by Kristie Cook
He hobbled to the showers, hung his dogtags and towel on a hook then stepped under the steaming stream of water. A leisurely shower was a rare treat, but Jonathan couldn’t enjoy it. Not with his team out on patrol, sweltering in the heat, choking on the sunbaked dust that permeated everything and crusted their sweaty bodies like a second skin.
He squeegeed the water off his arms and chest with his hands then reached behind him for his towel. It wasn’t there.
A sharp snap, followed by a stinging pain on the side of his hip, startled him. Jonathan whirled around, putting too much weight on his injured ankle. Damn, that hurt. He glanced at the soldier’s sleeve, checking his rank, before deciding to cuss the guy out. But when he lifted his gaze to the soldier’s face, his mouth fell open.
Franklin grinned and handed Jonathan the towel. “Get dressed. I’ve got a job for you.”
Franklin was the LDS chaplain’s assistant so he travelled all over Afghanistan; but this was only the second time he’d visited Jonathan’s base.
“Frankie! What are you doing here?” Jonathan wrapped the towel around his waist then bear-hugged his twin.
“We’re heading over to Bagram to give a couple of the guys a priesthood blessing. We could use an extra gun on the drive. Wanna go?”
“Hell, yeah.”
Franklin grinned and punched Jonathan’s shoulder. “Do us both a favor and watch your language in front of the chaplain.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Hell’s not even a real swear word.”
The chaplain fell asleep in the back before they’d even made it off base, giving Jonathan and Franklin a chance to talk. He stayed asleep even when the pot-hole riddled, bone jarring, teeth rattling excuse for a road turned into little more than a goat path. It was a challenge even for the rugged Humvee. It’d be a miracle if the decrepit van in front of them made it up the next hill.
The hair on the back of Jonathan’s neck stood on end. He was probably just being paranoid, but the road was going to get a lot narrower in less than a half mile; perfect for an ambush. “Hey Frankie, can you get around this guy? I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Franklin didn’t argue. He didn’t ask why. He didn’t even arch an eyebrow. He just rolled down his window and leaned his head outside, edging closer to the sheer cliff on the side of the mountain.
River
Thunder’s sides heaved. He blew foam with every breath, but River was desperate. She couldn’t slow down to spare the horse. Hannah had been in hard labor for over twenty-four hours. Two midwives, working together failed to turn the baby. Reuben’s sister, Shula was a doctor. She couldn’t use any outsider medicine, but maybe her advanced medical skills could save Hannah.
River turned Thunder over to the stable boy and ran towards Sanctuary Mountain’s hidden entrance.
“Halt.” The guard’s voice was stern but not harsh. “State your business.”
“River, daughter of Asher and Issachar’s daughter, requests an audience with Shula, daughter of Zebulon and Israel’s daughter.” River’s heart pounded. The last time she’d been inside Sanctuary Mountain, Mother had been falsely accused, tried and executed.
The guard glanced at her face then threw his shoulders back as he tilted his head to the left and dipped his chin. “You may enter.”
These Sanctuary Mountain types were so impressed with bloodlines it was pathetic. “Can someone please escort me to Shula’s quarters? I don’t know the way.”
“I’ll take her.” A young enforcer stepped out of the shadows and lit a torch.
River’s blood ran cold when she recognized Eli. She couldn’t stand him, but the fact that he never showed his face at the ranch after Reuben told her he’d arranged to have Eli court her was insulting.
Eli turned towards the entrance and pointed at a child in servant’s clothing. “You there, fetch me a ration of jerky and fruit. Bring it to my enclave.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy bowed at the waist then took off at a dead run, his bare feet slapping the smooth rock floor of the tunnel.
Eli jerked his head towards the entrance. “Let’s go.”
River ducked her head, to hide her flaming cheeks. “Yes, sir.”
“Don’t pretend to honor me by bowing in my presence or addressing me as ‘sir.’”
