Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  More hands hauled him up the concrete wall. They pounded on his back as he coughed and retched. When he managed to open his running eyes, Titus and Jamie were helping Xolani and Darius from the water. They each shook themselves as if unaffected by the impromptu swim and dropped down next to him.

  “You damned lunatic!” Jacob was ranting, his clothing wet from the waist down. He looked pale and furious. “You grabbed me! You tried to drag me down with you! You did it on purpose! You’re just not going to be happy until you manage to kill me, are you? Do you see what I’ve had to deal with all these years?” He glanced from one Jug to the next, beseeching.

  “I didn’t—” Another fit of coughing seized Rhys, and he vomited more water. He shook his head, but he knew it was useless to defend himself when Jacob tried to pin the blame for something on him.

  Darius’s hands—hands capable of snapping a wooden piling like a twig—began feeling carefully up and down Rhys’s body, assessing for injury. “You okay, boy?”

  Xolani’s blunter inquiry overrode his. “Talk to me, Rhys. You all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Rhys shivered, though the heat was making a steamy wrap out of his wet clothing. He turned his face toward Darius’s thigh without thought, trying to block out light and activity and questions until he could gather himself again.

  He thought about that moment of terrifying, seductive peace beckoning him to yield the fight and trembled even harder at how close he’d come to honestly giving up.

  “Please don’t make me do it.” The whispered plea left him involuntarily, heedless of the presence of others.

  After a moment, he felt Darius’s hand on his hair, stroking the uneven hanks back. “Don’t worry about that now. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

  When Rhys finally looked around again, the others had all left them there on the riverbank. They had all gone still, staring at Jacob, who stopped glowering at Rhys long enough to become aware of their regard.

  The tension felt like a suffocating weight pressing Rhys into the ground. He pulled away from Darius’s soothing hand, embarrassed by his frailty next to Darius’s strength.

  “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “Houtman sent you flying when he kicked you.” Xolani’s voice was flat, her mouth tight. “A good ten feet or more.”

  “I don’t understand.” Rhys coughed again. Jacob’s eyes began to gleam, and his mouth curled into a diabolical smile.

  Darius’s hand tightened on Rhys’s shoulder.

  “He’s a Jug.”

  Darius watched Rhys swaying on the landing near Fort Vancouver. Little wonder. With all the kid had been through, Rhys probably hadn’t slept more than a handful of hours combined in the past three nights. Not to mention the fifty-mile march and the nightly struggle that Darius couldn’t let him win. Only the fact that he’d turned green once the boats had been in motion, and the looks of terror he kept giving Houtman since they’d realized he was a Jug, had kept Rhys from falling asleep during the trip downriver.

  His feet practically dragged on the ground, but he still tried to pitch in, attempting three times to heave a supply-laden rucksack out of the boat until Kaleo took it from him.

  “Take a break, cutie. You look ready to fall over. We got this.”

  Rhys flushed, but he made a point of getting out of the way. The same couldn’t be said of Houtman who, for all his new status, wasn’t doing much more than Rhys to help but who kept making pointed remarks about Rhys expecting everyone to wait on him. No one was paying Houtman much attention since his outburst on the waterfront. They could excuse knocking Rhys into the water when the dock began to fall apart as being a reflex response, but his accusations afterward had disgusted everyone. Darius felt a surge of pride in his people that they didn’t mind Rhys not helping when he was obviously on the verge of collapse.

  “I need to check in with Luis, give him our report,” Darius told Xolani as they unloaded their gear from the boats. “Can you get the boy settled in?”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “And just where’s his billet gonna be?”

  “My quarters.” Darius gave a resigned shrug. “Doesn’t make sense to put him anywhere else.”

  Her eyebrow crept higher. “You’re not still thinking of foisting him off on someone else if you can find a taker?”

