by Elise Jae
She can handle herself.
And if something is too much for her, I know she’ll tell me.
The brotherhood approaches the man’s home like we would a nest of monsters.
Victor doesn’t have a security system. There aren’t even any lights to snap on at our movement.
Unlike the Shadow Zone, the suburban neighborhood has dozens of potential innocent casualties.
Men and women quietly tucked into their homes for the night.
No one sees us. There’s no one to call the authorities.
The house is cold, quiet.
If Arc hadn’t confirmed Victor was home, I’d have thought we were in for a wait.
The house is almost immaculate. But there are signs of what Laurel would have been walking into, had they placed her here.
The dim light casts a shadow on the crater where a fist hit the wall. Shards of glass have been swept into a corner.
Violence begets violence….
Laurel’s hand is in mine, reminding me that she’s behind me, safe--enough for now--from this man who could have taken her away from me without my ever knowing it.
I have to shove that thought away, or I’ll be the one begetting violence.
The only light comes from a half-cracked door at the end of a narrow hallway.
The others have silently cleared the rest of the house, and we move, as one, toward the last place he could be.
Drift takes the lead, whether because he’s the leader of the brotherhood, or he thinks he needs to stand between Victor and myself, I don’t know.
Probably both.
I let him. Let Trench move ahead of me too.
I don’t need more bodies between him and me. I need them in front of Laurel.
Victor wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack her with the rest of us around her, but there’s no point in taking chances. He was stupid enough to try to kill her once.
Drift pushes and the door swings inward on noiseless hinges.
Victor doesn’t hear us.
He’s sitting at a terminal, leaned back and relaxed with a glass of something red. It reminds me of human blood.
Drift holds me back. Eyes narrowed.
But there are no traps here.
The man in front of us doesn’t have a care in the world.
He should.
We’re used to moving in silence.
Used to struggling through snow without alerting predators to our presence.
Laurel isn’t.
Her shoe scuffs on the carpet, and I see the minute drop in his shoulders.
He knows.
Victor turns… a moment too late.
Hand at his neck, I slam him against the wall, using his weight to choke him.
Sputtering and kicking, his attempts to free himself are ineffectual.
“Richter.”
Drift’s words bring me back. Remind me. There’s a way this must be done.
Had Laurel died, I could have done anything I wanted to this piece of shit. But she didn’t. Retribution isn’t mine to take.
I drop him, happy, at least, that his legs buckle, and he hits the floor.
Turning my back on him, I have to walk myself through the reasons I can’t just tear his head from his body.
One look at Laurel, and I know exactly why. Not because she’d think I’m a monster.
But because I can’t leave her alone in this world.
Core has placed himself in front of her.
I’d trust them all to keep her safe, but Core is the only one of them who truly understands.
“My alarm will have already called the authorities.” Victor sputters from the floor.
“It didn’t.” Trench drops down to squat in front of him. “We disabled it before we let ourselves in. But don’t worry. We called them for you.”
Victor’s eyes move to me, and something vile slides into his stare.
“There’s no proof I had anything to do with your mate running off and getting herself killed.”
The smirk he wears tells me he truly believes he’s going to get away with this.
He still doesn’t realize Laurel’s alive.
“Don’t you think,” Drift says, moving himself again to place himself in my way, should I want to do something rash. “That saying something like that is all the proof we’d need?
“After all, how could you know Laurel was in the Shadow Zone.”
If she was gone, he wouldn’t be talking. I would have torn his tongue from his throat, and he’d be missing at least one limb by now.
“It will be all your word against mine… but you broke into my house and accosted me. Maybe you’re all going a bit insane up there near the caldera.” He smiles again, still on the floor. “Maybe next time, he’ll think twice before taking someone else’s property. Now that he knows what it feels like to have something of his taken away.”
“Actually,” Laurel says from the back of the room, stepping out so she can be seen. “He doesn’t know what it feels like… And I’m no one’s property.”
Drift nods to the gun in her hand. “He tried to kill you. You may do what he was unable to, if you wish.”
She flinches and her sudden panic and disgust makes my gut churn.
“No.” I slide my hand down her arm, squeezing to let her know I’m not going to ask her to do it. “He’ll be dealt with the right way.”
Trench drags him off the floor. “Some might say pulling him limb from limb is the right way.”
“He’ll go to prison.”
The flashing lights outside remind me it’s the better way.
LAUREL
I hang back while Richter and the others take Victor into the front rooms of the house to wait for the authorities.
Thankfully no one tries to make me come with them. I’d like to stay as far away from that man as possible.
But I can’t stop myself from looking around at the house he might have brought me into. It’s why I notice what he’d been doing when we interrupted him.
