Page 18

Amaia

I didn’t want to get comfortable. Something about being with Alexiares made me religious. I found myself praying every night and rising sun to be lucky enough to spend what time I had left in this life with him by my side.

There were times when I worried about what little humanity I had left. Around him, I didn’t feel any of that. I felt normal, okay, safe . I didn’t have to project false confidence or apologize for making the tough choices and tucking my empathy to the side. With him, there was security that I would never become the villain in at least one set of eyes.

Fire crackled against the wood inside the fireplace. The room was warm in both the sweet, subtle scent of ashen wood and heat that radiated from within. I teased the flames with my magic and they pulsated to my will. Alexiares trailed his fingers along the side of my arm as I leaned into him.

Suckerpunch slept lazily underneath the couch, ignoring the sensation of my combat boots stuck under his wide body. His soft snores deepened the comfort I had finally settled into, in what was once Prescott’s. I reached down, rubbing Harley’s long snout as she whined for the nonexistent leftovers inside our bowls. We’d ditched The Kitchens for our favorite little spot in Entertainment Square. Chili and smoothies weren’t exactly on the menu, but the owner had been working her ass off to grow what she could. Small portions of creative delicacies were now the staple of her spot. She offered them at a fair cost a few times a week and had sent a message earlier demanding I stop through. She’d saved some for us, insisting that I deserved a decent meal too.

This was the quiet before the storm.

Tomorrow I’d meet with Ronan. I wasn’t quite sure what I hoped to accomplish anymore. Ronan, if nothing else, was predictably unpredictable. What was the difference between his emissaries stationing their ass at every council meeting, reporting back on the details of The Compound and a spy? Nothing. Everything. Fuck .

The door opened behind us and I turned my head. Elie and Emma I expected. Two bloodied up small children accompanying them, I did not. The four of them stood there staring at us, not saying a word. I couldn’t even make out their age or gender beneath all their grime and gore.

“Hi?” I greeted them in confusion.

The dogs were on her within seconds. Their interest shifted to our surprise guests, who stood frozen with unease.

“What’s up?” Elie said. Snapping her fingers, she called Harley and Suckerpunch off. They sat instantly, watching as she grabbed the kids’ hands and made a beeline toward the bathroom.

“These miniature people don’t look like ours, Elie.” Alexiares stood from the couch and watched on. He made no move to cut them off yet they stopped in their tracks at his words, regardless. His ink coated arms crossed over his broad chest, dark brows arching in expectation.

“They are now,” Elie said slowly, fixing her tone. “Casey and Hayley.”

Emma’s messy blonde hair was stuck against her sweat beaded face. Her smile was bright and encouraging. “We found them.”

“The weird thing about kids that don’t belong here is that it’s impossible to stumble across them.” I grumbled and paced across the room.

The oldest winced as I dropped to my knees before them. I kept my distance. His eyes held no fear—only a menacing threat. Protective instinct.

“That’s cuz we went outside the walls,” Emma added, doubling over in pain from Elie’s elbow jab to the stomach. “Why’d you do that ? You know, you’re so annoying. I literally helped you after my dad told me I’d be grounded forever if I left again. Gigs up. They aren’t stupid.”

“What?” The words were a near silent growl off my lips. Alexiares closed in behind me, his hand falling on my shoulder in an attempt to calm. I glanced over in warning and it fell.

Elie shrugged, either not reading or caring enough to read the room. “Too many people here. I needed some air.”

“There’s perfectly good air inside The Compound.” Alexiares retorted, his hand running across the top of his recently shaved head.

With the cut low against his scalp, the detailing on the inked lines running around the side of his head were visible. I knew all of his tattoos held a story, but this one screamed nothing but pain. Wanting that pain to be known. To be visible. It was beautiful—and this cut did nothing but distract me.

“Yeah,” Elie surmised, releasing her light brown curls from her bun. “Well, it’s a bit stuffy with all the new additions.”

“You came back with two feral children. Find a different excuse.”

“And quickly.” I added to Alexiares’s statement, trying not to laugh. Right now I had to be serious. Firm. Elie and a gentle hand didn’t work.

I hated it. I missed just being her friend. The flames went out in the quiet of the room. Elie’s harsh stare didn’t flicker. It was Emma who broke the silence. “I went so she wouldn’t die alone. Can we call my snitching even and you not tell my dad?”

The sudden, sharp sneeze from the younger one made me jump. I’d forgotten they were even in the room. I blinked and bent to their level. My eyes flickered between them. The oldest, a boy, was no older than six which made the state of the smaller one, likely his sister, an even more jarring sight. They looked like hell. I softened a bit. Motioning for them to follow me, I placed them into the bay window, allowing them to watch the citizens of The Compound. A happy distraction for the conversation we were about to have around them. With a simple hand motion, the dogs understood what to do. Harley licked my exposed ankle as she passed by.

