Page 7 of The Bound Zodiac

We were late, of course. Always fucking late. We made our way down the Dominion admin wing’s spiral staircase in silence, boots echoing on ancient stone, and every step felt like lead weights were fastened to my ankles.

The conference room was at the end of the hall, the door already open and a lit fire spilled warm light out into the corridor. Percy was first through, his face unreadable. I followed, with Aiden behind me and Draco silent as a ghost at the rear.

Charles Callahan was already waiting, of course. Spread out at the long oak table, his own shield team posted up behind him in perfect formation. His axis wasn’t here, which was probably by design, but their absence was a message in itself. Victor, the infamous empath, conveniently tied up elsewhere. Maybe it was a good thing, because today, we were liars.

Aiden’s father sat at Charles’s right, looking vaguely bored and entirely dangerous and cunning. Two other men I recognized only by reputation sat on the left. There was Gray, who looked like he could snap my neck one-handed, and Hanz, the “good cop” who smiled with too many shiny white teeth.

Nobody moved for a long, awkward second.

Percy just pulled out a chair and dropped into it, his arms folded. He looked like he hadn’t slept. “Thanks for making the time.”

Charles smiled. He had that politician’s thing where you never knew if he wanted to shake your hand or strangle you with it. “For my son? Always.”

Aiden sat beside me, shoulders hunched and eyes already narrowed. Draco took the far end, putting more table between himself and the rest of Charles’s shield, and lit a cigarette without asking permission. I let out a breath and did the same, because fuck it, what were they going to do, write me up for it?

Charles steepled his hands. “So. You wanted to discuss the incident.”

Percy’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t glance at me or the others. “Yeah. We had two attacks in a single night. My suspicion is that it wasn’t random.”

Hanz leaned forward, hands folded on the polished wood. “You think the Assembly’s under threat?”

“No,” Draco said, voice flat. “We think it’s us.”

Draco looked awful. I counted the pulse ticking in his neck, the tremor in his fingers as he exhaled smoke. Still not fully healed, and yet he was the only one at this table with his dignity completely intact. If that Lucas fucker hadn’t been there, we might have lost him.

Charles fixed him with a look that could have frozen the blood in our veins. “Dramatic. But I suppose you always did have a flair for it.”

Aiden’s father watched all of us, silently calculating. The bastard didn’t even blink like a normal man. He looked so much like Aiden that it was like glimpsing my shield brother’s future. But there was cruelty in his eyes that Aiden didn’t have.

Percy leaned in. “Someone poisoned Draco and took a bat to the back of Eris’s skull. If Jupiter hadn’t intervened, we’d be down a shield brother or possibly two. It was a professional. Nobody gets into shield quarters unless they’re Assembly trained or have an exceptional ability.”

Charles’s lips curved in what might have been amusement. “And you want my help?”

A beat.

“We want answers, Charles.” His father ground his teeth at the insulting way he spoke to him, but chose not to comment. “I assume you have more resources than us, and it’s been days and Dominion has yet to come up with any answers despite their investigation.”

Gray let out a low whistle, shaking his head. “Not many would pick a fight with Nightfall. You’re the top combat team in the region, and your fathers are Assembly elders. What could possibly motivate an attack like this?”

I felt them all watching Percy, but his eyes were on Charles, searching for any flicker, any tell. If you looked close, you could see it. It was the hope, the pain, the unfair need for his father’s approval that had been killing him for twenty-six years. He hated his father more though. Hated him enough to make the lies easier to swallow.

I cleared my throat and stubbed out my cigarette. “Maybe it’s a message. Maybe it’s a power grab. Or maybe someone wanted to make damn sure the Ophis came running when her shield was wounded.”

Charles didn’t so much as blink. “She did open a portal across the ocean, didn’t she?”

I nodded curtly.

Gray caught my eye, grinning. “Hell of a woman. Must have been some bond you had.”

I didn’t rise to it. I just shrugged, ignoring the acid in my chest. “We still have the bond. You of all people should know exactly how powerful it is despite distance.”

Another long silence. The whole room was a chessboard. Every word meant something else.

Aiden’s father spoke. “If someone did leverage your suffering to bring Ophis back, it worked perfectly. She was here less than an hour after the attack.”

It was true. She’d been so fucking scared for us, she hadn’t even bothered with her own safety. She could have accidentally landed in the middle of the ocean, drained of her energy with no way to siphon any from anyone else.

The memory of seeing her standing there when I came to, made me ache, deep in my bones and deeper in places I didn’t want to admit. Even after everything, she’d risked herself to save us. Even after we shattered her trust in us, and ruined the best thing any of us ever had.