Page 40 of Snag (Conduit #2)

I stand, taking a step toward him, hearing Rought shifting behind me. Wood clatters to the floor as he moves, his chair seemingly torn apart, or perhaps crushed under his weight. Rath has taken out one of the carved support posts in the living room before crushing the nearest set of couches.

Hopefully, the second floor isn’t about to drop on top of us. That might actually hurt.

“Not only am I not a child,” I say quietly to the Outcast, icy calm now, “but that childhood was all but stripped from me. And I can’t help but think that you bear partial blame for those missing years.

Whether due to your past actions or negligence or some direct intervention thirteen years ago …

you carry the responsibility for the fact that my own bonds have been ripped from me. ”

I’m close enough to touch him now. I raise my hand, hovering it over his chest.

He flinches even as he tries to cover that reaction, his fear of me. I doubt that the Outcast has been truly afraid in decades. At least not for himself. “I didn’t know.”

“You did,” I say. “Because even if the boys all thought I was dead and reported that to you, your territory surrounds my aunt’s.

Like Rath said, someone, one of your scouts, would have seen me leave the property.

There is no way, so fresh from being dead, that my aunt could have arranged to teleport me.

She didn’t even know that I would survive that night.

Even now, as the Conduit, the complications are too risky to even attempt to move me in such a way. ”

Something flickers at the edge of my mind …

A sense of wind pressing me back, and rock underfoot. Then a dark, stormy night.

And screaming.

So much screaming — shouts of disbelief, and pain. Then terror. The power of the intersection point aching through my bones, as if rejecting me …

Or … unable to connect with me.

I shove it all away.

The actual memory of the only time I have been teleported follows. In the aftermath of my mother’s death, in the arms of my absentee father. Not that Disa gave him much of a choice about the absentee part. I might have only been nine, but that particular memory is crystal clear.

I shove that thought away as well.

“I didn’t know for certain,” the Outcast insists, shifting his feet to stop from swaying. “Not until recently. ”

For a moment, I can’t remember what we’re discussing in the aftermath of the elder shifter’s power play.

“How recently?” Rought asks from behind me.

Right. My death.

The Outcast’s gaze flicks between both his nephews, Rath having moved to boxed him in from the other side.

“Cayley,” I say, more pieces of the puzzle click, click, clicking together.

“Cayley is bound to you. And she saw me in Tokyo. Even with me securing the invitation from the Phrontistery and the scholarships after rescuing her sister, Kiki would have needed permission, your permission, to leave your territory. Cayley would have been forced to give you something to explain all of that, even if she refused the Authority when they interrogated her.”

“What?” Rath exclaims. “What interrogation with the —”

“Eighteen months,” Rought says hollowly. “You’ve known for certain that Zaya was alive for at least eighteen months.”

The Outcast raises his hands, placating his nephews— but not surrendering. “Telling you what I only suspected wouldn’t have fixed your severed bonds. I knew they had to have been muted or compromised somehow, either by Zaya’s death or …”

“Or …?” I ask.

“Some other intervention,” he adds, covering the pause though I know that wasn’t what he was about to say.

“The bonds had to be compromised. Otherwise the boys wouldn’t have believed you were dead, Zaya.

Not even with Ingrid’s and Mack’s confirmation.

They would have felt you.” He locks his gaze to Rought’s over my shoulder. “Especially you, Angel.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rought rasps .

Rath slowly starts to unbutton his cut. “Have you got what you need, Zaya?”

I’m not certain. I don’t know that I needed any of this information, nor that I’m done asking questions. But I nod anyway.

“Give us a quick moment, goddess,” Rought says, ghosting his fingers down my spine.

So instead of fucking with the Outcast’s threads like I so desperately want to, I lower the hand I’m still holding only inches from his chest.

Because their uncle is right, though for the wrong reasons.

I won’t hurt him. His punishment is for his blood, those few he should hold allegiance to, to extract. It’s not as if he had an intact universe-gifted soul bond to supersede his blood bonds.

Rought presses a kiss to my temple, both of us still staring at his uncle.

The Outcast finally drops his gaze, though his shoulders remain squared, his stance firm. I notice that he lost his cane during his temper tantrum.

Leaving the remainder of my answers behind, assuming the Outcast can provide them, I cross around him, stepping carefully through the debris now littering the room.

Rath yanks off his cut, crumpling it in one hand. He leans into me as I pass. I pause just long enough for him to brush a kiss against my cheek. Essence shivers across my skin. The kiss is utterly chaste, but full of promise.

I traverse the living room in reverse, noting again that a house that should be teeming with shifters is oddly empty. Not even Rought’s mother and sisters are here.

Did the Outcast send them all away after Rath’s call, to protect them from me? As a simple reflex? Perhaps he expected retribution. But for what, exactly? For keeping me from my mates?

I glance back over my shoulder. Rought and Rath have crowded around their uncle, but all three of them are watching as I leave. Just before I cross out of their line of sight, Rath throws his discarded cut at the Outcast’s feet.

I turn my attention forward — where it always should be — and exit through the front door, my heart weighted with even more questions than I had when I entered.