Look at me actually getting this scheduled the day ahead! Still no preorder up yet (I’m waiting on the new book covers, and the ediiting schedule, etc)
If you missed it, here is: Snag (Conduit 2), Chapter 1, Part 1 and Chapter 1, Part 2
This excerpt is from the second draft, unedited, unproofed, of Snag (Conduit 2). Please try to ignore any glaring errors, they will be smoothed in the editing process. Anything in brackets is language/text I’m still not settled on or a bit of the timeline, etc, that needs to be double-checked.
General content of note for the entire series (not necessarily this particular excerpt): explicit language, sexual thoughts/situations (eventual, sloooow burn, why choose), occasional on-page violence, memory loss, mention of child abuse (not main character), kidnapping. Please see the main page for Awry for a more inclusive list.
Chapter 1, Part 3
Rought turns back to the photo, his expression turning grim. “I think my mother thought the Cataclysm wouldn’t drag us back right away if she stayed with him. But, no matter how many bastards he has … we have half-siblings we don’t even know about. Reck is his eldest. And Rath and I are …” He doesn’t complete the thought, just staring at the picture for a moment. “There are still things I don’t know all the details about. It was Grinder who brought me to Ingrid, not my uncle. The Outcast drove us to the estate, here, straight from California, but then left us at the gate. I think the Club traded a favor with Ingrid for the healing. All three of us needed it, none of us had our beasts then.”
“Most shifters don’t fully transform until their late teens,” I murmur quietly to let him know I’m listening. Intently.
He nods. “Grinder brought us to the main house first to speak with Ingrid, but we didn’t go inside. Then three days later …” He touches the photo, then looks down at me. “You came out to the cottage in the woods, demanding to meet me, meet us.”
I laugh. And realize that I’m here. I’m here in the now. With him. Just like I was for that moment on the front patio of the main house yesterday. The moment I first saw him, even if he met me when we were both only nine.
I want to be in the now with him. I want to ignore the terrible revelations collapsing all around me, and all the conclusions sure to come. I want to ignore everything I thought was the truth, have now learned was some sort of a lie, and skip forward.
I think Rought would be more than willing to jump into the now with me.
“Your arm was also in a cast. You asked me …” He clears his throat. “You looked at my leg, at the bruising on my face. Ingrid had to heal me in stages.”
“Me too,” I say quietly, not wanting to interrupt him.
“You asked me if my mom was dead too.”
My heart feels like it’s lodged in my throat. “And what did you say?”
He chuckles darkly. “I said no, but I wished my father was. Three days here, by the ocean, surrounded by people who actually fucking cared about me, and not worried what my next so-called lesson was going to be … and I already knew I never wanted to go back. Then I met you. And you just cemented all of that.”
“But you went back.”
“I went back. The Cataclysm didn’t let us get away that easily. But he let us come every summer, to train with our uncle, the Outcast, because he thought it would get him a foothold in Cascadia.”
“Why here? The Federation seems more his … style.”
Rought snorts, then shrugs. “Power. It’s always about the accumulation of power, isn’t it? That’s why he …” He shakes his head.
“Why he?”
“Let’s put that on our list,” he says, angling his head so he can look me in the eye. “Not that I enjoy looking back at anything other than you, Zaya.”
I flush, actual warmth threading through my chest.
“You want to know something?” he asks, all low and rumbly.
“Anything,” I whisper, like an utterly breathless, utterly beguiled idiot.
“You’ve taken my vengeance for that day. For all the beatings before and after.”
I blink, confused. “How so?”
“The Cataclysm enforcers who liked the beat the shit out of Reck, Rath, and me under the loose guise of training us? Of making sure we were the biggest, baddest shifters around? The best assets for our father? You’ve killed them both.” He laughs harshly.
He must mean Chains and Breaker.
“What a blow to their fucking egos. To be put in their fucking place by a girl.”
“I am the Conduit,” I say wryly, rubbing my forearms where I can still feel Chains’s threads of fate scoring my skin.
Rought’s gaze drops to follow my movement, his brow thoughtfully pinched. But he doesn’t ask if I’m hurt, or cold. “They don’t understand power like what you hold, Zaya.”
“And you do?”
He pauses for a moment, actually thinking about it. And somehow that makes me like him even more.
‘Like him’. What an utterly trite way of encompassing everything I’m feeling.
