Page 2 of Forged Bonds


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My other mate, the one I was desperate to have my hands and teeth on again.

I was Oswald. That was why she kept saying the name. Instincts warred with my conscious brain, wanting to mark her like I’d done with Nolan, but not wanting to claim her on a place as unarousing as her wrist. I held myself back only by withdrawing from her completely, panting and licking the last few drops of her blood from my lips. “Oswald?” she asked again, tentatively.

Shakily, I nodded, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Do you need more blood?”

My throat was dry when I swallowed, and my voice was a weak croak. “Yes. Not from you. Fuck.”

Another wrist was offered up from behind and I latched on, drinking a few more big gulps before closing up the wounds. It was enough to satiate me for now. I’d obviously never spent two hundred years as a familiar followed by nearly dying, but apparently it was pretty damn hunger-inducing.

“Better?” Freya asked, reaching out. The arms yanked my body back and Freya glared behind me. “Shan, let me touch him. He’s not going to hurt me.”

“What do you call what he did to Nolan?” Shan grunted.

Shan and Caspian were the ones holding me back, and I was grateful they were. If I’d been able to reach Freya’s neck… fuck, I would have claimed her, and she would have hated me.

Claimed her just like I claimed Nolan.

My eyelids fluttered shut and I inhaled deeply, trying to calm the panic. All the pieces were fitting together now. I’d been hovering around Nolan since we got here not only because I’d been left out of Freya’s circle, but because his scent called to the deeply repressed Alpha part of me. Familiars weren’t Alphas, Omegas, or Betas, but obviously I had my original designation from before I’d been cursed to live as one. I’d known it was the reason I’d bonded myself to Freya in the first place, but with Nolan my desires hadn’t been quite as obvious.

Freya’s gentle fingers stroked my cheek and my eyes snapped open again. Her purple eyes were open in awe as she traced my jawline and pulled my lip down to look at my elongated fangs. “You’re exactly how I pictured you.”

I heated, moving my head back from her. Her touch was too much when I hadn’t yet drank my fill. “What are you talking about, little fin?” I asked, calling her the nickname I’d grown so used to using.

“During my heats, I had an image of you in my head. Your body and face are identical down to the curve of your jaw.”

How could she have known? We lived in each other’s heads with the familiar bond, sure, but every detail of my time before being cursed had been blocked to her, nor could I talk about it. I’d heard of Omega magic before, the phenomenon rare, but Freya had never shown any indication of having special abilities. They usually manifested in the first five years after revealing, if they were going to appear at all. Was there something else between us, besides her scent luring me like a siren call?

“I don’t know,” she murmured. I startled. No words had been spoken out loud. “Your scent is more than pleasant to me, too. Especially right now.”

I glanced down at her wrist, finding it healed with no mark left behind. I hadn’t marked her when I drank from her, so there was no way we had formed a bond that way. If she could hear my thoughts, that meant…

“Freya? Are you still in my head?”

She stared at my unmoving lips, hers parting.“Ozzy? You’re not a familiar anymore. Why are you still bound to me?”

My shoulders shrugged, not having an answer for her. Puzzling it out would have to wait, because Amabella stormed into the room a moment later, her clothes drenched in blood. “Where is Mabel?” she demanded, glancing around the room.

It was my first time looking around, too. Bodies littered the floor. We hadn’t killed them, not unless something drastic had happened after I’d been shot with the arrow. Freya could have created this much chaos, but the dead men didn’t look sliced up or injured in the way Freya would have done it. They’d all simply… fallen to the ground.

Brain refocusing on Ama’s question, I nodded to the bathroom door. “In the bathtub.”

Ama glared at me. “Who the fuck is he?”

“I’ll explain later,” Freya said. “Check on Mabel. I didn’t know she was in here.”

Amabella shoved open the door and closed it behind her. We heard a soft yelp followed by a sob, and it was a comfort to know Mabel was fine, if a little traumatized.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling Shan’s grip on me finally loosen. “I didn’t mention it.”

“You were too busy dying, I don’t blame you. And Nolan was…” She trailed off, and I followed her stare.

Nolan was rocking back and forth on the ground, one hand on his neck and the other covering the wet spot in his lap. His pupils were so huge his eyes looked black, and I doubted he’d stopped staring at me for a second since I’d been forced away from him. I cursed and took a step forward, only to hesitate.

Fucking Angels, what had I done?

He’d never heard me speak before and I’d irrevocably tied us together for the rest of both of our lives. How could I possibly apologize for that?