Alexiares stood hovering over the girls. Their eyes remained fixed on the floor, their shoulders hunched in the quiet tension of the room. I straightened up and rubbed my temples. My thoughts were soaring, racing through my mind so fast I couldn’t focus on a single one. How the fuck did I end up here? The weight of this past year pressed on my chest at the most inconvenient of times. I couldn’t keep wasting my energy focusing on this shit.

Life had flipped on its head in the blink of an eye. Here I was, playing house, lecturing someone who had been a sister to me, acting as if I were a mother hen. It seemed as if only yesterday Jax and I had our damning conversation about his ideal version of the future. It had shattered my illusions on what we were meant to be. Now, I was here. Living his dream. Playing house. Except in this reality, with a Bloodhound. I’d spent the morning leading. Tomorrow, I’d be back running shit as a general.

Leader today, protector tonight, warrior tomorrow. The constant shifting of roles nearly sent me reeling. A whirlwind of responsibility, decisions, and emotional fucking landmines.

I made my way back over to them. “Explain yourself.”

“There were Pansies. There was a baby crying and a little boy doing his best to draw attention away from the house in a tree,” Elie side stepped my question. “Would you have preferred we left them to die? Seems like that’s a trend around here.”

I fought to keep my cool. Her accusation hung in the air. The challenging gaze directed at me from someone I was accustomed to having nothing my carefree laughs with was heartbreaking. Elie was having a hard time. I knew that. But she refused to talk about what happened every time I tried. Without a way to understand what she was thinking or how she was coping, I found myself lost on how to support her. So I did the only way I knew how, the same way I would one of my soldiers.

“I know it’s easy to relax now that things appear to have calmed down but that would be a mistake. Going outside the wall, doing something this reckless, it could get you killed. Both of you.”

“Something reckless?” Elie snickered at me. “Didn’t know reckless and helping were synonyms.”

“Oh please. Preach to another choir because this one sings the same tune,” I said, tossing a hand in dismissal.

Alexiares let out a low, amused sound, his arms folding casually across his chest as a hint of a smirk plays at the corner of his mouth.

“They were OGs,” Elie added in juvenile confidence. “I think we can handle ourselves.”

Technically, by today’s standards, Elie was an adult. She was closer to seventeen than sixteen and here, that was The Before’s eighteen. Still, I couldn’t help but see her as someone I needed to protect. An extension of me. And some part of me knew she felt the same way. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here. She’d be out on her own, doing as she pleased, instead, she chose to call my home hers—listening to lectures and guidance. Elie did not have to be here. The fact that she was told me enough.

“There were only a few. It’s okay, I promise I won’t let her hurt herself,” Emma said, the reassurance in her eyes admirable. She genuinely thought she could protect them both.

I could see the worry etched into Emma’s tan face. Subtle, but there. Unmistakable. Since the Soulfire explosion, Emma’s confidence had shifted. There was always this hint of trauma in her eyes. Like she had seen death, stared it in the eyes several times and told it to go fuck itself but not walked away without the memory. Emma had a shadow over her that had never quite lifted though she’d been in good hands. Hal had done all that he could to shelter the girls from his grief at the expense of quietly unraveling himself. We all were in our own ways, I supposed. The only option we had however, was to keep pushing forward.

“Wait, all OGs?” I asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Elie said slowly, her narrow eyes squinted back at me.

“Supports our reports,” Alexiares leaned in and muttered in my ear. “One week without Ronan’s sack of corpses.”

I mulled it over. We’d try to decode this later. Another topic for another time. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t an act of kindness. With Ronan, nothing ever was. Nothing ever would be. Gifts of sincerity that were meant to maintain the peace weren’t his style of leadership.

“You can’t ever be too cautious. Don’t forget that,” I warned.

Elie’s hands fell to her hips, her face stuck in mockery. “ I’m proud of you, Elie. Keep watching out for the small guy, Elie. Don’t forget your humanity, Elie. It’s all we have left, Elie. It’s like I live with a totally different person!”

“You’re mad at me because I want to keep you alive?” I asked, mouth hanging in shock if only for a moment. “I expect everyone to keep their wits about them at all times, but especially you. No matter where you are, home or not—with one of us or the dogs or not—no matter the circumstance, you must remain vigilant. The proof of the consequences if you don’t are all around us.”

The room sank into another heavy silence. Stilted, thick air filled with unspoken tension added to the weight of shared despair. No one dared break it this time. Not for a few minutes.

Elie’s brows furrowed against her light brown skin. Irritation flashed across her face, but then, she softened. The tension in her eased as realization dawned in her eyes. “They’re kids, Amaia. One’s pretty much a baby. I don’t care what happens to me. I refuse to walk away. We don’t have to hide to be safe. You gave us the tools. All we need to do is use them. Trust our training. The best use of our skills will always be to help others. You taught me that.”

