Chapter 27
DIANA
Three days.
Three days of drinking the black petal tea Kitty brings me every morning, floral and soothing, because Judge asked her to make sure I did.
My alpha appears to have thought of every corner that might bring me grief.
Three days of refusing to be in the space that smells of us because it triggers immense fear, anxiety, dread, and all the fucking bad feelings a person can have.
Three days of doing the only thing I know how to do when the world is falling apart.
Working.
I’m not even mad at him. I don’t want to run. I want him back. I want to help him. For the first time in my life, my instincts aren’t to run, but rather to fight.
I've visited the medic wing once a day, going through Dominion’s inventory and helping where I can.
I’ve checked my own back wounds in the mirror each morning—the claw marks from the warrog are healing well, pink and tight, no signs of infection.
The Witch Doctor's essence did its job. I apply a thin layer of salve anyway, the motion mechanical and soothing, something my hands know how to do even when my mind is screaming.
I'm a nurse trained to assist in trauma, not sit in waiting. For being useful when everything else is chaos.
Every time I feel any sliver of worry for Judge, I bury it as deep as my sorrow goes with Dean. I just literally refuse to lose him, and admit that I take medicine to help me sleep at night. I want to crumble so badly, to relish in the way he held me like he really loved me—
No, I won’t grieve for him yet. I know he feels he needs to prepare me, but I’m a fucking fighter.
But it’s on the fourth night that I start to collapse under the weight of everything, because I can barely feel him. He's so far away that the tether has gone thin and quiet, just a faint hum that tells me he's alive but nothing else. No warmth. No emotion. Just... distance.
Finally, I return to Judge’s space, the one that smells like us. Kitty is behind me, because she’s always with me. My body shakes as I start to sob, nearing the window as I peer outside, a view I used to look at for weeks, but from the room above.
The glass is cold enough to sting my forehead when I lean into it. Snow comes down in lazy, fat flakes. The grounds below are quieter than they should be. No barking frenzy from the kennels. Just the low pulse of Dominion holding its breath.
Even the wind feels like it's trying not to make noise.
"I can't do this," I say. The words come out rough, too honest. "I can't do this waiting.”
Kitty sits in one of the dining chairs, gently lacing her hands with the usual red nail polish. "This is war, honey."
"I know." I turn from the window, pacing because standing still feels like drowning. "But I'm a nurse. I should be out there. I should be doing something. I’m so fucking useless while he thinks he’s going to die!”
"You are doing something," she says, softer now. "You're staying alive. You're staying sane. That matters more than you think."
I don't have a response to that, so I just keep pacing. It’s suffocating and comforting, all at once, to be in this space.
To see the couch that my alpha held me in, and maybe even cried at the idea of parting from me.
It smells so much like him that I’m almost about to tell Kitty to leave so as not to ruin this mausoleum—
The door opens hard.
Skinner comes in like a storm.
He's usually controlled, measured, one of the few men who can stand near Judge without shrinking. But as his smell enters the space, a frantic energy burns through me. “Okay, no, I need you both out of here. You’re ruining the scent!”
Kitty stands instantly, motioning to Skinner while also giving him this ‘what in the ever-loving fuck are you doing’ expression.
“Don’t give me that look, I’m obviously here for something. Jesus… let’s go. There’s something really important that happened.”
I touch my chest, like maybe I can actually touch the tether to confirm that Judge is alive. “It couldn’t wait?” Kitty asks.
“No, come on.”
We move quickly, my focus returning as I leave Judge’s musk behind. It’s all a blur, my heart skipping beats at time until we’re taken into a large room with a massive long table inside, and Beast is at the head.
The room smells like leather and birds. There's a perch in the corner, a hooded raptor still as stone. Beast stands near a table covered in maps and markers, but he's not looking at them. He's holding a letter that looks far too small in his massive hand.
"This came in on the train," he says, his mechanical voice pulling me from my fears. "Along with two tanks, three medevac vehicles, and about a hundred armed men."
I glare at Kitty, shrugging my shoulders because I don’t understand why this is so relevant.
"From where?" Kitty asks, sounding just as confused as I am.
Beast's eyes fix on me. "Blackridge Bunker.”
The room tilts.
