Page 45

“They’re forcing our hand.” Dominic frowns over the maps, and Lucien glares at him.

“They’ve either got something to prove or they’re as desperate as they say.

If they really wanted to build trust, they’d move back—and it’s hard to negotiate when we have no leverage.

We need to turn the tables, get into a position of strength.

” He glances up, lifting his chin in question. “Beau? What do you think?”

A hollow fire burns in Beaumont—his eyes are locked on Jaykob’s hand between Eden’s legs. Then he swallows, shaking his head, and looks back out through the sliding doors.

His reflection is cracked and deformed in the injured glass.

Eden’s gaze worries at him, and she moves to get off Jaykob’s lap.

He yanks her back into place. “Let him sulk. If we hit here ”—Jaykob indicates a green space on the map—“then we shouldn’t get blowback.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” Dominic disagrees.

“You don’t know fucking everything, Cap .”

Lucien slams his hand down on the map, finally bursting between Jaykob and Dominic. He jams his finger over a neat mark. “Shut the fuck up and listen. The side entrance is outside the moat. We have a way out.”

Jaykob and Dominic frown at his finger, pointing out the hidden cave exit we use infrequently . . . and they whirl on Lucien.

“We can’t evacuate ninety people without being noticed.”

“We don’t have anywhere to take them.”

“They’d be dead in?—”

“Did you even think?—”

Eden sighs, deflating further as they bicker.

And just like that, my half-formed plans of stealing away damsels and humbling Jaykob vanish. With that single sorry sigh, I stop in my tracks.

My fingertips rest on the roughened stitching of an armchair as I stop studying the men.

I study Eden instead.

Hopeless, miserable despair flashes over Eden’s face as she looks between them. She leans against Jaykob as though her weight is too much for her to bear, and my heart fissures.

Where does Eden find her peace among all the five of us? Between soothing egos and managing issues, does she ever have a chance to just . . . be ?

“Should we take the last bridge down?”

“The civs might want to cross. Just keep eyes on it. Blow it if they try?—”

“Oh, sure, just leave them an opening. Why not?”

A displeased sound escapes me, and Eden’s eyes crash against mine. Their shade of blue is so much softer than Lucien’s. Dove feathers and silken ponds, rather than bright skies.

Caught and under watch, she hides her misery so quickly that I wouldn’t have caught it had I not been fixated on her.

Eden adjusts her glasses, forcing a smile.

She glances at Beaumont, the worsening chaos of the others, and looks back at me as though it’s nothing.

But her throat is too taut when she nods at me.

I’m fine , her smile says.

I raise a brow in reply. I think not.

It’s a far cry from our silent conversation earlier this morning.

A bittersweet heaviness settles in my chest. It’s not her own weight Eden’s struggling to carry at all.

.. it’s ours. Our endless arguments and all the troubles beneath them.

It’s all the issues that have existed long before she ever arrived but that she’s now forced to bear.

Jaykob’s defensive resentment, Dominic’s guilty retreat, Beaumont’s fury, and Lucky’s reckless anxiety. ..

My absence.

And our problems are not only affecting Eden, either.

My gaze drifts to Beaumont again, brooding by the window, looking smaller than usual. We’ve all been smaller than we should be—and lacking in direction.

Evidently coming to the same conclusion, Eden sets her shoulders like she’s donning armor. I can see how much the transformation costs her.

“Bristlebrook.”

The arguments cease in an instant, and every head turns toward her.

Eden pries Jaykob’s hand from around her waist, and she shoves to her feet. “Stop arguing. Stop this. You’re all so busy trying to talk you’re not even listening to each other.”

Jaykob frowns. “They’re?—”

“No.” Eden stares him down. “ Listen .”

Guilt chases me wickedly as Eden strides into the battlefield sans backup. Not even thinking to look for it.

Then again, how often has she needed it, and only found more problems to solve?

I look at Beaumont’s tense back, and something settles inside me. This is why I choose the high road.

Eden doesn’t need more problems.

She needs help .

While she faces off with the others, I turn away from my irritation and my jealous plots... and find myself standing beside Beaumont.

Our shoulders brush as we watch the activity outside. In the sunshine, civilians line the defenses in neat rows, their weapons fixed on the Reapers with sharp attention. But there are a few breaks in ranks.

In the distance, I see Cole toss Kasey an apple across the moat, and Ida waves a colorful handkerchief in excitement.

I stay quiet, but I don’t need to wait long for Beaumont to speak.

“Here to fix me?”

Beaumont’s voice is raw, and too tentative.

