Page 41 of Snag (Conduit #2)

ELEVEN

Slowly crossing toward the woods only a few meters from the north side of the house, I breathe in deeply in an attempt to settle my mind.

I’m more than a bit staggered by the secrets my aunt was keeping.

Though I also understand that Disa was always clear that her role, her duty — as dictated by the universe — was to live in the present.

As she raised me. As I’m now supposed to be.

If I allow myself to be truly maudlin for a moment, though, I’m not certain anyone raised me in the traditional sense after my mother died.

Of course, other than the intermittent visceral flashes I’ve been experiencing in the last few days, I am apparently missing large portions of thirteen years of my life.

More secrets kept from me by my aunt.

Someone always fed me, someone tutored me, someone was always around — a rotation of aunts and uncles, mixed with a few cousins, following some schedule that kept them near enough. But never close enough to form actual familial bonds. By my aunt’s edict? Because I was the Conduit’s vessel ?

Maybe Disa always planned to explain it to me … that’s what her note implied, yes?

I’m sorry for everything you are about to discover

and that I wasn’t the one to tell you.

Or maybe that note was penned out of regret for everything my aunt was leaving for me to hold.

Did she think I wouldn’t be haunted by her death?

Or the past she’d hidden from me? Maybe she thought she’d trained me better than that.

Maybe she thought I would simply step into my role and wait for the universe to move me where it willed.

“I’m never going to know,” I whisper to myself, as if I need to chastise myself out loud for it to truly sink in. I’m beyond the tree line, weaving through evergreens now. “I’m never going to know, so what’s the point in rolling the questions around in my mind?”

The ground between the huge conifers is bare, packed down in places, a combination of the still-chilly late-winter weather and the dozens of shifters who must run through these woods on a daily basis.

I don’t have a great sense of the history of the area, but I presume it would have been clear-cut well over a century ago, when the settlers attempted to strip this land of its resources and seize it from the First Nations.

Back when the territories were first united, only to be torn apart into separate countries with the vast stretches of the wilds in between.

Even if they weren’t second growth, it seems unlikely that the trees would be this large without help, presumably from multiple mages with earth affinities. Though this thick growth could simply be a side effect of the Outcast building a strong, unified pack filled with rare and powerful shifters.

I let those niggling thoughts fall away, allowing myself to just breathe. The air is mossy and damp. Comforting. If I were anyone but me, anyone but the Conduit, I might have assumed I was breathing in essence.

I am me, though.

I’m immune to more than just malicious spells.

I walk apart.

Except … I recall the essence shifting between Rought and me as I rode him on the couch. And an echo of the grip the gryphon had on my hips as he pinned me to the bed only a couple of hours ago.

I could reach for the tether that binds Rought and the gryphon to me now. As tenuous as it still feels, I know I could find it, touch it. Maybe even strengthen it by reaching through it, brushing my mind, my consciousness, against my soul-bound mate.

I’m not so alone anymore.

I’m also not so childish as to seek out that connection in a minor moment of confused melancholy. Rought’s conversation with his uncle is far more important than me suddenly feeling like I wouldn’t mind a cuddle.

I find the first carved totem another dozen steps into the trees.

This carving is rougher hewn … as if made by claws, articulate but deadly.

The Outcast’s claws— or rather, the claws of whatever beast he transforms into.

Unlike the smoother, more considered carvings in the house, the wood here has been left to weather.

The grayed totem stands about a foot taller than me.

I have no idea what the markings represent, or even whether it’s a language or pictographs.

Perhaps only the Outcast can read them. Perhaps he’s a member or a descendant of a lost tribe .

I don’t touch the totem. I don’t wish to trigger or dispel the boundary ward.

The power of the Outcast — both the shifter and the club he created — isn’t under my purview. I’m not some … autocrat. Or savior. I neither make rules nor enforce them. I don’t even bring balance or protection. Not on a global scale, at least.

Not unless or until the universe deems it necessary.

As I wander farther, juggling thoughts of all my aunt’s secrets and what I was taught was my fundamental role, the sound of the surf picks up.

Wisps of low-lying fog tell me I’m nearing the coastline.

I pause among the trees instead of continuing.

