“So, you see, we never meant for any
of this to happen. We never meant for you to spend your life with them, the
Watsons,” my mother said carefully. “We never meant for anyone to get hurt.
We’re only sorry we didn’t make it in time…to save your mother.”
Seth stiffened beside me a second
before his phone went off. It was a short, sharp, loud ringtone. He apologized
and mumbled something about it having to be loud enough to wake him up at night
at the fire station as he looked at the text message. I wasn’t trying to invade
his privacy, but I heard it loud and clear in my mind as he read it over and
over in his mind. He stared at it for a few long seconds before shaking his
head and then tucking it in his pocket.
Have
you finished with her yet?
He looked up with a grimace at my
mother and I felt all his emotions at once. Anger, abandonment, happiness,
jealousy, sadness, appreciation that they had tried, but they had failed. It
wasn’t enough. He had lived in a certain kind of hell his whole life and the
fact that they had been right there and he was the only one not rescued was
like a slap in the face.
I however couldn’t stop thinking about
that text. Have you finished with her?
What did that mean and who had sent it? It was obvious it was about me. So he
had told his family—the Watsons—about me. And now they were texting wanting to
know if he was finished with me? What
did that even mean?
His warm hand covered mine and I
looked up to see him watching my freak out. He looked concerned and shook his
head. “It’s not what you think. I did tell them and they’re really happy for
me. For us. They wanted me to bring you to meet everyone tonight.”
Everything stopped, especially when
Mom’s breath caught and the glasses of sweet tea on the coffee table started to
shake. Seth leaned back a bit, having his first taste of my mom’s powers. Tea
sloshed on the table as Dad’s hand came up and cupped her cheek. “Baby,
everything’s okay.”
“Caleb,” she begged him for something
that I didn’t understand. Maybe she didn’t either. “I didn’t understand what it
meant until now. She’s his significant. That means he’s going to take her to—”
“No,” Dad argued, and it was evident
that he meant it. He looked over at Seth and I started to say something to get
him to tame his look, but he went on before I could. “She won’t be going to the
Watson’s with you, Seth. I know they’re your family and I know that
it’s…customary for significants to meet the families, but with our history with
them I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Seth’s jaw tightened. “They didn’t
think it was a good idea for me to come here either, especially alone. They
said it wasn’t safe for me, that you’d hold a grudge against them, even after
all this time, might try to hurt me. But I had to come. I wasn’t going to let
Ava suffer because of it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mom huffed. “I
have a distinct suspicion that what you think happened in the past and what
actually happened are two very different things.”
Seth stood, taking his hand with him.
I felt his absence in my blood like ice. “I didn’t have the best life. I’m not
going to stand here and pretend that my family is all peaches and cream. They
have their problems. We weren’t perfect by any means, but they were all I had.
They took me in when no one else would and have kept me this whole time—”
“They took you, Seth,” Mom told him.
“Taking you and taking care of you
are two different things. You and your mother were…kidnapped and experimented
on.”
He scoffed and moved away from me
around the table. “Now this is just too much.” He looked at me, then at Mom
before his eyes settled on me once more. “Ava, I know you don’t like my family,
but you can’t expect me to believe that they—”
“A lot of things happened before we
were born,” I said softly.
He shook his head, so Mom forged on.
“Their powers were taken away.” It didn’t escape me how she left out the part
where she had taken their powers.
“But even before that, they practiced with potions and blood magic, alchemy,
things they had no business messing with. Your Uncle Sikes was the worst of
them. He started all this. He made himself a…significant.”
“What?” Seth groaned in disbelief.
“He forced an imprint on a human
woman, in a sense faking a bond with a potion he gave her. You would never have
known. She got the tattoo, they were significants, they healed each other with
their touch and he was protective of her. But it was never quite right. When
their powers were taken because of the things they were doing, as punishment,
they didn’t accept that and move on. They did the opposite. They began to
practice alchemy even more and…” she shrugged, “we didn’t know in time. By the
time we found out, it was too late. We’ve tried to keep a watch on them over
the years, but since they fled the compound, we didn’t even know where they’d
gone to.”
“Scattered,” Seth muttered,
distracted. “We don’t live at the compound. It’s been abandoned for years. They
use it to cellar wine for my cousin’s business.”
