“Whoa, what happened?” Ryn demands as he rushes over and crouches down next to the cot I’m now sitting up in.
“Why am I dressed?” I ask, confused, but that just seems to make Ryn even more confused. “I never wake up dressed. It’s freaking me the fuck out. Is Zeph okay? Treno? You?”
I look around, and I’m once again in a tent, but there’s nothing in here except me, Ryn, and the cot I’m lying on.
Ryn’s worried eyes warm, and he releases a relieved exhale. “Zeph said we should get you cleaned up, but the bath and water are still on their way. You woke up sooner than we thought you would,” he explains. “Zeph and Treno are fine. They’d be here, but they had to intervene between the fighting that was still going on. They’ll come back as soon as they can.”
I release my own deep breath and let the tension sluff off my shoulders. “Where are we?”
“We’re about a day’s fly from the Eyrie. We’re working on getting a temporary camp set up here while we try to smooth tensions over. Cree and her people have been bringing in and setting up tents.” He gestures to our current surroundings.
I give them one last look and then focus on where Zeph and Treno are.
“Fighting, huh?” I ask, and Ryn’s face grows solemn as he nods.
“Looks like getting rid of the Vow might have been the easy part. Bringing the Gryphons back together after everything both sides have been through is a whole other story,” I observe, and Ryn snorts. He sighs again, and I realize how tired he looks. I reach up and run the back of my hand over the scruff on his cheek.
“Hey,” I call to him as his exhausted gray eyes land on mine. “We did it.”
A wide proud smile stretches slowly across Ryn’s face, and he pulls my lips to his for a slow kiss before he rests his forehead against mine. “We did it,” he agrees.
We stay like that for a breath, just taking the moment in.
“It almost doesn’t seem real,” he confesses. “I’ve thought of what this day would be like for so long, and now here we are, and nothing is at all like I thought it would be.”
“How so?” I ask.
“For starters, I thought the fighting would stop when there wasn’t a Vow left to fight over, but it’s clear the wounds run deeper than magic.”
I nod and run my fingers through his hair. It was so much shorter when I first saw him, and now I’m not sure which I prefer.
“It’ll take time for everyone, I’m sure. Lucky for us, we seem to live for a fucking long ass time, or at least that’s the impression I got from the archives,” I tell him on a chuckle. “Holy shit, it was you!” I accuse, pushing back from him as I realize something. “You put the mating book right where I would find it in the archives. That’s what you were doing there.”
“I gave my word to Zeph that I wouldn’t tell you about the bond, but if you figured it out and came to me…” he says with a leading tone.
“But why would you agree not to tell me in the first place?” I ask, hoping to finally understand all the fucked up shit that happened between us.
Ryn hesitates, his gray eyes studying my face for a moment, and then he gives a defeated sigh. “Zeph suspected your bloodline. He wanted confirmation before completing the bond, just in case we...” His pause is weighted.
“Just in case you what?” I press.
“We had to make an impossible decision for the good of the Hidden,” he admits tensely.
An impossible decision? What the hell does that mean? Like they were going to kill me or something?I joke in my mind, but as soon as I think the words and scoff in my head, I freeze.
Holy shit, that’s really it.
“You know?” I accuse, as I put missing pieces together and get a good look at a shockingly clear picture.
“Know? Know what?” Ryn questions, befuddled by my reaction.
I shake my head, completely caught off guard. “You didn’t want to mate with me if you were going to have to kill me,” I elaborate, and the shame and silent assent I see in his eyes confirms my suspicions.
It all makes so much sense now. I was told the Hidden had been hunting down anyone who had Bond magic. I assumed they were making sure another situation like the Vow couldn’t happen again, but it’s also possible that they somehow knew killing the bloodline of the original creators of the Vow would end it too.
“It wasn’t as simple as that exactly; we really did suspect that you were a spy for a while, but then your potential blood ties became the larger issue. We weren’t sure what to do. We didn’t know about the gates or any other worlds, so we couldn’t be certain that if you died, you would take the Vow with you. But we couldn’t dismiss the notion either.”
He takes a breath and runs a hand over his face and shakes his head, while I try to figure out my footing in all of this. They knew I was their mate and that they might have to kill me. It definitely sheds light on a lot, but I’m not sure what to think about what I’m looking at now. What if Zeph and I hadn’t had that night and Ryn was able to confirm who I was faster. Would they have gone through with it? Can I even blame them for considering it, knowing what I know now?
