“I think we have the best team we could have ever wished for,” he says, looking us over in approval. All the misfits banded together by the cruelty of fate. “It’s good to see us all together again. Especially after everything we’ve been through. Death has a way of banding the good together.”
He pauses and looks off to the side, like he’s searching for the strength to say whatever he needs to say.
“When I was your age, before the Coven went to shit and before my wife was taken from me, Ava had this little saying she’d say to all the newly recruited Night Watchmen we used to train. She had a way with words. A way to make sense of what someone was going through, no matter how scary, with humor.” He pauses, like he is struggling to get through talking about her. He hasn’t said a word about her since that night.
We all exchange glances and bow our heads at her memory.
Evangeline moves beside Sterling. Squeezes his arm in reassurance. He looks over at her with genuine appreciation, and then light fills his eyes as he says, “She said never make a deal with a demon. You both end up losing one way or another, only the demon will enjoy it.”
It takes a second, takes the small smile spreading on his lips, telling us it’s okay to laugh, before the laughter is passed around the room. For a moment, it feels like it did back at the manor, when we all came together under Mack’s leadership. And in this brief moment, I’m glad Mack didn’t listen to me. I’m glad they were assigned to join me in this, because they’re the only ones I trust. We’ve been preparing for this from the beginning.
And, when the end comes, I’ll know we all did our best.
“We will be watching every minute,” Sterling adds, returning to his disciplined stature. “We will also have constant communication with General Tillman and his army who will be ahead of you should something go wrong. With the Everlasting in your midst, prepare for nothing less.”
“We got this,” Lukah says, hugging Harper close to him and looking to everyone.
Catcalls of pride are thrown around the room.
Damien nods along with him, looking as fierce as ever. “We’ve been waiting to smear the floor with their blood.” He’s the only one who hasn’t laughed this entire time with his fists clenched at his sides and his posture rigid.
Toby laughs, playfully pushing at Damien’s shoulder. “Tell us how you really feel, Damien,” he says, returning his arm around Bianca. They look entirely different in their Elite uniform from the day I first met them when Bianca was hovering over Toby’s bleeding form on the front lawn of the manor, begging for our help. It’s almost invigorating to see how strong our unit has become.
Mack clears his throat. “There’s one more thing I’d like to add.” We wait. “This is going to be the hardest mission you’ve ever encountered. Some of you may not make it. Others… you might not come out the way you went in. You are the core of winning this war. Selected only because of your bravery under extreme amounts of pressure. If you think you can’t handle it, I advise you to leave now. This will be your only chance to back out safely.”
He waits, letting it sink in that we could be walking into a death trap, but no one leaves.
“Good,” he says, smiling and nodding. “Very good.”
My dad’s eyes appraisingly graze over the room before landing on me. We share a small exchange of content that overshadows all the awful that’s happened, and then he says, “I think we’ve covered all the bases with you, so get some sleep, everyone. You’re going to need it.”
Mack nods. “You will leave at first light. Meet at the gates. There will be cars waiting to take you to the Darkyn’s whereabouts.” He picks his pipe up and lights it. The short thrill that filled the room vanishes like a puff of smoke as reality sinks in.
Tomorrow is it. Tonight could be our last.
“Go on, everyone,” he says, sounding tired. “Get out of here.”
Everyone disperses, including Jaxen, as my dad walks over to me and pulls me into his arms. “I guess not being there to let you go properly when you were initiated into the academy is coming back to bite me because I have to admit, letting you go now, to do this, is killing me.”
I hug him tight. “I’ll be okay, Dad. I promise.”
“I’m going to hold you to it, kiddo.” He walks me to the door. “I have some things I need to finish up here but, if you need to talk, you know where to find me.”
I’m not sure if he’s picked up on what’s happened with Jaxen or not, and I don’t intend to ask. I just hug him back, and then head out into the dusk, feeling like my head has been glued on backward.
Hoping that when I get back to the house I’ve been stationed to, Jaxen will be there.
