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Bonds Broken & Silent
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Bonds Broken & Silent
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book Four
Kris Austen Radcliffe
Copyright 2017 Kris Austen Radcliffe
All rights reserved.
Published by
Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance
Edited by Annetta Ribken
Copyedited by Terry Koch and Juli Lilly
Cover designed by Lou Harper
Series dragon design and art by Christina Rausch
Plus a special thanks to my Proofing Crew.
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are used factitiously. All representations of real locales, programs, or services are factitious accounts of the environments and services described. Any resemblances characters, places, or events have to actual people, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely unintended and coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
For requests, please e-mail: [email protected].
Second electronic edition, September 2017
Updated and reformatted
version 9.10.2017
ISBN: 978-1-939730-50-3
Contents
Bonds Broken & Silent
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The World of
Author’s Note:
BONDS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
BROKEN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
SILENT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
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The Worlds of
About the Author
Bonds Broken & Silent
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
Kris Austen Radcliffe
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Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
The Series
Games of Fate
Flux of Skin
Fifth of Blood
Bonds Broken & Silent
All But Human
Men and Beasts
The Burning World
The World of
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
The Fates
(Latin: Parcae)
Live in bonded triads often made up of family members. Fates bond on a metallic object that embodies a context for their seeing. Prime Fates command an exceptional level of power and ability.
Past-seer: Able to read the truth of someone’s past.
Present-seer: Able to optimize the present situation for a desired outcome.
Future-seer: Sees the most likely future.
The Burners
(Latin: Ambustae)
Crazy, smelly ghouls who eat human flesh and who often explode when their hearts stop.
The Shifters
(Latin: Mutatae)
Class-one Shifters, like Prime Fates, command considerable power and ability. Shifters mostly live in clans and are often exploited by Fates.
Morphers: Able to morph their bodies within the basic human body plan.
Enthrallers: Able to control other people’s emotions through pheromone-like calling scents.
Healer
s: Able to heal—or unheal—with a touch.
The Dragons
(Latin: Dracae)
Ladon and AnnaBelinda, along with their dragons, form two human-dragon dyads. Both Ladon and AnnaBelinda are former Roman military commanders, and they are often known by their respective Roman honorifics, the Dracos and the Dracas. As brother and sister, they know each other as Brother and Sister, and as Brother-Dragon and Sister-Dragon.
Author’s Note:
The stories of Bonds Broken & Silent introduce Daisy Pavlovich and Gavin Bower into the world of Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon. They can be read before or after books 1-3, so don’t worry if you are starting your FFSD journey here.
Bonds Broken & Silent were also originally published as three separate novellas, but have now been pulled together as the Complete Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book Four.
Kris Austen Radcliffe
BONDS
PART ONE
Chapter One
Now…
Daisy Reynolds Pavlovich leaned away from the café’s wobbly table and pressed her back against the cheap, metal coldness of her chair. The little shop in the basement of the Continuing Education Building carried the same strong, roasted-astringent aroma of every coffee shop she’d ever been in. That washed-out, generalized smell of brewed coffee, the meta-scent of places where more than one blend bubbled through more than one pot. And like every place serving food, every surface in the café also carried undernotes of bleach cleaner.
She wiggled her nose, trying to ignore the stinks and the stenches. Sometimes being a bloodhound enthraller had its drawbacks, and eating in restaurants was one of them.
If she was honest, she’d admit that being a bloodhound had more drawbacks than benefits, but her abilities did offer a level of protection normals did not have. And they allowed her to help animals with her Shifter healing ability, and to pop the Burners she tracked with her curse of a nose.
The damned ghouls stunk to high heaven, and like most other bloodhound enthrallers, Daisy could smell one miles off.
Which she had, three months ago, not far from this very café. Her nose was the reason the man sitting across from her was still alive.
Gavin Bower grinned as he set down his latte. Tall and built like a runner, Gavin had the same entitled, easy charm of a lot of handsome white guys his age with his touch-me mop of milk chocolate-colored loose curls, healthy skin, and sparkling, bright blue eyes. He also happened to be remarkably intelligent.
Even with his hearing issues, he did not seem to want for much.
She watched him for a second, thinking perhaps her assessment wasn’t quite right. Gavin had more going for him than he showed. He was younger than she was, and pre-med. She’d spent enough time with him to wonder if he didn’t know how to express himself. Or perhaps he did, and didn’t want others to see what he considered too private to share.
Not that she’d been open to such expressions these past three months.
The mug holding her coffee—black, no sugar—warmed her fingers. It felt smooth and clean, but like everything else in the café, carried hints of bleach when she lifted it to her mouth.
She hadn’t consumed much of her caffeine.
