If there's anything I'm sure of, it’s my safety around these men and the gods that live inside of them. Even the new ones. I know that I can trust them as much as I know that my own heart beats in my chest.
It simply is.
His eyes look into mine, searching. I stare back at him, unsure of what it is that he's looking for and hoping he's finding it. He slowly lowers his head to bring our faces closer together, not quite kissing but still breathing the same air, a whisper away from our skin on each other. My bond yearns for him, strains in my chest with a desperate ache, and I know then that it’s been waiting for this bond.
It’s been waiting for them all.
There's movement around us, but Azrael shifts to grow at my feet, reaching my waist before he snarls at whoever was dumb enough to approach us right now. Once he’s sure they’re no longer moving in, he sits at my feet as though he's protecting us, both of his lips curling back on his sharp teeth as he growls soundlessly.
“Mine,” Atlas’ bond whispers against my lips. I nod my head just a little, my lips brushing against his. The next wave of power that bursts out of him flows through me as seamlessly as the shadow creatures would.
I'm afraid, for a second, that he is hurting the TacTeam personnel around us by accident, seeing them as a threat that they're not. Then I hear Gabe curse viciously under his breath, a shocked sound, not horror, and I jerk my head away from Atlas’ bond to get a look at what's happened.
The Resistance outside of the shield have been torn in half.
Every last one of them is dead, and it's not the clean and painless death of their souls being torn out or the horrifyingly violent death of me triggering their souls either.
No, this is visceral and bloody and horrifying. The mangled bodies before us look as though they’ve been hacked apart with a chainsaw or simply ripped into two by a giant.
North and Gryphon are twin images of shock, but Nox’s eyebrows are drawn low as he mumbles something under his breath, turning back to look at Atlas, but his bond only stares down at me.
It’s fixated on its Bonded.
I can tell everyone around me is already freaking out, so I press my palms to his cheeks, drawing him down to me so I can speak slowly and soothingly to him. “It's okay. Everything is okay. We're safe. The shield is in place, and no one can get to me here. You can give me Atlas back now. Okay? Give him back to me.”
I’m not lying. There’s no sign of Resistance survival amongst the corpses of his bond’s wrath, and none of the TacTeam around us would dare to attempt to harm me. The only danger here is what will happen within my Bonded Group if the bond doesn’t give Atlas back. North and Gryphon can get a little jumpy, a little protective, and I don’t want a fight breaking out right now.
The problem is that now that the Resistance is all gone, it doesn't want to let go. It wants me.
I nod, humming under my breath in a soothing sound. “I know we can be together soon. Once it's safe here for us to be together, I'll let you have my bond as well. Okay? Right now it's not safe for us to be together.”
Whether it understands my words or only what I want from it, the bond does slowly slip away until Atlas is blinking down at me. His green eyes are cloudy for a moment before they clear, and his lips part in shock as he feels the being living within his skin. It takes up more room and has more opinions than his bond had ever had before.
I already know how unpleasant that feeling is at the beginning.
“What the fuck was that?” he whispers, and I can only think of one thing to say back to him.
“The gods live among us.”
He blinks at me for a second and then curses under his breath, jerking his head around to look again at the destruction his bond had wrought on the bodies just past the shield. There’s absolutely no horror in him at the sight of the gore, only satisfaction that he did that. He took out our enemy with no hesitation when they came calling for us.
I’m proud of him too.
“We need to move now. We need to run damage control,” Gryphon says as he steps over to us both. Azrael ignores him, pressing his big head against my belly for a scratch. I give it to him almost mindlessly.
North starts calling out commands and directing people around us, walking ahead of us, his shadow creatures moving along with him obediently. I’ve never seen him in such harmony with them before, the tension he usually carries with them is gone completely.
A lot has changed in our Bonded Group.
When we make it back, the entire camp is buzzing with the rumors of Atlas’ change. The news of it moved faster than even we did, dozens of eyes following us as we head straight to our tent. Atlas’ hand shakes a little in mine, the toll of his bond’s power shift is already setting in with him.
He’ll need to sleep it off, and fast.
All of the TacTeam who were present are staring at Atlas as though they’re questioning themselves about what they saw, but there's no question that his Gift had changed. The mangled bodies of the Resistance just outside of the shield is testament enough to that.
He passes out the second his body hits his sleeping bag.
North is careful about getting us away from the public eye until he can decide how to proceed. By nightfall, the situation has gotten out of hand. Gryphon decides to push his Gift further than he ever has before, stripping out of his thick jacket and sitting on an overturned crate by the fire as his eyes shift to white.
We all held our breaths for a second until they did.
Kieran drops off the provision boxes of dinner that we’re allocated, and I sit with Gabe to eat while I watch Gryphon work. His eyes stay white the entire time, no matter how hard I stare at him.
He hacks into the brain of every man and woman in the camp. It would be a very tall ask to wipe their memories entirely, especially when we're preparing for our offensive move in the next few days, so instead, Gryphon plants good feelings.
He argues with Nox over it, mostly because my most damaged Bond doesn't like the idea of forcing people to comply. At first, I think that this is an ethical thing, or perhaps trauma, but then Nox snaps, “If they're going to turn against us, we should get them out, not give them good feelings and potentially leave a snake in our nest!”
I can't disagree with that.
North is quick to point out the problem with that approach. “We don't have enough resources to be picky right now. We have to work with what we've got, and what we've got is an entire camp of people who are questioning their leaders, for better or worse.”
Gabe groans again and rubs a hand over his face. “I don't understand what happened! We were talking and everything was fine and then he just— what even was that?”
Surprisingly, it's Nox who answers him in our mind link.
The god that lives inside him woke up. Seeing what the Resistance did to his parents, no matter how he felt about them, triggered it. Then finding them all standing there so close to his Bonded after what they had just done, it woke it up.
Gabe shakes his head. How are you saying that so calmly? What part of your research told you that this was going to happen?
I'm glad the conversation has moved into our heads when Nox replies, Oleander and I found dozens of references to gods over the last millennia. There was a reference to the ability to Soul Rend, the shadow creatures, the Neuro ability, and the dragon. There was also the ability of a man who could tear his enemies in half while none of them could touch him. The more I look at it, the more of us that I can see. North and I aren't the only ones carrying gods. We're just the only ones whose gods have been awake so far. Bonding with Oli started the process, and each of you have had a trigger so far. Everyone except Gryphon.