Chapter Eighty-Three
Feralyn
Our parents were gone.
Dead.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken to my father on the phone, and now he was dead. Helios and Ares’s mother was dead. And Helios was holding my hand.
He was holding my hand as he led me inside the house, and it felt wrong.
The scent of exotic spices was coming from the kitchen, and Helios’s arm wasn’t around my shoulders. His hand wasn’t on my nape. His body wasn’t in direct contact with mine. I wasn’t tucked under his massive bicep, pressed against his side.
Our parents were dead, and he was keeping a sedate distance because Ares, Ghost, and his wife, who I’d only seen twice but never actually met, were all in the house, all around the kitchen, all staring at us as we walked into the open-plan living area.
I looked at Ares first.
Standing next to the kitchen island, his expression a mask, his eyes on mine, he stood perfectly still.
Suddenly, I remembered a much younger version of Ares, and it hurt my heart so much, I was moving toward him before I could think twice.
I fell against him, he wrapped one arm and his masculine scent around me, and for a brief moment, we were what we had been. But then I inadvertently broke the spell with a whisper. “I’m so sorry about your mother.”
Ares’s body stiffened even more than usual. “My condolences for your father.”
I swallowed down a different kind of grief and stepped back. “Thank you.”
True to his word, Helios was right there behind me.
But then Ares moved a few feet away, and Ghost was in front of me.
His intense gaze searching, his face handsome, his entire disposition lethal but also very still in a way that Helios was not, I suddenly realized it was not Ghost that I had feared all these years, but what he represented.
A brother I didn’t know.
One I would never know because by the time I had met him, our lives had already been predetermined by circumstances beyond our control. Then Ghost became exactly what Helios and Ares had chosen to become. A warrior.
Tier One operators who could get killed in the line of duty.
Warfighters that may not come home.
And I’d already had a dead mother as well as a father and stepmother who didn’t want to come home. Now they were dead too, and I was where I’d always perceived myself to be.
Alone. Without blood family.
Then I’d been taken, and it was as if the noose of my own design hung me, and all of the fear—and yes, resentment—I had carried over my circumstances had become a fear of Ghost.
But he was here now, when he didn’t have to be, and he, Helios, and Ares were all alive.
This was my family.
“I’m sorry about our father,” I said to Ghost.
He looked over my head at Helios. “May I?”
I felt Helios’s exhale on my neck, and we all heard his low growl of warning, but then that was it. He didn’t tell Ghost to stand down.
Ghost met my gaze again and held out his arm.
I stepped forward.
For the first time, my half brother hugged me.
The scent of cool rain, vetiver, and musk surrounded me as Ghost wrapped both his arms around me and truly hugged me, albeit briefly.
Then, in a low voice, he surprised me. “Thank you.” Releasing me but keeping his eyes on mine, he stepped back and held his arm out again, but this time it was angled toward the beautiful woman in my kitchen. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I’m sorry for yours,” I replied as Helios moved in, his body heat and familiar scent enveloping me as his huge hand landed on my nape.
“I didn’t know him like you did,” Ghost replied with no intonation as his wife stepped under his arm. “Feralyn, this is my wife, Safiya.”
The dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who was as exotically beautiful as her name, held out her hand. Then she spoke with a slight accent. “My deepest sympathies for your loss.”
I placed my hand in hers to shake, but she grasped me with both of her hands and squeezed.
Despite the circumstances, despite my history with Ghost, despite everything, I immediately liked her. “Thank you.”
Merely nodding in response, she dropped her hands, then looked over my head. “I’m so sorry for the unfortunate circumstances, but it is good to see you again, Helios.”
She knew him?
“Safiya,” Helios stated with the same emotionless tone as Ghost, giving nothing away.
I glanced up at Helios, but before I could ask how he knew Safiya, Ares spoke.
“We need to discuss burial arrangements.”
“I will finish preparing dinner while you all speak.” Safiya looked at me apologetically. “I hope you do not mind. I have made myself at home in your kitchen, but I promise to leave it as I found it.”
“I don’t mind, and thank you so much for your thoughtfulness.”
Safiya gave me a reserved smile, then she looked up at Ghost.
The eye contact between them was so intense, I had to look away.
But then I looked up at Helios, and I wondered if what I just saw and felt was what Ares saw when I looked at his brother.
“You okay to do this now?” Helios asked only loud enough for me to hear.
I was in shock, and I knew the grief would come back, much more so than in the garage when Helios had first told me, but this very second, I was okay to do this. “Yes, but please stay close.”
“Woman, you’d be on my lap right now if I didn’t know for a fact that it’d make you fucking uncomfortable.”
I wanted exactly that, but he was right. I would be uncomfortable with it right now. “How do you know Safiya?”
“Her story to tell. Just know that Ghost is still a motherfucking dick, and I don’t regret shit, but I met her after I took those rounds in the shoulder.”
I instantly knew two things. Safiya was a woman with a past, and Helios had in some way been involved with helping her. Maybe one day she would tell me, maybe not. I would never ask. But I was thankful Ghost had someone who loved him.
I was thankful I had Helios who loved me.
“I love you,” I whispered to my warrior.
Helios’s eyes turned dark. “Woman.”
Ares spoke up, interrupting my temporary bubble of reprieve. “Let’s have a seat.”
I glanced towards him.
Standing at the dining table, his hand on the back of a chair he’d pulled out, Ares’s gaze was fixed on me.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Helios muttered. “Remind me again why I can’t shoot him.”
“Because he’s your brother.”
“Yeah. Right.” Helios exhaled. “Let’s get this fucking over with.” Helios led me to the table.