by Ivy Asher
I didn’t pass out, which I’m pretty fucking proud of. I’d wing five Pigeon if, you know, I could move.
“Only what she asked me to do,” Wekun defends evenly.
“You have no right to try and take her from us!” Ryn bellows. “It’s not just her decision to make!”
I can’t open my eyes, but I can just picture him, stepping threateningly into Wekun’s personal space. Oddly, I become aware of purple threads inside of me that seem to lead from me to Ryn. I look over in my chest to see another set that connects Treno and me. I would groan at their unwelcome anchor in my soul, but I don’t think I’m completely awake.
“It is Falon’s decision whether or not she wants to be with you three. She’s the only one who can make that choice,” Wekun lobs back. “Don’t come snarling in here at me. If you had been more careful with her and who she is from the beginning, she wouldn’t have tried to cut your bonds.”
His words make my chest ache.
Tried? Does that mean it didn’t work?
I swim through the distress that fills me at that thought and try to surface from the numbness I’m treading in. The purple threads feel heavy inside of me, and I need to know what that means. Am I free, or did I somehow strengthen what I was hoping to break?
“Where’s the Syta?” Wekun asks. “He’s usually the more volatile of the group, why is he not here lumbering around and being all threatening?”
I would snort if I could. It’s almost as though Wekun likes pissing Zeph off, but his question makes me pause, because it is weird that he’s not here blanketing everything in his outrage.
The room goes quiet.
“He’s not dealing so well with these,” Ryn states, and confusion stabs at my numbness. “He told us to make sure that Falon was okay, but he’s in a bad place right now…”
Something in Ryn’s tone calls to me, and I force my battered consciousness to look down at the threads I know lead to Zeph. I reach out to the purple tether that’s not supposed to be there anymore, and in a breath, I’m pulled from where I am with Wekun, Ryn, and Treno, and yanked toward Zeph.
A roar slams against me, shocking me as my feet touch soil. I blink the darkness all around me into focus and find myself at the bathing pools. Another cry fills the night around me, and I can hear the panic and terror in it. I try to shake the disorientation I feel from my senses.
What did I just do?
Am I doing that dream thing again? I’ve never been able to control it or make it happen at will. I look down at myself and scrunch my toes in the damp soil surrounding the bathing pool. I don’t feel like I’m dreaming. This lacks the somewhat fuzzy quality I always felt when it happened before. I feel like I’m actually here, but I have no idea how.
I’m pulled away from my confounding thoughts with a jump, as Zeph crashes into the water in front of me with a horrified bellow. The warm water of the hot spring sprays up all around him as he runs deeper into the pool and falls to his knees.
My first reaction is that he’s under attack somehow, because he looks like he’s running for his life, but as I look around, there’s no one but us here. He starts to scrub furiously at his skin, and the torment laced in his every movement has me running into the water to help him with whatever is hurting him.
A whimper escapes him as I close the distance, but Zeph doesn’t even look over as I make my presence known. I round on him and see he’s scrubbing at rings of black marks that now wrap around his arms. His eyes are far away and lost looking, and his movements are frenzied. I’m taken aback and confused for a moment.
Where did these marks come from?
It’s as though he doesn’t even know I’m standing right in front of him, and I reach out for him, not able to stop the drive slamming through me to help him in some way. I’m not sure what’s going on or why he’s so spooked and terrified.
I freeze as my arm comes out in front of me and I see the same rings of marks on my body. Understanding sucker punches me in the mouth, and I immediately know what’s setting Zeph off.
He’s wearing my runes.
He’s covered in marks that represent the people who destroyed his entire life, raped his mother, killed her and then his father. People who swore by these marks, brandished them like weapons, betrayed his family, slaughtered his brother before his eyes, started the war he’s currently fighting. Zeph has worked his entire life not to ever bear a rune that could ever enslave him and bring him to his knees against his will. And now, he is covered in them, on his knees, trying to wash them all from his skin.
My heart breaks.