  He glanced over at Rhys again, in time to see his chin touch his chest and then jerk up again as he nodded off. “I don’t know.” Darius pulled his rucksack out of the boat. “After all I’ve had to do to get him to this point, not sure it’s right not to stick by him until it’s done. Assuming he can stand having me there. If there’s still a way to salvage this fucking mess after what I’ve done to him, maybe we can find it.”

  Xolani tugged hard on her braid, giving him an impatient look. “Bullshit angst isn’t like you, Darius. You don’t wear it well. Yeah, in a prettier time what you’ve been doing would be going over the line, but times sure as fuck aren’t pretty right now.”

  “You think he sees it that way?”

  “I think he’s going to live,” she answered frankly. “I think for his age, as isolated and abused as he’s been, he’s one damned self-possessed kid. But I also think he’s just one more trauma away from cracking if we don’t give him a chance to find his footing. He needs something stable, and handing him off to a stranger isn’t going to do him any favors. He’s tough, but everyone has a breaking point. I think a few days of at least being able to have some privacy for what he has to do and getting to know more of our people can only be a good thing. Besides”—her gaze flicked toward Houtman—“I’m not sure Rhys would be safe in the barracks.”

  “Right.” Darius grimaced, handing her his pack. “Put him in my quarters. Tell him to get some sleep if he can. Put Houtman in the barracks. I think a few weeks of bunking with people who won’t put up with his shit might just adjust his attitude. Let Rhys know I’ll check on him later.”

  Darius was well aware that he’d made everything worse.

  Yesterday, it had seemed essential to ask Xolani to scout for candidates among the other men at the fort who could take over shepherding Rhys through the process until he was a Jug. It would be better for the kid. Rhys couldn’t possibly trust Darius any longer, and it wasn’t like he’d had a lot of interest in Darius to begin with, however strongly he responded when Darius pushed him. Maybe someone who was more his type would be able to help him along more effectively. Darius had thought he would pawn Rhys off on someone new, someone nicer, someone who understood the kid, and go about his business.

  Now he didn’t know what to do. Rhys’s despair at the idea of being available to everyone had been obvious, and his fear of Houtman was palpable. Darius wasn’t sure he could safely let Rhys out of his sight. Either Rhys would kill himself or Houtman would do it for him. Which left it up to Darius.

  Had he done the unforgivable? Or would Rhys understand that Darius just wanted him to live? And when had it begun to matter so much?

  That morning in the dormitory, after the failed operation with the colony, of course. That was when it had started to matter what Rhys thought and felt. Darius had nearly killed the boy on sheer reflex when Rhys’s nightmare-driven scream had jerked Darius out of his sleep only an hour or so after he’d gotten off watch. If he had been just an instant slower to come to his senses, Rhys would have bled to death there on those musty mattresses.

  Rhys should have been petrified once he’d realized how dangerous the man fucking him was.

  Instead, he’d kissed Darius with so much goddamn need.

  Darius wasn’t sure why he’d turned rough in response. Maybe he’d just wanted to avoid the urge to make love to Rhys, or maybe he’d wanted to show Rhys just how dangerous he could be, to convince him that Darius wasn’t anything close to what he wanted. Either way, he hadn’t been prepared for Rhys’s eager response. And he couldn’t have been prepared for just how addictive that response would be.

  Darius might have been able to work things out
if Rhys’s intractable reluctance to consider having sex with anyone else was the only obstacle. But Darius’s possessive streak was back and worse than ever. The closer they’d drawn to base, goaded by the presence of Rhys’s adolescent crush, the more willing Darius had become to pulp the face of anyone who even considered sticking his dick in the boy. Rhys had kept his distance from his onetime friend, but Darius had seen him looking at Gabriel with yearning naked on his face.

  And Gabriel himself had been worse.

  “What have you been doing to Rhys?” he’d demanded furiously after that first night, after Darius had made Rhys scream. Gabriel’s hands had been fisted at his sides, his body tense and ready to launch himself at Darius. He’d had no idea that Darius could pulverize him with a single blow. And that he wanted to. And that challenging Darius wasn’t helping the situation. So before either of them did anything stupid, Darius had told Gabriel everything.