“I’ll learn the new you,” Rought finally says. “Though I think I understood the you of before, so that’s not a bad start, right? For our threads?”
He reaches for my hand and ever so gently brushes his thumb across the smooth pad of my left thumb.
“If … if you were mine …” I whisper. The idea is overwhelming, mind-boggling. I never thought, never even hoped —
“If I was yours,” Rought says. “We would walk on the beach together, like this, hand in hand.”
“Yes.”
“Snuggle on the couch together …” His golden-rimmed eyes ensnare me. I can’t look away, as if he’s weaving some sort of spell between us. A binding. “Sharing our favorite films and snacks. Do you still like licorice All Sorts?
I haven’t had any in years, but —
He adds, “Not the jellies, though. Your favorites are the triple-layered ones, leaving me the coconut rings and the black licorice.”
I close my mouth. He’s right, of course.
He tilts his head, assessing me. Maybe seeing if I’m still with him.
I am. Completely.
“And we’d go for drives up the coast, blasting music and stopping anywhere that serves milkshakes and fries. If I was yours.”
“Yes.” I exhale shakily. I’m not … that life … that’s not supposed to be mine, but … he knows me. Maybe he only knows little bits of me, but I want to know all about his favorite things as well. I want to know how to make him smile, make him laugh, make him tighten his arms around me. “I want that.”
He crowds up against me, lowering his voice again. “And dancing, like at the Clubhouse?”
I nod, head fallen back to look up at him, cheeks flushed and utterly fixated. On Rought. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I wanted him while dancing. And with Rath watching us together …
“And at night?” Rought teases, knowingly. “When the darkness encroaches on the day. I’m in your bed, yes? For more … cuddling?”
I laugh, again involuntarily. “Cuddling? Is that how you earn your keep?” Just about everything I knew about my past has been blown wide open. I’ve been dealt what would be a mortal wound, even a death sentence, for most — the loss of three soul bound mates — and I’m fucking flirting with him.
“Well,” he says feigning seriousness. “I’m pretty good at fixing things, cars, appliances …”
“I see,” I say, pretending to consider his proposition.
“And I’m a great tech.”
“I have Coda for that,” I say.
He blinks at that, absorbing it. “You have … Coda …”
“Not like that!”
He barks a laugh. “No … I didn’t think … but I know who Coda is.”
“I know you do.”
“Which … that means …” His face crumples, shoulders suddenly sagging. “That I … I … could have fucking asked! I could have asked Coda about you. I fucking searched and searched myself —”
“I’m impossible to find that way, Rought.”
Head bowed, he scrubs a hand over his face. His heavy despair, his old grief, actually rips through me. Viscerally. And that should frighten me, should concern me, because I’m not empathic. But, somehow, it only anchors me further.
I’m not alone.
I’m not alone in this world. In my grief.
I grab his shoulders, suddenly desperate to patch this newest wound. “You couldn’t have found me like —”
Rought pulls me into his arms, lifting me up — chest pressed to chest. I twine my legs and arms around him, as if it is pure instinct to do so. Maybe even muscle memory? I bury my face in his neck. Skin to skin.
He holds me tightly. Though I’m so much smaller, I’m not fragile to him. Though I’m so much, much more powerful, I’m not dangerous either.
He takes multiple deep inhales, of my hair, of my neck, filling his lungs with me over and over again. Essence — mine, his, and the power underlying the intersection point — twines all around us, cocooning us.
I know. I know what he needs in this moment. And I know how to give it to him. I want to give it to him.
Because he is mine. He feels like mine. Oh, fuck. He felt like mine the first time I saw him. And, right now, I don’t care that there are no actual threads between us. That I can’t see or sense our soul bond.
“Have you got me?” I ask, whispering into the skin of his neck. Because this is what he needs. He needs to know I’m here. That he’s found me.
“Yes,” Rought says gruffly. “Always.”
– Snag (Conduit 2), 2nd Draft
Are you new to the Conduit World? While it’s not necessary to read all the interconnected series, the ideal reading order is as follows:
Please note: it is very likely that the Conduit World books will be going into KU in the next couple of months (around the time that the preorder for Snag becomes avail). If you prefer to purchase directly from other retailers, or me, that won’t be an option while the books are exclusive to KU. Snag will be available directly from me before it hits KU, promise. Just FYI!