Outside the café’s open door the sun dropped toward the horizon, and now hid behind the fresh, green odors made by the many trees surrounding the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. Warm summer light streamed into the café. Golds danced on the glass, along with a hint of late summer humidity. On the other side of the seating area, oranges moved over the counter and the coffee-scented student-workers behind it. And in front of her, brilliant reds and greens flickered over the titanium buds in Gavin’s ears.
He wore expensive, cutting-edge tech produced by a division of Praesagio Industries. He dressed well, too. No, Gavin did not want for much.
Except, perhaps, his friend Rysa Torres. The woman who, on the night Daisy rescued Gavin, had been yanked away by Burners. And the woman who now planned to marry the Dracos.
Gavin, for his part, seemed miffed.
Daisy, for hers, wondered how much of his longing was based on possessiveness and how much was true caring. But then again, this too may be an emotion too private to share.
Gavin tapped the tabletop and a soft, hollow thump filled the air between them. “Rysa insists she already knows which house they’re going to buy.” He rolled his eyes.
Three months, and he should know better than to roll his eyes at the declarations of a Prime Fate. He had yet to meet a Fate face-to-face, so he did not have personal experience with the abilities of a future-seer such as his friend Rysa. She currently traveled from Wyoming with the Dracos—Ladon and his beast—and would return to Minnesota tomorrow.
Since the fight three months ago, Daisy had been careful to make sure no Fates came near Gavin, mostly because her father had asked. She was, in his words, to “make sure that the friend of Ladon’s new love stays out of harm’s way. So as not to tax the dragons.” There were… issues.
Her father had not been specific. Daisy had not asked.
But mostly Daisy watched over Gavin because she knew his friendship meant a lot to Rysa.
And Daisy and Rysa had a history, even if Rysa didn’t know about it. Even after all this time, Daisy still felt she needed to look out for the kid.
Daisy sipped at her black bleach-coffee. They could sign, but Gavin found her American Sign Language difficult to read. He teased about her “dragon accent,” but more likely her muddled signing came from her lack of practice. So she squared her body and faced Gavin head-on to allow him to easily read her lips.
“She’s a Fate, Gavin. She knows everything.” Though Fates didn’t know everything. Daisy had learned that lesson more times than she cared to count.
Gavin leaned forward. “You still haven’t told me how you’re connected to all this.”
He meant the small corner of the Shifter, Fate, and Burner world he now knew existed. The bit of reality within which Daisy walked every moment of her life. The part with dragons.
She peered over the rim of her mug at the handsome normal human seated on the other side of the table. He wasn’t all that much younger than her. Nine years ago, he and Rysa had both been eleven. Daisy, seventeen. Three months ago, their paths converged.
The Fates bound everyone to fate, Gavin included.
Daisy curled her fingers around her mug of bleach-tainted coffee.
Gavin threw her his most open and disarming smile—the one she’d seen him use on just about everyone he wanted to make feel comfortable. It always worked, even on Daisy.
Mostly, she guessed, because he never gave off an air—or scent—of manipulation. Even with his entitlement, Gavin had a fabulous bedside manner. He would, one day, make a fabulous physician.
Daisy nodded and set down her coffee mug. “Where should I start, Dr. Bower?”
He closed one eye and scrunched up his mouth. “At the beginning, of course.”
Daisy laughed. “My beginning, or theirs?” The complications that led them to this table—in the same café where the hell of Rysa’s heritage first lit the poor woman’s brain on fire, under a similar evening sky—started long, long ago. Some parts of the story, during the Roman Empire. Other parts, later in the wilds of Gaul. And others still, during the cold death of a particularly brutal Russian winter.
But not for Daisy. For her, history was much closer. And much more personal.
Gavin grinned again. “Yours, of course.”
Oh, he truly was disarming. And handsome. And a good friend.
Maybe this was the moment the Fate had meant so long ago, when she warned Daisy to never tell the stories until the right moment.
Daisy glanced out the café door. Outside, her boys—Radar and Ragnar—waited, tied to the bike rack. Her two guard dogs, who were as much a part of this world as she was. And now, it seemed, as was Gavin.
“San Diego, nine years ago,” Daisy said, still looking out the café door. “Before I knew
what the hell was going on—and a few years before I activated.”
Gavin scoffed. “Rysa lived in San Diego nine years ago.”
Now Daisy threw him her own disarming smile. “I told you, Fates know everything….”
Chapter Two
San Diego, California, nine years ago…
People stink.
Big people, little people. People with dirty hair and people with skin scrubbed free of dust and dead cells. People who held their kids close, like the woman sitting on the wire mesh of the San Diego Metro Transit bench five feet behind Daisy Reynolds.