Page 11 of Before the Bond Breaks
He tipped my chin, so I had to look into his amber eyes. “Freya said they weren’t fated mates. The Prime trusted Balder, maybe even loved him, but it was never meant to last. Not the way fate intended.”
I understood what he was saying. With a soulbond in place, betrayal was impossible. We would feel each other’s emotions, hear each other’s thoughts, be tied so deeply that one’s pain was the other’s. That was why Freya and my mother had gone to theNorns—weavers of fate—to cast the soulbond spell. A connection forged in destiny, not convenience.
I stepped closer, slipped my arms around his waist, then rested my head against his chest. He folded me into his embrace instantly. He pressed a kiss to my forehead, tender in a way that broke me more than battle scars ever could.
“I want this between us,” I whispered. “But it will take time for me to trust it.”
“I know,” he said, his voice fierce and certain. “And I’ll prove this is real to you every day. Always.”
The vow lingered in the air long after I pulled away.
Once the tension eased, Talon offered to get dinner. I stayed behind, rifling through Jessica’s belongings, each item cutting sharper than the last. A hairbrush was left on the counter. A jacket tossed over a chair. A pair of shoes sat neatly by the door, waiting for feet that would never come home.
My chest tightened again as my vision blurred. Taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, I pushed away my grief. Just for a little while more. I’ll take the time to break down and mourn my sister later. Right now, I need to retrace her steps.
I forced myself to keep moving, todo so. To be more than the grief clawing at my throat. That was when I found a journal tucked inside the nightstand. Beneath it was a thin ledger bound in plain leather. It looked ordinary, but the moment I touched it, my Valkyrie senses prickled. Hidden wards.
After breaking the ward around the ledger, I sat on the edge of the bed and flipped through pages filled with coded coordinates. Jessica had already started decoding, but she hadn’t gotten far. She’d been onto something, and it had cost her everything.
As soon as Talon walked into the apartment with takeout, the apartment filled with the rich, spiced scent of food. My stomach growled as I met him at the table. He set the bags down and glanced at me. “Find anything?”
I placed the journal and ledger in front of him. “She hid these in the nightstand. The ledger’s coded. Jessica barely scratched the surface.”
Talon studied it, brows drawn. “Quil could help Winter decode it.”
“Agreed.” I took pictures of the pages and sent them to Winter. Then I collapsed into the chair opposite Talon.
We ate in silence at first, but after a few minutes, Talon broke it. “Tell me about Valen Protection Agency.”
I hesitated, then explained. “VPA is still new. We started it about a year ago when we discovered witches being abducted. At first, we worked under the radar, but then Chandra and Winter suggested that we form an official business, which would allow us to protect magic, track down Balder, and offer security and investigation services. Then we bought the building VPA is currently in and moved to Pepper Glenn.”
His expression softened, but it was his grin that caught me off guard. For the first time in too long, I smiled back. It felt strange but real.
Talon leaned back in his chair, gaze steady. “Then why did you stay away so long?”
I stared at the journal, at my sister’s neat handwriting that would never fill another page. “Because we hit a dead end in our search for Balder. Until Jessica.” My voice cracked, but I pushed through it. “Her death gave us the lead we needed.”
He didn’t press, though his wolf simmered in his gaze. Instead, he reached across the table, brushing his fingers against mine. I opened my hand and intertwined my fingers with his. “We’ll find out where the hell he is hiding and take him out. Might not be as fast as we’d like, but we will win this fight.”
“We have to.” I watched him lift our hands to his mouth before he kissed my fingers. “We can start with eliminating his eitrborn.”
“I’m on board with that.”
After cleaning up after our lunch, Talon and I sat on the sofa with Jessica’s laptop, going through it. Checking her email and storage drive to see what else she discovered. It had no more information than what she’d already sent to Winter before she disappeared.
A little while later, Talon set his phone down. He’d been scrolling in silence for the last ten minutes, expression unreadable. When he finally looked at me, there was a spark there I hadn’t seen in centuries.
“Feel like going out?”
I blinked. Was he serious? “We’re on a mission.”
The corner of his mouth curved, slow and dangerous. “We can play and work at the same time. There’s a bar down the block owned by witches. It’s a good place to ask questions about Balder and his pets.”
I snorted at “his pets.”
The idea of walking into a witch-owned establishment while Jessica’s death was still freshly made my chest tighten. But Talon wasn’t wrong. Information lived in places like that, between whispered deals and drinks poured too strong.
I sighed, pushing my chair back. “Okay. But if this is just an excuse to drink, I’ll make you regret it.”
