Chapter 11
ELEVEN
GABE
Every morning that I wake up at the Draven mansion, my first thought is how peaceful I feel and how desperately I want to cling to that feeling, but it never lasts long before the guilt washes over me in relentless waves.
The weight of it threatens to crush me, my chest tightening and my eyes stinging until my vision blurs and I have to wrench myself back from a panic attack.
I'm sure the therapist back at the council offices would have a field day with this.
I've never let it slip, the shame that clings to me relentlessly, but even if I wanted to, I couldn't speak to someone about any of this.
The emotions that are swirling in my gut are impossible to name or explain, and bile creeps up my throat.
A good son wouldn’t feel so relieved at leaving his defenseless mother behind…
but would a good mother abandon her son in her own grief?
Is it possible for a Central Bond to lose their Bonded without falling into the grips of despair just like my mother has?
There's also the small part of me that believes it's my fault my father is dead, that he wouldn't have been taken by the Resistance if he weren't out looking for me, and maybe my mother believes this as well…
maybe that's why she's never tried to wrench herself out of the deepest clutches of her pain.
North offered to move my mother into the Draven mansion years ago when he first figured out how much she was struggling with my father’s death, and when we found our Bond, he offered again, but I refused this time as well.
I told him I couldn’t move her away from the shrine-like memorial to my father she put up in our house, but the real reason is that I know she wouldn’t come willingly—or quietly.
My gut churns at the idea of the rest of the Bond Group seeing her like she is now, the way she forgets who I am and where we are.
If my Bond already finds me defective, then how will she react to seeing the state my sole surviving caregiver is in?
The problem is that I don’t want to waste resources by having TacTeams guarding my parents’ house, not when there’s only my mom in there and those personnel are better used in the gated communities or, better yet, the dorms where hundreds of Gifted sleep.
I tell myself it's the logical thing to do, that the Resistance isn't going to come after a broken shell of a woman in a town with so many other Top Tier Gifted around, and that’s enough to keep me going to my college classes and living my life without any trouble. It’s enough to keep the shame and guilt from eating me alive.
My day starts off with this same weird guilt spiral, but with my usual plans of following my Bond around all day, I don’t have time to waste on that.
When I get out of the shower to find dozens of text messages waiting on my phone for me, my stomach hollows out.
There are even more than the gossip machine on campus has been drumming up daily, the endless speculation and commentary on my Bond rejecting the entire Bond Group publicly, and I scramble to unlock it and figure out what the hell is going on.
North’s messages are still the same constant update of Oli’s whereabouts, so it's immediately clear that my Bond is both alive and still safely under surveillance back at the dorms. Nina has messaged her usual briefing of my mom’s refusal to eat decent meals, but that means she’s still safely reclused at home.
I tap the group message at the top of the list, the most recent one, and any relief I felt evaporates into thin air.
Brayden Marshall was found dead on Draven’s campus this morning.
The Marshall’s have lived two doors down from my parents’ place my entire life.
Our moms were on our grade school PTA together, we did track club with a bunch of other Gifted as high school sophomores, and when I found out I was a Shifter, Brayden was the first Gifted outside of my Bond Group to reach out to me.
His mom wasn’t happy about it, she’s always been terrified of the Dravens, and finding out I was in the same Bond Group as North and Nox was enough for her to ice me out completely, but Brayden never let her shitty attitude stop him from being my friend.
He was a Shifter too, just like his dad, and they were both pivotal to me developing restraint.
Bray spent months training with me, pulling hundreds of late nights on the football field until I was sure I could still play without hurting anyone, and he never once made me feel like a burden.
Now he’s dead.
He was a Central Bonded with two Bonded, and one of them is now missing as well, along with two of her close friends.
Marley is an Elemental, but while her father is a Top Tier Gifted, she’s always been limited to localized weather patterns.
The Resistance don’t usually bother with Gifted who can’t weaponize their power, even if they’re stronger than most.
I scroll through the rest of messages about the attack, but even as more still stream in as more students wake to the news, there’s nothing else to go on. There’s no sign of the Resistance scouts who took them, no statement from the council, and no response from the community but panic so far.
Scrambling to throw clothes on, I send a quick text message to Nina to reassure her I'm safe and move as quickly as I can to get myself decent enough to get out the door.
North doesn't usually get up as early as the rest of us, a night owl through and through, but when the Resistance attacks hit Draven, the mansion always becomes a makeshift response center.
The other council members will hole up in their own mansions, demanding TacTeams to protect them while they cower, while North is usually trying to find shelter for as many of the local Lower Gifted families as he can while still keeping his household running, protecting the Bond Group, and fielding the bullshit that inevitably comes his way from the rest of the council.
He doesn’t deserve any of the fear and scorn he’s given, and it’s getting harder by the day to keep myself from losing my shit at half the community for how they treat him—my Bond, most of all.
The hallways are unusually quiet, none of the cleaning staff working with the house locked down the way it is, but when I turn the corner into the main hallway, I find the dining room has been overtaken by TacTeam personnel and twitchy council staff that spill out into the foyer.
Only the guys I know from Gryph’s team acknowledge me as I make my way through the crowd, Harrison slapping my shoulder as I dip my head at him in greeting, but the mood is somber to say the least.
Bray’s older brother served on Gryph’s TacTeam, but he was killed on a scouting jump two years ago.
He has an older sister who moved to the Midwest a few years ago with her own Bonded Group, and his younger brother is a high school freshman.
They already know what it's like to grieve a brother and now they've lost another.
If there has ever been proof that these sorts of conflicts aren't fair, this is it. How do some families pass by the Resistance’s attacks unscathed while others lose everything, not once but over and over again?
My father was the second Bonded my mother lost. She learnt long before I was born how to grieve a missing piece of her soul, but my father’s death took the last of her strength with him.
Oli’s face flashes into my mind unbidden, smiling and laughing at Sage because she’s definitely never looked at me like that before, and the churning in my gut reaches an all time high.
Could I survive her loss?
If she was the one taken, if it were her body found on campus, would that be the end of me as well?
A lump forms in my throat that’s impossible to swallow around, my eyes prickling again until I’m clearing my throat and fixing my gaze somewhere in the vicinity of my scuffed-up high tops until I’m sure I’m not about to lose it.
When I finally get through the crowd and walk into the dining room, the other council members sitting around it don't bother to glance my way but North looks up to meet my eye the moment my shoulders squeeze through the doorframe.
It's not so obvious that the members of council would be able to spot it but I’ve spent enough time in the center of crises with North to see fatigue all over him.
His new assistant is fussing over a large jug of coffee and she preens over every man she pours a cup for while barely batting an eye at the women here.
It’s gross and obvious, but impossible to deny and despite thinking nothing of her, I get secondhand embarrassment so badly my skin crawls with it.
Before I can find a reason to get the hell out of this room so I don’t have to see more of this crap, Penelope reaches North and stops in her tracks, the blood draining from her face.
You’d think his eyes had shifted by how she’s reacting, but the dark blue irises are the same shade they always are, only the usual placating and sedate mask he usually wears is gone and the look he’s throwing at her is scathing enough to strip paint from the walls.
She blanches even more at the curt thank you he all but spits in her direction, the delivery like a threat, and the idiotic woman seems to finally figure out that she’s acting in a disgusting manner.
Scurrying away without another word, her cheeks are scarlet red and I catch the gleam of tears there, too.
Several of the council members shift uncomfortably in their seats at the display, looks shared across the room, and my stomach drops at the new mess North will be forced to smooth over. He told Gryph over dinner weeks ago that Pen is harmless, but maybe she’s not as innocuous as he thinks.