She didn’t make it very far. Her burned out Source and depleted life force dragged her into unconsciousness.
31
Quinn
Quinn grabbed her before she hit the dirt, knowing she wasn’t going to make it very far.
“I’ve never met such a warrior,” Yasmin commented. “We should rest until dawn.”
“I can carry her,” Quinn said, lifting Sawyer into his arms. “How long do we need to walk?”
“From here? Maybe only another day. We should be back at your camp by midday, I think.” Yasmin shrugged slightly. “Tez will be staying here. I will be going with you.”
Quinn looked at the other male. They were so similar and so different. Both marked by who their mothers had been, powerful because of it. But Tez had been raised with such a different outlook on life. A community built around him. Quinn had been raised alone by his mother, who could barely tolerate other humans unless they were other Druids. Quinn’s childhood friends had been wolves, Tez’s had been his village and his future wife.
He awkwardly extended a hand. Tez took it and they shook slowly.
“Thank you,” Quinn told him in his native tongue. Tez smiled and clasped his hand with both of his own after that.
“Continue to heal and grow, Wolf. We will tell the world that you are no longer a rogue, but rather a warrior.” Tez backed away, letting go. “Until we meet again.”
Quinn smiled. Warrior. Yes, that’s what he would like to be remembered as. He turned away to give Yasmin and Tez privacy to say goodbye. He stared down at the peaceful, exhausted face of his own female.
She’d done what he couldn’t. She had climbed the trees and fought the wilds just to kill the last dangerous obstacle between them and their family.
He knew it was the only thing she could do. There was no other option in her mind. He loved her for that strength and passion.
She’d changed everything.
“Let us go,” Yasmin said quietly, walking up next to him. He nodded. That was another woman who changed everything. Maybe he’d been blind growing up, to ignore that many Druids were non-violent and kind; maybe he just had met all the wrong ones, unlucky in his experience. Yasmin changed him. He respected her. She was about to do what no Druid had ever done, especially not one from the depths of the Amazon.
They moved quietly and quickly in the night. They were only slowed by Sawyer’s sleeping form in his arms, which he was careful not to jostle. Sombra walked directly at his side, as if she couldn’t bear to go far from her unconscious Magi.
“You didn’t say anything about wanting Camila’s body as proof,” Yasmin finally said as dawn crept up.
“No. I have a feeling they will believe us when we tell them,” Quinn explained. He would rather carry his mate than drag a body or carry a head. “I have you. They won’t call you a liar.”
“Good point.” She sighed, nodding. “What is home for you?”
“Why?” He frowned.
“Curious.”
“A…big white house on a few square kilometers of land where no one bothers us. We live far enough away from any cities that I can go out into our woods and feel alive. Sombra will have lots of space to run, I hope. Shade and Scout have never complained, and I keep them away from the locals. There’s no Druids nearby, so the territory is mine, I guess.” Quinn missed it. He loved the wildness and expansive nature of the Amazon, but he missed his plot of land, his white house, his garden, and his lean-to.
Home.
“And this team?”
“They are also home, yes. Vincent, our leader. He’s dark, like Sawyer. They are well-suited in that way. She grew up with two of my packmates, Zander and Jasper. Good men, but very different from each other. She and Zander argue a lot, but she once told me that they love each other so fiercely that they fight with and for each other.” Quinn took a deep breath. “Elijah. He’s a cowboy and my closest friend. I consider him a brother in some ways and a convenient lover in others. He’s a happy man, but he’s protective as well.”
“Over?” Yasmin sounded genuinely curious.
“Me. Her. The team. He’s a kind man.” Quinn missed him. As he held Sawyer, he also missed Elijah. He knew his cowboy, if alive, was probably worried sick over them. He privately, for a moment, hoped that the separation convinced Elijah to finally admit his feelings for their female. “We’re all hers, in the end.”
“Excuse me?” Yasmin laughed. “Really?”
