Page 41 of A Sweet Destruction

I was on her in a second. If Esme didn’t have the reflexes of a fucking cat, I probably would have sent us both tumbling to the ground again, this time pinning her beneath me.

Instead, I ended up hitting the floor so hard, I would have shattered my nose on the stone if I hadn’t caught myself at the last minute.

“What the hell?” Esme yelled, while I rolled onto my back with a groan, running my hands down my face.

Soren’s big head entered my vision a second later, doing a piss poor job of hiding his smirk. “Why are you on the ground?”

“I tripped,” I grumbled, the best excuse I could come up with for that lapse in sanity.

Esme’s face joined his a second later, looking down at me with clear judgment. “I have never seen you trip a day in my life,” she said cautiously, still regarding me like a caged animal.

Well, she wasn’t going to let me get out of this one easy, was she? Fine, I wouldn’t let her get away with it either. She knew what was going on, she just wouldn’t admit it yet.

Though this probably wasn’t the best setting to break the news, she’d be more angry if I kept it from her. “The Bond made me do it.”

The color drained from Esme’s face so fast I thought she might faint. Unfortunately for both of us, that thought set the Bond off again, and I was up and grabbing her before I could blink.

Esme twisted out of my hold no less than a second after my hands wrapped around her upper arms, taking several steps away from me and raising her hands between us.

Soren muttered something to Bellamy, and they both maneuvered so they were blocking us from the rest of the crowd.

We were still trapped in this room until everyone made it through the Bridge, and people were still popping out of that shimmering portal to Muli.

I waited as she took one, two, three breaths in. “What did you just say?” she finally asked, her voice thick with an emotion I couldn’t recognize. I’d seen nearly every iteration of her moods over the years, but this was something different, something heavier.

“I said the Bond made me do it.” Esme looked downright offended by the calm tone of my voice, but it was just a fact.

I was already having a hard time keeping it quiet. It was pushing all my baser instincts to the surface, unlocking long silenced parts of my brain.

“Oh, and that’s just normal, then?” Esme whisper-yelled, her arms flailing out to the side. She pinned me with a hard, if not a little wild, stare. “When did this happen?”

Even though the corridor we were stuck in was massive, it felt like the room was closing in around me, pushing all my focus towards Esme, forcing me to take a step towards her.

The mirroring step Esme took away from me sent a splintering pain through my chest. My jaw was clenched, pushing my next words through my teeth. “Right after we Crossed.”

Esme heaved in a breath, planting her hands on her hips while a little furrow formed between her brows. She looked…well, she looked rather childish. Like a little girl about to be pulled into something new, and her first reaction was to approach it with fear.

I don’t like that. Fix it, the Bond commanded, with a sharp snap of fury that I would stand by and let her look that concerned.

“An—and what did it say to you?”

If not to try and dispel the anguish that question built in my throat, realizing that this was affecting her so deeply it made her steady-as-stone voice waver, I answered, “It didn’t like that I couldn’t see you.”

That valley between her perfect eyebrows deepened even further. “What does that mean?”

I shrugged, trying to maintain some sort of composure even though I felt like my sanity was slipping further and further from my grasp. “We got separated by everyone coming through the Bridge. I believe it thought we were still in danger and didn’t like us separated.” I shocked myself with the fire in my voice, listening to it take on a new, darker character.

Esme shuddered. A visible, full body shake that made me want to scream.

She took another step away that almost sent her tumbling over a bench, but caught herself at the last minute.

“Don’t hurt your—” The raw, primal command ripped from my throat so fast, the damage was done by the time I caught it.

Esme stopped, going stone still as if her body had no other choice but to listen to me.

For a horrible, drawn out moment, staring straight into her soft brown eyes, I thought she was about to cry.

“Esme, I—” I was cut off for the second time by the announcement that we’d all made it across the Bridge.