Page 164 of The Bonding Games: Part 2

“Well, if you adjust the shade of your Avri, you could make it invisible—”

“As you are a nurse, I would think you are intelligent enough to know that that would allow the inside of my face to be visible,” she snaps, and even now, injured as she is, the nurse’s huge gulp tells me she’s very much aware of the damage Ezla can cause with a flick of her pinkie. “I would not want that.” Then she seems to lose a whole heap of energy, as if the effort to get out the harsh words drained much more than she expected it would, her good eye closing and her head tipping back into the pillow beneath it. “Now, if you do not mind, I would appreciate you getting to work right away.”

“Right, yes, of course.” The wide-eyed nurse rushes for Cooper.

“Do not touch my Bond! He is mine!”

Scared half to death, I think the poor woman’s about to pass out as she freezes in place.

Cooper’s emotions are a complete mess in the bond, just like the rest of ours, but even now, a spark of pleasure at her possessiveness intrudes on his panic and anger, though that’s mostly drowned out and not at all able to be heard as he all but growls, “Vengeance, believe me when I tell you I don’t want another woman’s hands on me, but this needs to be done—”

“Enzo can do it,” she hisses, and the older Exot immediately moves over, no hesitation.

“It should be me anyway for this part,” he tells us quietly, clearly trying not to offend the nurse by keeping his volume low as he gestures for Cooper to raise his arms, which he does at once, holding the faintly shaking limbs out either side of him. “They’re evidently out of their depth here.”

“If you fuck this up—”

Cooper cuts Tate’s growl off this time, voice low as he asks, “You can definitely do this? You won’t hurt her?”

Enzo looks at him steadily. “I’m going to do my best here. I’m evidently not a medical professional, but I would never purposely hurt the woman who’s saving my children, and I’ve commanded enough Avri to believe I can do this.”

“Then do it.”

Without another word, Enzo gets to work.

***

It takes two hours alone for Enzo to override the commands ensuring Cooper’s energy stays stuck to the sinthe and sinthine of his Avri suit. It takes another four to give it new ones and move the dark green pixels pulled into the air into Ezla’s face. Ezla’s sleeping face, because she was knocked out by Avri injected into her veins at the beginning of the process to be kept in a stable condition overnight. As a result of that Avri, the blood thankfully also stopped pouring from her split-open skin ages ago, and now . . .

Mouth hanging open, I gape at my Bonded. She’s still unconscious, but the injection isn’t like one of the medical tubes that keeps patients paused in time for years and years, and she’ll be waking up anytime now as I take in the scar on her face.

The unbelievably green scar.

She looks the same but . . . different. And I obviously knew that it was going to be that colour, but as Enzo steps back, having only just finished working with the doctor’s help, Ezla’s previously torn upper and lower eyelids now perfectly intact but hiding what I know to be a rebuilt eye beneath . . . I struggle to comprehend the sight.

“It’s green,” I whisper the obvious.

“I can see that, Tiger,” Scotty murmurs, just as transfixed, all of us taking in the thick luminous green scar running down the right side of our Bonded’s face. And the panic’s died down now, my heart rate gradually slowing as the hours passed by, but I won’t be able to calm myself completely until she wakes—

Ezla’s eyes snap open to reveal one glowing green iris and one familiar coffee-brown one.

45

ALBY

It feels odd to be back here after all that’s happened. Even weirder that we’re not standing on the arena’s floor, but in its viewing box. An intimidating, imposing box where the Game Master used to watch us be slaughtered like animals while the crowd cheered for the brutality. Now, on the official last day of the eleventh Bonding Games, I stand with a Bonded I never thought I’d get, never thought I’d be deserving of, four unexpected brothers, and The Council.

Or what remains of it.

There’s the Showmaster, of course, and it’s not too common we see the Techtis Council with Joseph having been so arrogant, so self-absorbed, that he kept all the attention on himself, with Peter’s exception to this rule being his role in the Games, but I’m aware from Evot Training School that there were twenty-two members including the two of them.

Now, there’s ten.

Well, actually, there’s sixteen—if you include us.

Ezla killed the rest of them.

It seems too easy to have got to where we are now. It seems too easy for Ezla to be named the head of The Council, for us to be given seats so effortlessly. But when I think about all that we’ve been through, who my Bonded is, who we killed . . . it all doesn’t seem so hard to understand anymore.