Davies smirks slowly, deciding he’s been victorious, and steps back to his work desk. “If you’re lying to me about this Bond and where he is, I’ll come back here and I’ll really torture her. This? This is just a warm up, but if you send me away for no good reason and I don’t come back with this Neuro? I’ll amputate her leg. No pain relief either, she doesn’t need both legs to be my weapon. It was my next course of action when I last had her to get her to talk. I’m excited to give it a try.”
I want to pass out at the very sound of that, but then he’s back at the table and pushing a needle into my neck, injecting me with something that kicks in immediately, my brain fuzzing out.
“Extra insurance to keep you here, little Render. I’ll be back with your next Bond soon. Be a good girl and wait here for me.”
Then he walks out, and I lose track of what the actual fuck is going on here. I don’t know up from down, the table feels as though it’s spinning into space, and my skin begins to crawl as though a thousand fire ants have just been injected into my veins.
I lose my shit entirely.
There’s a cracking sound and a muffled scream, like someone biting down on fabric to stop themselves from making noise but failing kind of miserably, and then there’s some retching. My stomach doesn’t like that sound one bit, protesting immediately, and I turn my head to vomit. My restraints are too tight to move much and I’m sure there’s vomit running down my chin, but I can’t feel anything, nothing but the sensations that the drug fills me with.
I think I’m crying.
Not that I want to, not that the tiny slivers of my sane brain are feeling that sort of emotion, but my breath is sawing out of my chest and I start to taste salt.
There’s grunting and the sound of a heavy sack dragging along the dirt, and then somehow Kieran’s face appears in front of mine. I have no idea how the hell he’s here—it’s probably a hallucination—and I think the sobbing gets worse.
He’s trying to speak to me but his words are distorted, because even though I can see his mouth is moving, the words are all coming through wrong.
“Kill… just him… get help… Oli, please… kill… know you can…”
I scowl at him and finally take a gasping breath, but whatever the fuck Davies shot me up with turns my stomach again and bile rushes up my throat.
There’s a moment of darkness, nothingness I want to climb into and stay in forever, and then there’s Kieran’s face again. There’s vomit on his shirt and pants, my vomit, I think, but he’s not angry or disgusted.
He’s desperate.
“Kill him, Oli… kill Franklin…”
I don’t understand what he’s saying.
But my bond does.
And then there’s nothing but death and pain, blood and destruction. I might be utterly fucked from the drugs, but my bond has always been stronger than anyone will ever comprehend, and no one threatens me without facing the dark god living inside me.
Chapter Seven
Nox
Three nights.
She’s only been gone this time for three nights, and yet the chaos she’s left behind is insane. Gryphon’s foul moods and obsessive behavior makes sense to me because the idiot was stupid enough to fully Bond with her, but the rest of them?
Pathetic.
We all knew she’d run the moment she had a chance. Gabe and Bassinger were the ones without a shared coherent thought between them that wouldn’t have possibly strung together the idea that maybe they should leave the GPS tracker in her.
Then there’s the small fact that I think North’s bond is going to take over and wipe out the entire country to get her back, and after decades of playing the gentile councilman, cultivating the sedate and moral man that he is, he’s about to ruin it all for her.
Fucking Bonds.
Of course there’s no sign of her or the other dozens of Gifted who were taken. The moment we’d gotten back here from the aborted mission, we found Gabe shifted into the biggest wolf form I’ve ever seen him in, snarling and snapping at Atlas like he was hoping to rip his throat out.
After we’d split them up, it had taken a good hour before Gabe calmed the fuck down enough to shift back, and then he’d told us all about Atlas’ extensive knowledge of Fallows’ time in the Resistance.
And what they named her.
I never liked him, and I’ve made my thoughts on his situation widely known because we’ve already lost one Draven to a Resistance sleeper cell this year. Keeping him around for the sake of a Bond who never wanted any of them in the first place is just plain stupidity.