Page 19 of Bizarre Bonds
Why wouldn’t they? They didn’t ask for it. I didn’t even ask them. It wasn’t fair to any of us.
Zian gives a low shout, and our heads snap around.
The furry frog creature is just tumbling out of the rift again. Jonah stiffens.
“That didn’t last long,” Hail drawls. “It must really want to be on this side after all. Makes you wonder how awful the shadow side is.”
A chill races down my back. “I don’t think I’d want to find out.”
“That’s something else I’d like to know,” Rollick admits. “I’m not going to ask any of my associates to enter one of these questionable rifts, but I have sent some to try to locate them from the shadow-realm side. Unfortunately these portals seem to be rather… slippery. My assistants have reported some areas with strange ‘vibes’ but they always seem to end up turned around before they can delve very deeply into them.”
Raze grunts. “Then the rifts probably aren’t messing with normal shadowkind. They’re producing creatures that are already weird in their own pockets of strangeness?”
“That’s the conclusion I’d have to draw so far.” Rollick sighs and waves to Jonah. “Send this creature back again. Once the protections are down, that should keep it away for as long as the rift is here.”
After Jonah places another sorcerous command on the creature, the six of us draw farther and farther back along the shoreline, watching the shadowbloods do their work and avoiding the uncomfortable aura of the metals.
Riva and Zian move with impressive speed, which must be one of their supernatural talents. By the time they’ve laid out a swath of silver and iron across about half a mile of territory, Dominic is swiping at the sweat on his forehead, but the other two look unaffected.
Riva glances toward the dark ocean and wrinkles her nose. “Next time I’ll take the one in the desert.”
Not much of a sand-and-surf fan, then.
As her companions chuckle, Rollick nudges her toward me. “Why don’t you and Peri have your little… girl talk, let’s say. See if you can work out why our glowing emotion-eater might have tossed her version of bond marks onto her teammates—and what could be done about it.”
A jitter of nerves runs through my gut, but Riva looks at me with only curiosity. The impressions I get from her are mild but friendly enough.
Rollick shoos us off to the scruffy fields beyond the jutting rocks while he and the other men head to the waiting vehicles. Riva waits until they’re out of easy hearing range before picking up the conversation. “Tell me about these marks—what they look like, what they do, how it happened. I’m not exactly an expert, but there could be some overlap with ours.”
I drag in a breath. “Sometimes when I get very emotional, the energy of the feelings kind of… explodes out of me. This time it hit the four of them and left glowing spots on their chests. I have one too.”
I tug down the neckline of my T-shirt to show her and then explain about the two-way tap of emotions and the way I fainted when Raze roamed too far away.
“I’ve tried to shut down the connection, but nothing’s worked,” I finish. “None of the other energies that’ve surged out of me before lasted more than a minute or two. This one seems very stubborn.”
I’m usually proud of my persistence, but in this one case, I’d welcome a little slack.
Riva’s forehead furrows. “How long have you known these guys? From what Rollick said, you haven’t spent all that much time in the mortal world?”
“I only met all of them about a month ago when I was brought to Rollick’s academy.”
She rubs her mouth. “And how involved had you gotten with them—like, emotionallyandphysically—before the bonds? If that’s not too private a question.”
My cheeks warm, but it feels easiest to answer plainly. “I’ve had sex with two of them. With the other two, it’s just beenfeelings. Some attraction, but they had reasons for not wanting to pursue it.”
Riva doesn’t show any sign of judging me. A hint of a blush colors her own face. “With my guys, we’d known each other our whole lives. We were created—genetically engineered by scientists as human-shadowkind hybrids—using the same process at the same time and then raised together. And our bond…”
She pulls at her tee to reveal a row of five thumbprint-like bruises along her collarbone. “They formed separately, the first time I got completely intimate with each of them. It felt like something we were creating together, not something I imposed on them.”
My heart sinks. “I didn’t mean to impose on anyone.”
“That’s obvious!” Riva says quickly. “I wasn’t trying to criticize, just explaining how it seems different. We’ve never tried to get rid of the connection between us either. But we could resist the urge to form it by doing the opposite of what it wanted—by keeping our distance, refusing to give in to the feelings… If yours formed out of joy, maybe stirring up a bunch of negative feelings would crack through it?”
The idea makes my stomach churn, but her suggestion makes sense. “We haven’t tried that.”
“It might be worth a shot. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.” She twists the tip of her braid. “I don’t really understand how most of this supernatural stuff works myself.”
“That’s okay,” I reassure her. “It was good to talk to someone who’s been in a bit of a similar situation.”