I LEAVE THE LETTER I WROTE Jaxen on his side of the bed.
The house is as empty as I feel. I didn’t expect him to be here, but a small part of me is still disappointed when I realize he didn’t come home.
He may not come home.
Katie left a note on the fridge saying she was out visiting Chett and left a casserole in the oven for me. I force myself to take a few bites before putting it away.
Still in my uniform, I climb up the stairs and collapse on top of the bed, ready to be done with today. Sometime in the middle of the night, woken from a dreamless sleep, I feel him crawl into bed beside me. Feel his arms move around me, pulling me against his cradled form as we lay in complete darkness.
I don’t ask him where he was. I don’t have a right to anymore.
Heat overwhelms my systems as his fingers search for mine. As he buries his face in my hair, his body trembling. I’m almost scared to roll over. Afraid that when I do, I’ll see the echoes of his hatred for what I’ve done reflecting in his eyes.
“I read your letter,” he says softly. His tone open and bare. “The word sorry is overrated.”
I gasp for air, straining to keep from crying. I’m nothing but a beating heart in his hands. Nothing more than a pile of apologies around his feet.
I roll, shaking, to run my hand over his cheek and across his lips, desperate to touch him. To re-trace every inch of him I had almost let slip through my fingers.
He’s doing the same. Touching me so tenderly and planting kisses all over my face as the reality of what tomorrow brings grows thick in the air between. It’s urging us closer together, to take this moment we may never get again.
When we catch our breath, he nudges his nose along mine, eyes squeezed shut as he says, “I hunted tonight.”
I feel my eyebrows furrow as I wait for him to explain. As I look over what little I can see for any sign of an injury. A dark shadow circles around his eyes.
“You were hit?”
His eyes avert to the side. “Weldon and I had a few kinks in our friendship to work out.”
My entire body stiffens. “I swear to the Goddess, I’m going to kill him!”
I’m already reaching out to Weldon in my head, ready to curse him out, when Jaxen pulls my attention back on to him. “I’m fine, Faye. Really. It was our issue, not yours, and something I had coming. And after we talked through it, he offered to take me on a hunt and I accepted. I think I needed it. I needed to feel some normalcy again and clear my head.” He pauses. “We ended up taking out a nest of vamps and snagging a Darkyn. He’s being questioned right now.”
His forehead creases, and I know he’s trying hard to get to the root of what he needs to say. Words I’m scared to hear because this could be it. What if he realized he’s okay with my choice? What if he realized he doesn’t love me like he thought he did? What if having a moment of normal made him realize he doesn’t want to give it up?
I think he sees the panic in my eyes. Catching hold of my chin, he waits for me to look at him. I barely see him through the terror blurring my eyes.
“I want to be angry at you, Faye.” His face scrunches, his voice strained and raspy. “I-I still am. But after losing Cassie and realizing what’s about to happen, and after spending all these months pretending I didn’t mind
knowing you were pushing me away when it was killing me inside…”
I hate that I notice his eyes watering. That I hear the tremble in his words.
He takes a breath, and then his eyes clear with resolve. “Tonight, after everything that happened between Weldon and me, he said something that hit home. He said that real love is not giving up and burying your head in the sand when shit gets hard. He said real love is rolling up your sleeves and diving in headfirst. And when you can do that, without fear for yourself and what might happen, then you know the love you feel for that other person is worth risking it all.
“I love you more than my own anger and your betrayal. More than the mistakes we’ve made, and the mistakes that have yet to come. And I don’t care what you do, Faye. You’re not going to get rid of me. So what if we aren’t connected anymore? I still love you, through all of your choices, because it’s this,” he says, placing his hands against my pounding heart, “it’s here that matters. I know deep down, without a doubt, that you love me just as much as I love you because you are my soul mate.”