The Agency site is still open on his screen. He’s making a list of women he might have requested to replace me.
While the others are busy, I scroll through the women whose profiles he’s added to his favorites.
Most of them are blonde. They’re about my age.
Seemingly, that’s where the commonalities end. Their eyes are all different, their heights fall across the whole range. Their “previous professions”--what they’re doing right now--run the whole host… but that’s the other commonality.
I might not have noticed if I hadn’t known the criteria on which the military had chosen me.
All of these women were… not necessarily unremarkable. They were just average.
Their careers weren’t something that would draw special attention. Their resume of accomplishments was vague and near the bare minimum.
But their medical scores….
Not a single one of them had a BioScore below a ninety-eight.
Normally, that wouldn’t have seemed strange to me. After all, the point of the mail order set-up was procreation. A ninety-eight or higher was the Agency’s way of saying the woman was fertile enough you’d be pregnant within the space of a sneeze.
You don’t even qualify for the program if you’re less than a ninety-three.
A sickening thought strikes.
I type in the name of the woman who was supposed to have been Richter’s bondmate.
She’s beautiful. Like Cindy, she’s a nurse--clearly, the Agency wants to help keep the brotherhood safe.
She doesn’t look anything like me.
Short with dark brown hair and lips so full, even I want to kiss them.
But her BioScore is ninety-five.
I push away from the computer. I don’t want to see any more.
The house is still eerily lit, but there are voices coming from every direction… but one.
A brightly lit doorway leads to what can only be described as a lab.
Med
ical equipment lines one wall, a hospital bed is shoved into the far corner, and there are stores of IV bags and syringes mixed among microscopes and Erlenmeyer flasks I haven’t seen since my last chem class.
Drift is in the middle of the room, scowling.
“Is he a doctor?”
“No.” Drift nods toward the packets on the far wall. “Humans are susceptible to high doses of morphine….”
“He was going to kill me either way. Stolen from him, or not.”
“And if my guess is right, sell your baby.”
I feel sick.
And this time, it’s not because of the child growing inside me.
“He had a bondmate before. She died four months ago. According to the records, it was during childbirth... And the infant didn’t survive either.”
“What makes you think that’s a lie. He’s not a doctor, it might have been an accident.”
“It could have been….” Drift looks at me, his face blank, though I don’t believe he’s immune to this. “But a man who’s willing to kill you is more than capable of what I think.”
He glances to his left. The table there is the only thing in the space that has clutter. He doesn’t have to move to push the items aside. He plucks a filmy piece of plastic from the pile, scans it, and hands it to me.
“Luckily, the authorities will have some clue how to find the child.”
The film is a receipt as far as I can tell.
I have no idea what their currency translates to in USD, but there are so many zeros behind the number, I can guess it’s a hefty sum.
I look from it to the bed where his previous bondmate probably died.
The idea of killing Richter--with the depth of connection the bond has given us….
“Hurting him would be like tearing my own heart from my chest.”
NINETEEN
RICHTER
I stood beside the car, watching as the man who had tried to kill my bondmate was pulled bodily from his home.
It was that, or only ever see Laurel from behind poly sheeting again.
Or maybe not.
Maybe a tribunal would let me get away with crushing the skull of the man who’d tried to take her from me.
Laurel had consented to sitting inside the car while the authorities did their questioning and finalized the formal transfer of Victor from Drift’s custody.
She was tired and cold and relieved and… there was something like hope buried under all of the other swirling emotions. Something I would have to ask about later.
For now, I would have to be content to stay where I was, scowling at anyone who even considered taking a step toward her.
Drift was the only one immune to me.
He didn’t even hesitate as he turned and crossed the pavement.
The window was open, Laurel would hear everything he had to say.
She deserved that.
Deserved much more than that.
“He rejected the woman they paired with him… the woman who was supposed to have been yours.”
“No.” I couldn’t let that thought go unchallenged. “The universe knew she was never meant to be mine.”
“Anyway. She didn’t even make it home with him. From what I can tell, she’s currently reviewing other candidates--staying at Margot’s--and should find her place soon.”
Laurel sighed from behind me. “At least she didn’t have to live with that maniac, even for a day.”
“He had specific requirements. We think he might have already had someone in line who wanted to buy the baby.” Drift looked from me, down to her. “So be careful. If they wanted you to begin with, they might still come after you.”
“Let them try.”
Drift’s lips twitched. Not quite a smile.
The car holding Victor flipped on its lights and threaded its way through the still dense crowd of officers and brotherhood.
Drift stood beside me in silence as we watched the car ferry him to the local holding center.
He wouldn’t stay there long.
