“I met them in Montana,” Rhys said, and Darius could see the effort he was making to keep his voice steady. His cheeks were still slightly pink, probably from embarrassment over the way he’d panicked when he’d recognized Zach. “My family never knew that people were gathering in Colorado Springs. We’d been staying in a bunker before then, and we had run out of supplies. My father used himself as bait to lure some revenants away from me, my mom, and my sister, and we never saw him again. My mom didn’t know where else to go, so when Father Maurice told us about the monastery he wanted to reach, we went with them. We were there for seven years until a revenant attack killed everyone except me and Jacob.” Rhys rubbed the back of his neck. “They never mentioned you.”
A hiss escaped Zach’s mask, sounding like a bitter laugh. “I’m not surprised. What happened to Jacob?”
Rhys hesitated, and after a moment, Xolani spoke up, her voice hard. “We infected him with the Alpha strain. He’d been exposed to revenants, both he and Rhys, and it was the only way we could try to prevent them from getting the Rot or becoming revs themselves.”
“Infected? You mean, the way you were infected? By— With the Jugs—” Zach spluttered into the speaker of his hood. “He— Jacob agreed to that?”
“Jacob was more than willing to do whatever it took to live,” Rhys replied, his mouth tight. “Especially since it meant he’d become a Jug. He liked the idea of being superhuman. A lot.”
Zach nodded. “He always was ambitious.”
“He wasn’t ambitious, he was evil.” Rhys’s face tightened, his eyes growing flinty. “He and your father tortured me for seven years. I have trouble moving two of the fingers on my left hand. Xolani thinks it’s nerve damage from the way Father Maurice used to beat my palms and knuckles with his cane. They nearly starved me to death, withholding my rations every time they decided I needed punishment. We still don’t know how much organ damage I suffered from that. And Jacob used to hold me down while Father Maurice hacked off all my hair.”
He spat out the catalog of abuses and their lasting consequences flatly, delivering his words like blows. Zach sank into himself, hunching over as the litany continued.
“That doesn’t even include forcing me to pray on my knees on a hard stone floor three times a day, or every time I was told I was damned, that the plague had been retribution against me and my ‘kind.’”
By the time he was finished, Zach’s shoulders were up by his ears, his arms wrapped around himself. “They punished you in my place,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
Rhys continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Once Father Maurice was dead, Jacob lost all his authority. I didn’t realize until too late that someone would finally believe me if I told them how awful he could be. Three people are dead because I didn’t speak up.” Darius opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again. This wasn’t the time. “Two of those people were my good friends, and the other one was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when Jacob decided to use other survivors to keep torturing me.”
They could hear Zach whispering inside his suit, though it took Darius a moment to pick up the words.
“God forgive them. Please, God, forgive them. And help me to live my life with more wisdom than they ever showed. Help me always remember the love and mercy of Your Son, Jesus Christ, and never lose my way as they did. Amen.”
The poor bastard was praying. Honestly fucking praying.
“I’m so very, very sorry,” Zach said again when he’d finally lifted his head. “My first impulse is to try to defend myself, to reassure you that I’m not like them. But that’s self-serving, and I don’t think it’s what you need to hear from me right now.” His breath hissed through the mask again as he inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I saw my father becoming more reactionary and fundamentalist in the years before the pandemic, but I didn’t know how to stop it. Maybe if I’d succeeded, you wouldn’t have gone through that.” He sighed. “I take it from what Xolani said that you killed Jacob?”
“We did.” Rhys’s tight smile was grim.
Zach nodded. “I . . . understand. You did what you needed to do to protect yourselves and others.”
Emotions played on Rhys’s face as he struggled to find something to say. It was a difficulty shared by all of them. Houtman had torn a hole in their company, not only by taking Kaleo from them but by reminding them—as Charlie Company had done years before—how dangerous they were, how easily the Alpha strain could be misused.
“I don’t blame you for what Jacob did,” Rhys finally managed. His tone was rough, as though he had to force the words out. “I’m sorry for the way I reacted earlier. Seeing you . . . it was like seeing a nightmare come back to life.”