"That's—" I start to disassociate, completely stunned to hear those words. "That's my home. That's where I'm from. Why would they, how did they even know—"
"Judge wrote to them before he left," Beast says, my head tilting slightly as I blink rapidly. "He traced your family pretty easily. Apparently, not many Dares in the bunker states. He initially just wanted to reach out and see what happened, and then we got a line of communication going. They’re interested in allying with us, since we’re not too far from them. Tanks are hard as fuck to come by. All we had were some bulletproof Humvees.”
"We didn't expect a response," Skinner adds with a smirk. “They seem a little eager to make sure we win this fucking spat with Bayou Maw.”
"Why would they care?” I ask, trying to remember if we ever did stuff like that as kids. “We stayed the hell away from biker gangs growing up.”
The mechanical breathing fills the silence for a moment before Beast speaks.
"The South is fractured. Broken into dozens of factions that can't agree on anything.
Except for one. Bayou's Maw has been eating up territories for the past decade.
Swallowing smaller factions whole. That's what triggered Dominion's expansion.
Judge saw what Titan would become if left unchecked.
He started absorbing territories up here because the possibility of Steelborn taking over a massive territory is too fucking real with Titan leading them.
It would be a hellish nightmare for everyone.
"Not everyone agreed with that. Lots of alphas in Dominion thought we should stay small. Keep to ourselves. Let the South tear itself apart. But Judge saw the long game. And as we started getting more omega refugees, it pissed a lot of the alphas off. I don’t want to say too much, but Titan has been meddling recently with territories in the Rockies.
We either deal with this shit now, or we risk losing it all.
The letter your home sent seems to acknowledge as much.
Or at least, that they don’t want to be on the losing side. ”
I stare at the letter on the table. My home. The place I ran from. The place that wanted to trade me away like livestock. And now they're offering tanks, soldiers, and an alliance.
We always had it beaten into our brains that the bunkers were superior, that we had access to military technology and the parts to fix them. “So they’re going to help Judge?” I ask.
Beast dips his head in a confirmation. Kitty sighs loudly. “Oh, thank baby Jesus.”
“Did they not take tanks, or medevacs?”
Skinner shakes his head. “Don’t got that shit. It’s all locked down at the bases. And we can make our own makeshift medevacs, but the ones you guys have are superior. Safer.”
Beast pulls out paper and scribbles on it, then rolls it tight and slides it into a small capsule.
He lifts the bird's hood. The raptor's eyes are gold and alive.
Wings snap open in the small room, wind hitting my face hard.
Then it's gone through the open slit-window, out into the pale sky, carrying words to Judge that I hope reach him in time.
Kitty's hand finds my shoulder. “This is a lot fucking better than what they went with,” she whispers, and her voice shakes like she doesn't say things like that often.
I look at her like I’m missing a massive piece of this puzzle.
“Did they go on a suicide mission or something?” I ask, mostly joking.
I frown when she looks at me like she’s uncomfortable answering that.
“And why are telling me all of this? Do I nee to do something? Oh my god, they really did go on a suicide mission, didn’t they! ”
Skinner clears his throat. “We’re telling you in case we might need anything…
any negotiation that they could ask for, since you’re tied to it.
And, well, it’s a Trojan horse. It’s not like we sent the cook or some shit.
It’s a bunch of fuckers that know how to kill.
Bayou’s Maw is chaotic as all hell. If Titan’s gone, they’ll crash.
We have plans to send the Reapers in after and clean their shit up. ”
The meeting with Grimm.
I quickly pull out a chair, almost collapsing. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, just to scratch skin that seems impossible to satisfy.
I can’t even comprehend that home is helping the people I ran from.
But at this point? If they bring me Judge back?
They can have whatever the hell they want— “Why didn’t I get a tattoo on my neck?
” I ask, then feel a little dumb for saying that at this time.
“I just, sorry, I just imagined seeing people from home and realized I won’t look like anyone here. ”
Kitty’s eyes soften, the liner around them making her gaze all the heavier. “Judge said he didn’t want you to be tied to that identity.”
And as embarrassing as it is, I fucking crumble right there in this empty war room, my face in my palms, touched that he would consider even that. The sobs come ugly and raw, shaking through me until I can't tell if I'm grieving or hoping or both.
Come back to me, Judge...