Chapter 1: Chapter Broken Bonds: Prologue

The dream is always the same.

We’re all in the car together, traveling on the highway. I’m arguing with my mother, who’s sitting next to me, and it’s because I’m so angry that she’s making us move again. I’d made friends in Connecticut, real ones, and for the first time in my life I felt… normal. Average. Just one of the girls and not like some freak of nature.

It was the last time I would feel that way.

My father is driving, our looks so similar that there’s no mistaking I came from him. He’s listening to the news and frowning, always glancing back at me to check that I’m okay. He always has an eye on me, his beloved daughter.

Andrew, another of my mother’s Bonded, is in the front passenger seat with his laptop open as he works. He’s a very serious guy, cold and aloof to anyone outside of our family, but he’s very affectionate and loving to me. He calls me his reason. The reason he works hard, the reason he’s always striving for more.

Vincenzo is the third and final of my mother’s Bonded and he’s sitting in the back with us, holding my hand tightly as his thumb strokes down my thumb in comfort. He’s always been the kind one, the one who was affectionate and loving no matter where we are. Often, when we’re living among the non-Bonded, people assume he’s my biological father because he would spend the most time out with me. He’s a stay-at-home dad, the type of man who is happiest taking care of the house and his Bond.

I’m angry but it’s also the last time I felt at peace… and safe.

I’m struggling not to cry; I’ve always been the type to burst into furious tears. My mother is trying to get me to talk to her, quiet words I can’t remember, but the sound of it is soothing to the deepest depths of my soul. That’s the last I remember of them and the last moments of the dream.

Right before it turns into my nightmare.

The one I can’t wake up from, the one that tells me that this isn’t a dream at all. It’s the memory of a day I can’t scrub from my mind, no matter how hard I try.

Something hits the side of the car at a high speed, pushing it over until the car flips and flies down the side of a ravine.

In my shock, my gift flows out of me.

I panic and try to pull it back into my body but I hit my head, dazing myself so badly that there’s no stopping it.

I’m the only survivor.

And I will never stop hating myself for it.

Never.