“Yes and she’s possessive. Once hers, you stay hers. I fought it for a long time, but she’s hard to fight against, even when she doesn’t know there’s a battle.” Quinn smiled down at her. “I thought I could never love because I had never loved before.” Not like he did her.
“Oh, I knew you were lost the moment you woke up. I assumed you were mates, by what Sombra had told me. How she saved you from Camila.”
“Now we are,” Quinn whispered. “She has four mates now and she’ll have a fifth before the year is up. Elijah is fighting harder than me…well, he’s not even fighting, he’s just running. He’s admittedly being a coward about it. He loved someone once and lost that person. Now he cares again and is scared.”
“Love is scary,” Yasmin agreed softly. “He doesn’t love you?”
“Probably in some ways, the ways I understand. Brotherly, friendly, just as a physical lover, but he and I have never been so devoted to be mates, only family.”
“All love is love, Wolf. Pack, family, lover, friend. Child. It’s all the same love.”
“I know that now,” he murmured, still looking down at Sawyer’s face. “I know that now.”
An hour later, Sombra snarled and Sawyer stirred uncomfortably. Quinn stopped walking and lifted soft earth to make her a bed raised from the bugs of the undergrowth.
“Is she okay?” Yasmin knelt next to Quinn as he laid her down.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know.”
Sombra continued to snarl at Sawyer’s tossing and turning body.
32
Sawyer
Nightmares came at the most inconvenient times, Sawyer realized, as darkness loomed on her. She was too exhausted to wake up.
She was drained and tired, which took her back to the end of a hard assassination. She burned out trying to get out. The guards she hadn’t wanted to kill had chased her out right after she killed their master.
Now she was in front of her own.
“You. Got. Caught.” Axel snarled out every word.
“I’m here, and they don’t know it was me,” she tried to explain.
A hand cracked across her face, hardened by the shield Axel always wore in her company unless she was unconscious. Stumbling, she hit her knees. She still had blood on her hands from the kill.
Blood on her hands…
She closed her eyes as Axel grabbed her hair and pulled her up.
“You gave away who sent the killer. They all know you’re mine! Now I have to play damage control, tell my other allies why I had him killed, or they won’t trust me. Politics, stupid bitch, you need to remember the politics!” He threw her away with her hair and she fell back to the ground, the marble of his home in Rome.
Something brushed against her mind. A feline. She gasped. Midnight was gone. There was no…
Sawyer snapped in lucidity. Sombra. Sombra was waiting for her to get up, to wake and go home. Her warrior Magi was scared in her sleep, and she didn’t understand what evil was hurting her Magi.
Sombra could help her become lucid enough. That was fucking amazing. She had another ally in her fight for her peace of mind.
Sawyer smiled. Axel was still raging. No. Nightmare-Axel, not the real man.
She laughed. Why had she ever feared this man? She had just killed a fucking Druid. What the fuck was Axel compared to that, except a bad fucking memory?
Axel threw out a kick and Sawyer grabbed his ankle. She yanked it hard and brought him to the floor with her. She jumped on top of him and wrapped her hands
around his neck.
“I’ll fight you every night,” she snarled down at him. “But I refuse to be fucking scared of you anymore.”
With her hands around his throat, she pulled up and slammed him into the marble. Over and over. The shield broke and his head cracked open.
“I’ll fight you, then I’m going to wake up and kiss one of the men I love. You can go to hell. One day, you won’t even have power here.”
She pulled herself out of the darkness.
Sawyer woke up with a start and grinned at the confused Quinn and Yasmin beside her. Sombra climbed into her lap.
“It was a nightmare,” she quickly explained to them. “I’m fine. Sombra helped me.”
“Good.” Quinn sighed in relief. “I was scared you might be poisoned or bit by something.”
“Tez wouldn’t have missed that,” Yasmin sternly said to him.
“I still worried,” he mumbled, looking chastised.
