Chapter 16 #2
My bond begins to claw at my control, begging to be let out to pull Nox the fuck into line. One look at my Bond and I almost lose control—shit, I almost cut the ropes holding it back and just let this night go all the way to hell.
She’s spitting fucking mad, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s not at him shitting all over their sacred connection. Nope, it’s him being so vulgar about Sage that has her furious.
North and Gabe both subtly prepare themselves to physically intervene as well, looks shared between the three of us that no one else notices.
Lana is too busy chuckling and fawning over Nox like a fucking idiot while he’s drinking Oli’s hate in gluttonously, and my Bond?
Well, she’s gnashing her teeth like she’s imagining it’s his throat caught between them, torn out in an instant.
The air around her is nothing short of savage, like even her bond is prepared to cut their losses and bathe in his blood for acting like this.
My Bond doesn’t read like a Shifter, but this sort of animalistic reaction has me second guessing.
We all startle when she shoves her plate away from herself, as on edge as we are. Lana giggles softly again, picking up her abandoned fork and starting in on her food finally, as though she’s won something by running my Bond off.
North sends her a look that has that smirk evaporating into thin air.
Gabe swallows roughly, too conscious of what’s about to break out at this table, but he clears his throat before he speaks to her, “North needs me to look over some paperwork, we can’t leave yet.”
She looks down as though she’s trying to collect herself, but her shaking voice as she replies says she’s probably losing that battle. “I’m walking back then. I’m not staying here with him.”
That’s not an option here.
“I’ll take you.”
She blanches at my reply as though it’s the last thing she was expecting, but she doesn’t look in my direction as she mutters a quick thanks. I get my ass moving out of that nightmarish room as fast as I can without actually jogging just to get away from Nox’s bullshit.
My Bond does break into a jog to catch up with me, muttering under her breath mulishly about how stupid this house and all of North’s demands are, and for once, I agree with her entirely.
My Bond’s scent still clings to my Camaro’s interior when I message Kyrie to meet me for dinner, my stomach growling viciously. There was no way I could eat anything listening to that bitch’s bullshit and the only reason I sat through it as long as I did was to prove my suspicions wrong.
It was a shit dinner on all accounts.
Instead of meeting me for something greasy, cheap, and fuss-free like I’m hoping, Kyrie tells me to head to her cafe.
It closed hours ago, there’s no way she’s still cleaning this late into the evening, so I stop to grab a six pack of beer and a bottle of wine.
The only thing that could possibly come close to dealing with Nox’s trauma implosion is taxes.
Sure enough, I find Kyrie at her tiny desk shoved in the corner of the storage room, surrounded by boxes of takeaway, coffee cups, and paper napkins doing her taxes.
Her eyes light up the moment they hit the bottle of wine.
“Sometimes it’s very useful how well you know me.
I’ve ordered Thai from the place down the block.
I told them I’d walk down and grab it, but they’ve got Eddie’s younger brother working for them now.
He took the order and said he’d Transport it over when it’s ready.
Shit, it was like stepping into a time machine listening to him talk… makes me almost miss the asshole.”
Nothing on this earth could make me miss that fuckwit.
Kyrie’s first and last long-term boyfriend; she started dating him to piss the General off but then caught feelings and eventually moved in with him. Then one day, after five years together, he sent her a text to say he’d matched with his Central Bond and wouldn’t be coming back.
It’s a common occurrence and not something I’d hold against him, except that he did it by text, didn’t pay his half of the rent even though he knew our parents had cut her off, and then he went around talking down about her so his Central didn’t get pissed off about him shacking up with someone else before they’d met.
I dealt with it.
Eddie doesn’t come within a hundred miles of Draven anymore. Eddie is lucky he’s still breathing.
Kyrie scoffs at the look on my face, waving a hand at the stool in front of her desk.
“I shouldn’t have brought him up; you look like you’re about to call Black and hunt him down again.
I’m fine, Gryph. I don’t need you going after that idiot and giving Draven a new headache to deal with in the morning.
I’m sure he has enough on his plate as it is. ”
Fuck North’s plate.
A ripple of unease works its way through my stomach instantly at my own reaction.
Jesus, my Bond coming back to Draven has changed everything.
All of the hard work over the years we spent waiting for our bloodwork to come back, then the years of searching for her, all of it crumbling beneath our feet while we bicker and fight.
I take a seat, handing the bottle of wine over to Kyrie before I pull a beer out and set the rest down on the ground at my feet.
“His plate is overflowing. I need to remember that when he does something so fucking stupid I want to hack into his brain and dredge up a whole new set of nightmares for him to battle.”
Ky raises an eyebrow at me, pulling a wine glass out from the drawer where she hides it. “Shit. What’s happeninng now? I thought things would settle down now that your Bond’s been back a few weeks.”
I almost empty the can of beer in one gulp.
I barely had a college experience thanks to all of this, but chugging a beer isn’t rocket science.
The sole reason I grabbed a six pack instead of something stronger is that I knew Ky would ask about my Bond and I’d write myself off if given half the chance.
“Jesus, Gryph, what the hell has happened?”
I shake my head. “Nothing big, just—how much longer can I watch all of this play out without losing my mind? Walking through a minefield of Draven trauma, council snakes, Resistance scouts, and a Bond who doesn’t lie right… I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of losing everything.”
She blinks at me and then pours herself a glass of wine, filled to the rim and impossible to lift without spilling.
“I wasn’t prepared to talk you off of a ledge, Gryph!