He stared at the floor, looking so
dejected and lost. I hated that I was part of the cause of this. “Seth,” I
whispered.
“I would know,” he argued with no one
and gritted his teeth. “If my family was doing these unspeakable things you’re
talking about, I would know. I’ve lived with them.”
I caught a flash of a memory from Seth
from when he was a child, something he was trying to remember. A room, a woman,
his mother maybe, a table or bed, a bunch of people gathered around her, but
when he saw that I saw it, too, he pushed it away and glared at me.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s what
you’re talking about!” he yelled, making me jump, my shoulders bunching. He
sighed and swallowed. “I’m…I’m sorry. Do you have any idea how hard it was to
come here tonight, knowing that you were all going to hate me for my name?” He
laughed once with no humor. “And then be completely right?”
“We don’t hate you,” Mom soothed and
stood, but she made no move toward him. I just sat down and stared at his
hands. My body ached for him, for his touch, his comfort. Our first day
together and we were already fighting and yelling. This wasn’t how this was
supposed to happen. I felt awful that my significant felt so alienated.
I felt the drop of a warm tear on my
hand before I even realized I was crying. I wiped it away and looked up to find
Seth had done a complete one-eighty. Apparently, seeing that tear had done him
in. With my family there watching, he didn’t care a lick. He came and knelt at
my feet. His warm hand wrapped around the back of my calf while the other came
and went straight to my cheek. I sucked in a short, quick, embarrassing breath
when his skin hit mine. He on the other hand let out the tiniest of groans. His
thumb swept under my eye twice and he watched his movements as he cleaned up
every drop.
“Ava,” he said my name under his breath,
“this whole time I’ve selfishly been pouting about how this was effecting me
and my family. I’m so sorry. This involves you and your family, too. No matter
what happened in the past, that doesn’t matter now. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
He squinted, as if that caused him pain to think about. It was fascinating to
watch. “Can we just move forward, please? We found each other.” He looked down
and smiled before looked back up. “I found you. And I trust that more than I trust anything. So no
matter what happens, this is meant to be. You’re mine now. So can we just start
over and pretend that today never happened?”
I found myself smiling, then I was
biting my lip to contain the smile. And then he did the strangest thing. He
took his thumb and tugged down, freeing my lip from my teeth.
“You shouldn’t ever try to stop that
smile,” he said softly, but his own crooked smile was coming through. His thumb
moved against my cheek and I felt my eyelids flutter from the pleasure. When I
opened my eyes again he looked ready to keel over. He crawled closer, which was
almost impossible which mere inches between us. “Ava,” he whispered. His phone
buzzed with another text and he remembered the one he’d gotten earlier. The
look of awe vanished from his face and I cursed whoever it was who was texting
him. He leaned back a little. “Ava, we really do need to talk before—”
The back door slammed open, revealing
several dark-haired men who rammed their way in before I could even think. Seth
had stood and thrown me behind him on instinct, but then he realized who it
was. “Uncle Gaston?”
The tall, slender man stared at me
over Seth’s shoulder like a prize and had the audacity to smile. “Seth, you’ve
done marvelous. We’ll take it from here.”
My heart stopped. Seth’s hand
tightened on my wrist, but he didn’t turn around to look at me. He spoke to his
uncle again. “Gaston,” Seth said calmly, which was doing nothing to make me
feel better about things, “what are you doing here?”
“It’s okay, Seth,” he soothed and
smiled at him. “You did good, son.”
“What do you…?” Seth peeked back at
me, squinting, and then looked back at his uncle. “You thought I couldn’t
handle this? You thought they’d hurt me? Gaston, I told you they wouldn’t.
She’s my significant. The family feud between you has to stop.”
“We’re here now. You don’t have to
keep this up.” I felt my heart tug painfully at his words. Seth gripped my
wrist tighter to keep me from running.
“Gaston, what are you doing?” he
growled in a voice I’d never heard from my significant’s lips.
Gaston pulled a bottle from his inside
jacket pocket and held it up in front of his face. He kissed it and then
grinned as he tossed it toward his Visionary. She gasped and tried to use her
power to stop it, holding her hands out in front of her. But it didn’t work.