  He wondered if Rhys would thank him for trying to make his friend understand. Or would he hate Darius for exposing what he considered his shame?

  It wasn’t acceptable. Rhys needed to be exposed to other partners for at least another week for his best chance at survival. Darius couldn’t spare him that, no matter how reluctant both of them were.

  So now what the fuck was he supposed to do?

  Darius shook his head at himself and headed across the grounds to the barracks where Luis had set up his office. He didn’t have time to figure all that shit out right this moment. Now he had to check in with Delta Company’s other CO.

  Luis Martinez was Darius’s best friend, for all that Luis had been an officer. They’d fucked occasionally, when neither of them had anything better to do, but they weren’t really compatible. So when the Jugs had been exiled from Colorado Springs and split into companies, he and Luis had divided the responsibility of leading Delta Company. Luis was the natural strategist and administrator while Darius oversaw operations. The partnership had worked well.

  Luis greeted Darius with a smile when Darius entered his office. Sitting on the desk were two glasses of what could only be Titus’s moonshine, so strong Darius could damn near see the distortion of fumes rising from it.

  “So, what’s this I hear about you taking on recruits?” Luis asked when Darius finished reporting on the patrol’s efforts to clear south and west of Portland. Darius knocked back his shot. The alcohol burned pleasantly in his stomach, and he relaxed for the first time since Titus’s motorcycle scouting had tracked the infrared signatures of a suspected pack of revenants to the monastery outside Newberg. “I thought we’d agreed—”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Darius offered him a wry smile. “Xolani’s big-sister switch got hit or something. She would have gutted me if I’d let Cooper die. As for the other one—” Darius’s smiled became a grimace. “There was a chance he’d been infected, too. I couldn’t make the offer to one without making it to them both.”

  “Well, that’s a problem for us.” Luis swirled the liquor in his glass. He was still on his first shot. Darius realized he’d probably given away a lot of his present conflict with how quickly he’d downed his first drink in comparison. “How the hell are we supposed to keep telling our people hands off the civvies now?”

  “These weren’t exactly normal circumstances. We didn’t decide to fuck these guys just to do something new and different, you know?”

  “Yeah, but we had a deal, man. After we took out Charlie Company . . .”

  “I know,” Darius snapped. “Xolani’s starting to think we need to implement Bravo Company’s way of doing things. I’m not really comfortable with that, but we may have to open the door to other exceptions in tightly controlled circumstances. But right now, it’s these recruits I gotta deal with.” He subsided and held his glass out for a refill. “I think I screwed up.”

  Luis topped them both off. “How?”

  “Offering someone no one seems to like a spot on the team, for one. Houtman has been rubbing everyone the wrong way. And Rhys . . . Jesus, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing there. Kid’s got no business anywhere near this life, but the other option was him dying so what the fuck was I supposed to do?” Darius took a burning gulp of the hooch. “He’s been through a lot, and he’s stayed tough, but he’s pushing back on doing what he needs to do to survive. I’m not even sure anymore if it’s that he’s been screwed up by religion or if he’s just too modest or what. If I can’t find a way to get him to play ball, this may have all been for nothing.”

  Luis gave him a level look. “Are either of them going to contribute enough to the unit to make it worth the disruption?”

  Darius fought the urge to glower and made himself look at the situation as objectively as he could, analyzing it with the cold calculus of survival. “Houtman? I doubt it, but that’s a done deal. Rhys? Yeah. I think he will.” Darius gave a firm nod. “He’s untrained, but he’s a survivor. Scrawny, but stubborn as all fuck. He works hard, takes orders well, doesn’t talk back much, and except for having too much pride or morals or whatever to bend over for a bunch of strangers, he’s willing to do what it takes without complaint.”

