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It struck him that the sadist could don surgical scrubs and walk into an operating theatre without anyone questioning him. He wore the air of a man confident in whatever field he chose, and after he’d saved Merrick’s life, it was evident his path in life might have been far different.

“All packed up and ready to head home. We’ve been away from the gremlins for too long.” Jasper walked over to the bed, studying the monitors with a quiet grunt of approval before taking a seat. “Now that the bodies are buried and the community is no more, our work here is done. We confiscated all their tech equipment, and their funds will be used to help the victims acclimatize into civilization.”

“How many?” The gravel in Merrick’s voice surprised him.

“Too many. The elders had already started purging numbers.” Looking tired, the kind of tired that burrowed into a soul, Jasper shook his head. “Thirty-three women alive—including Tamsyn. Twenty-six girls under the age of twelve, and fifteen young boys already being indoctrinated into the community way of life.”

“Christ.” At the mention of Tamsyn’s name, Merrick glanced toward the doorway, hoping she’d appear. “The dead?”

Jasper laughed, but it was humorless. “By the time the team breached the hideaway, there were over thirty women already dead. Executed. The opposing mercs were short-handed with six men, and the community men were wiped out efficiently. The death toll stands at sixty-six, but we found the chasm where Tamsyn said the elders disposed of the other bodies.”

Did he dare ask? “And?”

Pale blue eyes shuttered. “We’re still counting the bodies. Some are decades old, little more than skeletal remains. Some won’t ever be found if the trail of bones leading through the surrounding area is any indication; the wildlife have been eating well for a long time up there. Early estimations are in the two to three hundred mark.”

As a man who loved women in general, it was a nasty strike to the heart.

As the man who loved beyond measure a woman who, if not for her courage and resilience, may very well have ended up as one of thosetwo or three hundredmurder victims, it was a fist to the sternum, a reminder of how close she’d come to dying alone and unloved as a statistic in the community’s books.

Nothing more than a product used, abused, and discarded once they broke her.

“What’s going to happen to them?”

“I don’t know. Atticus called in assistance, someone high up the totem pole in Denver. They’re going to identify who they can, but the majority will be community born and raised with no identification. Individual cremations, maybe? I’m not sure how anyone deals with a mass gravesite that extensive.”

“Does Tamsyn know—” Merrick cut himself off.

“That the people she grew up around are mostly dead, or that you killed her father?”

Ouch, that was blunt. Before Merrick could respond, Jasper lifted a shoulder. “The answer is yes, to both. Fordham’s been taking care of her since…” He gestured to Merrick’s wound. “She comes every day to visit you, spends more time than she should sitting in this chair waiting for you to wake up lucid, and hasn’t spoken a word to anyone in a week.”

Oh hell. While he’d been submerged in drugged darkness, his little owl had been left to flounder in darkness of her own. How much damage had been done in the last week, how many steps back had she taken? Was she having nightmares, flashbacks, all the horrible fucking memories they’d worked so hard to stop?

Struggling to sit up, Merrick grunted in pain as fire ripped across his abdomen.

“Oh, sit still, you idiot. A surgeon spent eight hours of his life trying to save yours and you’ll undo all his hard work if you carry on.” Jasper laid his hand on Merrick’s tense arm. “She’s outside, waiting to come in. I asked her to give me a few minutes to talk to you in private. Figured we won’t be seeing each other again for a while.”

“Is that wishful thinking?”

“A pity, actually. I like you, Merrick. Maybe you’re an idiot for tackling a guy armed with a gun when there was a sniper waiting to take the damn shot, but as a man who is also irrevocably in love with his woman, I know where your head was at. Next time, let the sniper do his fucking job, would you?” Amusement flickered in those blue eyes. “You should know you have a remarkable woman in Tamsyn. She stayed strong from the moment Tabitha got her back to the club until the second they loaded you into the chopper. She reminds me a lot of my Anarchy.”

That was a compliment and a half—it was blatantly obvious how Jasper felt about his wife, how much he revered her. If he was prepared to set Tamsyn on the same level, Merrick wouldn’t argue.

“Archie did some poking around in the community files. It turns out Tamsyn was partly mistaken about the elders not keeping birth records. Boysweregiven certificates, like she thought. The girls, while not officially documented with birth certificates, do have an basic online file. Mainly just a first name, the parents’ names, a date of birth. They were updated once the girls were traded or killed, much like livestock records.” The disgust on Jasper’s face mirrored Merrick’s feelings. “The good news is, Drake only sired one child despite having several trades under his belt. Tamsyn’s online record should be enough to secure her official documentation as a US citizen.”

Merrick studied his face intently. “Archiefoundit or ‘found’ it?”

Jasper grinned. “While I wouldn’t put it past my lovely wife to fabricate such a file in order to expedite the documentation process—and your wedding—this time, she didn’t need to resort to extreme measures. The files are there, Merrick. She’s going to filter through them once we get home, hopefully match some of the survivors with their own files. The seed I’m trying to plant in your head is don’t hang around, waiting to put a ring on your girl’s finger, Merrick. I know from experience—as do you now—that life and death don’t care about us mere mortals. We are the pieces on the board; they are the chess players.”

That was kind of eloquent in a morbid fashion, Merrick mused. Still, he didn’t need the sadist’s advice, as much as he appreciated it; the day he got out of this bed, away from the hospital, he was pulling every string at his disposal to make Tamsyn his wife.

Fuck the paperwork and official citizenship.

They’d deal with the finer details later, he just wanted her to be his as soon as humanly possible, no matter the cost.

Jasper checked his watch. “On that note, I better move my ass before my kitten sharpens her claws on it for being late.” He rose smoothly, every inch a distinguished gentleman, and his smile flashed like a knife under sunlight. “Hope you have a speedy recovery, Merrick. Where we come from, we take great pleasure in celebrating our kind of love.”

“Does that mean you want an invite?”