17
SCOTTY
The taalk beneath my gloved palms moves, pushing my hands away as it rises up and out towards me with a soft pshhh.
Breathless sounds of relief fill the room, Tiger’s half a laugh and half a sob. I move to his and Alby’s side in an instant along with Tate and Cooper, throat clogging up as our Bonded’s unnervingly still face greets me with nothing in the way.
With her now accessible, I don’t hesitate to carefully slide an arm under her thighs and another under her back before lifting her into my arms as gently as possible. My brothers hardly breathe as I do, and my voice is choked as I whisper, “Ezla, Love . . .”
“Let’s get out of here.” Cooper doesn’t sound any stronger than me as he marches for the door, not sparing a glance for the bloodied man on the floor, while Alby and Tiger glue themselves to either side of me as if they can’t bear to be even a centimetre away from Ezla.
Tate strides over to the large wardrobe in here, and I’m wondering what on earth he’s doing when he comes back out with some black shorts and a tank top after a short rummage through its contents.
Heading back over to us, he holds the top up, and I reposition Ezla with Alby and Tiger’s help so we can efficiently dress her.
I’m assuming the reason she had so little on was so she could absorb whatever the enclosure was feeding her properly, but nausea and a mind-numbing rage racks through me as I think about how much Joseph would have enjoyed having her in such a state for his viewing pleasure.
I don’t even want to think about why he positioned her right in front of the bed.
The bed.
This bed would be . . .
My head quickly turns to the side as that sick feeling races up my oesophagus, but nothing comes out when my lips part.
Tiger places an uncertain hand on my shoulder as I breath in and out through my mouth, arms tightening around Ezla as I work to push the feeling back down. His palm is rubbing gently until the temperature in the room seems to freeze over all at once, and he becomes a statue.
Shifting my gaze to him, then the others, I notice my brothers’ focus all narrowed in on those obsidian silks now, too.
Cooper has paused in the doorway, and I see the moment it truly hits him what room this is.
I see the way his eyes jump to the wardrobe left open from Tate, the way they rapidly take everything visible inside it in—red-lined suits and ties on the right-hand side, the bras, dresses Ezla would never pick out for herself, heels, and her Avri suit all on the left .
. . I see the way they snap to the bedside tables, taking in the neatly lined-up items presented in a way a husband and wife’s would be.
And I see the way they jump to the chest of drawers pressed up against the wall, taking in the unlabelled tablets left out, ones I’m quite sure only I can guess the function of after my time with our Bonded the other day.
Cooper steps back, almost stumbling as he does, as if the sight, the realisation of what we know happens in here, is too much for him.
Then he storms forwards.
Right at the same moment, Alby tosses out a hastily whimpered, “S-sorry, I think I’m going to be s-sick.” He rushes for the bathroom, a bang letting me know Tate’s had to break yet another panel, before the unmistakable sound of vomit hitting water meets my ears.
Cooper doesn’t even look his way as he snatches up the pill pot, turning it this way and that before uncapping it and tipping a few of the small white tablets into his palm.
“What are these? These aren’t Avritabs.” His forceful demand isn’t as strong as it usually would be when a fine tremor runs through it.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I breathe in Ezla’s hot-cinnamon scent, shifting her weight in my arms so I can press my nose into her neck. I need to feel her, to know we have her back, that everything will be okay. I have to fix this.
“Scotty? Scotty, do you know what these are?”
When my lids open back up, Cooper’s expression has hardened, but there’s a sheen coating his darkened eyes. His shaking hand is held palm-up, three oblong tablets quivering in its centre.
“I . . . I’m sorry, Cooper . . .”
“You lied,” he grits out. “You said—” His voice breaks, and he tries again, “You said they were from the infirmary when we asked you how Ezla got something like that.” I had.
I’d wanted Ezla to share the information that she revealed to me with the rest of the group herself.
Because knowing she has tablets like this on hand, knowing the implications, the visible evidence that her father doesn’t just hurt her through the link between them, doesn’t just violate her body in the most intimate ways, but destroys it with his fists and whatever else he sees fit in person, and often and bad enough that she needs to be healed over and over again .
. . Devastating doesn’t even begin to encompass it. “You . . . Why?”