“I wasn’t bowing.” River straightened her spine and lifted her gaze to his face. She couldn’t tell by his expression what he was thinking, or if he even recognized her. “How should I address you?”
“My name is Eli. You may address me as such.”
“I know who you are.” River paused, giving Eli a chance to say something … anything … about why he hadn’t begun to court her. The silence between them begged to be broken. “The first time I came inside Sanctuary, it was to witness your merge.”
Eli looked down his nose and scanned River’s body. “You aren’t old enough to have witnessed my merge.”
River didn’t know whether she was more insulted by the way he examined her like a common whore—or that he was so obviously unimpressed by what he saw. But the fact that he didn’t even recognize her was beyond humiliating.
He smirked at her then took off down a side tunnel without another word.
River had to jog to catch up with him.
Eli led her deep inside Sanctuary, past dozens of curtained alcoves before stopping in front of a red velvet curtain. He pushed it aside and motioned for River to enter.
Her eyes widened at the rich opulence inside. But she wouldn’t mate with Eli even if he owned the entire mountain.
“Mother? Uncle Reuben’s …” Eli paused and looked at River. “What are you anyway? Servant?”
“No!”
“Well, you’re too young to be his concubine.”
“I’m plenty old enough! But I’m not a concubine.” River’s cheeks flushed. If Eli knew she belonged to Reuben’s household, he also knew exactly who she was.
Another set of velvet curtains parted on the other side of the room. Shula entered. Her brow wrinkled in concern. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to speak with you in private.”
“Did Reuben send you?”
It was a crime for surface dwellers to seek medical aid from Sanctuary doctors. But River didn’t know what else to do. “No. I came on my own.”
Shula’s eyes softened. “It’s Hannah, isn’t it?”
River nodded.
“I’ll go.”
Eli's face paled. “You can’t. I’ll have to arrest you!”
“It’s not illegal if I join them first.”
“Join them? You’ll give up everything.”
“You’ve been reassigned to serve under Reuben. You’ll be on the surface all winter. We’ll see much more of each other this way.”
So, Reuben was still trying to force them together.
Eli glared at River.
Her face burned even hotter. Did he blame her for his winter assignment? Did he think she was behind it—that she’d asked Reuben to arrange it? Well, she’d set him straight the first chance she got. Arrogant jackass.
Shula reached for Eli’s face.
He batted her hand away before she touched him. “What about next winter? And the one after that? You can never come home.”
“We’ll all be sealed inside the Mountain once the cleansing starts.”
River didn’t like to think about the Great and Glorious Year of Cleansing; even when she was on the surface. But with the full weight of Sanctuary above her, just the thought of spending a year sealed up inside the mountain sucked the air out of her lungs. She hadn’t seen the communal quarters where the surface dwellers would live, but from what she’d heard, it wasn’t going to be anything close to this. It wouldn’t matter how much alpha blood ran through her veins, River would never live in this kind of luxury. Unless she were mated to Eli—not worth it.
Eli glared at River, as if he could read her mind, then grabbed Shula’s shoulders. “I forbid you to join them.”
“I’m sorry.” Shula palmed Eli’s cheek. “Reuben’s my brother.”
He closed his eyes and leaned into her hand. His voice was barely a whisper. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“I owe him everything.”
River agreed. Shula had run away when she was seventeen, merged with her spirit guide and mated with an outsider. If she weren’t Zebulon’s daughter, she would have been executed the moment she was captured. Instead, he granted her a stay of execution and ordered she be whipped instead.
Reuben was over a hundred years older than Shula and her only full-blood sibling. Their relationship was more parent-child than brother-sister. Reuben volunteered to stand in as proxy for Shula and took her punishment. It was easy to see from his scars that Shula would not have survived the beating and Eli would have never been born.
“Please, Mother.” Eli blinked, obviously fighting tears. “Don’t do this.”
