposed to be mine, but … he knows me.

Maybe he only knows little bits of me, but I want to know all about his favorite things as well. I want to know how to make him smile, make him laugh, make him tighten his arms around me. “I want that.”

He crowds up against me, lowering his voice again. “And dancing, like at the clubhouse?”

I nod, head fallen back to look up at him, cheeks flushed and utterly fixated. On Rought. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I wanted him while dancing last night. And with Rath watching us together …

“And at night?” Rought teases knowingly. “When the darkness encroaches on the day. I’m in your bed, yes? For more … cuddling?”

I laugh, again involuntarily. “Cuddling? Is that how you earn your keep?” Just about everything I knew about my past has been blown wide open.

I’ve been dealt what should have been a mortal wound, even a death sentence, for most — the loss of three soul-bound mates — and I’m fucking flirting with him.

“Well,” he says feigning seriousness. “I’m pretty good at fixing things. Cars, appliances …”

“I see,” I say, pretending to consider his proposition.

“And I’m a great tech.”

“I have Coda for that.”

He blinks at that, absorbing it. “You have … Coda … ?”

“Not like that!”

He barks a laugh. “No … I didn’t think …”

“We rescued each other years ago,” I say, feeling oddly earnest. I haven’t been without sexual partners, as sporadic as the impulse to connect with another human has been, but I don’t want any misunderstandings between Rought and me.

“From awry hunters. But there has never been anything other than a mutually beneficial … partnership between Coda and me.”

Still grinning at me as if I’m utterly adorable, he says, “I know who Coda is.”

“I know you do.”

“Which … that means …” His face crumples, shoulders suddenly sagging. “That I … I … could have fucking asked! I could have asked Coda about you. I fucking searched and searched on my own —”

“I’m impossible to find that way, Rought.”

Head bowed, he scrubs a hand over his face. His heavy despair, his old grief, actually rips through me. Viscerally. And that should frighten me, should concern me, because I’m not empathic. But somehow, it only anchors me further.

I’m not alone.

I’m not alone in this world. In my grief.

I grab his shoulders, suddenly desperate to patch this newest wound. “You couldn’t have found me like —”

Rought pulls me into his arms, lifting me up — chest pressed to chest. I twine my legs and arms around him, as if it is pure instinct to do so. Maybe even muscle memory? I bury my face in his neck. Skin to skin.

He holds me tightly. Though I’m so much smaller, I’m not fragile to him. Though I’m so much, much more powerful, I’m not dangerous either.

He takes multiple deep breaths, of my hair, of my neck, filling his lungs with me over and over again. Essence — mine, his, and the power underlying the intersection point — twines all around us, cocooning us.

I know . I know what he needs in this moment. And I know how to give it to him. I want to give it to him.

Because he is mine. He feels like mine. Oh, fuck. He felt like mine the first time I saw him. And right now, I don’t care that there are no actual threads between us. That I can’t see or sense our soul bond.

“Have you got me?” I ask, whispering into the skin of his neck. Because this is what he needs. He needs to know I’m here. That he’s found me.

“Yes,” Rought says gruffly. “Always.”

I pull back just enough to look him in the eye. He shifts me slightly up in his arms so that my legs twine around his torso rather than his hips, leveling out our faces. I thread my fingers through his hair, greedily snatching thick handholds of it, gazing deeply into his eyes.