Darius grimaced at the literal truth of that statement. The nightmares had started after Rhys had been forced to kill his friend Gabriel, whom Houtman had infected with the Rot. It took a year before the dreams had finally become rare, intermittent occurrences. He had a feeling they’d be dealing with a few more such occurrences in the nights to come.
“I understand.” Zach stood slowly, as if afraid they might set on him if he made any sudden movements. “All right. Getting this back on track . . . I still need to get the blood samples I was told to collect, but then I’ll get out of your hair for the rest of the day. As I said before, please give some thought to staying in the room with the animals for a few days or nights, long enough for us to be sure they’ve had plenty of exposure to you.”
“All right.” Rhys rose and crossed to the small eating nook, rolling up his sleeve. “Can I ask why there aren’t, I don’t know, doctors or scientists coming to talk to me?”
“Honestly?” The hunch of Zach’s shoulders indicated embarrassment. “They thought it was too dangerous. We have so few researchers and physicians. Most of them died in the pandemic. Until we know whether or not you’re shedding virus, they feel it best to minimize the number of people who have contact with you.”
Rhys’s mouth twisted. “What, so you’re the guy who drew the short straw?”
Zach shook his head, wrapping a tourniquet around Rhys’s bicep. “I volunteered.”
“Why?”
“Because this is important.” He fell silent as he carefully slid the needle into Rhys’s vein and began filling a handful of vials. “I couldn’t let fear hold me back from helping.”
Darius ducked his head to cover his smile. The man sounded like Rhys, always the first to volunteer to put himself on the line. If Zach was telling the truth about having no other agenda, Rhys might very well have met a kindred spirit.
That thought ached more than it had any business doing. Rhys should have friends among the uninfected population. He was with Delta Company because they didn’t know if he was safe around the civvies. But if it turned out he was, having a home here in the Clean Zone would make a hell of a lot more sense than packing it up and moving with the Jugs every few years, living in dusty, falling-down places that had been abandoned for over a decade. It was what the Jugs had to do until they exterminated all the revs and rounded up the uninfected civvies, but that didn’t need to be Rhys’s life.
“Thank you again,” Zach said after he’d put a pressure bandage on Rhys’s arm and tucked the vials away in a carefully locked and insulated case. “I’ll be working in a lab we set up in the quarantine unit next door. There’ll be a guard posted outside your enclosure to act as a runner, so if you need anything, or if you want to send word to the rest of your companions, notify them and it’ll be handled. You also have free passage along the causeway to the intake facility, as long as you stay away from the other refugees and don’t try to pass the checkpoint into the Clean Zone.”
As he spoke, he made his way toward the door, then paused, his gloved hand gripping the lever. “Rhys, I just want to apologize again. For my father and brother. I hope . . . I hope as we work together that maybe I can help heal some of those wounds.”
“Thank you.” Rhys looked down at his b
andaged arm, his eyes glassy, and Darius rose to go to him. He stroked the back of his boy’s neck, and Rhys shuddered at the touch. He was rigid under Darius’s hand, muscles twitching and jumping beneath taut skin. It felt like touching him had in the early days, when Rhys hadn’t wanted it—or at least hadn’t wanted to want it.
Darius started to let his hand fall away, but then Rhys’s came up and covered his, holding it in place. They both watched Zach hesitate, as if he felt like he ought to say more, then he turned and slipped out the door.
“I can’t really hate him, can I?” Rhys muttered when the door had closed. Xolani, Titus, Joe, and Toby all busied themselves with other things, giving them the illusion of privacy. Rhys leaned into Darius’s touch. He wrapped an arm around Darius’s thighs and hid his face in Darius’s midriff.
He stroked Rhys’s sandy hair, which fell between his shoulders. He’d taken to pulling it back at his nape the way Darius did. The choice not to cut it was one of the many small fuck you’s he sent to the ghosts of Jacob and his father.
“You can hate whoever you want, boy. You think you have reason not to trust him, we’ll all back you, no questions asked.”