River dropped her gaze and studied the patterns woven into the carpet beneath her boots. Eli was a grown man and an Enforcer. Why was he acting like a child? River had stood in front of the council three days after Mother’s execution while they decided her fate. She hadn’t shed a single tear. River extended her hand and touched Shula’s elbow. “Please, we need to hurry.”
All citizens of New Eden knew how to ride, but the heirs of Sanctuary didn’t spend hours on horseback the way surface dwellers did. Thunder was the fastest horse in New Eden, but Shula couldn’t keep up. So, River was forced to ride at a much slower pace. All she could do was pray that Hannah and her baby would still be alive when they got there.
Jonathan
Gentle fingers stroked Jonathan’s face. A hot tear fell on his brow as cold lips pressed a kiss to his cheek. A quiet, but persistent, beep, beep, beep was annoying the hell out of him.
“Baby? Can you hear me?”
Mom?
“Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
Jonathan was so tired, so sleepy. His left eye refused to open at all and his right eye only opened enough to reveal a blurry band of light.
“Charles, get in here! He’s awake.”
Where am I? As his vision cleared, Jonathan recognized the clear plastic bag hanging from a steel pole above him as an IV. Everything hurt—even his hair. He tried to draw a deep breath, but gasped when pain shot across his ribs. His left hand was on fire. It throbbed in time with that infernal beeping.
Jonathan turned his head and raised his left arm. It was bandaged from pit to wrist. And ended six inches before it should have.
Mom kissed his forehead. “You’re okay baby. Please calm down. You’re in the ICU at Landstuhl Hospital. You’re safe now.”
Safe? Jonathan groaned as another wave of pain shot up his arm and across his ribs. What happened? The last thing he remembered, he was riding shotgun with Franklin and the chaplain to Bagram.
“Calm down, Frankie. It’s okay.”
Frankie? Is he here, too? It was hard to think, hard to put the words together coherently, but he had to know. His mouth refused to cooperate. Was his jaw wired shut? “Is … is he?”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” Mom’s hands on his cheeks were cool, but the tear that dripped off the tip of her nose onto his forehead was hot. “Jonathan’s missing.”
The room spun. She thinks I’m Franklin. I must be messed up pretty bad if Mom can’t tell the difference.
“Not Franklin … Jonathan.” His garbled speech was impossible to decipher.
“It’s okay, Frankie. The army’s doing everything in their power to find him.”
“No …”
Mom smoothed her hand over Jonathan’s forehead—as if she could still brush away the curls the army shaved off months ago. “The last time anyone saw your brother, he was on base, recovering from a sprained ankle. He probably snuck off and went looking for trouble. He left his dog tags hanging in the shower.”
Jonathan pantomimed writing in the air.
Mom handed him a pen and held a notebook steady for him so he could write.
I’m not Franklin.
Mom stumbled away from him and crashed into a stainless steel cart.
A man in green scrubs darted across the room and caught her before she hit the floor.
Someone yelled, “Get her out of here!”
The man dragged Mom out of the room but her sobs continued to echo down the hall even after the door swung shut. “Where’s Franklin? Where’s my baby?”
A doctor snagged a wheeled stool with his foot and pulled it next to Jonathan’s bed.
Jonathan’s hand shook as he wrote: My brother, PFC Franklin McKnight and Chaplain Stewart were in the Humvee with me. Are they okay?
The doctor placed a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder as he leaned in to read the note. “I’m sorry, son. There were no other survivors.”
The words ‘no other survivors’ ricocheted against the corners of Jonathan’s skull. His sides heaved, but he couldn’t catch his breath. He squeezed the pen so tightly his fingers ached as he wrote: PFC Franklin McKnight. MIA?
The doc shook his head. “There were three men evacuated from the site of the attack. You, the chaplain and an unidentified soldier. During triage, we found Franklin McKnight’s dog tags in your pocket. A medic must have found them near you and assumed they were yours. We’re working on identifying the unknown soldier, but considering the evidence, I’m afraid it’s not going to be good news.”
This was a mistake. It had to be. Franklin couldn’t be dead.