She seemed surprised, her mouth parting and holding open in a silent scream as
she awaited the fate of that bottle. Daddy gripped her arm and swung her behind
him just as it smashed into his chest.
She screamed just as I did. Seth’s
tight grip held steady on my arm to keep me safely behind him even as he barked
at his uncle angrily, asking him what was going on.
“It’s like I’ve always told you,
Seth,” he told him calmly, but I wasn’t watching him. I was looking at my
father as he watched a hole in his shirt eat away and then the skin under it
started to turn black. He looked up to Gaston for an answer, who just stared
blankly. He returned his gaze to Seth and sighed. “The Watsons led a hard life
because of the people in this room. We were never meant to scrounge and beg
like humans. Virtuoso are a powerful people with powerful blood in our veins.”
He looked at my mother. “Did you really think we’d just lie down and accept
your punishment?”
Seth jerked and looked at my mother,
but she kept her gaze on Gaston. Dad didn’t look good and I worried about him.
There was so much going on, I didn’t know what I should be focusing on.
Seth whispered, “Her? It was her that
attacked you at the palace that day?”
“Seth, son,” Dad groaned, struggling
to remain conscience as he bent to lean on the arm of the chair. Mom whimpered
and could no longer keep up her pretenses of the strong leader in charge of
things. She caved and rushed to lean down to him, never stopped touching him,
but still kept looking back at Gaston as if he’d attack at any moment. I’d
never seen my family so helpless. We were always the strong ones, the leaders,
the ones all the other clans looked up to. And now the Watsons show up,
supposedly with no powers at all, and now are able to lay flat my family with
one vial?
Dad continued. “I doubt you have the
whole story, in truth and in full. Remember that you only know what they’ve
told you, what they want you to know.” Gaston growled in warning, but Dad
pressed on. “There’s a reason that you bonded with my daughter. Remember that.”
Seth looked at me over his shoulder
and I saw something different in his eyes now. It wasn’t reverence or the
beginnings of love or wonder. It was suspicion. I felt as if he himself had
reached up and slapped me. It was his
family that had come in and attacked my family. I saw him flinch with that
thought. It was his family that sent
him a suspicious text earlier asking if he was ‘done with me yet’. He flinched
again, seeing where I was going with this. It was his family who hurt my father, his
family who barged in here as if on a mission, and his family who were now watching him like they were waiting for
something. I backed away a little, pulling my arm from his grasp. His lips
moved, saying he word ‘no’ but no sound left his lips. His eyes begged me as he
finally understood the gravity of his actions, of his family’s actions. Whether
he understood what was going on or not, he was taking a side right now. And it
was ripping me in two that he wasn’t choosing mine.
Gaston looked at Seth and nodded. Seth
shook his head as if he understood what he wanted but he didn’t want to do it.
It was then I finally understood that my significant came here to betray me. A
gut wrenchingly painful breath burst through my chest and out of my throat. The
moan stopped Seth dead in his tracks and he moved to come to me, but I put my
hand up to stop him.
“How could you?” I asked him which as
much conviction as I could, but it came out a pathetic whimper.
He seemed to get it then and
straightened. He seemed shocked and shook his head. He glanced back at his
uncle and then back to me. “No, Ava. No. This isn’t what it looks like. Uncle
Gaston came here to make sure I was okay. He…he was worried that your family
was going to hurt me. I would never betray you this way,” he said angrily. “My
family would never do that—the way you’re thinking—when they know that we’ve
imprinted. They’d know what that would do to me.”
“Seth,” Gaston implored in an exasperated
tone, “we need to be going. No more stalling.”
“Gaston,” he growled. “What are you
doing?”
I felt his confusion, his anger, his need
to protect me, but also his will and want to protect his family. I backed away
another step away as his back was turned.
A member of his family that had fallen
in the back of the room was getting up. Things were getting worse for us by the
second. When Seth heard the noise behind him, he turned and lunged my way. I
covered my head on instinct at the roar that erupted from him and the way he
came at me. But nothing ever came. I opened my eyes to find Seth’s back in my
line of sight. I peeked around him and saw the man glaring at him, his arm
twisted in Seth’s grasp.
“Don’t ever touch her,” Seth told him
in that voice I had heard before and I was so confused I didn’t know what to do
or think. Was he with me or against me?
