The Pursuit (The Permutation Archives Book 2)

by Kindra Sowder

  “Another nightmare?” he asked as he started at me within the darkness. After the shower we had gone straight to bed without worrying about any kind of bed clothing at all. There was no need for that anymore because this was as intimate as you could possibly get.

  I nodded, knowing he couldn’t really see it. The only light in the room was filtering from underneath the door leading out into the hall, barely penetrating the darkness that surrounded us.

  “Uh huh,” I gasped.

  His hand rubbed my bare back as he leaned down to kiss my shoulder, his warm breath flowing over my skin like a blanket. “I’m sorry.”

  I threw the sheet off of me and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, the soles of my feet tingling as they touched the cold floor. “It’s okay. I’m alright.” I rubbed my hand over my face, the sweat beginning to sting my eyes as it ran down my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut hoping to stop the pain as my eyes began to water, but it wasn’t just from the pain. It was also because of my breaking heart and the fact that my mind seemed to be following close behind. “God, when will this be over?”

  Ryder adjusted himself, placing both legs on either side of me and enveloping me in his arms. The warmth seeped from within his bones and into my own, loosening my tense muscles as the anxiety from the nightmare was still at its peak. My heart pounded, and my breaths came, in short, labored gasps, but they were beginning to slow as he comforted me. His fingers reached up and pulled some of my damp hair away from my neck, placing a soft kiss on my shoulder. I let my head fall forward and gripped his forearms as the pounding ringing in my ears began to slow. The adrenaline began to fade, resulting in shaking hands and a rattling body that I couldn’t do anything to stop.

  The dreams were a result of the events that had transpired since our abduction, and I knew that, but also knew there wasn’t a way to stop them. Not until I dealt with the issues that arose inside of my shattered mind because of it. Cato’s ever growing presence was a part of that issue, but what the Hell could I do?

  “I’ve got you. You’re okay now,” Ryder whispered as he softly kissed the bare skin of my shoulder again, rocking me slightly. His breath was hot and ragged, his heart beating wildly against my back as if he was reacting to my fear as well. Tears welled in my eyes as we sat there for I had no idea how long, just waiting for the terror and the sorrow to fade, but it wouldn’t. Not anytime soon.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” his voice came from within the darkness, fatigue threatening to pull me under as the adrenaline running through my veins subsided.

  A breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding caused my lungs to burn as I forced it out of my chest with an answer. “Do you really want to know?” And I meant the question. Did he honestly want to know what was happening inside of my skull that, half the time, I didn’t even want any part of? Did he want to know how truly broken I was, if broken was the word for what I was. A part of me already knew the answer.

  “I do. That’s only if you’re willing to share.”

  With a deep breath, I decided that telling him about the dreams or what I felt wouldn’t do any harm. If anything, he was just as beaten and bruised as I was, if not more because of his servitude to King and his army long before I came along. Long before I changed everything not just in the world itself, but his as well.

  “I guess I should start from the beginning, huh?” I asked, turning my head back only slightly to see him. The darkness had swallowed him whole, only the feel of him against me the proof that he was indeed there at all.

  “I won’t push you to tell me more than you’re ready to say. Start wherever you want and take your time. We’re in no hurry. We have the rest of our lives to learn about each other.”

  “And you’re going to share more when exactly?” I chucked as I leaned into his bare chest, nothing separating us. Not anymore.

  “I tell you what,” he replied as he shifted around me, tightening his arms, “how about you share something, and then I share something. And we keep going till we can’t stay awake any longer. Sound like a deal?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Deal. Though, I’m already pretty damn tired so it won’t take long.”

  “That’s alright. Like I said, we have the rest of our lives.”

  “However long that may be,” I sighed.

  Ryder leaned to the side and pulled me down to lie on the bed against him, pulling me in even closer as my fingers dug into the flesh of his arm. The sheets had cooled, damp from perspiration that had congealed as we sat there. My lids felt like they were being held down my lead weights already, but I wanted to know more. Needed to find out more about the man I had already shared so much of myself with. The man who had saved me from King’s clutches. The man who would ride into war with me no matter what. And would never leave me behind. I cleared my throat and started the exchange, not sure how much I’d be able to admit to before sleep pulled me down into its depths.

  “When I was little my father passed away. My mother had always told me that it was an accident of some kind, but never really went into much detail about it until I had seen the cause of it in a dream.”

  “The one in the forest?” Ryder asked, his breathing loud in my ear.

  “One and the same.” I shifted in his arms, turning toward him and placing a peck on his lips. “Your turn.”

  He nuzzled into my neck, and I felt him smile, his lips moving against my skin. “Looks like it is.” Silence overwhelmed us for a moment as he thought about what to say, the grin turning into a frown against my flesh. “I didn’t just lose my parents and an older brother. I had a little brother before I was enlisted. We were both in the system.”

