Forced Bonds (The Bonds that Tie Book 4)

I feel the thud of his lifeless body hit the ground, the echo in my bones as our connection severs and the puppy running at my heels disappears in a puff of warm wind

His voice echoes in my head, the last thing I hear as chaos reigns around me and the only time he’s ever spoken to me through our connection.

I’ll see you in the next life, Bonded. Maybe I can love you right there

I run towards them as I feel the life slowly draining out of Nox as he gives everything to North. My bond still funnels energy through to Gryphon and North as fast as it can, desperately beating at the wall that Nox has put up between us. But it's no use. He won't accept it.

Whatever is happening, he wants his brother to make it out alive.

Take it! Take the power. I’m coming, but just take it! I scream at the wall in his mind, but it’s no use. I feel his soul slipping away

he refuses the power, putting up a wall inside his own mind as he moves it onto his brother, giving everything he has to North to make sure that he survives whatever is happening right now to them.

Brutus slips out from behind my ear to run with me, both of us desperate to get to him.

, scrambling to my feet and running, running towards them, running towards the pain and the horror of what is happening to them,

Atlas uses his Gift to transfer his strength to me, but this is not an injury that is happening to me, so it does nothing to help. This is not something that I need to be shielded from, this is three of my Bonded being tortured in ways that I do not understand, but my bond does.

My bond always knows.

It takes over my body, ripping through my mind and flooding me as my eyes shift, the souls of everyone around us that is our enemy are torn from their bodies all at once as my bond takes from them and funnels everything it can to my Bonded, giving them that strength from us to survive whatever it is that's happening to them.

I’m relieved for a split second.

Except Nox refuses the power.

Come back!

There's quiet down the mind connection and then pain.

All I can feel is pain, all that I can think of is pain, everyone and everything is pain.

It takes over every fiber of my being, and even though it's not mine, all I can see and think and feel is his pain, pain, pain.

There's only pain.

I'm taken to my knees, my bond flickering in my chest as it tries to take ove