Page 66 of Forging Bonds: Part One

“What’s going on?” Ty asks, “Is everything okay?”

Evander frowns, “We’ve got to go. We’ll figure this out and all that later. We’ve got something to deal with,” Evander immediately hangs up without waiting for Ty to reply. “What’s going on?”

“There’s magic building in the air, and we don’t know how or why,” Ransom explains quickly.

None of the guys waste any time. Griff fully shifts into his gargoyle form, River turns into his giant kitsune, Ransom’s fists light with magic, and Raiden’s form becomes slightly wispy as he treads the line between his reaper and his human form, smartly keeping his wings concealed for now. Scales cover Evander’s form as he readies his magic, Doc’s eyes glow with magic, and Reed’s form changes as he shifts completely.

I stare in awe and then snap myself out of it, aware that I probably should be paying more attention. I don’t have any special form, not yet, maybe not ever, but I do have Asael and Betty. I hold Asael in my dominant hand, ready to wield him, and Betty in my other hand. It’s not incredibly easy to shoot this way, but I’ve had a lot of practice and I’m absolutely not going to allow myself to become the weak link in this situation.

As the magic builds even more, I suddenly remember where I’ve felt it before, in Ireland in the vision. It’s not the same as the magic that pulled us in, but rather the portal magic that was moving us from place to place and between moments while we were within the vision.

Shit, Navy said we needed our bags. I think we’re being pulled into the Choosing already. Before I can warn the guys, the building magic peaks andexplodes in a burst of light. I feel the regular tugging sensation that I feel when I go through a portal. I’m actually really hoping that it’s the Choosing and not something worse.

Dimitri

“Sir, you’re going to want to see this,” Joah says as he walks into the room.

I sigh. I really doubt that there’s any fucking thing that I want to see. My head is pounding. It’s been pounding for months, ever since I had that dream. I dreamt that some old woman spoke to me; she told me that something was wrong with me, that I was being influenced, and that I needed to, in her words, get my shit together. She told me to look past the pain and find it. I woke up with more clarity than I have had in years and my first thought was Neith.

Everything that I have said to her over the years, every order I made her follow, and every injury I made her inflict. All of the pain that she went through because the words to command the fuckers that work for me to stop wouldn’t leave my lips. I screamed in my mind, at myself and at my men. I tried to move, make the fuckers pay, to comfort her, but my mind and body aren’t my own, and they haven’t been on my own for a long time. I have known that right from the very beginning but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that there was something that I could do about it.

It’s broken me.

Hurting her, having her look at me with such pain and hurt, and then worse with acceptance when the evil and vile things spouted from my mouthtore me apart. I am broken, and I deserve to be. I deserve worse for what I have put her through, even if I had no control over it. There is no way that I can prove that.

I have no fucking control, and I know that it’s his doing. Casimir, a blue faethat is as evil as they come. He’s creating hybrids or at least trying to and making me help him, he has been for years.

Despite the fact that he is controlling me. My love for Neith and my need to keep her safe somehow manages to override whatever he’s done in certain instances. Not enough, but enough to ensure that I was able to look the other way while Neith gathered the evidence to put me in prison. I deserve to be there. I want to be there. I don’t want to hurt anyone else, not the innocent at least. Don’t get me wrong, I thrive on hurting and destroying the evil and those that hurt the innocent. That’s what Neith, Coen, and I did. But now I am one of those people, and Casimir won’t let me die. I’ve tried. I tried when I first screamed at Neith and called her unforgivable things when I backed her into a wall and was absolutely terrified that I was going to put my hands on her. After that moment I tried to end it all, I tried really fucking hard, I didn’t want to risk that I could actually put my hands on her in anything but love, I would rather die. But it didn’t fucking work. I don’t know how Casimir is controlling me so completely, but I can only assume that it is also stopping me from ending it. My reaction was so strong to the thought of hurting Neith that I felt it change something to do with the thing controlling me. After that, no matter what, I never raised my hand to her. I never physically hurt her. But I still couldn’t stop other people from hurting her.