A tribunal would meet within the week. All three of us would have to speak to the council, and then Victor would disappear into the maw of Kerzog prison.
Drift and I shared a look as the car turned onto the main road and disappeared from sight.
We both knew what was going to happen to him. It wasn’t a detail I planned to share with Laurel. I didn’t want her to feel any guilt for the man’s imminent demise. No one survived long inside Kerzog when they’d harmed a woman… much less tried to kill one.
“Go home.” Drift said. “Take care of your mate. Trench and Arc are watching your section of the zone. I don’t want to hear that you’ve left your house for at least three days.”
“I think I can do that.” A month ago, it would have seemed like sheer torture. Now, I might not want to leave it for a year.
I get in the car as she’s rolling up her window.
The seat holds me close, the way I wish I could hold her right now.
I don’t leave right away.
I can’t without asking... one more time.
“Are you okay? I can take you to Cindy.”
She’s already got some bruising. A light pattern of shadows across her cheek and shoulder.
It could have been so much worse.
And I can’t let myself think about that.
“I’ll be fine. Take me home, and let’s put all of this behind us.”
“As you command.” Now and forever.
LAUREL
The house is warm when we get there, and as he carries me back over the threshold, it’s like all of the problems we’ve faced thus far are long behind us. We buried them in the snow and will never see them again.
He sheds his coat mechanically and strips off his weapons methodically, and I hand over the gun I borrowed, and my jacket too. He puts them all away on reflex, eyes never leaving me… as if I might disappear if he blinks.
But there’s no chance in hell--or whatever the Sian equivalent is--that I’m going anywhere.
When he’s done, and the wall seals itself up tight once more, I take his hand and lead the way to the couch.
I don’t have to sit as close to the fire as I might if he wasn’t here and tuck a foot under myself as I turn to him.
“There’s something I found out after you left… something I didn’t want to say in front of anyone else.”
I take his hand and move it lower, placing it to rest on my stomach. There’s not much change there yet but understanding blossoms on his face in an instant.
“Really?”
I nod, not sure I trust my voice.
I do trust my lips, so I pull her into me, kiss her, try to make it clear I am never going to let her go.
She’s smiling as she gently pushes me away.
“It’s more dangerous out there for you now.”
“I knew you were going to be the mother of my children. Knew you were going to be the only ones I would truly risk my life for from the moment I collected you from the Agency.”
“You,” His fingers firm, gently, against my stomach, “Are the reason I will come home from every trip out into the snow.”
“Can you promise me that?”
“With every fiber of my being, I will try.”
“Are you happy?”
“I couldn’t be happier.” His voice is a whisper against my skin. “The woman I love is safe in my arms… you are the family I’ve always wanted, and you’re giving me another person to love.”
“The man I love had a little to do with it too....”
With a laugh that’s closer to a growl, he turns me, lifts me until I’m in his lap. Head on his shoulder. And holds me there.
He doesn’t rock me. Doesn’t make a sound. If I couldn’t feel his thoughts whizzing around, I’d have guessed he’d fallen asleep.
But those restless thoughts trigger worries of my own.
“If he’d known….” I shiver at the thought. “Do you think he would have kidn
apped me instead? Kept me locked up in his lab until he could do to me what he did to his bondmate?”
“No.” Richter shakes his head, nose brushing against my collar bone. “If you were gone, but alive, I would have found you. He knows what we can feel through the bond. It’s how I found you out there in several tons of blizzard. And he had to have known that if I’d found him with you, I would have torn his head off, like I did that monster.”
“You’re good at killing monsters.”
RICHTER
Now I have her back.
Safe.
The only things we had to worry about were on the other side of that glass. And neither of us were going to let her wind up out there again.
As the moonlight slanted through the windows, I had no idea what time it was, or how many times we’d pushed each other over the edge.
Still inside her, I ran my hand over her stomach. I could tell the difference now, with her naked and relaxed, legs twisted with mine.
“Do you think we’ll ever get tired of this?”
“Tired? No. Exhausted… yes. And in five months, we’re going to have a different sort of distraction to exhaust us.”
The idea was still as terrifying as it was exhilarating.
“And Cindy told me I’ll have to turn you away after the four-and-a-half-month mark.”
“I guess we’ll just have to get as much of this out of the way before then.”
Taking hold of her, I rolled onto my back, the movement slid her completely onto me and the keening sound that escaped her mouth made my cock twitch.
“What else did Cindy tell you?”
Her answer is a half-formed hum of a question, and as she rocks into me, all thoughts leave my mind but this:
Passion has its place, even in the most dangerous of lives… and I’m so grateful she showed me where it fit.
THANK YOU!
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