Saber's Surrender (Imperial Knights #2)

Chapter 13

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Saber

I wake up in a fog. At least, I think I’m awake. When I glance down my body because I’m far shorter than I should be, I notice I have tits. My eyes bulge in my head as my hands reach up and grab them.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I mutter as I test the weight and a giddy chuckle, that should not be amusing in the least, escapes me.

“Listen,” Wrecker demands, “And stop playing with Roxy’s tits, that’s fucking freaky, brother.”

“You think that’s freaky, brother , try being in my shoes,” I hiss. “I have fucking tits and a motherfucking pussy. What are you up to anyway?”

“Listen, learn, and feel,” he says, his voice floating through my mind. “You can feel Roxy up in reality when you get over yourself and admit that she didn’t set out to intentionally hurt you.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever understand what she was doing when she violated my love for her in such a destructive way,” I tell him.

“You will if you shut the fuck up and really pay attention to her thoughts and feelings, jackass.”

“Great, I’m arguing with a figment of my imagination,” I grumble. “Wait until I see you in person, motherfucker. I can’t believe you gave me tits.”

“I didn’t give you anything, Saber. You’re seeing and hearing things from her point of view. Grow the fuck up, Saber. Your son is coming your way, you’re going to be the man he looks up to and mimics. Do you want him to feel your anger and turn that on Roxy?”

“No,” I utter, feeling properly scolded. “I don’t. She may not have been the one who’s raised him for all of these years, but she’s his mother. He needs to give her the respect she’s due.”

“And as the mother of your son, shouldn’t you give that to her too?”

“Stop being logical and shit, Wrecker, it pisses me off.”

“You just can’t stand the fact that you’re wrong,” he exclaims. “Now shut the hell up and learn what she was going through. You weren’t the only one who was in pain.”

Sinking into the background, I pay attention to the voice and thoughts that are not mine.

My eyes clamp shut as I feel hatred and self-loathing.

I felt abandonment but she’s remembering the hunger pains and cramps. The days we nearly froze to death because our foster family wouldn’t turn the heat up and our rooms weren’t insulated. How she’d give me her food and say she wasn’t hungry, when I now know she was starving herself and saying she was okay just so one of us was able to eat.

The contempt of the man and woman who called themselves our parents that was aimed at her every damn day of her life. The feeling of being unwanted consumes her. She knows in her gut that the hard days aren’t in our past but are ahead of us. She doesn’t want to ever lose her grasp over her anger and have Draco feel that. She wants him to experience unconditional love and never know a day of feeling the fear of never knowing if the lights are going to be shut off, if the water bill will get paid and we’d have to go to a truck stop for a shower.

She doesn’t want our little family to have to go to soup kitchens so we have an evening meal to fill our bellies until we wake up the next day and worry about all those things all over again.

“Oh, Foxy Roxy, why didn’t I listen when you tried to tell me all of this?”

“Because your pain was so prominent that nothing else could penetrate it,” Wrecker explains. “Neither of you were able to break down that last wall y’all both had up in order to see what was happening through the other’s eyes. Still, it’s obvious that Roxy didn’t come to her decision lightly, Saber. She agonized over it for weeks before finally trying to talk to you.”

“And I shut her down,” I bitterly mutter. “Too engrossed in my own issues of neglect to see she was hurting.”

“This wasn’t done so you would heap blame on your head, Saber,” Wrecker advises. “It was to show you the other perspective that you didn’t have at the time. Roxy is getting the same.”

“Wait, she’s got my dick?” I ask, suddenly speechless.

Wrecker laughs and then says, “She damn near pulled it off.”

Instinctually, I cup where my junk should be if I was in my body. “How did she react?”

“About the same as you have,” he replies.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve invaded my sleep and planted shit in my head, is it?”

“No. I needed to release some of the anger you had so you could see the bigger picture,” he confesses. “Once both of you were in a more peaceful mindset, I could let you be cognitive enough to be part of it and remember.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget this,” I muse. “Wrecker?”

“Yeah, brother?”

“Thank you.”

“I'll always be here for you, Saber. You just have to let us in. Now, sleep, brother. Y’all have some talking to do when you wake up. Remember, it’s for the kids.”

I jolt awake, this time for real and reach down and palm my dick. “It’s so good to have you back, old friend.” I hear a chuckle that’s not mine float through my mind. “I guess it’s too much to ask for some privacy while I reconnect with my dick, huh?”

