Great. I knew, of course, from what Hel had said that sexual attraction could be part of a Bond, though not all Bonded had sex. I had asked a million questions over the last few weeks to try and understand what we were getting into. The thought of Bonding with someone kind of freaked me out, though. I had some experience with sex, but the majority of it had been neither positive nor voluntary. The thought of being forced to spend the rest of my life withsomeone like that gave me pause, but I pushed my panic down. I couldn’t let it take me now.
We were just entering the Pavilion when a woman in a tight blue Illyrian military uniform approached. She had graying short-cropped hair with a pair of gold-framed glasses sitting low on her nose. She was carrying a clipboard with a number of papers attached and seemed to be glaring at them determinedly. She was the walking epitome of the word “uptight”.
“Beatrice,” Hel acknowledged warily as we approached.
“Helios,” she said coldly, looking up at him. Her eyes raked Hel from top to bottom. “Polemos wants to see you immediately.”
“I’m sure he does,” Hel growled. “But I have almost sixty new Mageia that I need to get settled first.”
Her eyes went wide in surprise and her expression seemed to thaw. “Sixty? That’s almost the complete complement of the Machi! However did you convince so many?”
Hel glanced at Elex, a small smile on his face.
“I had some help,” he said. “Beatrice Ignatia, this is Elex. My Bonded.”
If I’d thought she’d looked surprised before, it was nothing compared to what she looked like when she looked at Elex.
“But—but that’s… that’s not…” she stammered incoherently, looking from Elex to Helios, then back to Elex. She looked around wildly, then hissed. “Does he have a hood? A hat?Something?”
Hel and Elex both looked at her in confusion.
“Why?” Hel growled. Betts looked equally confused.
“Goddess,” Beatrice sighed. She dug in her pocket and pulled a rumpled knit hat and threw it at Elex. “Put this on.”
Confused, but seemingly willing to go with it for the moment, Elex pulled the hat on over his curls. It was a little warm for hats, but whatever. Maybe it was some weird Illyrian custom? But Hel and Betts seemed equally confused.
“You two, follow me,” she snapped. “We need to get you to the Tower. Betts, you can take the rest to the Pavilion for the Touchpoint.”
“I’m not going anywhere without Luke and Allard,” Elex snapped back at her, stopping at my side.
“Luke? Luke who?” she demanded searching her paperwork.
“He’s my brother,” Elex said, nodding at me, and a small part of my heart warmed at hearing it.
“They can go with the others,” she said dismissively. “But you need to come with me.”
“No way,” he said. “They go with us, or we go nowhere.”
Her eyes flashed angrily.
“Look here, young man,” she began, shaking her finger at him. “I don’t know who you think you are, but here in Illyria, we do things differently.”
“Bea, you put that finger away, or you’re going to lose it,” Hel growled.
Something in his tone must have caught her attention because she turned her irate gaze on him.
I glanced at Hel and saw that his teeth had lengthened and ears sharpened to a point.
“So it’s true, you finally found someone else who was stupid enough to Bond with you,” she sniffed. “Spasmenos.”
Hel started to move forward at the insult, but Betts was between them instantly.
“That’s enough out of you, Aunt Bea,” Betts said, her voice cold and cutting through Hel’s growling. “Hel doesn’t deserve that!”
“Why not? HeisBroken,” she hissed. “He should have died before he let Orion come to harm.”
“He almost did!” Betts responded.