“I don’t. Not really.” Rhys sighed. “And if I do, I’ll be doing the same thing to him that Schuyler has been doing to me, blaming me for Kaleo’s death.”
“Maybe you need to stop blaming yourself before you expect her to.” Darius squatted to face him eye to eye. “Don’t think I didn’t hear what you said to him about that. I ain’t gonna tell you it’s not your fault, ’cause you already know that. It’s gettin’ to be way past time you started believing it, though.”
Rhys stared at him a moment, and then leaned in, clasping Darius’s face with both hands and kissing him hard. Darius let him take the lead. Sometimes it felt like his ribs would crack with the size of the emotion Rhys stirred up in his chest. He wouldn’t call it love any more than he could say he loved oxygen or water. Rhys was necessary. Essential. Love was too trite a word to apply to it.
Rhys pushed Darius to the floor, ripping at his belt with one hand while delving in his pocket for the lube with the other. With the rest of the squad only feet away, it was like it had been two years ago when Rhys had first traveled with them, though Rhys had never been so uninhibited then. In a flurry of frantic movements, Rhys shucked his own pants, slicked up Darius’s cock, and mounted him. He wailed softly as he sank down on Darius, his whole body tense and trembling as he forced himself to take it faster than his muscles could adjust. Darius just groaned and lay still, except for his hands, which he used to stroke the quivering muscles of Rhys’s thighs.
“Darius, I—” His voice broke, his breath hitching, as he lifted himself and slid down again.
“It’s okay, boy. You take what you need. Do it. Let me see you.”
Rhys did. He rode Darius hard and fast, rising and falling, sweat rolling down his temples and the pale chest bared by his open shirt. Darius pushed it off his shoulders, wanting to see all of Rhys’s lean, tightly toned beauty. If he was once infatuated with the skinny, fragile innocent Rhys had been, Darius damn near worshipped the strong, tall man he’d become. His hands touched every inch of skin he could, knowing Rhys was all his.
Rhys reached down, grasping his own dick and jacking himself, his moans getting louder with every stroke. He was tight around Darius’s prick, tight and so damn hot that Darius had to grit his teeth to keep from grabbing Rhys’s hips and hammering up into him. But he wouldn’t do anything to change what Rhys was doing. It was glorious to see him so open and unashamed.
Rhys cried out sharply, and scalding, slick streams splattered Darius’s belly where Rhys had pushed his shirt up out of the way. When it was over, Rhys fell forward, pressing himself flat against Darius, smearing the mess between them as he lay there, panting and shaking.
“Feel better?” Darius asked, smiling.
There was a pause, and Darius could imagine the blush heating Rhys’s cheeks, even if he couldn’t see it. “Sorry. I—”
“Don’t be sorry. I’ll always give you what you need, the way you always give it to me.”
Rhys’s mouth tightened. “Always.” But he didn’t say anything else or explain the grimace. He was silent a long moment, and then, “I’m going to have to stay in that damn room by myself, aren’t I?”
Darius sighed heavily, caressing his sweaty back. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You don’t want to be here, say the word and we’ll go. But if you’re serious about doing this, if you mean it when you say you want to help them understand the plague and find a way to stop it if you can, then . . .” He drew a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. “Yeah, you’re gonna need to do things their way for a while. Otherwise, we might as well go home.”
“I sleep alone all the time when you’re out on patrol. Weeks. Sometimes even months. Why is this different?”
“It just is.” Darius rolled them abruptly, sliding out of Rhys’s ass as they went, then pinned Rhys to the floor. “But before you go, I’m not done with you, boy. Turn over.”
Rhys scrambled to his hands and knees eagerly, and Darius didn’t hesitate to sink into that shining pink hole gaping at him. His cock was still stiff, his balls drawn up and ready to boil over, to breed his boy so deep and hard Rhys would be able to taste it.