Breathing, settling. I can’t remember the last time I set foot in nature like this …

the last time I voluntarily hiked or biked or swam in the ocean.

It takes a moment, as if I have to truly settle my mind to catch it without actively reaching for it, but I can feel my connection to Rought.

Or rather, I can feel where he is. That connection is quiet, though not as tenuous as I previously deemed it.

Still, I hesitate to reach for it, even tentatively, because I don’t want to accidentally overpower it.

Which is more of a feeling than a rational thought.

I have a soul-bound mate. Someone — or something, perhaps the trauma from my first death — tried to tear Rought and me apart. But the gryphon … Rought’s beast hadn’t manifested yet. And the gryphon held the bond.

Even the idea is overwhelming. I’m sure Rath will scour the library looking for supporting documentation. But … maybe … the dragon and the cu-sith hold the other two bonds?

My aunt had three soul-bound mates as well. I don’t understand the intricacies involved in her choosing to sever those bonds, but she never told me about any of it .

She never told me that maybe I didn’t have to carry everything on my own.

I ignore the condemnation I feel rising underneath my own thoughts — the childish anger threatening to overtake the purely rational conclusion.

Disa thought she had more time. Another century at least before the vessel would wear thin, before the Conduit power would pass to me.

I start making my way back to the house. Despite my tumultuous thoughts, the tiny knot anchoring me to Rought is a warm glow in my chest.

Maybe Disa was right about the past not mattering.

We all have to live in the present, after all.

I tug my phone free from my pocket, honestly surprised that I’ve got the device on me. I’m also carrying my sunglasses, which is just short of a miracle. Maybe I’m not as easily distracted as I thought.

I’m swiping Coda’s passcode sequence on the phone screen before I consciously make the decision to do so.

The pack house comes into view through the thinning trees.

A large SUV — clearly Authority issue, though its hulking exterior isn’t marked with their insignia — speeds up the drive, abruptly skidding to a stop as if the driver has spotted me through the tinted windows.

“We’re on it,” Gigi growls over the speakers of my phone.

“On what?” A chill slithers down my spine as I keep my eye on the SUV.

The phone suddenly feels weighted in my hand, as if anchored by a strand of fate. The fate that placed it in my pocket, that saw me reach for it to dial Coda without conscious intent .

I pause, waiting. No other essence stirs around me, but I’m suddenly certain I’m hesitating in the moment before a knowing . As if the universe is also waiting, waiting to see which way the threads are about to shift.

Or what they’re about to snag.

A long, weighty pause settles between me and the combat mage on the phone. There are very few things that would concern Gigi enough to take that testy tone with me. With anyone, really.

The passenger-side window of the SUV rolls down as the vehicle backs up, letting me see within it.

Reck.

The last time the universe paused around me was right before the cu-sith strolled through the shifter and berserker battle on the streets of Newport.

Right before I made a choice — a personal choice — to send Precious off without me and to save those dozens of shifters from the death emanating from Reck’s beast.

I’m not at the edge of a minor twist of fate.

I’m on the precipice of a full-blown knowing .

“Get in,” Reck calls to me, blunt and biting.

“You’re ‘on what,’ Gigi?” I raise the phone closer to my mouth to repeat the question.

“Precious slipped away while I was showering,” Gigi says over the speakers. “With the boy.”

“You’re tracking her phone?” Freed from the momentary pause in the universe, I cross steadily toward Reck.

Not rushing, but not avoiding what’s coming.

I’ll move quickly if Presh needs me, but jumping to conclusions while the universe realigns around me — if that is what’s going on right now — is never a good idea.

“I’ve got it,” Coda says from somewhere in the background. “Give me my fucking phone, Gigi. ”

“You. Focus!” Gigi snaps at the awry tech. Her voice sounds closer to the phone speakers as she addresses me. “Sorry, Zaya. It took me a moment to wake the asshole supreme once I realized the kids weren’t on the property.”

“Zaya!” Reck glances from me to the front entrance of the house. “Move your fucking ass.”

“Text messages, not as wiped as the baby awry probably thought …” Coda mutters in the background. “She’s been texting an unknown number … this routing code, though …”

“Authority?” I ask, walking right up to the open window of the SUV to meet Reck’s dark-eyed gaze. Then I deliberately look into the back seats. Empty.