Because of that, I came to the conclusion that prison was the best place for me. I can’t hurt anyone there, and more importantly, I can’t hurt her. So, when I realized what Neith was doing, I was somehow able to ignore it, to allow her to do it and hope that not only did it get her away from me, but it put me in the place that I deserved to be. Of course, it didn’t work out thatway, but in a way, it worked out even better. She ended up working for HID. She was safe. At least, I thought she was. HID treats her like absolutely shit, and there is fuck all that I can do about it. Especially since I have several of the useless fuckers working for me. I got them to employ her and claimed that she was there working for me to keep an eye on them. I thought that saying that would give her another layer of protection, but if I’m being honest, that’s most likely why they treat her like shit. I needed her away from me so that I couldn’t hurt her anymore, and that seemed to be the best place for her, even if they did teach her like shit. For some reason that I am not entirely sure of, Casimir and his control let me do it. Maybe he didn’t know, maybe he didn’t care, maybe he was glad that she was gone because I fought him at every fucking turn when she was around.

Not that it did any fucking good.

Ever since that dream, I have been doing what the old woman told me to do. I’ve pushed past the pain, I’ve delved deeper than I ever have before and I found something, something that doesn’t belong and something that feels wrong. I know that it is the root of what is controlling me and so I’ve been attacking it whenever I can. I have been blasting it with my magic, my anger, and anything else I can think of. It’s weakening, but not quickly enough. Not enough that I can turn myself in, but I’m not going to give up.

It had weakened enough that when Casimir told me to order the death of Neith, I refused. He raged and nearly killed me before he realized that’s what I wanted. Instead, he made me listen to him make the call, and he made me watch them blow the fucking car up. I watched her body fly through the air. I watched her break and bleed.

I watched her die.

It shattered me. I have never felt pain like it, and I will admit that I lost my shit. I beat Casimir until he injected me with something, and Iended up falling under his control again, all of the progress that I had made disappearing completely.

He had a smile on his face. He loved that I was in pain. That all I wanted to do was join her in death.

Ever since that day, I have hammered the thing inside me. I have torn and attacked it, and millimeter by millimeter, I am slowly gaining control. I will turn myself in. I will admit to everything. I will tell SID everything I fucking can.

For her. Always for her.

For a long time, that was all that I focused on; it consumed me.

Then that leech tried to mind-meld with me, saying the only thing that could make me do it, Neith was alive. Hope soared, and my heart beat in my chest so fucking hard that I thought I was going to have a heart attack. That’s not even possible for my kind. I tried not to believe it, and then I saw her, beautiful, wary, and sassy as ever. Somehow, that other part managed to take over before I could tell her where I was and that I needed her to come get me and bring me in because I insulted her again.

She burned the body, severing the connection, and I have never been happier to have a connection painfully severed because it meant that I couldn’t hurt her with my words anymore. Not long after, I was called into a meeting with Casimir, and I thought that it was because he had found out that she was alive and he ordered Neith’s death. He knew that she died. I saw her die; no human can survive those sorts of wounds, but she was definitely alive, which means that she wasn’t human.

Which is insane and not information that Casimir should ever be aware of. Fortunately, by that point, I had attacked the wrongness that was controlling me enough that I didn’t have to tell him, and I managed to keep my mouth shut in the meeting. He also didn’t mention it, so it was clear that he didn’t know. So far, I have managed to keep him in the dark, and Iintend to keep it that way. I have also doubled my attack on the thing that is controlling me, and Casimir has been busy. So, any meetings between us have been few and far between and short if we do have them, which is working in my favor. I have also made sure that he doesn’t have any suspicions that his control is slipping. I know that if he does, then he will inject me with that serum that he injected me with when I lost my shit when I watched Neith die. If he does that, then I will have to start from scratch again.

“Sir?” the supe I had forgotten existed says cautiously.

I sigh, pushing up from my seat. My whiskey glass dangling from my bloody fingers, I still haven’t washed my hands after torturing the guy, now dead at my feet. That one I don’t feel bad about. He deserved it. Neith would have liked torturing that one.

---