I felt arms go around my waist and
gasped, but Rodney shushed me. “Come on,” he whispered into my hair, but Seth
had already turned and started to lunge.
I held up my hand and he stopped
immediately. He sighed seeing it was Rodney and then sighed again when he saw
me back away another step. “Ava,” he begged. For what, I didn’t know. What did
he want me to do in this situation?
Then his eyes rounded and his mouth
opened to speak, but it was too late. I heard Rodney’s grunt and then he fell
to the floor behind me as Mom screamed. I was yanked roughly by my hair as
Gaston dragged me away from Seth who came for us.
“Uh, uh, uh, nephew.” He held
something over my head. Seth’s eyes glued to it as he stopped. “I see that
you’ve let the bonding and intensity of the situation get to you and that
presents a problem for us.”
“She’s my significant,” Seth argued.
“What did you expect? Would you let someone take Aunt Amy from you?”
He smiled. “You’re missing the point.
You haven’t been with Ava. You don’t know her, you haven’t fallen in love with
her, and my significant isn’t the daughter of the woman who destroyed our
family,” he finished loudly. I couldn’t help but flinch. He pulled a little
tighter on my hair, but it didn’t escape my notice how he made sure not to
touch my skin. “This is it. This is our chance, what we’ve always talked
about.” Seth paled—actually paled at his uncle’s words. “We’ve always said that
when the time came we’d return the favor to the ones who destroyed us. You’re
bonded with the Visionary’s daughter.” He grinned. “I see no more fitting
restitution than that.”
“And what about me?” Seth asked calmly
and seemed to throw a wall up in his mind. I got nothing from him. “While
you’re torturing and doing whatever you plan to do to her, what about me? I’ll
feel that, have to…deal with that.” He gulped, but kept looking at his uncle.
I looked away from him, completely
disgusted. Even if he hadn’t come here to purposely ambush me, they had talked
about ‘the family’ who had ruined his family all those years ago and apparently
that trumped our bond. He was going to let them ruin us.
“Don’t worry, Seth,” his uncle was
saying. “We have our ways of getting around the bond. We even have ways of
creating a bond itself.” Seth seemed surprised by that, seemingly to have
forgotten what we talked about before…or it seemed, but who knew what was real
anymore. “We’ll take care of you. In the meantime, she’ll be at your disposal.
Whenever you need her, or want her,” he tacked on with a grin, “she’ll be
there.”
Seth gulped again and nodded. “That’s
great, Gaston.”
Rodney woke up with a groan and
scrambled up at seeing the scene, remembering where he was. His face was red
with anger as he cursed and braced himself on the back of the couch. I tried to
look at him, but couldn’t. Gaston turned us toward my parents and I could
practically hear the smile on his face as he began to spew propaganda at them.
I didn’t hear a word of it as my world crumbled around me. I just stood and
tried not to crumble with it.
Rodney’s phone dinged with a text. He
ignored it. It dinged again, and then again without waiting. He sighed and
pulled it out, to turn it off I presumed, but then he stopped and looked at it.
Then he started to text back. My mouth fell open and if I could have smacked
him in the back of the head, I would have. Only my brother would be texting his
buddies back in the middle of a Watson\Jacobson clan battle. What a jerk.
He slipped his phone back in his
pocket and looked at me. He looked beyond angry, but there was something else.
His eyes shifted left once before he mouthed for me to duck. I didn’t wait or
think, I just trusted my brother. I yanked out of Gaston’s grip as fast and
hard as I could. He had been holding me for so long that he has gotten careless
and comfortable. I went easily, falling to the floor in a heap, my chin
smashing into my knee. I hissed in pain, but before I knew it, Seth was
smashing into his uncle from behind, toppling them over the coffee table to the
floor. He punched his uncle just once and that was all it took for him to be
out cold.
I heard some scuffling behind me, but
couldn’t look away from Seth as he rushed to me on his knees across the floor.
“You’re hurt,” he breathed and took my
chin in his fingers. His calm didn’t seep in and I wondered if our bond had
been severed because my heart was broken. I pushed him away before I could find
out or think too hard about it.
He sighed. “Let me help you.”
“You chose, didn’t you?” I asked
softly.
