A keening sound pours out of his throat, and I clutch at my chest. The sound feels like it’s ripping me apart. I’ve never heard anything like it, and the lamentation sinks into my soul and settles there, promising to be something I never forget for the rest of my life.
“She’s still breathing,” he exclaims, shocked, his head snapping back up to where I’m standing, and he scrambles back over to where Zeph is still just watching me.
I can’t decipher what the sky shadow’s face and eyes are communicating.
“You’re not dead...we’re not dead?” Ryn announces, like somehow saying it out loud will help him wrap his brain around what’s happening.
“So those dreams?” I ask Zeph, needing to confirm what I already suspect.
I’m here, and yet I’m not here at the same time.
“Not dreams, it seems,” he answers, his demeanor still oddly calm.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to make sense of what’s going on.
“You almost...died,” Ryn replies, his tone devastated and confused.
“Treno?” I ask, my chest hurting. I move to go check on him where he’s lying unmoving by the fire, but Zeph steps in my way.
“He’s still breathing too,” Ryn explains, stealing my attention back to him.
I’m confused, and everything feels muffled as I slowly try to make sense of what’s happening.
“I think since he was the last to bond with you, the connection was stronger. When you were dying, you pulled at our force to help replenish yours,” Ryn goes on, tapping his open palm to his chest. “Treno was more affected.”
I move to sidestep Zeph, and once again he blocks my path. The bewilderment I’m swimming in becomes an afterthought as irritation prickles through me.
“What are you doing?” I demand as my eyes move up Zeph’s massive body and settle on his honey-dipped gaze. He looks...unsettled. The unfamiliar look in his eyes swirls with the usual pissed off gleam that I find in his golden stare. I don’t know what he’s doing here. Fuck, I don’t even know where here is or why I seem to be split in two right now. The things I saw and did with Zeph while I was in Kestrel City weren’t a dream, and I’m not sure what the hell to think about the sides of him I spied when he thought no one was looking.
“Keeping you from repeating your mistakes,” Zeph states. His tone feels like a quiet earthquake, both threatening and making it hard to keep my footing.
His meaning crawls over me like the rays of a slowly rising sun, and I heat with rage. “Mistakes...repeat my mistakes?” I growl. “That’s super funny coming from you...mate,” I snarl at him, stepping into his space until we’re chest to chest.
He doesn’t move, and his eyes heat at the challenge in my tone and radiating out of every tense muscle in my body. I want to rip him apart. Eviscerate him for everything he’s done and tried to hide from me.
“The only mistake I see around here is you, you arrogant piece of shit.”
A growl crawls up Zeph’s throat, but I’m done being intimidated by him. I’m done feeling sorry for him. I’m fucking done with it all.
“You mated an Avowed. Lazza’s brother, of all the rutting marked filth!” he yells at me, like he still doesn’t see the level of fucked up that he achieved by not telling me about our connection.
I shove at him, and satisfaction blooms in my chest when he has to drop a foot back to keep his balance. “You mated me and didn’t even fucking tell me. You forced a bond between us and didn’t even bother to explain what the fuck was happening.”
“I didn’t force you into anything,” he snarls back. “You cried my name and begged for more all on your own.”
My entire world flashes red. My fist smashes into Zeph’s cheek in less time than it takes to blink. Pain screams up my arm, but I don’t care. I pounce on him like a rabid beast, ready to break every bone in my body if it means he hurts too. Zeph does nothing other than try to protect his face from my wild hits. Arms wrap around me from behind and pull me off of him. The noises slipping out of my lips as I’m yanked away are feral bellows demanding retribution and promising pain.
I’m drowning in my need to hurt him the way he so carelessly hurts me. I’m not sure what Ryn is saying to me, but it’s clearly meant to talk me down. All I can focus on though is that Ryn is just as deserving of my wrath, and I turn on him. Pigeon surges inside of me. She wants in on the action, but I slam a vault door on her, wrap it in chains, and chuck the key as far into the recesses of my mind as I can. They’ve all betrayed me, and they can all rot in fucking hell.
“You knew!” I screech at Ryn as I twist and try to get my feet under me so I can wound him too. “You fucking knew after what happened in the woods. That’s what you were keeping from me when I woke up. Side effects of a Trammel magicked rope, my ass!” I yell at him. I get one arm out from under his hold and claw down the side of his face. He hisses and shoves me away from him.
I land on my feet and charge. He backs away, hands up, like that’s going to keep me from trying to rip the asshole apart.
“We had to know who you were once and for all. That’s why I came back to Kestrel to see what information had been recorded about your parents. To figure out if there was anything that would tell us where you’d come from and what you might be doing here now,” Ryn defends.
“I fucking told you who I was and what I was doing