  “If he takes orders well, make it an order.” Luis gave an offhand shrug. “If one of your people was wounded, would you waffle while he refused to have it treated? Our job isn’t to hold their hands and make sure they’re happy about everything. It’s to make sure they get the mission done and that if we can’t keep them alive, at least they die for a good reason, accomplishing something. Pride or morals or whatever aren’t good enough reasons. His job is to help the unit to the best of his abilities, and if he’s gonna die, it needs to be serving the unit or protecting the civvies. So right now his job is to do what it takes to keep himself from dying because his life ain’t his to throw away. Not anymore, not in our unit.”

  Darius snorted softly, thinking of the way Rhys kept melting the more force he used. How he’d responded that night in the clubhouse bar after Darius had given him to Toby and Joe. How . . . almost content . . . he’d been for a few days afterward. Until they’d found Gabriel.

  “He doesn’t understand the life yet. What our duty is. That’s not the kind of order he’d respond to right now.”

  Luis shrugged again, sipping his drink. “Then make it the kind he will.”

  Darius scowled. That was exactly where all this had gone to shit in the first place.

  Rhys was sound asleep when Darius returned to his quarters. The boy’s hair was still damp and his lips blue from the shower. In the fading daylight coming through the window, Darius could see the bruises he’d left on Rhys’s wrists and arms over the last few nights.

  Darius was never more grateful that he’d chosen to take advantage of being co-commander and claimed one of the private units rather than staying in the barracks. Here, Rhys could indulge that stubborn modesty of his, at least when he was with Darius. Maybe he’d even find the privacy sufficient to give it up without a struggle. He looked peaceful and agonizingly young curled up in Darius’s bed. In another world, the old world, he’d be getting ready to go off to college or something, rather than waiting to find out if he was going to die. In that world, if he fucked strangers, he would do it willingly, chasing after adventure and new experiences with all the enthusiasm of his youth.

  Darius wanted to join him in bed, to be tender and seduce him sweetly. God help him, he wanted to make love to the boy, and he could never do that. He’d lost the right. It was idiotic—a man his age getting hung up on a kid so young. Rhys would never be his lover, even if Darius hadn’t forced himself on him the past few nights. In a matter of weeks, possibly days, Rhys would be a Jug or he’d be dead. Either way, he wouldn’t need Darius any longer.

  Annoyed with his own sentimentality, Darius decided to let Rhys have a few more minutes of bunk time while he showered and changed out of his fatigues, which smelled musty after getting soaked in the river. The shower was a glorious treat, one he hadn’t experienced since they’d left the monastery. After so
many years of living rough, the cold water had ceased to be a shock. At least this time it took the edge off his lust while he considered how he would fix the damage the last few days had done to his cease-fire with Rhys.

  When he emerged, toweling water from his loose hair, Rhys’s eyes were open, and he was staring at the bathroom door warily.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you.” Darius scrubbed the towel across his chest before wrapping it around his hips. He wished he could get a handle on what was happening behind those somber eyes. Rhys had seemed so open and transparent that first night in the monastery, but now his gaze was shadowed and cautious. Darius could almost hate himself for destroying that innocence.

  “Are you going to send me to someone else?”

  Darius approached the bed carefully and sat down on the edge. His wet hair clung to the skin between his shoulder blades, itching slightly.

  “After what I’ve done to you these past few days, you might find it easier that way.” A muscle in his jaw twitched, but Darius made himself meet Rhys’s eyes frankly. “I won’t hold it against you if you can’t stand me, but I won’t apologize, Rhys. Not even for that. I told you from the start, I don’t flinch. I can’t, not if I wanna get by and keep my people alive in this world. Sometimes that means doing some ugly things, things that make me a fucking shitty person but that get the job done. My only other choice was risking you dying, and I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t gonna make one of my men force you, so that left me. We all do what we have to do.”

  “You were ready to kill me that first day at the monastery. Or let me die. You don’t care if I live. You never have!”

  “Is that what you think, boy?”

  Those hazel eyes were hot and dry. Except for the first time Darius had forced him, Rhys still shed his tears in the dark of night when he thought no one could see or hear.