I may not like him or appreciate what’s gone down between us, but I wouldn’t wish the panic and pain I can see in his golden gaze—and feel in my soul—on my worst enemy.
I’m not sure what to do. How to help Zeph navigate this. He seems out of it at the moment. He’s manically scrubbing and clawing at himself, but his eyes look as though they’re reliving all kinds of horrors.
Fuck!
I thought Wekun was going to break the bond, that even if my marks came back, it wouldn’t affect anyone but me. I didn’t think something like this was a possibility.
Water laps at my waist, and I frantically search through my guilt for a solution. Okay, Falon, think. I need to snap him out of this in a way that doesn’t make him want to snap my neck. I reach for him again, my hands now shaky and unsure. I hesitate just before I connect with his hands. I don’t want to set him off even more by touching him in a way that could be more triggering. I think through the horrible things I know he’s been through and try to suss out a way I can touch him that isn’t going to make what he’s experiencing so much worse.
He’s been held down, held back, forced to watch and endure.
I decide not to try and touch his arms or shoulders. I don’t want him to think I’m just another soldier here to make him hurt.
Another pained whimper comes out of the massive male in front of me, and I fucking loathe that I have no idea what to do.
I bring my hands up, and before I can really think it through, I cup Zeph’s cheeks with my palms. He doesn’t react in any way that makes me think he can feel me, but his gryphon doesn’t appear and literally bite my head off either, so I go with it. I crawl over his frantic hands as they continue to scrub at his now bleeding skin until I’m settled firmly in his lap.
His eyes are still somewhere else, and I press my forehead and nose against his as I cradle his head and start to hum, my mouth centimeters away from his. He’s panting through whatever flashback he’s currently being forced to endure, but he breathes in my song each time he fills his lungs, and I decide to give whatever the fuck I’m doing time to hopefully draw him out a little.
I press my head against his firmly so he can feel me, but my touch isn’t demanding or cruel. The tips of my fingers edge his wet black hair, and the scruff of his new beard feels prickly against my palms. I stare at his haunted, scrunched eyes and just hum.
I have no idea what I’m even singing. The damage I’ve been doing to my throat over and over again doesn’t help to make the tune any more identifiable. I sound like Scuttle and a toad’s tone-deaf baby.
Gradually I fix my cracked and battered voice onto Radiohead’s “Creep.” I mellow it out, humming the Daniela Andrade cover of the song that I like to play on repeat when I’m feeling moody. I sing it on a loop against Zeph’s frenetic breaths, my face touching his and my hands holding him.
I feel his tense muscles slowly relax, but I don’t let myself celebrate. Nothing about this situation is worthy of any level of elation. He pulls in a deeper breath than the others that came before, and I go from humming to softly singing the words to my moody song choice. I try to picture the tune and lyrics seeping into him and helping to invite him out of the dread that’s consuming him.
Zeph’s hands stop moving behind me, the scrubbing coming to a stop as I tell him the musical tale of how I’m a weirdo. Surprise ricochets through me when I feel his large hands wra
p around my waist and pull me tighter into him. I don’t miss a gravelly note as he inhales me and his clenched eyelids begin to smooth out.
My thumbs trace his cheek bones as I sing about wanting a perfect soul. His chest starts to move in time with mine, and then all at once, honey-kissed eyes are staring directly into mine. Pain bleeds out of his stare, so I just keep whisper-singing to him, my own eyes telling him that I’m here. That he’s safe and not back anywhere that could be causing the haunted look in his eyes.
We stay like this for a long time, me singing the same song over and over again as I sit in his lap and do my best to hold his fragile pieces together. I’m not sure how many hours separate when I first got here until now, but the water is warm and pressing lazily against us as his thumbs start to brush against my ribs in time with the languid beat of my borrowed tune.
I don’t ask him what happened or if he’s okay. They’re stupid questions I refuse to lend my splintered voice to. I can see it in his eyes and feel it in his body that he’s not ready to leave this moment yet. I’m in no rush; this is the least I can do. They’re my marks that are etched into his skin and terrorizing him, this trauma is on me.
