Page 9

Dominic

Pets are a liability, best to set them free.

(Or drown them in a sack.

It really depends how much you like them.)

Lucky yanks sullenly against his tied wrists.

I tug back on the rope. “Easy, boy.”

We’ve done rounds twice, and I’ve rechecked the trip alerts around the camp. Everything’s quiet.

“Cute. You’re really cute. But my fingers are turning numb. You need to let me out,” Lucky complains for the five-hundred-millionth time, wiggling his fingers at me.

Almost everything is quiet.

I glance down at his hands. They’re tanned, a bit dirty, but they’re not swollen or blue-tinged—they’re not even reddening around his bonds. The tools might be less than ideal, but Jasper ran the shibari masterclass at Darkside. It’s expert work.

As usual, Lucky’s talking out of his ass. Typical subbie wheedling.

He’s standing beside my boulder awkwardly, and, sure, I could move over so he can sit next to me, but that would give the pest the impression I want him to stay.

And right now, I need to think.

I go back to watching the trees, but I only see Aaron scowling at me.

Heather tracing the line of Alastair’s throat with her knife.

Eden in the forest, telling me we could get Alastair and Mateo to switch sides, her eyes like gravestones.

Mary Beth’s face when I barked at her for carrying the axe.

Bristlebrook’s empty inventory list. Aaron staring at the battle maps, taking notes.

Eden stepping up against Alastair, her hands shaking behind her back, while I was on my knees.

My knuckles are white on my rifle, and I force myself to unclench my hands. One rifle. One clip to get us to a home where our people will already be starving.

The Sinners might have stripped us bare, but there’s only one person responsible for fucking us that night.

Suddenly, Lucky’s ass is on mine. I don’t know how, since his hands are still tied, and this boulder is huge, but he’s somehow monkey-crawled into my single square foot of personal space and is shoving his ass into mine like he’s trying to link cheeks.

I let out a long, low sigh. “Lucky?”

“Yeah, boss?” He settles his shoulder against mine comfortably. The butt cheeks nestle in closer.

Uncomfortably close.

“Can you at least pretend you’re house-trained?” I ask tiredly.

Lucky shoots me a grin, but it sours and dies when he joins me in staring at the trees. Like he sees anything but greenery as well.

I look at him, then away.

I’m not curious. I’m not. He, Jasper, and Eden have been stuck together all week and it’s...

I rub my hollow chest. It’s none of my business. I have too much to think about already, and Eden’s love life isn’t my concern. It never has been.

But I hear myself ask, “You don’t like them being alone together?”

I’m not asking about her. I’m asking about him. If he’s going to squeeze cheeks with me, then we’re in personal questions territory.

I wouldn’t have picked Lucky for the jealous type, but I’ve never seen him in a relationship before. Not a serious one, anyway.

Blond brows fly up, and he gives me a puzzled look.

“What? No. No, they need to do their thing. Read books. Stare pensively at each other. Develop matching frown lines. Just . . .” He huffs, and his eyes track back to the trees.

“They should just do it at home . Behind your scary moat. In a panic room. Preferably surrounded by an ancient booby-trapped labyrinth that only I know the path through.”

Right.

“Indiana Jones style?” I deadpan. “Or Pan’s?”

He considers that, then shrugs. “Jones, but David Bowie could fondle his balls on the way if he wants.”

I study the side of his face. The anxious tap of his foot against the rock. It drags me out of my own shitty spiral.

“Jasper’s not the same man he was five years ago, Lucky. He can handle himself.” My throat feels like crushed glass when I add, “Eden can, too. They’re not stupid.”

Lucky sighs suddenly and rubs his tied hands over his face.

His fingers bury themselves in his hair.

“I know that. I do. They’ll be fine. They are fine.

I just . . .” He peeks at me sideways between long strands of his hair that have pulled free of his bun.

There’s lavender tucked into it, and it peeks from his kit, too.

Purple everywhere. “I just need them to stay fine. You know?”

Eden had lavender all through her hair, too.

The wind kicks up and it’s too hot for this time of year. Another mosquito darts around my head, and I glare at it, daring it to try me. It does, and I slap it down.

Its squished little body doesn’t make me feel any better, though.

I sigh. “They don’t need us, Lucky.”

It’s Lucky’s turn to study me, then suddenly, I’m having lavender tucked behind my hair too, like I’m a milkmaid and he’s an overenthused stableboy. Like he’s not trussed and being babysat by his former CO like a sticky-fingered, armed toddler.

I cock a brow at him, and he gives me a half-smile. But his blue eyes are unusually serious.

“We all need each other, Dom. All of us.”

I stare at him hard, the scathing replies sticking in my throat.

It reminds me of standing in front of my old man, shoulder-to-shoulder with a scrawny sixteen-year-old Beau as we got our asses handed to us.

The first few weeks after he landed in military school were rough. He was soft as underbaked apple pie, cursing his mama and the rest of the world for catching him with that fake ID and sending him off to get straightened out.

I was the too-serious golden boy protégé with a sideways rod up my ass—and I took it on myself to do the straightening.

Stupid.

I don’t know exactly what it was about him that pissed me off so much. Maybe it was his floppy hair, or his whining, or how his sisters teased and hugged him for fifteen whole minutes when they dropped him off, or the dumb accent that only comes from a lifetime of living in one place.

Whatever it was, he was in my class, my dorm, and he was too soft to survive the hard rules I lived by. So I beat his ass, shaved his head, and ran him ragged every day until he finally stopped whining. It took him less than two weeks before he snapped and flipped me over a table.

We fought.

I broke his nose.

He gave me a concussion.

And my dad wanted to take the rest out on my hide.

I remember standing bloody and ashamed in his office after the principal was through with us, wanting to die on the spot at the disgust and disappointment in his face.

How he ripped us up for over an hour for breaking protocol, for disgraceful behavior, for shaming him, for setting a poor example, and two dozen other things, and I didn’t say a single damn word.

How he finally ordered Beau to tell him what happened.

And how Beau drawled in that annoying accent, “Walked into a door, sir. I’m real clumsy sometimes.”

To my dad. My dad. Colonel Slade himself.

And all for some asshole who’d made his life hell for days.

For that one moment, Beau had my love for life.

Not that it meant anything to my old man. He just sent Beau away and sat me down for his final, disappointed words under the glinting glare of his medals.

“You’re nothing without your team, Dominic. A good team can elevate a mediocre leader. A good team will function even with out a leader. But a bad leader... a bad leader will get a good team killed.”

His Medal of Honor shone the brightest on his wall, proud and centered over his desk like a halo.

And he didn’t flinch when he said, “I always knew you were mediocre, Dominic, but today, you were a bad leader. And sometimes, the best thing a bad leader can do is walk away.”

Those words ring in my ears, jarring and jumbled and sounding of nowhere—of no place that could ever really be called a home. They tumble in with Lucky as he continues to talk, waving around his tied hands. He’s a good man. We have a good team.

They don’t need me.

Eden doesn’t need me.

She was incredible up against Alastair, deft and clever. Humbling herself to salvage my shitshow. I knew she was smart, but watching her fox her way out of the box we were in was impressive as hell.

She’s a good judge of character.

She knew I wasn’t making the right call with the prisoners, so she fixed it herself. She knew I was furious about it, and she didn’t trust how I’d react enough to speak up.

She knew I was lacking, just like my father did.

So now, just like with him, I say nothing to Lucky. I just listen to him chatter about every kind of bullshit until the moon hangs low and we’re eventually replaced for our watch.