Page 295 of Commanding Blood And Bonds
“I think we’re even now.”
“Then prove it,” he whispered, brushing the tip of his nose along mine. “I can’t explain what this is—”
“A goddamn Bond—”
“—but I don’t want anyone else.”
My breath stuttered.
“It wasn’t just the Bond transferring your pain into my chest. It was you. You stood your ground against all of us that night.”
“A cornered animal does the same.”
“I was mesmerized then. Something bigger than me stayed my hand at Uptown. Today, when that bastard said you were in trouble…the world stopped existing, Freya. My hierarchy didn’t matter, my pride, my honor, all of it meant shit if you needed help. So, let me.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Then tell me.” His fingers curled into my hair, tugging gently. “But don’t lie. There’s always been something more.”
“That’s the Bond talking.”
“Then tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you feel nothing when I touch you like this.” His hands burned paths into my skin, one on my throat, the other in my hair.
I opened my mouth. Tried to lie. But no sound came out. His eyes—smug, hazel, luminous—searched mine.
He knew.
“You getting hurt wrecked me,” he said. “Call it a tie. Call it fate. But I broke my queen’s direct orders because you were on the other side of the field. So give me your worst, Freya. I promise—I can take it.”
That was the last straw.
Because it wasn’t Cyrus’s face I saw anymore. It was Reagan’s. Regal. Smug. Bleeding out on her throne after I drove a blade through her fucking throat.
I stumbled back, shaking him off as I looked away.
“No. You can’t. And I didn’t come here to break you, Cyrus.”
He blinked, pain flashing across his features before he masked it. “Then don’t.”
“Freya!” August’s voice cracked through the clearing. I turned to find him and Ally approaching—blades on their backs, wary eyes flicking between us. “You alright?”
I straightened. “Be right there!” To Cyrus, I murmured, “Word to the wise? Set yourself free before it’s too late.”
The wind shifted, and he stared at me like he’d already tried. Like I was the one who held the key.
“I don’t think that I can.”
FIFTY-FIVE
FATE WEAVER
ALVARA
You look perplexed. What secrets is she guarding? August asked, mind-to-mind, a week after we arrived in Santa Bloom—drawing my gaze up from dark hair and mesmerizing aquamarine eyes. I was perched on the leather sofa, luxurious and well-worn, but the ecstatic high of reuniting our coven had long since given way to a morbid, gnawing curiosity: who, precisely, was the woman God carved from the clay of the world to balance my sire?
‘Stunning’ was inadequate. Magnolia possessed a beauty so arresting it made other women shrink. And when she wasn’t locked in battle with her wounds, she radiated a quiet certainty I deeply admired. With another few decades of experience—or another life more carefully guarded—this soul could move mountains. Selfishly, I hoped she would survive the war, if only so Aren’s smile might become a permanent fixture.
We’d reconvened with him that afternoon, then jumped the entire coven—sans Freya—back to the Florida Estate, where space and solitude came in abundance.