I think that Wekun can probably do whatever my dad did to me and make them go away, but Zeph isn’t ready to hear any of that yet. So I wait patiently and start the song over for the hundredth time.
“You tried to break the mating?” Zeph suddenly asks me, his voice quiet and even.
I stop my song and immediately feel the peace it brought slip through my fingers.
“I did,” I admit, my thumbs going still on his cheeks.
He doesn’t say anything, and my confession floats around us, slinking in and out of the silence that settles between us.
“The Ouphe enslaved my people,” he tells me, his face hard, but his eyes beseeching like what he’s saying isn’t easy for him.
“I know.”
“I’m covered in their magic.”
“Yes, you are.”
He pauses for a minute, and I see unmasked vulnerability flicker in his eyes. “I don’t know how to live with that.”
His confession soaks into me, and I nod my head in understanding. “You have two choices then,” I start, my eyes flitting back and forth between his, our faces still pressed together like we’re telling secrets. “We either figure out how to get rid of them…” I pause for a minute to let that option resonate and land where it needs to inside of him.
“Or?” he presses when he’s ready.
“We learn how to use them so they can never be used against you or your people again.”
A spark of uncertainty alights in his gaze.
“I’m going to break the Vow, Zeph,” I tell him, the words a promise. “Once that’s done, the magic that bound the Gryphons to the Ouphe is dead. I’m not sure what each mark on our bodies can do, but if any one of them can help us bring down Lazza and what he represents, then maybe it could be worth it to wear them for a while.”
“For a while?” he questions.
“Speak to Wekun, find out what all of this means, and then decide what’s best for you,” I encourage him, trying to help him see that he can take back control over these runes on his body. He can decide if they’re allowed to mark his skin or if he wants them removed.
After a minute, he nods. His hands tighten slightly around me, and I’m abruptly aware that my thighs are wrapped around his torso, my lips a feather’s width away from his, and my maroon tank dress is floating up around my waist, meaning there’s only his pants separating his bits from mine.
We’re tangled in a very intimate position, but our connection to each other couldn’t be any further from intimate if someone strapped it to a rocket and sent it hurling off in the direction of the moon.
I’m pressed tightly against him, and oddly, it didn’t feel weird until just now. My body responds to him despite my head saying oh come the fuck on. Unfortunately, in moments like this when Zeph peels back the layers and shows that there’s more to him than anger and brutality, it’s hard not to get reeled in by the other facets of him.
But my reality is that the tenuous connection that existed between us has been beaten to a pulp. As much as part of me wants to close the miniscule distance between our lips and slide his hands over to cup my breasts, I’ve played with his fire already—and been burnt to cinders. I won’t risk it again.
Zeph’s eyes stay fixed on mine as I shutter myself against him. His honeyed gaze flashes with penitence before resolve takes over. His large hands skim down the sides of my ribs, testing my will power.
I wish I didn’t know what he felt like pressing himself inside of me or what it was like to kiss him. It would be nice to no longer remember the feel of his chest beneath my palms as I ride him or what his weight is like on top of me as I orgasm.
It makes all of this so fucking complicated, because my body feels right against his. I just wish my soul did.
I climb out of his lap and ignore the way his fingertips skim down the side of my bare hips and thighs as I do. I can see that he wants to press for something physical between us right now. Like he wants to fuck the vulnerability he just experienced away, replace the trauma he just suffered through with connection and orgasms.
I can’t lie, there’s a part of me still that wants that too, but I refuse to be used and trampled again. I need to talk to Wekun and find out what went wrong, see if there’s a way to fix it. I want more than hate fucks and help me forget intimacy. I want the way Moro looks at Tysa after they kiss, like she’s oxygen to him, like his world couldn’t possibly exist without her. I’m not stupid enough to think I’ll ever find that here.