  Surprise made my eyebrows rise and I leaned back in an attempt to see his face, but the darkness had swallowed him whole, leaving me blind to his facial expression. But the feeling of grief in the air settled around us, putting an uncomfortable pressure on my chest that I recognized all too well.

  “Why didn’t you mention him before now?” I couldn’t keep the irritation and the anger out of my voice then.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just,” he paused, “I just can’t talk about it, but I can’t hold it in anymore. I feel this overwhelming need to tell you everything about me, even if you may not like it.”

  “What happened to him?” I genuinely wanted to know. The revelation of a sibling wasn’t something I could pass up, no matter how painful the memory may be for him. I was in love with a man I shockingly knew very little about, and that needed to change. Hence, this deal of an exchange of information that I had agreed to.

  “There’s something they don’t tell you when you enlist, but as far as I know, it wasn’t always in effect. They want to see that you will show no mercy, especially if the face of the enemy is one that you love. After your training they will act like your family can visit you, but they have ulterior motives.”

  I could see where this was headed, but I remained silent so he could finish, taking in the information with a renewed horror at the depths of King’s depravity. I squeezed my eyes shut as tears burned at the edges, threatening to spill over even before he confirmed my suspicions. A part of me wanted to take the deal back and tell him he didn’t have to tell me any more, but I was so starved for information that I wanted to cling to anything I could get, no matter how selfish it was. Or how much it could hurt me in the process. He took a deep breath, his chest expanding against me, and blew it out in a rush of hot air. His breath was still minty from the toothpaste we had both used before falling into bed and passing out from sheer exhaustion.

  “I had just finished my training the week before, and they told me that my little brother could visit me. That it was one thing allowed to me since I would be leaving on assignment the next week.” He paused, swallowing hard and I knew he was swallowing back sobs as the tension built in his muscles. “When they brought me i
nto the visitation room I wasn’t sure what to expect and, when I saw him sitting there, I was excited at first. That was until they set me down across from him and presented a case to me.”

  “What was inside it?” I pushed, knowing full well what it was. I was certain I had seen a similar case.

  Ryder cleared his throat and swallowed again. “A gun. They told me that, to be a part of King’s Army, I needed to be able to end the lives of those I loved without issue because the enemy wore many faces. Even loved ones.”

  A sharp intake of breath filled my lungs with a gasp. “Oh God.” I couldn’t stop the words from leaving my lips in that instant. Yes, I knew exactly what had transpired, and I knew exactly what he’d think I thought of him. He couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Yes, I was angry and terrified and shocked, but I felt sorrow too.

  “I didn’t want to, but because of my skill level, they wanted me badly enough to force it on me. I’ve been a part of the regime ever since, and I have never stopped thinking about that day. Or my little brother. I can’t get him out of my head. Ever.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Leo. His name was Leo.” I heard him sniff, and he raised his arm, but I couldn’t tell if it was to wipe away tears or rub his face. Possibly both, but it was too dark to tell. I could only feel his trembling body against me as he silently sobbed. Then, when he began to pull away from me, I was flooded with confusion.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him, attempting to keep him close to me by gripping his forearms tightly. He was in pain, and I didn’t want him to leave. I only felt an overwhelming need to comfort him after this revelation.

  “You sure you want me near you? I mean, child killer and all?” He sat up and had his back to me, his head hung down low in the little light I could see him in.

  I sat up and ran my hand up his back, reaching it around so I was hugging him against me with my hand on his chest. He froze, not sure what to do. He was a broken man who had been forced to slaughter his little brother, and for some reason, he thought I would hate him. We had all done things that would scar us for the rest of our lives. If anything, I felt a deeper connection to him. We both had the fact that we were killers hanging over our heads and darkening our hearts. As of that moment, I couldn’t have loved him anymore if I had tried no matter how much the information overwhelmed me.

  “We’ve both hurt people, Ryder. I’d be a hypocrite if I hated you for it,” I pointed out as I hugged up against him, placing a soft kiss on the nape of his neck. His breath came out in a whoosh, and he laughed awkwardly.

  “It’s your turn.”

  “It would seem it is,” I chuckled in return. I knew the laughter was to mask the sorrow filling his chest. I knew it because the same pain was sitting on mine like an elephant had taken a seat on my ribcage. “Hmmm.” I thought about what I would tell him next, knowing nothing could make him feel any better about what had happened with his little brother Leo, but I wanted to shoot for just a glimpse into happiness somehow. I rested my head on his shoulder and trailed my fingers along his naked spine, twirling my fingers in his dark hair. He sighed, and I felt his cheek come to rest on mine as we stayed there in limbo, hanging in the darkness with no sign of light to speak of. Then my mother’s words about Ryder’s past popped into my head. Was this what she had been talking about in the forest?

  “Can’t think of anything else?” he asked me as he sniffed again. “There has to be something.”

  “No, it’s not that. My mother said something to me in the forest after we had left the compound and now I’m wondering if this is what she was talking about,” I explained.