Swallowing thickly, I say, “You would have done the same. In fact, you did—you realised who was hurting our Bonded first, but you didn’t tell us until later. Just the same as you, I decided that was her business. That’s sensitive information, Cooper. I know you understand that.”
Nostrils flaring, his fingers curl around the tablets, his tortured gaze rolling down to Ezla’s lifeless figure in my arms. Then his head drops in defeat.
Alby’s made his way back into the bedroom at some point, and Tiger and him stand side by side, almost leaning on each other for support.
His nose is red, and he sniffles, evidently having heard and understood everything that’s been said extremely well.
Pushing some raven hair out of his face, he whispers hoarsely, “W-what do we d-do now?”
“Trash the place,” Tate seethes. And stepping forwards, he absolutely does.
He doesn’t hold back at all, and I take minor satisfaction in the gentle hum of his Avri swords as he swings the two of them around savagely, shredding anything and everything that’s not taalk—the ornaments, the bedding, the glass and knick-knacks in the bathroom .
. . But really, I just want our Bonded as far away from this wretched place as possible.
Turning around, I hug Ezla to me. Tiger, Cooper, and Alby follow my lead, and I leave Tate to it, trusting that he’ll meet us on the rooftop, because if nothing else, I know he’d never put our Bonded at risk by harming our only known possible way to wake her.
And we get the hell out of this home of horrors.
***
It was hard to get back into The Bonding Games Headquarters’ central building without anyone seeing us and Ezla’s limp form, but we managed it.
I know she would have hated to be seen in such a vulnerable state, and I just want her to wake up and tell us she’s pissed at our stupidity, to dig her unimpressed glare into us and remind us that we should never do anything without her orders.
Hell, maybe even lie and tell us how little she cares for us, because at least then, I could actually acknowledge the fact that they are lies through the bond.
But she can’t do any of that. And when she wakes, because I will make sure she does if it’s the last thing I do .
. . I have no idea if a denial of her feelings would be false this time.
I have no idea what state she’ll be in, if her father’s left her on a blank slate as he said or he’s managed to warp parts of her to his liking already.
Tate’s got her now, and he’s meant to be letting her go, but he doesn’t seem to want to.
I completely understand him there, but Cooper, and even Alby and Tiger, all of us helmetless again after putting them back on for our trip back here, look moments away from exploding, needing that closeness with our Bonded right now, and I really don’t have the capacity to deal with a full-blown argument in this moment.
“Love you, Havoc. We’ll . . . we’ll wake you up.” Tate’s voice is gruff, and his storm-grey stare bores into Ezla as if he’s expecting her to jump into action any second now.
When she doesn’t, his hold on her tightens, his intense expression faltering. But luckily, after another silent moment passes by, he gently sets her down in the middle of our Bonded bed without me having to ask.
Alby hiccups, tears tracking down his face. “I-it f-feels like sh-she’s go-ne,” he somehow manages to get out. “Why—why is she s-so still?”
Eyes stinging, I move over to the bed without a word, climbing onto the silk-covered mattress to start removing Ezla’s suit and helmet and everything else that Tate brought out with him after he’d trashed Joseph’s bedroom—which included six softly glowing bonding cubes he’d found in a leather satchel in one of the drawers that we’ve now tucked away in our own for safekeeping.
We’d quickly put everything on over her pyjamas, ones it’s a miracle she even has with all the lace nighties and other clothes I know for a fact she didn’t pick herself, but now we need to make her as comfortable as possible.
So, carefully, I remove her helmet, then her armoury sticks, Cooper silently moving over to help me reposition her.
I don’t have anything to say to reassure Alby or the rest of my brothers, and I hope they won’t fault me for my lack of response to him.
He, Tate, and Tiger close in to help undress her, and it’s not long before she’s in that barely sufficient underwear again.
Wiping his under-eye, Alby whispers, “Sh-should we take those off? I don’t—I don’t want to invade her privacy, but that looks like .
. . like the G-Game Master, like J-Joseph, picked them. ”
Rubbing a hand harshly over his stubbled jaw, Cooper looks away, and Tate lets out a rumbling growl at just the mention of that vile man.