Page 30 of The Commander
Whatever the Commander had given her for pain relief made Cara drowsy, though she had no desire to sleep. Every time her eyelids fluttered, memories of Brenda filled the darkness, her voice piercing the chaos of the Red Hats descending on the loading platform.
Brenda, older by nearly a decade, had worn her years poorly—thin from head to toe, with bony arms and thin legs always in motion. Sitting down next to Cara in Springfield’s community dining room she’d pointed at the untouched roll masquerading as bread on Cara’s plate and held up a glass jar of hand shaken butter and announced, “this fixes everything.”
Cara had nodded, startled by the sudden intrusion. After months of sitting with two old men who barely spoke, someone her own age had finally approached her. She offered the bread willingly, eager for conversation, for connection. Sharing became a thing. Food, laundry soap, other rations. Anything to keep the chatty, outspoken woman by her side. Her presence filled up the empty noise of Cara’s loneliness.
Brenda knew everyone in Springfield. She gossiped about the town’s tangled relationships with an air of authority. Who had fathered whose child. Who had snuck behind whose back. She even knew that the mayor’s wife made the best apple pie in town and would trade slices for extra rations of sugar and butter. Brenda spoke like she held the keys to Springfield’s secrets, and for a while, Cara had believed she did.
In turn, everyone seemed to know Brenda. Once they became friends, people started acknowledging Cara, too—mostly men, sending casual nods her way. Springfield boasted about ten “unmatched fuckables,” as Brenda had called them, with all the indifference of someone discussing livestock. She had an opinion on each one.
“That Eric. He cheated on me with that skank. She gave him warts, so I won’t be going back there. And Mike? He’s with Hannah now, but before that, it was that crone, Nikki. And I’m not touching any guy Nikki’s been with—not even if he pays.”
A week later, Cara had spotted Brenda with Mike in the corner of the barn. By morning, Mike had returned to Hannah’s side, and Brenda hadn’t even mentioned it.
Instead, she’d moved on to another target. “Dave’s got the best shoulders, don’t you think? And a strong back. I bet he could pick me up and fuck me against the wall. You’ve never had a good dicking until you’ve been fucked against a wall.”
Cara had never gotten the chance to tell Brenda that she’d experienced that — Bastian had lifted her, pinned her, consumed her. Brenda had no idea what a good dicking really was.
Even if Bastian had been right—that Brenda had never truly been a friend, only an opportunist feeding her endless hunger for attention and food—Cara had still believed in their connection. She’d believed they had something real.
Now, those memories curdled in her stomach alongside the fading pain from her arm. Brenda, with her whims and jealousies, had once been a kind of salvation in the desperate loneliness after Springfield. Seeing her with Andy—back where she shouldn’t have been, choosing comfort over loyalty—shattered any remaining illusions.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Bastian’s low voice rumbled through the quiet truck.
“Is that one of your mating senses kicking in?” Cara retorted without looking at him.
“No, you breathe differently when your thoughts are aggressive.”
“Maybe I am being too hard on her.”
“Who?”
“Brenda.” Cara exhaled sharply through her nose.
“Stop it. Let it go. You are better off without her.”
The barbed wire of betrayal wound tighter in Cara’s chest, each breath a struggle against the pain. Her muscles tensed, holding back the scream she wanted to release into the wasteland rolling past the window. Crying wouldn’t change anything. Every step since meeting Andy, since leaving Springfield, felt like a series of missteps, each one leading her deeper into a labyrinth of regret and confusion. The mayor’s proposition, the Red Hats dragging her into captivity—it all blurred together now, a haze of wrenching betrayal.
“This happened a few hours ago, not weeks, not months or years. I’m not some heartless alien. I don’t have your sadistic, psychopathic soul, for months, I thought she was all I had. That I could count on her. I can’t just let it go,” Cara snapped, her voice cracking under the weight of her frustration.
“I know you are feeling things, Kitten,” Bastian said in that maddening, I-know-everything tone of his.
She had a real connection with him. She liked him—more than liked him. He hummed inside her chest, a constant presence in her heart. A growing, vital piece of her essential life force. All he had to do was growl, lick his lips, or drop some archaic, filthy innuendo, and she melted, ready to be bent over the nearest obstacle and beg him to fill her up with his amazing cock.
He might be the only real and honest connection in her life, but it felt wrong. Shameful. Disloyal. Like what Mackie had suggested, as if she’d given up part of her humanity, become less—a whore for the alien invaders.
He couldn’t understand. He didn’t feel any of this.
She ground her teeth as she stared out at the wasteland. “She was my only friend.”
“How many times are you going to tell me that? Repeating it doesn’t make it true. Are you trying to make her the friend she should have been in your mind? Do you think saying it over and over will change what she really was?”
The words hit hard, knocking the breath from her lungs. She wanted to lash out, to defend Brenda, to argue that their friendship had meant something. But deep down, the truth gnawed at her, relentless and undeniable.
“You will stop wasting your emotions on someone who never deserved them. Someone who betrayed you,” Bastian commanded, his voice firm, unyielding.
“I will?” Cara’s eyebrows shot up, a spark of defiance igniting within her. Had he really just commanded her to feel a certain way?
“You are my mate. You need to learn to obey orders,” he stated, as if it were a
simple fact of life.
“I’m your mate, not your Red Hat.” She refused to be just another subordinate, another pawn in his game.
A slow, wicked grin spread across Bastian’s face. His tongue slid out, tracing a path over his lips in a lewd, provocative gesture. He did that a lot, and every time her body clenched, eager to feel his tongue again. “You admitted you are my mate.”
The word “mate” settled between them, heavy with significance, a reminder of the bond that now tied them together. Despite her resistance, Cara felt the truth of it resonate within her, as if it had always been there, waiting for her to acknowledge it.
She swallowed hard, her throat tight. “You don’t get it. You didn’t know her like I did.”
“I know enough. We’ve already discussed this. Your brain, body, and feelings need to catch up with what is true. I will give you time, but I have no intention of allowing you to wallow.” His voice dropped lower, gravel scraping against her frayed nerves.
“Because you’re not grieving her, Kitten. You’re grieving the idea of her, the version you wanted her to be. The version she never was.” His black eyes reflected her stricken face like a mirror.
The knot in Cara’s chest tightened, then loosened, the weight of his words sinking into her bones. She wanted to argue, to fight him on this, but the fight had already drained from her.
Her vision blurred as the tears she had fought so hard to hold back finally spilled over. She swiped at them with the back of her hand, angry at herself for crying, angry at the world for being so damn unfair.
Bastian said nothing, letting the silence between them settle again, less heavy, less suffocating.
After an eternity, Cara exhaled, the breath shaky but freeing. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Bastian’s hand, large and warm, settled on her knee, a grounding weight.
The truck rumbled beneath them, a steady hum in the distance as Earth and time rolled on without their consent. Cara didn’t know what to say to that. He had protected her. He’d killed for her. Beneath the cynical shell forged by survival, she knew Bastian wouldn’t fail her—not because of love, not because of some moral duty, but because it wasn’t in his nature to lose anyone or anything that he called his.
They drove. It would be a long journey to Old Kentucky, in many ways.