  He turned slightly, and I lifted my head and looked him in the eyes, or what I could see of them anyways. “What do you mean? What did she say?”

  I sighed in frustration, and my body collapsed against his back.

  “She told me that you had a darker past than I knew about,” I admitted. “While she was right, she made it seem like I shouldn’t trust you because of that. But it’s not like we don’t all have some darkness within us now, whether we wanted it to be there or not. But what does bother me is that you’d think I’d hate you.” Now, the overwhelming feeling of learning way too much information in one sitting was beginning to bear down on me, making my chest tight and my mind race with it all.

  I pulled away from him and slid off of the bed, moving to the cabinet that held clean clothes, fiddling around inside of it until I pulled out a shirt and a pair of pants and slipped them over my bare flesh as best as I could. Inside of my mind, the new information came in a rush of images, and I had zero idea as to why this was happening so suddenly. Was it my mental state that was causing me to go from one extreme to another? Pure calm to utter psychological agony within mere seconds. That was the only way I knew to describe it and all of a sudden the room was too small. And he was too close. Everything was too close.

  “Mila? What is it? Where are you going?” His voice was panicked as he watched my hurried and frenzied movements. He stood and took a step toward me. “Is it me? Is it what I did?”

  I put both hands out and stopped him from coming any closer. “Please, don’t come any closer. I can’t breathe. My mind is going in a million different directions at once.”

  “So, it is me.” It was a statement, not a question.

  I shook my head and backed away from him, knowing that if I said I needed the space he wouldn’t follow me. “It’s not you. I can promise you that. I’m,” I paused, “overwhelmed. Just please, give me a minute. Everything’s too close and I just…I just can’t.” My back met the door, the handle jabbing me in the back painfully. I reached my hand behind me and turned it, feeling only slight relief when I knew that more open space was just beyond this door.

  “Mila. Don’t leave me. I couldn’t stand it if you left me.”

  “I promise that’s not what this is. I just need. Oh God, I don’t even know what I need.” With those words, I opened the door and slid out, the light blinding me so suddenly I had to blink a few times before I even realized the lights had been dimmed for the night after everyone had reported to their sleeping quarters. I only made it one step away from the door before my chest constricted so tightly I fell to my knees, my mind a tangled mess of thoughts and images that I couldn’t shake free. I could see a child. A smaller version of Ryder sitting in a room just like so many within the compound, Ryder sitting across from him as a soldier in all black and faceless sliding a silver case between them. I shook my head again, pressing the heels of my palm against my eyes in an attempt to stop it.

  I saw my father, and I saw the gun pointed between his eyes. I saw the explosion as King pulled the trigger, and I saw my father crumple at his feet. I heard Cato’s voice in my head, but couldn’t make out the words against the jumbled mess of my insides. The extreme and swift change in what I was feeling and what ran through me hinted at the fact that something was happening deep inside of me that I couldn’t put my finger on. I felt dread, anxiety, terror, and sorrow all rolled into one and there was only one way for them to leave my body.

  My voice came out in a weak, strangled cry as tears left my eyes in waterfalls and I could see every death in my head with perfect clarity. Even the death of Ryder’s brother that I hadn’t actually laid my eyes on. My imagination was just too vivid. And I had seen way too much. I dropped to my knees and curled into myself right there on the clean white linoleum, my arms crossed over my belly as if I was trying to hold myself together. And, granted, this wasn’t the most private place to have a complete breakdown, but where else was there to go? Nowhere. There was nowhere else to go. The answer was that simple. And I was completely broken, depending on myself to hold me together, but I couldn’t do it.

  I thought I heard my name being said, muffled by my cries, but then another sound. The click of the door to our shared room opening behind me and then t
he slapping of bare feet on the slick floor. Before I could turn around I felt him kneel down behind me and wrap his arms around my body, his warm chest against my back and heartbeat radiating through my body in a soothing cadence. Sitting there with the man I loved, feeling his heart beat against my back, was when I shattered, leaving the old version of myself behind.

  Chapter

  EIGHTEEN

  When Ryder was finally able to drag me back to the bed and placed the blanket over my body, I drifted off to sleep quickly and slept as hard as a rock. I didn’t wake up until Ryder sat back down on the bed with a tray of food and placed his hand on my leg underneath the blankets.

  “Hey,” he whispered, watching me as I turned onto my back from my side to blink at him. “You need to eat. They had pretty much anything you can think of, and I wasn’t sure what to get you, so I just got you a little of everything.” He smiled weakly and made a motion toward the tray with his hand, picking up a bright red strawberry and popping it into his mouth.

  My eyes were puffy, and I could barely open them, but I could see him through slits, and that was enough. I didn’t want anyone else to see me this way, but we’d be leaving today, and I would have to speak eventually to someone. At least be a human being instead of the broken thing I was now. I sat up, and he slid the tray over to me, watching my movements carefully just in case I broke down again.