“Can you get into his head? Can you see anything?” I mutter quietly to Gryphon, and he shrugs back, a white ring around his irises as he stares at the beast.
“I can get in there just fine, but there's not much I can tell you about what's going on. All I can tell you is that his bond is different now. It's more than it was before.”
I groan and look between the three bonds, eyeing them as the dragon huffs and it continues its pacing. “How exactly does a bond suddenly become more?”
Gryphon hesitates for a moment before he shrugs. “Did Oleander do this? She told him to think ‘bigger’， and suddenly he can turn into a dragon. Did her bond somehow spark this?”
I’ve never heard of something like that happening before. Never. Not even in the worst of the Gifted rumors or whisperings of the Resistance urban legends.
I reach out through my mind connection to Oleander, but her bond shuts me down before I get very far, my own bond clawing at the edge of my consciousness as it tries to get out to be with her.
Gryphon and Atlas couldn't handle my bond right now, let alone mine, Nox’s, and Oleander’s all at the same time with the new complication of Gabe’s dragon.
“It’s different,” Gryphon mutters.
I nod. “You said that.”
“No, I mean, it's different than Oli’s bond. It's not thinking in human terms, only in animal needs and desires. It only wants her.”
I don't even want to think about what that means though. The predatory look in its eye tells me more than enough, and I don’t like it one bit.
“We need to get the three of them back to themselves before this gets out of hand,” I snap, my frustration finally boiling over.
Atlas shrugs from across the room where he's standing half covering our Bonded, and he leans into her ear to murmur something to her quietly. The bond finally looks away from the dragon to stare at him before her eyes flutter shut for a moment. When they open again, Oleander’s beautiful blue irises stare back at Atlas. The animation is back in her face as she moves, her arms winding around his neck as she tucks herself into him closely.
“What did you say to her?” Gryphon asks, his tone a little harsh with relief.
Atlas shrugs and then watches as Oli slips her hand into Nox's without a word, leaning into his side without touching him, and slowly his eyes shift away from the voids until his lip turns up in a snarl and my brother is back in the room with us.
“A Soul Render can't just turn someone into a god,” Nox says as he watches the dragon pace, diving straight into the issue before us.
Gryphon runs his hands through his hair, irritated. “Well, what other explanation could there be? Bonds don't just become more.”
My Bonded chews on her lip for a moment, and it's clear she's keeping something from us, the guilt in her an almost palpable thing. Finally, Atlas takes her free hand and faces us. “Oli ended up in Gabe’s head after they went to sleep the other night. She hadn't had the chance to tell anyone yet, and now she's feeling guilty about it.”
She huffs and throws her hand out around the room. “Appearing in his head didn't just make this happen though. I don't have the ability to do this. Even if I did, I think I'd remember it. Right? Or at the very least, my bond would remember it, and it swears that it hasn't done anything. I did meet his dragon in there though. I met it, and we both knew that it was different. It was very different to his wolf and his panther.”
The beast stares at her with unblinking eyes and moves towards her slowly.
The first step we allow.
It could just be a deviation in the circuit he has been walking up and down the meeting room, but the second step is too much, and we all make some sound of caution to get him to stop. Atlas shifts more fully in front of Oli, and a dozen extra shadow creatures burst out of Nox, his hands flexing at his side as though he's preparing himself to physically grapple with a mythical creature come to life.
Oli is the only one who doesn't seem concerned.
“I think he just wants to talk to me.”
Gryphon turns and pegs her with a stern look. “And if you think that we're going to allow that to happen, then you have another thing coming. We're not going to just throw you in its direction and hope for the best, Bonded,” he snaps, and though she looks a little more subdued about it, she still ducks around Atlas.
“Let me at least try to talk to him.”
“Stay right there. Do not move even an inch further, Bonded,” I snap. She nods, raising a hand up as though she is trying to placate the dragon.
“What do you need? Tell me what's bothering you, and I'll fix it,” she tries, but the dragon only cocks its head at her.
With the void-like eyes, there is none of Gabe left in him, nothing familiar about the form at all. I have to struggle with myself to remember that the Bonded Group’s golden child is somewhere underneath all of those scales and fire.
She tries a few more times, but when it's clear that the dragon either cannot understand her or refuses to speak to her like this, Oleander reaches out to him through the mind connection instead.
That catches its attention.
It lets out a long breath that smells of sulfur and heats the room around us. Gryphon shoots me a look as he steps towards our Bonded, but the dragon speaks as though none of the rest of us are there.
Mine, it says in a voice that is nothing like Gabe’s but everything like my own bond’s and the one that lives inside of my brother.
Mine.
It takes another full hour before Oleander can coax the dragon into letting Gabe back out.
It’s difficult, but we have to get him back up to the house to sleep off the shift without anyone noticing our change in transport zone and the way that he’s so fatigued, and we all tuck in early for the night. I can’t spend the next few days watching over him for more changes though.
I have to leave that to Oleander and Atlas, thanks to the new situation we have to attempt to sweep under the rug.
With the revelation that my Bonded may have the ability to change the bonds within her Bonded Group, the last thing that I want to do is to go meet with the non-Gifted senators and law enforcement to run damage control about the Wastelands. Unfortunately, part of keeping my community and, more importantly, my Bonded Group safe is putting out these sorts of fires.
It's a tough choice, but I decide to leave Nox behind in the Sanctuary and take Gryphon with me. The decision had already been made for us to operate in pairs, especially now that there's the potential for Gifts to be changing. Although Nox argues with me, Gryphon is still the better choice to take.
The Resistance might not know that my brother survived their killing attempt, and any sort of element of surprise that we might have over them is worth an argument with him.
Meeting with Senator Oldham would also likely test Nox's very limited patience.
The woman is a thorn in my side. No amount of charity work or self-sacrifice is enough for her to trust the Gifted community. If it were up to her, I'm sure she would start an all-out war to get rid of us. Humans are drastically outgunned when it comes to the Gifted community. However, what they lack in firepower, they make up for in numbers. Realistically, humans are still a big threat to us. Unless, of course, Oleander’s bond could wipe them out completely.