Chapter 1
“This sucks,” Jemmy muttered as she sat down on her bed. “This is worse than the dorm rooms at the Academy.”
I looked around the room she was sharing with Dawn, Rachel, and Sierra. I couldn’t disagree with her, and I wasn’t even going to try and convince her otherwise. The room had two sets of bunk beds, one on each wall. On the opposite wall were four wall lockers. We were told they resembled the dorms in basic training.
It was befitting, considering that we now lived in a top-secret facility in the middle of the mountains. Our house was blown up, and we were hired by a private contractor to help them on the mission we were already on. The mission to take Horatio down. My biological father.
He had recently made the government take notice of us. The gifted. He was involved in kidnappings, human trafficking, murders, and a whole list of other crimes. He kidnapped children, hoping to raise them in his own little army. He kidnapped women, trying to create strongly gifted children. His last offence, we were recently made aware of, was that he had created a drug to inject into nongifted individuals. His ultimate goal was to create a force so strong that we no longer had to live in hiding. He wanted the nongifted to join him or die if they refused to.
People like Will, my connections father, wanted us to peacefully coexist like we had for years. We lived in communities where we were essentially free to be ourselves. We hadn’t felt the need to push our existence onto others. We were content the way we were.
Some members of the government wanted us to start registering ourselves. They wanted to start doing tests on us. They wanted to put us in camps because now we were being deemed as dangerous. We had lived among them for thousands of years, yet now they feared us.
Our hope was, if we eliminated him, they would forget about us. We hoped that they realized we couldn’t all be judged by the actions of a few.
“Tell me about it,” I muttered back. “Will had to fight with them to put us in an apartment.”
Our apartment comprised of three bedrooms with two double beds in each one. It had a small kitchenette, a bathroom, and sitting area. It was a tight fit with seven of us. The guys had never shared rooms with each other, but it was a sacrifice we had to make to stay with each other. Paul wouldn’t give us another apartment. We had already caused waves in their operations. Some people resented us for being given special allowance.
Paul was the government contractor that had recruited us. He was the reason we were here. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to take down Horatio without the help of gifted individuals.
Paul’s mom was gifted, but she hadn’t fully immersed herself into any of the communities. She never told him about how connections worked. From what he told us, she didn’t have a strong gift level. Megan was trying to educate him on how our community worked but it was slow going.
Megan was one of Will’s connections and Jace and Jaxson’s Aunt. They hadn’t been in touch for many years. Ironically enough Will had been trying to contact her in the regards to Ella, before they had found us. Now she was back in their lives.
Initially, Paul wanted to move me in with the girls and the guys into the single men dorms. Unless you were married or had a family, all the single people were put into the dorm rooms in the underground facility. Paul didn’t understand that our connection was important to us. It wasn’t me with six boyfriends; it was me with my connections.
In the gifted community, we had connections. A connection made us stronger. Some people had no connection, few of us had one, and there was a handful of us that had two. Somehow, though no one knew why, I had six.
I never knew how much six men could mean to me until I met them. They had become such an integral part of who I was. Remy, Jace, Troy, Noah, Drake, and Jaxson became pieces I hadn’t even known was missing. They were pieces of a puzzle that became our picture.
Jemmy gave me an annoyed but hurt look. “At least you’re still with them. Gavin is in the guy dorms, and he didn’t even try to put up a fight to be with me.”
Gavin was my friend. He had helped me after Horatio had tried to separate us. He had believed me when I didn’t think anyone could. When his minions wanted to isolate me, he had been there to support me and remind me what my goal was. He was also Jemmy’s connection. Unfortunately, they had hit a rough patch in their relationship.
Jemmy was Drake’s sister and someone I considered my best friend. She was beautiful. She was funny. She embraced life at full speed. Her flaws were that she tended to go over the top and push people. I normally just rolled with it. Regrettably, she still needed to learn how to compromise and learn how to be more empathetic to how others may feel.
I sighed. “Jemmy,” I said carefully. “Gavin doesn’t have a lot of experience with relationships. I understand that you want to take your relationship to the next level. He isn’t ready for that. When you pressure him into something he’s not ready for, you only push him away further. He cares for you a lot, and I know you care for him, so you need to show him.”
Jemmy gave me a mutinous look. “He’s my connection. Why does it matter how fast or slow we go if the end is still the same? We will be together. What guy turns down sex? It’s ridiculous! We’ve fooled around, and there’s no denying we have a chemistry. Why do I have to wait any longer? I know he wants it, and so do I.”