My heart somersaults, and I’m suddenly so unsure of myself. Suddenly scared I might say the wrong thing and mess this up, and I really don’t want to mess this up. I’ve been such a coward… such a liar… and I know I don’t deserve for him to hear me out. I don’t deserve second chances.
Because, long ago, I gave him advice to not be afraid of his own feelings and didn’t bother to take that advice for myself.
But I want him to know the truth. I want him to hear the millions of thoughts that have been stored up in my mind, and this makes me realize how foolish I’ve been in thinking I needed to go through this without him. In thinking I was helping him by pushing him away.
We’re not put on this earth to walk it alone.
“I screwed up,” I say, my words breaking clean in half. I try to take a deep breath. “I was… I was so focused on trying to do the right thing that I let what we built slip.” I find his green eyes earnestly seeking mine, waiting for me to say the right thing, and I don’t want to lie and hide from him anymore. “I’ve always had this fear I’d have to do this alone. I mean, who else in the world is cursed with this gift?”
He holds my chin, forcing me to look at him. To see the love in his eyes.
“When she died, I shut down. I couldn’t take any more. I figured if I shut everyone out, then whatever happened from then on wouldn’t hurt as bad. It wouldn’t distract me from doing what I should have done long ago.”
“Faye—”
“I’m serious, Jaxen. I could die. We don’t know what will happen to me when I step in that machine, and all I can think about is you and how you’re going to take it if something should happen to me.” I chew on my lip, and then ask, “Can you let me do that? Can you let me fulfill my destiny, even if it means you might lose me?”
The truth is like an anchor tied to our ankles, pulling us under.
There’s a battle waging in his eyes as I wait for him to answer. He closes them, his forehead furrowed in pain, and then says, “Nothing could tear us apart, Faye. Not even death. I promise you that.” His eyes are so intense when they open, so strong and steady and nothing like what I feared they would be. He doesn’t look hurt anymore. Doesn’t look scared of our future. He looks sure, confident, and it scares me a little. It makes me think things I shouldn’t. Things I wouldn’t want him to do if that day were to ever come.
“But if it does—”
He hushes me with a tender kiss, his eyes never leaving mine. When he pulls back, he says, “It won’t, Faye. Trust me.”
I don’t ask why he’s so sure. I just nod my head and take what he’s offering. Gobble up his confidence in us and in me as if I were a starving child fed for the first time in weeks.
He blinks, running the rough pad of his thumb over my cheek. “So, is that the only reason you broke the connection?” The hesitancy and fear in his voice disarms me completely. “Because you were trying to protect me should something happen to you?”
Heat swarms my eyes. He’s taken the time to explain his actions to me so I wouldn’t have any doubt about his feelings, and here I lay, not having cleared up my own actions. Not giving him the confidence he’s so desperately asking for.
I want to tell him how I hate the emptiness left behind. How I want to undo what I’ve done, but those words are overshadowed by the other side of the truth.
The sad side.
“When I spoke to my mother, she told me you’d have to make a choice between Jezi and me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you choosing me over Jezi. She doesn’t deserve it. That’s why I did it.”
He’s trying so hard to remain strong, but the anxiety in his eyes betrays him. “I know, which is why I’m trying my hardest to understand and not react how I normally do.” He chews his lip. “I don’t… I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with you breaking our connection, but I can…” He pauses. “I do admire you for doing what you believe is right. And I love you that much more for it.”
“I love you too,” I say as I tuck my head under his chin, silently crying as he holds me close. Enjoying this moment that I thought I’d never experience again. Our uneven breaths are swallowed by the shadows in the room as we cling to one another, refusing to let each other go.
I feel myself drifting off again as I listen to the sound of his heart beating. As he twists the ends of my hair through his fingers.
“I wouldn’t have listened,” he says some time later.
I lift my head, eyebrows pinched together as I try to pull myself from the hands of sleep.
“If you had tried to explain it all… I wouldn’t have listened to you. I wouldn’t have let you do what you did. I probably wouldn’t have let you get it in the machine either when the time comes.”