It’s unlike him. In all my time knowing him, Beaumont has radiated confidence to an almost arrogant degree.

He doesn’t often slip from it. I’ve seen him through countless sessions—through losing friends in combat and lovers in his downtime.

I’ve seen him make mistakes and pick himself up.

I saw him lose all the people he loved. I saw his resolve to die rather than face the world without them in it, and I was the one who took the gun from his shaking hands. Back then, it was me who pulled him back from the brink.

I wonder when I stopped pulling.

This is a different struggle. This time, Beaumont doesn’t have anyone to mourn, or fight. This isn’t a problem of the world and everything in it.

It’s a problem inside him.

A lifetime of bad habits that need to be unspooled and examined.

My stubborn, stubborn friend. It will hurt him to change.

“I’m not here to fix you, Beaumont. I’m here for you,” I reply softly.

“I know I’m fucking up.” He doesn’t look at me.

“I’m just... I think you were right, that time we spoke.

Maybe Dom was, too. I repress things. I don’t know how to talk about it, and then it gets worse, and everything falls apart.

And it wasn’t him that always fucked everything.

Or Eden. I did it too. And I think...

” He chokes. “I think I’m kind of an asshole. ”

The sweltering heat leaks through the fractures in the glass, and a rogue beetle slips through a poorly taped hole.

“Ah, well. Admitting it is the first step.”

My lips tilt, and Beaumont snorts, then his breath catches on a wild laugh. He glances at me, and then he laughs again, and I bump his shoulder.

I glance back at the sound of a gentle smack to see Eden shooing Lucien’s hand away from her ass, and she turns to pat Jaykob’s arm.

“Maybe you can find another use for the exit,” she says placatingly, and Jaykob’s attention narrows on her. His gaze turns inward, mulling that over. Listening to her, in a way he rarely does with us.

Jaykob’s head tilts, and he glances between Dominic and Lucien. “Where were they storing their food?”

The air changes. From violent to electric. It’s barely perceptible, but under the gravel, he almost sounds.. . excited.

Beside me, Beaumont nods.

“Can you help me?” he asks, more thoughtfully. “I need to figure this out. I need to be able to talk to them. It’s hurting all of us now.”

I press my tongue against my teeth as I resist the urge to point out how many times I’ve attempted to address this in the past.

It’s different now. Now, he wants to change.

“Of course,” I reply instead, and we turn back to the others. I give Beaumont a dry look. “It will save me needing to carve up your entrails for hurting our girlfriend.”

The word slips off my tongue. It’s not the right one. Girlfriend doesn’t capture my obsession, or contain the ache of distance and longing between us. It doesn’t hold the fascination I have with the wicked turns in her mind, or how I fall asleep tracing the fall of her hair.

But it seems to capture Beaumont’s attention.

Startled, his gaze flies to mine, searching.

Finally, a grin spreads over his face, and he tips his head. “Ours.”

Ours .

An answering grin forms on my lips.

Maybe that’s a better word.

Leaning over the table, Dominic points out another spot on the map. The light shines over it like a halo. “There. Jayk, that’s?—”

“I see it.”

Lucien laughs. “Holy shit. Eden, see that?”

She falls in beside them, until heads of onyx and gold, mahogany and rough bark are all bent together over the map, and the whipfire questions are returned with quick answers rather than arguments.

A strange string of hope twines itself around my chest.

“I do, I . . .”

Eden throws another glance over her shoulder at Beaumont, tired lines on her face and mahogany hair all out of place.

Her gaze switches between him and myself, and I wonder what she sees in it.

Us standing together like this. Suddenly, surprise and hope and gratitude flicker across her face so fast it’s hard to track each expression.

Then she smiles at me.

It’s a smile that could shatter heavens. A smile that could launch a thousand ships, or drive men to crash themselves against craggy rocks. It’s the smile from this morning, wondering and awed and... happy .

Everything crystallizes—sharp and dazzlingly simple.

This is what she needs. This is what a family does, after all.

They show up for each other.

“You have a plan?” Beaumont calls, and there’s a new lightness in his voice.

Lucien kisses Eden’s cheek hard and smacks her ass. “ You are brilliant. I love it when you scold us.”

“It would be easier if you didn’t need scolding.”

But she laughs, blushing, and Dominic stares at her like his heart has been carved from his chest. It aches in his eyes.

Jaykob sweeps the map up off the table, and electric joy sparks through him. “Fuck yes we have a plan.” A devilish smirk crosses his face. “We’re going on a raid.”