Emma cut in abruptly, trying to reason in their defense. “Casey said their mom and dad were like, killed by some monster or something. Pretty sure that means they got eaten by a Pansie. They don’t have nowhere else to go. Ya know, not everyone has an aunt to grant them access beyond the magical gates.”

It dawned on me then, that they weren’t escorted here by one of the guards. “How’d you get them in here?”

Elie scratched her head. “The slide.”

A soft, incredulous sound escaped Alexiares, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Real reckless of you, Elie. It could be a trap.”

“Paranoid much? He’s six.”

“I forgot, in your sheltering, you never learned the lesson about live bait.” It wasn’t sarcasm. In fact, he was so serious that I fought to maintain my composure. The horror on Emma and Elie’s face as he explained his suspicions might have been more effective than any lecture I could have offered. “Leaving behind the innocent. Humans and empathy are so predictable that anyone with a sense of safety is bound to offer help. You follow them back to the source and then boom, take ‘em down. Nothing too complicated of an effort. If their defenses are shitty enough, you usually hit before they even know you’re there.”

Red crept up Alexiares’s neck and warmed his cheeks. He glanced down, having said far more than intended. I knew this. He had spoken about his work many times. Some stories more shameful than others, nevertheless, important lessons toward maintaining our defenses. The girls however, had their jaws on the floor.

“They can stay here one night,” I said, clearing the air. “In the morning they’re off to Ms. Schuller’s to await placement. Compound Hall is backed up. It’ll take a few days. She’s sweet, they’ll be fine there. Abel checks on her Thursday’s anyway, she was his foster placement before Riley. I’ll send a message to take them with him in the morning. In the meantime, they look tired and cold. Maybe get them cleaned up?”

Elie’s attention fell behind me. She nodded slowly then made her way over to them. Casey responded to her touch with a slight wince. They’d need to stop by The Infirmary in the morning first and foremost. The slosh of water came from the bathing chamber in the center of our quarters. Elie glanced back at Alexiares in silent thanks for the magical assist before ushering the kids inside, the door closing behind her.

“I’m not so sure putting them with some random person just to pass ‘em to the next is the best idea,” Emma said with utmost confidence. We both turned, surprised she hadn’t disappeared the moment Elie did.

“Uh—”

“I watched my mom die,” she continued. “Right in front of me, same as these kids. Do you know what that’s like?” Those sad, lost eyes brimmed with tears before she blinked them away. Emma never cried. Ever. Not even when her father did.

“Yeah,” Alexiares replied with a hint of sympathy. “Actually, I do, kid.”

“If I didn’t have my dad or Aunt Moe, I’d probably be a feral child too. Those kids need a person to be their person. Can’t they stay here?”

“Emma,” I sighed. I didn’t say fuck the kids, they weren’t my problem. I certainly could have, but I didn’t. I’d offered the best alternative I’d had in my pocket. “I don’t think that’s the best option for them either. This isn’t what I’d call a stable household.”

“Elie lives here. Doesn’t that make you her parents?”

I locked eyes with Alexiares. A thousand unspoken thoughts passed between us—uncertainty. A shit ton of doubt. The question we hadn’t dared ask out loud. What did that mean for us? What did it make us? Me and him? Our silence hung heavy. Simply put, the answer was far too complex.

My Bloodhound broke the tension, his voice as gentle as I’d ever heard it be. Resigned. “No, it doesn’t. And even if it did, I think it’s clear we’re not doing a great job.”

“Well, don’t you know someone that can do a good job?” she asked, hopeful of a different outcome that I could not provide. Not under the current Compound circumstances. “Someone you can ask that you trust?”

I shook my head, uncertainty once again knocking me off-kilter. With the influx of people and parentless children, Ms. Schuller was calling in a favor. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“If we didn’t save em, someone else could have and it would really suck if that someone was Covert. Right? Even I know that’s worser. You leave them out there like that—if Alexi is right—that there’s people out there to get us, then one day, they might grow up to become the next bad guy.”

And with that, Emma was out the door.

I groaned, turning to Alexiares and leaned into him, “We aren’t dead.”

He kissed the top of my head. “No, we are not, Princess.” His voice was steady. Reassuring.

“Rebuilding this place, it’s not impossible. If I can get Ronan out the way, I still see that little glimmer at the end of the tunnel.”

“Should I even ask how long this tunnel is?” Alexiares grinned, his teasing lightening the air from the shitshow this night had turned into.

“Long as shit but the lights still there.” I laughed, a manic edge creeping into my voice as the sound erupted from my chest. Elie and Emma, as determined as they were, made their point. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that but damn is it fueling.”