I know he is mine to protect the moment our gazes lock. Just like the others in my bond group are mine. I can see the thread-thin bond shimmering between us. It looks … fragile.
Tommy’s jaw is distended. Fingers clawed. He’s partly transformed into some beast, the nature of which I cannot discern. Maybe the protective coating on the cage is fucking with my senses? His left shoulder is dislocated. Scarring from half-healed burns marks his hands and forearms. His ribs are darkly bruised.
I tear the steel cage door off its fucking hinges, ripping a hole through the protections sealing it at the same time.
Tommy valiantly tries to get to his feet. The cage is high enough that he should be able to stand, but I’m fairly certain there’s something wrong with at least one of his knees. So I reach into the cage, the protections I’ve ripped through still active enough to sear through my suit and blaze across my upper arms and shoulders. Yes, I’m too big to fit through the cage door without twisting sideways.
Tommy reaches for me with one arm, cradling the other to his chest. I awkwardly pull him closer. My heart wrenches at the sharp cry of pain and distress he valiantly tries to swallow.
Then I have him huddled against my chest. Dark-blond hair that wants to be curly falls across his brow as he chokes back more pained sobs. From all the places I’m certain that I’ve inadvertently hurt him just while getting him in my arms.
Still crouched, I pivot so I don’t have the audience at my back. Phone still in hand, the girl runs to me. I raise my elbow to gently block her from throwing herself on her injured brother. She hesitates, tears streaking her face. But when she leans over my arm, using it to support herself, her dark-blue eyes are fierce and determined.
“He’ll heal quicker now.” My words come out in a dark rumble that I’m unable to soften. “Now that he’s not in the cage.”
“I’m okay, Kitty,” Tommy says.
Kitty reaches for him, laying a trembling hand on his uninjured shoulder.
“Sully is near,” Mirth says casually. Her gaze is fixed to the panicking audience. Well, anyone not laughing as if they’re utterly mad is panicking. “I can feel him now. I can feel all of you.” She sounds relieved and peaceful, even while half the people in the crowd clutch at their sides, gasping for air and weeping with laughter under the mere touch of her essence.
“There aren’t any cameras in here,” Coda grumbles through Kitty’s phone speaker.
Kitty straightens with renewed purpose, pointing her forgotten phone and its camera back out at the room. She leans against my shoulder without fear, as near as she can be to Tommy. The little one is ours as well, like her brother. It’s another thread-thin connection, but it’s steady. Her power, the tiniest tickle next to the tsunami that is Mirth, marks her as awry.
Tommy stifles another pained moan.
“It’s the partial shift that’s hurting the most,” I say to him. “You’re going to listen to my voice, listen to my heart, and breathe with me and remember your wholly human form.”
“They gave me something,” Tommy says.
“Close your eyes,” I say steadily. “With each breath, imagine whatever shit they gave you dissolving in the power of your blood.”
Tommy looks at me with fear-blown eyes.
I get in his face so that all he can see is me. “You are so powerful, so unique, that you scare all these rich fucks, Tommy.”
“How … how do you know?” he croaks.
“Because you belong to me. Understand? You belong to Mirth, so you’re mine as well. And look at Mirth …”
He glances past my shoulder.
“Feel her power?”
He nods, pained.
“Feel how strong she is? She’s yours. Not only is her strength, my strength, yours, but you are carved from the same portion of the universe as we were. You’re younger and still learning, and that’s okay. But whatever those fucks gave you? It’s nothing compared to the power already in your blood.”
The pained fear in Tommy’s eyes darkens into a fierce anger.
“Good,” I say. “Now, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and exhale any remaining shit.” I inhale, then slowly exhale.
Tommy mimics me.
As does Kitty. “I’m more powerful than these rich fucks,” she says on her exhale.
Coda cackles gleefully through the phone speakers.
