Page 54 of Gift from the Nexus

“No. I’m watching. I’m just worried about what it’s going to do to you to relive it so soon.”

“Hopefully release some of this anger from inside of me. I feel like I could burn this realm down right now.”

“That can be arranged, sweetness, you just give me the word and we’ll do it,” he says seriously, and that makes me laugh, taking some of the pressure off my chest.

“Are you all okay with this?” I ask the others when Draken gives me a warm smile.

“If this is what you want and need, little warrior, we’re fine,” Tillman declares.

“You’re going to show me one way or another, Primary,” Caspian demands. I’d talk shit if I thought he was being an asshole about it, but this is his way of coping. He’s already seeneverything I’ve been through. He needs to witness this too. He needs to add to his ever-growing list of reasons for revenge.

Corentin hums his agreement and kisses my forehead while leading me farther into the lawn. I feel his apprehension, but he respects my decision.

Taking our place in the grass where the others are waiting, my nerves beat wildly through my veins as I sit in the middle of the close-knit circle they’ve formed. Insecurities of how they’ll view me after they see this try to take hold, but I shove them away as best as I can.

“You all won’t have to touch me, but I will have to get a sense of your magic if that’s okay?” I ask, really just San, Nikoli, Jamie, and Ry since I’m already familiar with Gaster’s, Oakly’s, and my Nexus’s, even though the not touching doesn’t apply to them. I don’t think they’d let me go right now even if I asked.

At their nods, I ground my magic into the earth, and command it out to feel for everyone else’s. No one resists or tries to push me out, so the signatures come easily, and I hold onto them, hugging them if you will, like Oakly taught me to do, then I get a feeling for whose is whose.

There’s a delicate string connecting me to all ten of them like spokes on a tire wheel. I know who each string attaches to and I sense the variations in all their magic.

“Ready?” I ask once I know for sure I’m securely locked on to everyone.

“Ready.” They all echo back, and I close my eyes, tilting my head to the sky.

“Show them.”

Like being thrown back in time, we all fall into my mind. There’s a smidge of disorientation, almost a hazy veil on the memories as I navigate where I want to start, but nothing distracting enough that you can’t tell exactly what’s going on.

Each of their presences is keen, and their determined, nervously eager emotions are wide open to me, ready and waiting to see what I saw. Deciding that not skipping any detail is for the best, I direct my magic to show us the exact moment Oakly and I were left alone in the gym.

Her weirded-out reaction to seeing herself like this skirts across my chest and my lip twitches because I felt the same way when Tillman did this with us. It’s a strange feeling watching yourself through someone else’s eyes.

All joking emotions evaporate as soon as the second earthquake throws Oakly and I to the ground in the command room, and everyone prepares to see what we already know is to come.

My body grows hot as Gish makes his first appearance, and Oakly cries out as she watches Ry get dragged alongside him. I hate that she has to watch this, but I can’t let her out now, it’ll break everyone’s connection, but she’s quick to recover and her emotions settle back, letting me know she can handle this.

So on and on we watch, we listen.

I wasn’t sure if everyone was going to be able to hear CC’s voice in my mind the way I did at the time, but to my relief, it sounds the exact same, and they all get to hear their instructions, advice, and everything else they said just the way I did, so there won’t be any gaps whatsoever to fill in for them.

The time comes when Franklin takes the dagger to my mating mark and my body tenses, preparing for the worst. I block Draken out completely as my heart splinters open once again over it, and this time is even worse because I feel his breaking as well.

His hand grips my arm tighter when my screaming out for him in my mind echoes loudly and the rumbling in his body vibrates my whole limb.

Unconsciously, my fist clenches as I prepare for Franklin to stab the knife through my hand and rip it back out. Time after time, my reactions to what’s to come cause me to flinch or twitch or take a deep breath, and every time the guys crowd closer to me, chasing away the rising panic.

My tears fall fast and hot as the truth of my mother is revealed. I wait for the judgment, the disgust to come off everyone, but I’m never met with that. Instead, they’re outraged on my behalf, my mother’s behalf.

The second the guys hear what was truly planned for me, a touch of pure, fiery, white-hot rage, possessiveness, and protectiveness hits my chest. It’s so potent, I may faint from it. I can’t breathe and almost completely drop the connection to everyone.

It takes everything in me to shove their emotions out with their punishing grips on my skin, but the second I do, I wall my chest up, blocking everyone out so completely, all I feel and hear is the memories still playing across my mind.

Sitting statue still for the remaining time that passes, I watch like a bystander, like everyone else, and it seems to make everything move faster now that I have no other distractions, no emotions to weave through. So I throw all my attention onto what’s happening, reliving, relistening, refocusing on everything that occurred.

As the guys surround me on the side of the prison to transport out, I slowly cut everyone’s strings one at a time from my mind.

Once my Nexus is released, they all jump up, pacing around furiously behind me, and I gradually allow my soaked lids to peel open, staring up at the sun that’s only barely moved from the time we took our spot here in the grass. How I was able to show a half of day worth of events in the matter of minutes is beyond me, but I’m glad it was fast and it’s over.

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