I don’t get an affirmative answer in response, but this time, there’s a second laughter that accompanies the first.

“Dragon? Y’all get the fuck out of my head!” I shout.

As if a vault is shut, the foreign feeling of having company in my body dissipates and I relax back into my bed. How am I ever going to make amends for my assholeness? If I were Foxy, I’d never forgive myself for the way I treated her and some of the venom I spewed.

A loud, thunderous knock pounds at my door. It sounds so urgent that I stumble out of my bed and grab my gun. Rushing toward it, I yank it open as I release the safety. When I take in the disheveled sight before me, I push the lever and relock it.

“Foxy,” I whisper, reaching up with my hand that isn’t holding my pistol and with the pad of my thumb, I wipe the tears away. “I’m so fucking sorry, Foxy Roxy.”

“Oh, God,” she chokes out. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Weston. It’s all my fault,” she blubbers, shaking her head. “I wish I understood where you were coming from and that we stopped long enough to have a rational discussion.”

“Neither one of us were feeling rational back then,” I reason.

Her laugh is bitter sounding as she looks up at me. “No, we weren’t, but we… no, I should’ve kept trying, Weston.”

“It wouldn’t have worked, Foxy. I closed myself off from hearing anything more you had to say,” I admit. “Not proud of myself for doing that, either,” I add. “Because seeing things from your perspective has shown me that as much as I wanted to keep our baby, we would’ve most likely lost him to the system because we could barely take care of ourselves. We might’ve done more harm than good but at least, with you choosing the McAllisters to adopt him, he had a fighting chance at a good life.”

“It sounds like he did,” she murmurs, a small smile on her face as she remembers some of the things Mrs. Tremain told us. “At least, until the accident.”

“We’re going to need to look into grief therapy for both of them,” I say.

“Therapy in general, I guess, especially when Canyon finds out we’re his biological parents,” she adds. “Because I’m sure that’s going to raise a shit ton of questions on his part. Hell, we don’t even know if he’s aware he was adopted to begin with, so it could be a major blow to him.”

I run my hand over my shaved head as her words hit me. “Fuck, you’re right. I guess it’s something we need to ask Mrs. Tremain the next time we talk to her. In the meantime, get in here and let me make amends.”

“What kind of amends?” she asks, a spark of light entering her eyes.

“The kind that I’ve missed for so many years,” I murmur, leaning over and nipping the shell of her ear. “How do you feel about make up sex, Foxy Roxy?”

“Like I hope you had your Wheaties because you have years of arguing to make up for,” she taunts me.

“There’s nothing wrong with my stamina, Foxy. I can promise you that,” I avow.

“Guess I’ll have to be the judge of that, now, won’t I?” she sasses, moving into my arms.

For the first time in forever, I feel as though I can breathe. Sure, I’ve been existing in some sort of haze, but I never realized that the day I cut her out of my life, I was severing a part of me that was so ingrained, I was walking around in a stunned daze.

“I’ve missed this, missed us,” she admits. “If we’d been more mature back then, we’d never have lost what we had and we’d be something so spectacular, so damn strong that nothing could’ve broken us.”

“We aren’t broken, Foxy. We were a little bent out of shape and warped, but we’ll realign ourselves and be better than we ever were.”

Dragging her finger down my chest, she tells me, “For the time being, I want you to remind me how it feels to have you buried inside of me. But when we’re done, I would like for you to explain the things you can. Primarily, how it is that I woke in your body and experienced everything from your point of view.”

“I suppose that since Wrecker opened those doors, it’s inevitable that you find out about those things that weren’t mine to share,” I state. “But in my opinion, he gave permission for us to talk about it when he decided to play head games with us.”

“I’d say so,” she agrees. “I’m thankful that in that dreamstate you didn’t need to take a piss. Because other than shaking it afterward, I’d have no idea how to take care of it outside of the basic medical facts I have.”

“Aiming isn’t as easy as one would think it is. Sometimes, a man’s dick has a mind of its own and grows even when it’s least expected,” I joke. “You should thank your lucky stars that you didn’t have to figure out how to contain him when he’s as hard as a rock.”

Her laughter has her entire face lighting up. Unable to help myself, I cup her face in my hands and claim her lips. It’s been what feels like a lifetime since I’ve felt them with mine and when we touch, a zap of electricity travels throughout my entire system.