Page 122 of Incoronate
‘Not the time, angel.’Dominic’s smooth voice slid through my mind with a calm I knew had taken him real effort to manufacture.
I pressed my lips together. The heat in my chest pushed back against the restraint, stubborn and righteous, but I swallowed it down. Because he was right. He was annoyingly, infuriatingly right.
This wasn’t the time. There was nothing I could do for those women tonight. I couldn’t save them. I wasn’t even sure how I was going to save myself yet.
“No. Not at all,” I finally answered, and somehow managed to make it sound like the truth.
I returned my attention to the plate in front of me and stared at it with great concentration, as if the mystery mash required all of my focus.
The three women had arranged themselves beside Cael, lined up like cattle to be inspected, but I was not going to look at them again. I was going to sit here and stare at this unidentifiable food and find a way to put some of it in my mouth, and I was going to get through the next hour without my face doing anything that would get us killed.
Dominic reached across the table and lifted his chalice, his movement almost elegant, as though he were wholly at ease with his surroundings, which of course, was a complete and total lie. “You’ll forgive our Catherine,” he said, the warmth in his voice so thoroughly constructed I almost believed it myself. “She’s rather possessive of her arrangement with us. Doesn’t share all that well.” He slid the chalice toward Cael and cut a sideways look at me with something that almost resembled fondness. “From the glass will do just fine.”
Trace didn’t speak right away, but a second later his hand left my knee just long enough for him to reach for the empty chalice in front of him and push it forward across the table as well.
I didn’t react in the least. We’d already agreed back in our quarters that there would be no bloodsharing from me here under any circumstances. The last thing we needed was the scent of my Slayer slash Nephilim blood in a room full of hungry, banished Revenants, especially when none of us knew exactly how long these people had gone without a proper hunt. Dominic and Trace could take blood from a glass without drawing attention and for now, that would have to do. I couldn’t afford that kind of risk. None of us could.
Cael’s gaze moved between the two of them before landing on me, something calculating moving behind it. “Bloodbonded then,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “We prefer to break our humans of that dependency as quickly as possible,” he continued with the manner of someone relaying a perfectly reasonable policy. His eyes moved briefly toward the women beside him before returning to Dominic. “Attachment of that nature produces complications. Our humans are not kept for that purpose.”
The words settled over the table like a verdict.
I looked up.
I wasn’t sure why I did it, only that something pulled my eyes back to the women standing beside Cael. The one in the middle was looking across the table at the Revenant feasting on a redhead across the way from me. There was something quick and involuntary in her glance before her eyes immediately dropped back to the floor.
The Revenant she’d looked at hadn’t bothered to look back at her.
Something cold wound its way through my chest as I returned my gaze to my plate. I didn’t need anyone to explain it to me. There had been something there once, some version of what I had with Trace and Dominic, all that warmth and want and the terrible, specific intimacy of a blood bond. And it had been taken from her. Trained out of her, or beaten out of her, or simply starved out through enough repetition and correction until she had learned to keep her eyes on the floor.
I couldn’t imagine it. Even now, even here, the bond between us was the only thing keeping me upright. As a human it would have been worse. As a human the pull of a blood bond was so total and so overwhelming that losing it—being denied it while the person on the other end of it was still walking around—would have been its own specific kind of devastation.
I put a piece of something in my mouth and chewed without tasting it.
“We’d be happy to help you with that,” said Cael, his gaze sliding from Dominic to Trace and back again with the brisk benevolence of someone offering to do a favor. “A few rotations through the settlement and she’d be considerably easier to manage. Our humans don’t come to the table with expectations anymore.”
The chill that moved through me was immediate and total. I could feel exactly what he was describing. The image of it came without invitation—arriving at a table like this one with just enough sustenance to keep me alive for them. Being passed around the settlement. Being useful in the way that required the least amount of consideration. A resource, not a person. Not even a possession, really. Something more disposable than that.
I felt my hands tremble in my lap.
“We appreciate the offer,” said Dominic, somehow managing to make it sound like he meant it, “but we find we rather enjoy letting her run things.” His eyes found mine across the table, a single dark glance that said nothing and everything all at once. “Keeps her happy that way.”
Cael made a noncommittal sound at the back of his throat, the way you acknowledged something you found mildly misguided but too minor to correct. “Enjoy it while you can,” he said, his tone taking on an ominous edge. “I’m sure you’ll come to learn rather quickly that attachments here only complicate survival. Eventually, most people decide they would rather live without them.”
My mind caught on the ‘while you can’ part as I tried to stop my body from physically reacting to it. Trace’s thumb moved against my knee, a small but deliberate gesture meant to ease my anxiety, and I forced myself to fix my attention on that instead. On the pressure of it. On the bond humming steadily between us, still intact, still there, something that no one in this hall would ever be able to take from us.
I refused to lose him. To lose either of them. Not here. Not like that.
I wasn’t going to end up sitting at this table night after night waiting for someone to decide I was useful enough to keep breathing. I wasn’t going to let this place grind us down until we forgot there had ever been anything outside of it. I had a life beyond these walls. I had people waiting for me.
Ares was waiting for me.
He was somewhere on the other side of this forsaken Realm in Tessa’s arms or Gabriel’s, hidden away from every faction that wanted him dead before he was old enough to understand why. And he needed me. Not just because I was the one who had decided to give him a fighting chance when everyone else had voted against it, but because I was the onlyone who had chosen to love him unconditionally. The only that understood what he was up against.
The thought of him, all small and new and entirely unaware of what was coming for him, was enough to cut straight through the fear and leave something steadier in its place.
I was going home. No matter what it took.
The rest of the meal passed mostly in silence, though there wasn’t a single moment of it that was comfortable or causal. I ate what I could manage, which wasn’t much, each bite sitting heavy and graceless in my stomach. Trace and Dominic drank from their chalices, simultaneously tracking everything in the room while appearing to track nothing, and every so often one of them would angle a fraction closer to me, while Cael’s eyes continued to linger on me a little longer with every look he took.