I thought we’d bitch about the council’s new plans for a peace agreement or Nox’s latest public tantrum getting Rio’s hand bitten clean off by one of his nightmare beasties.
Shit, it must be bad if you’re at your wit’s end—you have more patience than the rest of them put together! ”
I open another beer. “Not even close. I usually just have more information than they do to work off of. It’s a lot fucking harder to keep my cool when I can’t get the answers for myself.”
Her phone buzzes and interrupts us, Ky shooting me a look like she’s worried I’ll turn my Gift on the kid in my foul mood. As tempting as that is to work off some of this frustration, I’m not a fucking monster. At least, not in the ways the council worries about… for now.
Settling back in my seat, I cross my arms and jerk my head at her in the only assurance I can give her right now that I’m not about to commit unwarranted murder.
No matter how much I might be tempted.
Ky steps back over to the table and gets the food set out in front of us both, the smell incredible as always.
The food at the Draven mansion is always perfect, but there’s something about takeout with my sister in the back of her cafe with her tax paperwork spread out around us and her favorite playlist playing on the speakers that I needed more than I could’ve ever put into words.
Before I had my Bond Group, I had Ky. No matter what’s happened to her or me, we’ve had each other’s backs.
Maybe it’s that thought that gets me talking with a little more clarity.
I swallow a mouthful, keeping my eyes on my food, but speaking clearly when I break the comfortable silence.
“The problem is that I keep second guessing everything. I’ve always known my own mind, done what I’ve thought was right, and leaned on my Gift to steer the course of my decision.
I won’t cross that line with my Bond; that’s not who I want to be as a man and a Bond but…
I wasn’t expecting to struggle so much with what the right thing to do is. ”
Ky nods slowly, her own mouth full, and I continue before she has the chance to comment. I feel like I have to get this all out now or it’ll slip through my fingers.
I clear my throat. “I trust you more than anyone—if I’m being blinded by my bond by how fucking badly I want this, I trust you to tell me.
Rip the plaster off and just… let it air out.
Maybe then I’ll finally figure out how to learn to live with it instead of reopening these wounds and bleeding out every time I get my hopes up. ”
She nods as she chews slowly, her eyes on the food littering the desk between us, far more than two people could ever eat.
It’s been years since I last stumbled into her mind accidentally, even longer since it happened intentionally, but I know her so well it’s not hard to figure out that she’s hesitating.
I let out a breath, my voice coming out like a croak that would embarass me if it were anyone else hearing it. “You don’t have to say it, I’ll stop kidding myself—”
She cuts me off, her eyes flashing as her gaze meets mine. “Stop, Gryph, it’s not that. It’s just—I don’t want to send you on some wild goose chase when I don’t have anything concrete here.”
The beer pauses on its journey to my lips, clanking harshly when I set it back down a little roughly. “Anything concrete? What the hell does that mean, Ky?”
She sighs, rubbing a hand over her face as she leans back.
“Fuck, I’m probably making this into something it’s not but…
I read her files, just like you did. I must’ve read them a dozen times every night just in case we missed something, a thousand times in the years she was missing.
And… well… something hasn’t sat right with me since Black found her working at that shitty cafe. ”
A million things haven’t sat right with me, but I motion for her to continue, not caring how desperate and deranged I must look.
She shrugs at me. “She was fourteen when her parents died and she ran away from you. Now, I know plenty of girls who could’ve survived the streets at fourteen years old without running into trouble or being found by North, but all of them have connections, money, training—fuck, a Gift.”
She breaks off for a second, gulping down her wine like she’s gaining some courage from it, and her fingers rub the condensation on her glass as she sets it back down and thinks for a moment before she continues.
“She was sheltered by her parents, her files made that clear. Most Gifted families are protective, so that makes sense and didn’t flag with any of us, but…
what if it was more than that, Gryph? They moved around a lot, and for no real reason, at least, not on paper.
Her mother was repeatedly described as being ‘attentive’ and ‘protective’, enough that those words are burned into my brain. ”
Shit.
I have the entire file memorized, and Ky’s not wrong.
It wasn’t just her mother either; Oli’s fathers were all described the same way, attentive and protective.
From the looks of the reports, my Bond was the center of their world from the moment she was born, loved and cherished, wanting for nothing.
Then her entire family was killed in a car accident. She was the only survivor.
When I look up to meet Ky’s eyes, she pins me to my seat with a hard look.
“The hospital staff said your Bond was quiet and timid, that she was too worried to ask for something to eat and had to be prompted to use the bathroom to clean herself up. A girl in that state might run, but how far is she really going to get without North Draven’s resources finding her?
He threw everything he had at finding her, Gryph.
We all did. How the hell did that scared little girl slip past us all? ”
I want to vomit.
“We’d know if she was taken… right?”
Ky shrugs, pushing my food back toward me even though there’s no way I can stomach it now.
“Maybe she wasn’t taken, maybe someone else came to get her and she trusted them because she was a scared child.
Maybe she’s giving you all such a hard time because she’s traumatized from some grooming asshole or—fuck, I don’t know!
All I know for sure is that there’s someone else involved in this; there has to be. ”
She stabs at her food again for a second before finally she sighs.
“If you really want my advice here, Gryph, it’s that you guys all need to take a step back and remember that no matter how grown up or mouthy she is now, back then…
she was just a kid. You can’t hold that against her forever, and maybe you’re piling onto something that wasn’t her choice to begin with.
Maybe she’s not the villain in this story; maybe it’s you. ”