Page 68 of Forced Bonds

“What did it say about bonds?” Isabelle asked, looking eagerly at the text in front of her. Chris grabbed the book and turned the pages, stopping once he hit a list about bonds and matings.

“It says they forced bonds to stay intact, not wanting supernaturals to claim whoever they wanted without repercussions. They were the reason we could only mate or bond with one person. According to this, numerous mates and bonded were possible, but they stopped it,” Chris said.

“I can have more than one bonded?” Isabelle gasped and I swore her eyes glowed at the thought. She likely had more than one lover and hated that she couldn’t claim them all equally. That, or because that meant she wouldn't die if just one of them did. Though I highly doubted that would be how it worked.

“I think so,” Chris said, turning the book around. “You can read everything here.”

“You can also break bonds freely,” she said, reading further down the page. “It says a healer can remove your mating or bonding mark and that will free you from the bond.”

For once since I was forced into a mating and a blood bond, I could actually get out of it, if I wanted to. It was crazy to think that now I wanted nothing more than to stay theirs. I felt their nerves rising now that they knew I wasn’t forced into this bond. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I did, however, have a question. “Can healers force your bonds away? Like without your consent?”

Isabelle kept reading. “It says that you have to want the bond gone for it to work, and that forcing someone to want it gone won’t work either.”

That was something at least. Otherwise, I would’ve feared getting healed after this.

“You can also bond with the same person again if you break a bond and regret it,” she added on.

“So,” Altaur said, gaining all our attention. “The book didn’t offer anyone power and it didn’t do anything other than to bring our world back to what it was before this particular witch coven cursed us. So, what do we do with the book now?”

“It still holds information on what has changed,” Isabelle replied, skipping through the pages. “It doesn’t say how to make the curses, so I say let’s keep it and read it through, maybe make it public knowledge amongst all vampire covens?”

“That would be my thought, too,” Altaur agreed. “This will change a lot of things, for everyone.”

Isabelle nodded. “We still have no idea what coven held the book or if they died when the book was stolen, or right now as it got opened.”

“I think it was when it was stolen,” Chris said. “My father died but the rest made it away safely and we had no witch problems before your witches showed up.”

I was tempted to ask how she knew Chris had the book, but I doubted I’d wanted to know her ways. She was mad old and likely had abilities no one knew about outside her coven.

“With the increase in vampires, which will no doubt happen now that the risk of becoming a rogue has passed, we should make a joint decision on what to do about turnings,” Altaur said. It was rather daring of him to speak like that to Isabelle, but so far she’d seemed intent on this being a meeting where we spoke as equals.

“I completely agree,” Isabelle said, smirking. “Is it too big of a demand that only those in covens are legally allowed to turn someone? And if they turn successfully, the coven is forced to take them in, making them their responsibility?”

“I think that’s only fair,” Altaur nodded.

“We’ll get everyone together for this,” Isabelle said, glancing at the book. “We’ll need allies now more than ever if more are turned. The supernaturals will have to remain a secret to the humans, and newly turned vampires are already a threat to us.”

We rose to leave, figuring we weren’t needed for the rest of the conversation, but to my surprise, Zar had one last question. “Why was Tom in the cabin in the woods?”

Darius chuckled; it made me bristle. “Gabrielle needed to know her place, she’d talked about the book with those it didn’t concern. We simply had to remind her of what she had to lose.”

“That, and he was the only one she could feed from, even in his rogue state,” Isabelle said, grimacing. “But it did make creating rogues easier.”

“Was she the one finding all those people?” I asked, already regretting it when Isabelle’s eyes found mine.

“No, Benjamin. Those people were ones who wanted to become vampires. Many people believe we exist and some eventually find our coven. We figured this was the perfect way of getting rid of them. We did, after all, make their wish come true.”

Epilogue

Benjamin

Six months later.

I fucking hated fishing.

Jesse laughed as I lost yet another fish. “Man, you really suck at this.”

Shooting him a glare, I sat back down and refused to do any more fishing. Especially not in his company.