She's got me there, not that I need any encouragement to go after her Bonded… I just don’t want her getting her hopes up.
“I will leave Vivian here in charge with my Bonded, but I will personally go and find him. One way or another.”
She makes a tutting noise under her breath. “He's not going to like that. You know that he will want to go after Unser himself.”
Despite the shitty situation, I find myself grinning at her tone. “Like you said, there's certain people that take precedence. If anyone is going to be able to bring him home, it’s me.”
The elevator doors open and Gryphon steps into the office, Nox trailing closely behind him with a savage look on his face, a book tucked under his arm, and a bottle of whiskey in his other hand.
He hadn't taken the news of switching his sleeping patterns very well, mostly because I think he saw through my reasoning for it easily. I had been forced to explain it to him in no uncertain terms. If he's not willing to go back to therapy and figure out how to coexist peacefully with our Bonded, then this is the next best choice for him.
I turn my computer screen around so that they can both read it while I finish up the conversation with Adella. “I’ll get him back. One way or another. You just need to stay here and take care of Vivian and those kids. You'll have your hands more than full, I'm sure.”
She chokes out a tearful sort of chuckle, strong as ever, but still clearly worried about her Bonded. “The youngest one has already asked why the age restrictions on TacTeams haven't been lifted yet. I hope you're ready to face what we have brought into this world, because I'm not sure you're ready for my boys.”
The smile stays glued to my face, genuinely happy to hear it, and I sign off by saying, “They certainly can't be any harder to train than we were, and Vivian did a great job of that.”
The moment I hang the phone up, Nox says, “We need to leave now. If they get him back to one of the camps and we can't figure out which one, we're done for. One Trigger is bad enough.”
He's not saying anything that I don't already know, but a ripple of irritation runs down my spine.
“We’re going to need to take everyone,” Gryphon says, and I shake my head.
“We can't take everyone. It's not safe to have all of us in one place at the same time. We need to stick to the rules of one of us being here at all times. Oleander is still resting after the Bond being completed, so we can't take her. Her bond is volatile at the best of times.”
We both pointedly don't look at Nox, and I shrug back at Gryphon. “You, Atlas, and I are the only ones who have bonded and found our power increases. Everyone else should stay here.”
Nox reacts immediately and exactly the way I know he will. “There's no way I'm staying here. If there's a fight to be had, I'm going.”
I shake my head, not entirely sure why I’m fighting him when I know he’ll never back down. “You're in the same boat as Oli, you need to let the bond settle.”
“Fuck that. Bassinger and the little poison Bonded both fought the Resistance when they came here the day after they had bonded, so don't feed me that bullshit as an attempt to get me to stay behind. I'm going, and I'm finding Unser.”
I already know that it's going to be pointless to try and convince him otherwise. He doesn't have any particularly strong ties to the Trigger, but we all understand the significance of the Resistance taking him hostage. They know that Oleander has found her Bonded Group and they are doing what they can to shore up their defenses for when they have to face her. Silas Davies having two Triggers at his disposal, one of them with a huge range and the other able to regenerate at the drop of a hat, it's definitely dangerous for us all.
“Fine. The three of us will go. Oli, Atlas, and Gabe can stay behind.”
We make the decision to leave Kieran behind as well, as an extra set of eyes on the Sanctuary. He’s still extra jumpy, thanks to Sage’s mind abduction, and we’re not sure how long we will be gone, as it is a recovery mission.
I find myself as leery about leaving my Bonded as I am about finding Unser dead.
Oli doesn't take the news of us leaving well, not that she shows it, but we can all feel the inner turmoil inside her as she ducks her head and nods. I hate it. I would do anything to fix it for her, but the compulsion to keep her away from Davies for as long as I possibly can is stronger than anything else, especially with the Bond being so newly complete.
Someday soon, she’s going to be as close to invincible as any mortal will ever get. Until then, I’ll be her first line of defense.
“What if you need a power pick-me-up? What if you run out while you're out there?” she says, and while Nox keeps his back to her as he pulls his Tac gear on, I can see that she has his interest.
I already knew that he’d been interested in the power exchange from a philosophical point of view. I get it, I’d never heard of a Bond being able to do something like that before. I know that he had doubled his research on Soul Renders once I had told him what had happened when the Resistance had shown up here and she had funneled all that power through to me.
“I’m not going to need the power. The Wasteland we're going to is still brand new. Between the three of us, we’ll be able to have it dealt with. We have done it before, before you came home to us, and we all know how to do our jobs. Just trust me, Bonded.”
She huffs a little under her breath. “It's not about trust. It's about wanting you all to come home.”
Gryphon stands in the doorway and checks over his weapons one last time, that same obsessive tic that he has as a ritual each time he goes out on a job, as though touching each of his guns and knives in a certain order will ensure his safety. I can’t really give him too much shit about it.
He has always made it back.
We're standing in the supply area sectioned off just for our Bonded Group, mostly so that we can have privacy when conversations like this need to happen, and while I was expecting Nox to get dressed and disappear like he always does, he hasn’t made a move yet to leave us. There's something about our conversation that he is particularly interested in. Oli seems to think it's a good sign, but I'm not so sure.
I don't think my brother can be saved.
I feel a little bit of shame in admitting that, especially since I have been the one to rally so hard to keep him alive and with me, but part of that is my own selfishness and not wanting to lose the last member of my family. William's death had rocked me to my core, and I find myself even more desperate to keep Nox alive now because of it.
He has thrown that fact in my face more than once in his drunken ramblings in my office, and I have no choice but to stand there and let him, because it's true.
What could it be about this conversation that has caught his interest so much?
“We'll be back soon, Bonded. Don't worry. I haven't needed to draw on your power yet, and I have still found no limit to what my Neuro powers can do. Let's just trust North and Nox to get the job done.”
She nods and glances down at Nox again. “They're not going to know what’s hit them, two Death Dealers and the Neuro with powers that rival Davies’. I'm sure it'll be fine.”