12
Zeph lets me go as I step back and put distance between us. Cold air saps the warmth of the water from my body immediately as I step out of it, and I start to shiver. I think of the bed in Wekun’s tent for some reason, piled high with furs. In a flash, I’m no longer standing ankle deep in the bathing pools, but dripping water on Wekun’s fur covered bed.
What the fuck?
“Oh good, you’re back,” Wekun exclaims from the pile of pillows he set up for my magic retrieval. He looks exhausted, practically dead on his feet as he gets up and gestures toward the front of his tent. “The other two left not too long ago in search of you,” he informs me, pulling a dry shirt from a trunk and chucking it at me.
So it wasn’t just that dream thing I can do, I realize as I look down at my dripping body.
“What the fuck was that?” I demand, completely unnerved.
“You’re a slipper,” he tells me as he falls back onto the bed I’m now climbing out of.
“Say what?” I ask, heading to the screen I changed behind earlier.
“There’s a mirror in the corner behind you. It’s not the best, but it’s all I could find out here.”
I look behind me at his instruction and find what looks to be a slightly tarnished piece of reflective metal. I pull off my sopping top and stare at the distorted reflection I create in the makeshift mirror. I have runes everywhere. My arms have the same three bands of markings, spaced out on my forearm, that Zeph—and I suspect Treno and Ryn—now has. Above my elbow are four more spaced out bands, but these are much thicker and prominent.
I have a little flower-like symbol with four petals just under the nail of my ring finger, and three other runes that run down the digit. A thick black band, which looks to be a garter belt of runes, encircles each of my thighs. The markings sit high up on my thighs, and I turn to see they wrap all the way around.
Treno’s marks run vertically down my calves, and I spot the same skinny diamonds surrounded by dots on both of my shoulder blades. What’s new though, is line after line of even markings that run down the right side of my back. The structure of the runes looks like writing of some sort, and I immediately wonder what it says. I face forward once again and see more of Treno’s marks in a line above my left breast, and on the right side, in the same formation, are matching runes to th
e ones on my ring fingers.
I lean closer to the mirror and scan my body for any other marks. I catch a hint of black under my chin and tilt my head back to see what it is. On the underside of my chin, there’s a circle made of a thick black line. I drop my head down and step out from behind the screen.
“What do all of these mean?” I ask, gesturing to the new marks on my naked body.
Wekun looks over to me at my question and then slams his eyes shut. “Whoa, Falon. What the hell, are you trying to get me murdered?” he asks, covering his already closed eyes with his hands as though that will keep my nakedness from seeping in.
“Murdered?” I question.
“Yes, you know, from your warm and fluffy mates, who already look at me like I have ulterior motives when it comes to you.”
“What happened? I thought you were breaking the mate bond. I felt it snap with Treno and Ryn, and then all of a sudden…”
“Are you still naked?” Wekun asks me, irritated.
“Yes, because if I get dressed, then you can’t see all my runes, and I want to know what they are. We both know there’s no attraction between us, so stop acting like a baby and just tell me what’s all over my body so I can get dressed.”
“Fuck my life,” he growls.
I stand there, refusing to make this a big deal. Shifters get naked around each other all the time. Plus, I’ve seen—and worn—the barely there dresses that make up Gryphon and Ouphe fashion; there’s no way he can pretend to be overly shy when chicks here practically flash vagina lips on the daily.
He must sense my stubbornness, and with an exasperated sigh, he drops his hands from his face. I cover my breasts as much as possible with a hand and forearm, and drop my other palm to cover my vagina in an effort to save his virtue. Wekun looks over at me warily and quickly scans my body. He twirls his fingers, indicating that he wants me to turn. I do, moving my hand from my crotch to cover my ass crack as I go.
I stand with my back to him for a beat and look over my shoulder when I hear fabric rustling behind me, as though he’s climbing off the bed. Wekun comes closer, his eyes fixed on the lines of runes that run from under my shoulder blade to the top of my ass cheek on the right side of my back. He reads the symbols left to right like you would a book, and it confirms my suspicion that it’s some kind of written message.