Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Oli
Life enters a weird, new normal for us all.
Gabe and Atlas spend their days helping build houses and working on the new extensions for the school that are under way.
North and Nox occupy themselves organizing an election for the new council.
They go through the logistics of setting something like that up and how they can best use their resources to ensure that the Top Tier families don’t attempt to corrupt the voting process.
I think it would be incredibly bold of them to attempt it.
When I say this out loud, everybody stares at me like I'm either dumb or naive.
“Men in power will always choose to stay in power, Bonded. You should remember that,” North drawls as he sips his whiskey at the dinner table, pages of information still spread out in front of him even as he eats.
I smile coyly back at him. “I don't need to. I have a Bonded Group for that. I get to dance around and think the best of everyone at all times. Isn't that great?”
Gryphon scoffs at me and takes one of the rolls from my plate, ignoring the daggers that North shoots at him, but I bat my eyelashes until he serves me a spoonful of potatoes in exchange.
I wasn't expecting to love them as much as I do, but the chef has always been insanely talented at figuring out exactly what carbs I need on any given day.
“You don't think the best of anyone at any time, not even your Bonded, so don't try that bullshit here, Oli.” I flick a pea in his direction, but he's not exactly wrong.
Gryphon spends his days down at the Tac Training Center, working with the new recruits to get them as trained as we possibly can before our next conflict crops up.
There's no doubt in any of our minds that it's only a matter of days, not weeks, before we're hit again. The Resistance have always tried to throw everything they can at us without taking a break, and the news of the deaths has already quieted down. I feel as though we’re in the calm before the storm.
I spend my days bouncing between the three groups, trying to help but mostly being a distraction to them all.
More often than not, I find myself pressed up against a hard surface somewhere.
My Bonded are just as insatiable for me as my bond is for them.
I might also enjoy their presence a little more than I'm willing to admit, which is a whole lot.
I spend more time with Gryphon than I do the rest, though it isn't favoritism. I'm keenly aware that he’s just lost his father. His mother, from whom he is estranged, is still sitting in the cells underneath the Tac Training Center. She’s not exactly a prisoner, but she’s not trusted enough to walk the streets of the Sanctuary.
I tried to reassure them all that I'm fine with her being out and about. I don't think she's going to attempt to hurt me, and I doubt she could even if she tried, but her words are still very clear in my Bonded’s minds. Gryphon was the first person to shut down that idea.
It's only after I go to visit him at the Tac Training Center and he squirrels me away into the small office that he finally reveals what has been eating away at him all this time.
He sits me on his desk in front of him and takes a moment to lay his head across my lap, enjoying my fingers as I scratch his scalp after I pull the hair tie out, threading my fingers through it as I work.
I’m intent on just being here for him and offering him whatever comfort I can.
Physical, mental, emotional; I’m here for it all.
“My parents weren't really Bonds,” he mutters against my thigh, and my fingers falter for a moment before I get back to scratching.
“They did the blood tests?”
He shakes his head. “My father refused. I got Sawyer to pull them and rerun them.
He's only doing them on my request because the database is so big. It’ll take him years to rerun everything, but there was something that I just couldn't let go of that the god said…
North too. So I asked him to rerun them.
My mom also requested that we don't do it.
She told me she knew exactly how she felt about my father, and she didn't need a blood test to tell her they were Bonds. I guess she was wrong.”
I scowl a little as my eyes wander over the large map of the entire country he has hanging over his desk.
Small flags mark the Resistance camps. It looks a lot like the one that Atlas’ mom had sent to us before she died, only there are a lot of older camps and Wastelands on it that have already been shut down.
I’d questioned him about it the first time he brought me up here. He'd sent me a sheepish grin, which was so foreign on his face that I almost wish I'd taken a photo of it.
“It's proof that we're actually getting something done around here.