“Ava, please. I need to get them out
of here. Let me give you my touch before I have to leave.”
“Or you just want my touch for
yourself before you go,” I said, but didn’t look up at him. I felt his fingers
under my chin, but it was as if he knew exactly where to press to not hurt
where it was aching. He lifted my face gently to make me face him. He was so
close that our noses almost touched.
“Do you really believe that?” he
asked, his voice gravelly and filled with unchecked emotion. I couldn’t answer
him. Not only did I not have the answer, but I was afraid of being wrong and
afraid of being right. Finally I felt his touch begin to sink into my skin. I
was relieved and…so many emotions at once. I wanted him, but was it all
chemical? Was it all something in my body that made me want him? What if he
didn’t want me and I was stuck wanting someone who just wanted to use me? I
sighed, letting his touch comfort me for now and heard his responding one, like
he was waiting for me to accept his touch before he let himself accept it. “I
have to leave, take care of some things,” he told me, pressing his forehead to
mine. “I will be back. I’m so sorry
for…” He leaned away and looked like there was a million things he wanted to
say. Instead he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. I sucked in an
embarrassing breath that I’m sure he enjoyed at my expense. “Don’t give up on
me, Ava.”
With that, I watched him pick up his uncle
from the ground and heft him over his shoulder. Rodney was dragging someone
from the room and I realized the room was clear of everyone but us. My brother
was outside with them and I felt a moment of panic before he came in the
kitchen door and shut it. Or tried. The hinge was destroyed and wouldn’t latch.
He gave up and put a chair in front of it to keep it closed and then gave me my
phone. “Why do you—”
“Seth had it. Must have picked it up
from the table at some point. He was the one texting me. He planned that
little…move we pulled.”
I gasped and covered my mouth. “What?”
He slid down beside me on the wall. We
looked over at Dad and Mom. Dad was already looking better so the poison
apparently wasn’t deadly or permanent, but Mom had to stay with him. He was
asleep with his head in her lap and she looked at us worriedly, listening,
splitting her focus between us and Dad. Dad was going to be so pissed when he
woke up. He hated when Mom had to take over. He wanted to protect her, always.
It was in the Virtuoso man’s blood to.
Rodney sighed. “He got your phone off
the table sometime during the night, texted me from it, and told me to take out
his cousin behind him so he could take his uncle and you wouldn’t get hurt in
the process. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what was going on, what
he knew and didn’t know, okay? But I do know that he didn’t want to hurt you.
He wanted to keep you safe.”
“How can you say that when—”
“He defied his family, who obviously
thought he was going to be on board. His uncle’s plan was a bust. What do you
think they’re going to do to him when they wake up?” I groaned and sucked in a
breath without even realizing it at the thought. Oh, God… Would they hurt him?
He covered my hand on my knee. “I’m just saying, he was ambushed as much as we
were. He knew the Watsons and Jacobsons had beef, but he didn’t know that Mom
was the one who took their powers. They left that little tid-bit out
apparently. Why, I don’t know. He just thought he was going to have to be
overcoming a little tiff, he never imagined he was going to have to deal with
all that.”
I licked my lips. “He blocked his mind
from me. Why would he do that unless he was guilty?”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to know what
his plan was and give it away? I don’t know. I just know what he did, and what
he did was defy his family and save you. They were planning on taking you away
from us, Ava. Do you understand that?” he finished, his words slow and telling.
“Yes,” I said quickly.
“Wait—why didn’t he have to release
you? Or vice versa?”
I sighed and almost smiled when I
thought back to our conversation. “He did release me.” I grabbed my chest,
feeling his heart beating next to mine as I worked so hard to feel him there,
to feel him connected to me somehow, to know it was real. “He knew it was me
that needed to be released,” I said in wonder, “and he knew I was already upset
and freaking out so he said that he had to take care of some things but he
would be back. I wasn’t even paying attention.” I sat there immobile and useless
as my emotions overtook me.
“Turn on your phone,” he said and
yawned as he put his head on my shoulder. “Lover boy said to tell you to open
your text messages.”
I did as he said and there, in a
message to no one, was an unsent text. It read: Don’t give up on me, Ava. Please…
I could do nothing but let Rodney wrap
me in his arms and cry.