“How close are we?” she asked as she stood up. Sombra basically glued herself to Sawyer’s leg, with the intention of never leaving her alone again, even in sleep. She would watch her Magi while she slept now. Protect her.
Sawyer’s heart swelled.
“Only a few more hours, I think,” Yasmin told her. “Can you walk? Need more rest?”
“No, we’re getting back to that fucking camp.” Sawyer was on a mission. Nothing was going to keep her from seeing it through. Her men would be in that camp, dead, or they wouldn’t and would hopefully be alive.
But she needed those answers, not more rest.
“Thank you for carrying me,” she whispered to Quinn, taking his arm as they continued to walk.
“No reason to make you walk the entire trip when I could carry you. I will always help carry you.”
“As long as you accept that I’ll return the favor,” Sawyer reminded him.
“Of course.” He turned and placed his lips to her temple.
Sawyer knew the exact moment they were close to the campsite. She could smell it.
“Oh god,” she said in a muffled tone thanks to the hand she put over her mouth.
“I will collect dog tags and then bury the bodies. They are too old to try and take home.” Quinn was grim. Yasmin gasped when they walked into the camp and saw the destruction.
“You survived this?” she asked, looking at Quinn and Sawyer.
“It was like a horror movie,” Sawyer whispered. She looked up and gagged. The bodies were still in the trees. “Quinn…”
“I’ll get all the dog tags for the families and IMAS. You breathe.”
“I’m going to our section of the camp and…” She was off to look for very specific bodies.
“Of course,” he murmured to her.
She walked through the destroyed campsite, her pulse racing. The world was quiet around her, too quiet for her. She left Quinn to the grim task of the other bodies, her eyes trained on their old tents.
How long ago was that night? It seemed like ages, a lifetime. New York felt like a distant memory. Home felt like a dream that was never real.
She stumbled to the tents and pulled open the flaps. No bodies. There were no bodies in the area. She even searched the bushes and growth nearby, hoping they had not been dragged away.
Some tiny piece of hope began to form in her chest. She didn’t realize how much she had thought they died. She closed her eyes for a moment.
They got out. She repeated the words like a prayer. They got out.
She found their old bags and began to collect them. These were their things. She treasured them. Bags of clothing, snacks, personal items. She was inside the tent Elijah, Zander, and Jasper had been sharing that night when she found it.
Elijah’s sketchbook.
She snatched it quickly. Of all the things, she wasn’t going to let that get lost. She would give it back to him. She held it to her chest. It was the only real personal item any of them had brought here. She wondered if he even noticed its absence if he was alive out there, hoping for Sawyer and Quinn to leave the Amazon.
“Your team was smart to leave,” Yasmin commented. “To run and get out.”
“Yes, they were,” Sawyer agreed softly, keeping the sketchbook to her chest. She felt that little piece of hope for them grow. Were they tucked away in a hospital somewhere? Healthy? Did any of them get hurt? They had been secure when she ran out into the night for Quinn. “Quinn?”
“They are none of the bodies I can find,” he called back to her. “They should be alive.”
She placed a hand over her eyes. Her chest was tight, her shoulders shaking. She didn’t let Yasmin touch her, backing away from the Druid that tried to comfort her.
“I’m fine.” Sawyer turned away, clutching the sketchbook like it was a precious treasure. To her, in that moment, it was. She should have asked Quinn to try to track Elijah with it, but she couldn’t bear to part with it. It seemed too important.
“We can walk back to the village. Seven days, though we can shorten that time by moving faster and walking through the nights,” Quinn spoke as he walked over to her and Yasmin. She could hear the jingle of dog tags. So many. He held one out to her and she took it slowly, terrified. He’d said none of them were her team but…
It was hers.
Sawyer Matthews
IMPO
Her Registration Number. 59045673.
“Oh fuck,” she mumbled. She touched her neck. She wasn’t wearing it anymore. She’d never noticed. “I wonder where the one in my boot went…”
“You didn’t have any when I found you. Either of you.” Yasmin shrugged. “They will be lost forever, it seems.”