His hips slammed into Rhys’s flanks with a sweat-damp smack, as he admired Rhys’s back and the crisscrossing stripes of Darius’s handiwork with the switch. The worst scab had cracked open, crimson beads forming along its seam, and Darius bent forward to capture them on his tongue, leaving a rusty streak on Rhys’s fair skin. The metallic taste of blood awoke something in Darius, a primal thing that came to life in sex and combat. It was only too happy to hurt Rhys, to make him cry and beg and bleed. It had taken a while, but Darius had finally gotten comfortable letting go once he understood that Rhys wanted it.
Like he wanted it now.
Darius let that instinct run free. He gripped Rhys’s hips and pounded into him, driving him forward with each thrust. When Rhys collapsed, pushed so far forward he couldn’t keep his knees under him, Darius pulled out, hauled him back up, and shoved in again.
“Oh, no, you don’t. Not going anywhere,” he snarled, fucking Rhys harder.
They migrated a few inches each time they repeated the process, until Rhys’s chest lay along one of the bench seats at the edge of the room and there was nowhere else for him to go. That was when he began begging, and it was sweet music to Darius’s ears.
“God . . . Oh fuck, Darius! Too much. Too much. Can’t take anymore. Need you to come. Need you. Please!”
The thing in him howled for satisfaction, and Darius gave into it, driving into Rhys one last time and pumping thick, hot pulses of seed deep into his guts. Claiming him. Making Rhys his all over again, like he’d done in that monastery two years ago and hundreds of times since.
Rhys knelt with his chest on the bench, panting desperate breaths, when the frenzy within Darius curled up for a nap and tenderness returned. He pressed close and kissed those heaving shoulders, the perspiration-beaded spine, the knob at the back of his neck. He withdrew carefully, knowing Rhys would be sensitive, and pivoted, seating himself bare-assed on the floor and pulling Rhys into his lap. Rhys flicked a self-conscious glance across the room, where the rest of their companions were casually ignoring them, but he was obviously too fucked-out to tense up.
“You okay?” Darius whispered, nuzzling Rhys’s temple. He smelled like sweat and cum and blood, and it was enough to stir another tight spasm of lust in Darius’s balls, but Darius pushed it down.
“Yeah.” Rhys opened his eyes to give Darius a dreamy smile, high on something more than sex, something Darius didn’t understand even though he’d seen it many times before. It looked gorgeous on Rhys. Then he closed his eyes again and hid his face in Darius’s neck.
“Don’t fall asleep yet, boy,” Darius chuckled. “You should shower and make sure your back’s not bleedi
ng before you go into that room.”
“Mmm, wanna shower with me? Hot water,” he cajoled in a singsong tone. “When’s the next time we’re going to get a chance to do that?”
Darius pretended to consider for a moment, then surged to his feet with Rhys in his arms. Rhys might have grown taller than Darius, and he might have put on enough muscle to make Xolani gloat, but Darius was still a Jug.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said and carried Rhys down the hall.
“Well, it’s been three weeks, and Gilligan, Mary Ann, Ginger, and the Professor over there still don’t have any traces of Bane in their blood,” Zach announced once he shut the door of the bedroom/exam room behind Rhys, nodding at the test animals in their cages. “And even better news: neither do you.”
“Really?” Rhys felt his heart lurch, lost somewhere between elation and dread. Now he wished he’d asked to stay out in the common room with Darius. “What does that mean?”
“First things first. The others are at the intake center right now, I know, but does Darius have any open wounds that you know of?”
Rhys shook his head. “No, none of them do. We’ve been sitting here cooling our heels for weeks. What could they possibly be doing to injure themselves?”
“Good point.” Zach stripped off his gloves, then lifted his hands to the fastenings at the neck of his suit. With a twist and a hiss, the seal was broken, and he pulled the hood from his head.
Zach was more handsome than his brother, who Rhys could grudgingly admit had been a good-looking man. Zach’s eyes had a kind, eager sparkle, though, something that Jacob’s never had in all the years Rhys had lived with him. Zach’s rich brown hair was dark with sweat and clung to his temples, and he took a long, deep breath once the hood was gone.
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