Page 125 of Flameborne: Fury
“Bren, you don’t have to—”
“Yes. I do. It’s time, Donavyn. I should have trusted you sooner, and I should have trusted them, too. They’re part of this and I’d want to know if it happened to them. You were right.Theywere right. At the beginning Ronen told me, we have to do everything together. Gil said we have to talk it through. We all promised as a squad to be there for each other. But I didn’t know what any of that meant. I was afraid of it. I should have trusted them. I have to.Wehave to. Otherwise this will never work.”
I was desperately aware of seven sets of eyes on us—Ronen’s burning with contained fury, and the others watching with mingling worry and rage.
I reached for her mind, needing that connection, grasping at the bond like a lifeline.‘It’s your decision. I believe they can be trusted. But you have to be ready.’
‘If we don’t tell them, they’ll figure it out. I need them to help me hide and stay close to you. If they know, they’ll understand. And I can’t stand that they’re all looking at you like you did something wrong, Donavyn. It wasn’t you who caused all of this.’
I was touched. My simmering anger at the men faded to the back of my mind as I drank in the sight of her standing with her chin up and her shoulders back. Pride. Strength. Even in her fear, she grasped courage.
I took a deep breath and nodded.‘Tell them. We’ll figure it out.’
Her lips pulled up in a grim smile, then she turned to face them. I stood at her back, my arms folded, glaring at her brothers over her shoulder to keep their mouths shut as she haltingly filled them in. I warned them to take care with my eyes when they showed shock, and urged them to speak when they were concerned.
They asked their questions, voiced their disbelief, and gaped at both of us. But by the end, though she hadn’t told themwhoinflicted that disgusting violation on her, she’d told them the skeleton of the truth of what they did. And where we now found ourselves.
She admitted she’d been wounded. We were now bonded. And she’d found healing and strength in that.
She confided her worry that the other Furyknights would only ever see her as my mate, rather than a rider who’d earned her pin, so she’d kept the mating secret. But she needed them to know, because she and I couldn’t be separated. Not now.
“But what about Kgosi?” Gil asked, frowning. “If you’re Donavyn’s mate, why did he attack like that? He tore the building open. They’ve already started work to fix it, but he’s never been aggressive to Furyknights before. What happened?”
I waited for Bren. It was her choice how much she shared, though through the bond I gripped her and offered every reassurance I could.
She swallowed hard. “I… I was scared and overreacted. I hurt Donavyn. Kgosi came to save him. Fromme.”
They all looked more confused than ever after that. I warned them with my eyes to stay silent and let her find her words.
She blew out a heavy breath. “I almost killed our bond. I reacted out of fear and… I cut through it. Tried to get free. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but it didn’t matter. It hurt the dragons and Kgosi came for me because he thought I’d done it on purpose. We fixed it. But it took some time. The dragons needed to take us to be apart from everyone else to make sure things werehealed,”she said uncomfortably.
Her brothers all looked shocked. “I didn’t even know that was possible!” Harle blurted.
Bren huffed. “Neither did I.”
There were a couple more questions from Voski and Einar. But most of her brothers watched on with disbelief. One by one, as they took this in, their postures shifted from wary to protective. And Ronen’s gaze eased from burning intensity, to shadowed with fear, to resignation.
“…I’m begging you to keep this a secret,” she said quietly, looking at each of them in turn. “I’m trying to trust you. I know you can be trusted, like Donavyn. We don’t know how this will work. But I want to prove myself. And I need your help to get the chance to do that.”
Then she let go of the breath that had made her voice so tight and waited for their responses.
The others murmured to reassure her, but Ronen turned to me.
There was still a shadow in his gaze, but I suspected it was concern for where this might take us, more than wariness of me.
“That must have been very difficult,” he said quietly.
I snorted. “You have no fucking idea.”
“The bond—”
“Is stronger than it’s ever been. But we needed some time to settle into it,” I said, grimacing.
Ronen shook his head and raked a hand through his hair, clearly shocked and uncertain what to do.
That made two of us.
But minutes later, as their questions petered out and everyone breathed again, Ronen turned to me, wincing.