“It seems,” Sawyer whispered, pushing the dog tag into her pocket.
“Yasmin, can you bring any bodies out so I can bury them?”
“Of course, Wolf.”
Magic filled the air. Cleaner than Camila’s. Peaceful, but still it felt wild to Sawyer. She understood what Quinn had meant. The magic felt the exact same, with only minute differences based on personality. The same but different.
Then the earth shook.
Bodies were pulled into their graves, forever a part of the Amazon. Only their names would go home.
“I shall take over this area when I return,” Yasmin promised. “I will make a memorial to this place, a symbol that we should never let these horrors happen again.”
“Thank you.” Sawyer and Quinn said it at the exact same time.
“We should get moving. No reason to stay here with the stench. The fight was…” Quinn frowned. “Six days ago?”
“Something like that,” Sawyer confirmed. “The survivors, if they moved back towards the village, could still be on the path.”
“They might have already made it out, but it would be the first place anyone starts their search for us.” Quinn sighed.
They started moving on in silence, leaving behind the horrors of the campsite. Sawyer was glad to see it go. They didn’t bother grabbing tents to use, but Sawyer grabbed their personal bags. Between the three of them, the team would at least get their things back, even if they were a bit ruined.
When the sun began to dip below the horizon, they stopped for rest. Yasmin made a hut of vines for them. Sawyer built a fire. Quinn went out and took down a capybara for a meal with Yasmin’s blessing. Sawyer had the fire going when he was back. He and Yasmin butchered the animal together while Sawyer just sat on an earth spot Quinn had made to be chairs.
Sawyer looked at the sketchbook, fighting her own curiosity. She wanted to keep moving, to get it back to him, but they all needed sleep. They had been running ragged for days. Yasmin and Quinn hadn’t slept since before Camila. They needed to rest.
“He doesn’t have to know,” she whispered to herself, her hand trailing over the cover of the black, leather-bound sketchbook. She tried to convince herself not to, she really did, but her curiosity won.
She opened it slowly, trying to be gentle with the wet pages. She hoped it wasn’t completely r
uined. She didn’t want to see Elijah’s beautiful work ruined. That would be her excuse if he asked if she looked through it. She was checking on it.
She saw Quinn’s face first. Stunning, with his signature and rare smile; his eyes were bright, even in black and grey. It was a little blurry from the water, but Sawyer could still see the skill and time Elijah had put into the image. Sawyer didn’t dare touch it, for fear of ruining it.
The next page was Quinn again. Sculpted back and scars and the perfected toned ass. Sawyer resisted an immature giggle. If she could draw, she would pick similar subject matter.
Nearly the first third of the sketch book was only Quinn, then it changed. She started showing up. Tired. Fighting. Her hair flying while she danced around the ring.
Her over a book with Quinn, smiling at Quinn as he read the text.
Her eyes watered again. Elijah was fucking around, he had to be. He’d made her look beautiful.
The next page was her smiling at something that was obviously funny. The page after that was her and Zander shoving each other in some argument, or maybe they were just roughhousing.
One of her curled up in a recliner in the basement, watching a movie.
The rest of the sketchbook was just her. Her face, her body, posing, doing mundane things, real and imaginary moments. Sleeping, awake. Clothed and nude. He even added her scars to the ones where she was undressed.
Her heart pounded. There were nearly twenty pages empty at the end, but that was all. Everything in the book was a dedication of sorts to her and Quinn. All of it. Nothing for work.
It should have freaked her out, but instead, it just made her miss him. It also made her feel precious and beautiful. She blinked hard several times.
“God. Why am I crying so much?” she growled out, rubbing her eyes after she closed the sketchbook. It was probably the physical stress of the mission making her feel emotionally raw. She knew the reason for it, but she had never cried quite this much, and it was beginning to seriously annoy her.
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 97