Proof that we're making a difference. That even though more Resistance camps and Wastelands keep popping up, we are still getting rid of some. It might not seem like a lot, but to the people trapped inside of them, it’s huge.
I have to remind myself that every life saved might be a single number on our data sheet, but to that one person?
It's their entire life. Remembering the small things in this big mess is what gets me through the night when everything becomes just a bit too much.”
I don't like him speaking like that.
It sends a small tingle of fear into my belly, but I understand what he means. Sometimes I lie awake at night, the sound of their breathing all around me, and yet, even in the safety of their arms, I can't go back to sleep.
I know exactly what he's talking about.
“Do you really think she doesn't know? Or that she's just convinced herself that she does? I can't imagine not knowing.”
Gryphon shakes his head again, rolling his forehead against the soft flesh of my thigh as he groans at the firm tension of my fingers as I scratch.
“You know what this feels like because you have felt a true Bond between us.
How else are they getting everyone into the wrong Bonded Groups?
Unless they really have been manipulating people's minds…
Except that none of these people know what a Bonded Group really feels like.
They get butterflies at the idea that someone belongs to them, and they think that's it, that's enough.
They haven't felt what it's like to look at someone and have their entire world shifted on its axis so that that person is the center of it.
They don't know what it feels like to look out and see your heart living and breathing outside of your own body.
They don't understand what I felt when I saw you.”
My throat closes, and I bend at the waist until I'm hugging him, awkwardly laying myself over his back that's draped over my legs. We’re a messy pile of limbs, but it's perfect and exactly what I need at this moment. It’s what he needs too.
“Well, that means that you weren't a product of a Bonded Group. North and Nox weren't either, or Atlas. I guess that leaves me and Gabe.”
It’s never occurred to me that I could rerun my parents blood, but I suppose there’s a way that I could. Do I need that information? Do I want to have it? Will it change the way I think of them? Has it changed the way that Gryphon thinks of his?
I'm not sure, and I don't want to ask anything of my Bonded right now, not at the moment anyway.
Instead, I revel in the way that he's enjoying my touch, in the pleasure of us being here quietly together. Honestly, for now, it's enough.
* * *
The prospect of my parents not being Bonded weighs heavily on me.
It's not until a few days later, when I am holding pieces of drywall in place for Gabe to fix them, that I finally find a way to speak to him about it—a way for the words to come out of me and not sound broken and desolate or just plain wrong.
“Do you ever wonder if your parents were Bonded or if they were also part of the Resistance scheme?”
We're alone in the house.
Atlas just left on one of the ATVs to go and pick up more grout and boxes of nails for us, leaving with a kiss for me and a slap on the shoulder for Gabe as he got to work.
He's flourishing now that he has picked up the basics of building under Gabe’s tutelage.
The first time that Gabe had declared some of his work as perfect, I saw Atlas beam with pride.
It occurs to me that he's never had to really work for anything before.
Being a Bassinger on the East Coast had made his entire life very easy, and I'm reminded of when he'd first started training with Gryphon and I. Gryphon had declared his form and technique lacking, thanks to overpaid trainers who wanted nothing more than his parents’ money and prestige. They didn’t really give a shit about whether or not Atlas truly knew how to defend himself.
I remember exactly what it looked like the first time that Gryphon had also declared his form perfect. Atlas gets serious pride from working hard at something and doing it right, and doing construction with someone that I now see is absolutely his best friend is no different.
Gabe tacks the drywall into place and then shoots me a wry grin.
“I’ve done my best to make sure that you never have to meet my mother, and I don't really want that to change. I don’t need Sawyer to rerun the bloods to know that my mom was definitely Bonded to my dad at least. You don't break the way that she did without there being a Bond in place. She's not really here anymore.”
I have accidentally stepped on my Bonded’s trauma, one that he has always been so careful about keeping hidden from everyone. When I wince, he chuckles under his breath at me, bending down to give me a quick peck on the lips as he moves to the next piece of drywall to tack down.