Chapter 39 #2
I wasn’t sure why I did it, only that something pulled my eyes back to the women standing beside Cael.
The one in the middle was looking across the table at the Revenant feasting on a redhead across the way from me.
There was something quick and involuntary in her glance before her eyes immediately dropped back to the floor.
The Revenant she’d looked at hadn’t bothered to look back at her.
Something cold wound its way through my chest as I returned my gaze to my plate.
I didn’t need anyone to explain it to me.
There had been something there once, some version of what I had with Trace and Dominic, all that warmth and want and the terrible, specific intimacy of a blood bond.
And it had been taken from her. Trained out of her, or beaten out of her, or simply starved out through enough repetition and correction until she had learned to keep her eyes on the floor.
I couldn’t imagine it. Even now, even here, the bond between us was the only thing keeping me upright.
As a human it would have been worse. As a human the pull of a blood bond was so total and so overwhelming that losing it—being denied it while the person on the other end of it was still walking around—would have been its own specific kind of devastation.
I put a piece of something in my mouth and chewed without tasting it.
“We’d be happy to help you with that,” said Cael, his gaze sliding from Dominic to Trace and back again with the brisk benevolence of someone offering to do a favor.
“A few rotations through the settlement and she’d be considerably easier to manage.
Our humans don’t come to the table with expectations anymore. ”
The chill that moved through me was immediate and total.
I could feel exactly what he was describing.
The image of it came without invitation—arriving at a table like this one with just enough sustenance to keep me alive for them.
Being passed around the settlement. Being useful in the way that required the least amount of consideration.
A resource, not a person. Not even a possession, really. Something more disposable than that.
I felt my hands tremble in my lap.
“We appreciate the offer,” said Dominic, somehow managing to make it sound like he meant it, “but we find we rather enjoy letting her run things.” His eyes found mine across the table, a single dark glance that said nothing and everything all at once. “Keeps her happy that way.”
Cael made a noncommittal sound at the back of his throat, the way you acknowledged something you found mildly misguided but too minor to correct.
“Enjoy it while you can,” he said, his tone taking on an ominous edge.
“I’m sure you’ll come to learn rather quickly that attachments here only complicate survival.
Eventually, most people decide they would rather live without them. ”
My mind caught on the ‘while you can’ part as I tried to stop my body from physically reacting to it.
Trace’s thumb moved against my knee, a small but deliberate gesture meant to ease my anxiety, and I forced myself to fix my attention on that instead.
On the pressure of it. On the bond humming steadily between us, still intact, still there, something that no one in this hall would ever be able to take from us.
I refused to lose him. To lose either of them. Not here. Not like that.
I wasn’t going to end up sitting at this table night after night waiting for someone to decide I was useful enough to keep breathing.
I wasn’t going to let this place grind us down until we forgot there had ever been anything outside of it.
I had a life beyond these walls. I had people waiting for me.
Ares was waiting for me.
He was somewhere on the other side of this forsaken Realm in Tessa’s arms or Gabriel’s, hidden away from every faction that wanted him dead before he was old enough to understand why.
And he needed me. Not just because I was the one who had decided to give him a fighting chance when everyone else had voted against it, but because I was the only one who had chosen to love him unconditionally.
The only that understood what he was up against.
The thought of him, all small and new and entirely unaware of what was coming for him, was enough to cut straight through the fear and leave something steadier in its place.
I was going home. No matter what it took.
The rest of the meal passed mostly in silence, though there wasn’t a single moment of it that was comfortable or causal.
I ate what I could manage, which wasn’t much, each bite sitting heavy and graceless in my stomach.
Trace and Dominic drank from their chalices, simultaneously tracking everything in the room while appearing to track nothing, and every so often one of them would angle a fraction closer to me, while Cael’s eyes continued to linger on me a little longer with every look he took.
He hadn’t said anything else directly threatening.
He hadn’t needed to. The shape of it was already clear enough—what this place was, what it did to humans, what it would eventually do to me if we stayed here long enough for the Revenants around us to stop being polite about their interest. And the longer I sat at that table, the more certain I became of one thing.
Staying here meant becoming part of this.
And I wasn’t going to give him the chance to make that decision for me.
We couldn’t wait for the right moment or the ideal conditions or some sign from the universe that it was safe to move.
Because the longer we waited, the greater the chance that someone in this settlement would figure out what kind of blood ran through my veins.
And in a place like this, where humans were a resource to be rationed and passed around, what I was wouldn’t make me safer.
It would make me something they would kill to have.
And I’d sooner die than ever let that happen.
We needed out of Sanguinarium.
Tonight.