The doctor squeezed Jonathan’s shoulder and stood up. “I’m giving you something for the pain. It’ll make you drowsy.” Jonathan watched as the doc injected something into his IV line. The drug worked fast, but not fast enough. He closed his eyes and willed his mind to surrender. The last thing he heard was, “It seems we have a case of mistaken identity.”
When Jonathan woke, Dad was standing at the foot of his bed, talking to an army colonel. Their voices were urgent but too quiet to understand. Dad’s face was chalky grey. The creases around his eyes and mouth were deeper than Jonathan remembered. He looked ten years older.
The air conditioner kicked on, fluttering the curtains over the window.
The colonel shook Dad’s hand then turned and walked out the door. It swung shut with a soft creak.
“Dad …” It came out as a groan, but it got Dad’s attention. He bolted around the side of the bed and grabbed the rails so tightly his knuckles turned white. He took three ragged breaths then jerked the bedrail down and buried his face in the blankets above Jonathan’s right hip.
Jonathan had never seen Dad cry before; not even at grandfather McKnight’s funeral. He’d always assumed it was because he was so strong and brave. Maybe he’d just been too numb to cry … like Jonathan. He should be bawling like a baby … no other survivors … but his eyes were as dry as the Registan Desert.
Jonathan waited for Dad to regain his composure, then reached for the pen and pad of paper on the bed tray and wrote: It should have been me.
Dad spoke with quiet intensity. “No. It should not have been you. It shouldn’t have been either of you!”
If he hadn’t told Frankie to pass that van, they wouldn’t have hit the IED. Jonathan scrawled: It was my fault.
Dad took the pen and pad away from Jonathan and set them at the foot of the bed. “My heart broke when I realized I would never see our sweet, shy Frankie again …”
Jonathan tried to turn away.
Dad gripped the sides of his head with both hands and forced him to look at him. “But you can’t imagine the joy I felt when I learned I hadn’t lost you. I just can’t hold on to it. I’m devastated by Franklin’s death. But please, Jonathan, please believe me, when I say that I’m so very happy that you are alive.”
River
Shula performed a minor miracle and safely delivered Hannah’s baby, but everyone’s joy was short lived. The child had come too early. She was weak and sickly and required constant vigilance to be sure she remembered to breathe. Shula sta
yed at the ranch to help care for the baby and Hannah. River had to share her room with Shula but it wasn’t as bad as she thought it’d be. Shula stayed up with the baby at night and slept during the day. River hardly ever saw the healer, which was just fine with her. The woman was downright scary.
River had just crawled into bed when the sound of urgent whispers caught her ear. “Please, Reuben, I have to try. You heard what Shula said. If we don’t get antibiotics for the baby she’ll die.”
“You know the law. We can’t use outsider medicine.”
“But you’re an Enforcer. You could—”
“I could what? Risk everything for a child that probably won’t survive her first year? What about our sons? Do you think you can raise them without me? Or do you plan to take a new mate after my execution?”
River covered her mouth with both hands.
Hannah’s voice quivered. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing while our daughter struggles to survive.”
“Shula’s brewing another herbal remedy. Maybe this one will work better.”
“She’s dying, Reuben.”
River had heard stories of how outsider’s medicine could cure even the most dire illnesses, but their dependency on medical science had weakened the entire human race. The heirs of Sanctuary used outsider medicine, but only in life or death situations. Surface dwellers had to rely on the herbs nature provided and their own immune systems. Natural selection was a harsh, but necessary, doctrine.
Reuben’s voice held so much pain it made River’s heart ache. “Once you’ve recovered from the delivery. We can try again. We’ll keep trying until you get another daughter.”
“Each time I miscarry, it takes another piece of my soul.”
“Then we’ll adopt another child.”
“You know how rare shifter children are. The council won’t let us have another one. We were lucky to get Paul. And I can’t bear the thought of raising a human child only to watch it grow old and die. Come with us, Reuben. Let’s take our children and make a new life in the outside world.”