He’s saying he’s sorry. Telling me I’m not alone in my mistakes. That we are united in this relationship, and we will walk the thin lines together, hand in hand.
“I know.” I lean in and take the kiss I’ve so desperately needed from him, and then sleep claims us.
THE NEXT MORNING, WE MEET by the gates where black vans are waiting, engines running.
Gavin takes one look at Jaxen, and then turns to Weldon, who is standing next to him sporting his own shiner on the opposite eye. It doesn’t take but a millisecond for him to put it together. He shakes his head.
“I don’t know who I’m more disappointed in,” Jezi says, hands on her hips as she looks between them. “Here we are, about to enter the hardest mission of our careers, and you two are fighting like school boys.”
“He started it,” Weldon says, sticking his tongue out at Jaxen, followed by a smirk. The moment he catches my glare, his smirk disappears.
Mack appears beside us. “Good morning.”
“Is it?” Weldon retorts.
“I see you’re all raring to go. It’s refreshing to see.”
Weldon slowly turns, face pinched. “Refreshing? Are you feeling okay, brother?”
Mack looks like he doesn’t know how to respond. “Yes, uh, it is. Refreshing. I mean. You all have such vigor. There’s no way this mission will fail.”
“Okay,” Weldon says, easing back into his normal, cocky stance. “What is it?”
“What?” Mack says, his forehead creased.
“What do you mean what?” Weldon says, hands flying. “You walk over here to tell us we have vigor and we’re refreshing? Loading us up on compliments isn’t exactly your forte. I know you better than that. You have something to say, so spit it out.”
Mack looks caught between Weldon being right, and wanting to leave us in confusion.
Jaxen and Gavin exchange a knowing glance. They’ve seen this before.
“Come on, twinning,” Weldon says, pinching Mack’s cheeks. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
Mack locks eyes with him. “I-uh… I want you to know I will not prevent you from getting her out of there.”
We all freeze up the moment we re
alize who he’s referring to—Claire.
“I know this Darkyn claims she’s spoken to her. If you find out she had indeed done this, I want you to rest assured that we will alter our plans to ensure Claire is rescued. I’ve already talked it over with Sterling, Russell, and Seamus, and they stand behind my decision.” His eyes link with Weldon’s.
There’s no more humor in Weldon’s eyes.
Mack puts his hand on Weldon’s shoulder. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Listen up!” Sterling says as my dad steps in line next to him.
Mack squeezes Weldon’s shoulder, and then heads over to Sterling.
We follow, stopping in front of Sterling, who’s looking at his digital clipboard. “We’re going to call out your name, and you’re going to get into the vans we’ve assigned you to. They will take you to the Darkyn’s location, where you will wait until given clearance to exit the van.
“Van number one is also team number one. Everyone I’m about to call out needs to line up. Faye Middleton, Jaxen Gramm, Jezi Beaumont, Weldon Jacobsen, Gavin Gramm, Katie Coccia, Lukah Glassow, Damien Brighton, Toby Jameson, and Bianca Raine.”
We all shuffle over to the first van and get in line.
Sterling looks at every one of us. “Gavin is your team leader, but you are all solely responsible for ensuring Faye gets in and out of the Darkyn’s location.” His eyes land on Katie. “And you, Miss Coccia, will do everything in your power to ensure your aunt gives us all the information we need, correct?”
My dad steps forward, leaning toward Katie, who looks like she might break down at any moment. “Just remember what we talked about, okay? You’ve got this.” He smiles surely at her, and then she nods, her smile slowly growing with his.
“All right. Get in and get settled,” Sterling says, and then he steps to the next van, shouting out the names of Evangeline and the rest of her pack, along with some others left over from the Rebellion.
I take the first bench seat next to the window as Jaxen and Gavin slide in next to me. Weldon’s head pops over my shoulder a second later, and then his fingers trace the deep purple welt circling Jaxen’s eye.
Everdeep (The Night Watchmen Series Book 4) Page 17