Chapter 9 Good Girl #2
After an hour, he stared at me with those extraordinary eyes, their color finally visible now that I’d adjusted to the low light. “This is worse than I thought. You resort immediately to fear and panic.”
Still breathing hard, I swiped a hand over my sweaty brow. “That’s a normal reaction to being attacked by someone like you,” I snapped. “How did you even learn all this?”
His head cocked as if that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “I’ve fought in a war for the last three years. What the fuck have you been doing?”
I sent him a death glare. “Not all of us can be cold-blooded killers.”
His expression grew frigid. “Pity,” he spat and leapt at me again.
We sparred until long after sunset. Though the night was chilly, the exercise and my poor stamina had me sweating in my hoodie. I growled and yanked it off my body, baring the tank top I wore beneath. Throwing the sweatshirt to the side, I faced him again.
The merest flicker of his eyes to my breasts, and ice flooded my veins.
What was I doing?
Had I forgotten who this person was? Had the unfavorable power dynamic between us slipped my mind? Why was I showing him parts of my body when he was a Hunter, and he was a man, and he was clearly attracted to women?
And even though he’d saved my life, even though these lessons were meant to protect me, I still expected his next assault to be genuine. I expected to be laid out and threatened by the man he’d been in my head before he’d flustered me with this guy who…wasn’t terrible.
Lucas Scott was a violent executioner. A Blood Colonel.
Being pinned beneath his lean body should have been the most dangerous place in the world, but once again, he trapped me without pain.
No threatening advances, no careless grazes against body parts he shouldn’t touch. I tried to escape him, but I failed.
He sat on my hips, holding my wrists. “Your panic makes you make stupid decisions. Did you have any training?”
I scowled. “My first drill sergeant died. After that, I got…complacent.”
“How’d you survive?”
“Dumb luck.” And protective friends.
“You have the instincts of a cocker spaniel. Do you like to cuddle and be petted too?”
Such an asshole. My teeth clenched as I gritted out, “Depends on where you pet me.”
A brief pause.
He blinked, and then a sound burst from his mouth.
No, not a sound. A laugh.
His face transformed, and a genuine smile appeared like some lost treasure. It was definitely a more pleasant expression than his cold frown.
I glared at him.
“Do you have a shred of self-preservation in there?” he asked.
“You’re attacking me. I’m allowed to be pissed about it.”
He released my wrists and stood. “You made a deal with the devil. Suck it up and follow through.”
I laughed, mirthless and bitter. “Why? What more could you do to me? I’m already in hell.”
He eyed me. “This isn’t hell. And you lack imagination.” The dire tone in his words had me hesitating. I studied his face for answers, but it had reverted to its mask.
Slowly, I stood, my jelly muscles barely holding me up.
Tekqua had always been far more dedicated to her role as a soldier than me.
When she advanced to sergeant, she took command of our squad with determination, arranging daily exercise routines and training maneuvers.
With her hours of working out, she gave herself a body I envied but didn’t want enough to work for.
Meanwhile, I could barely handle a combat knife, and I’d resigned myself to scrawny arms and my mother’s hips.
With Tekqua gone, my stamina had dwindled to nothing, and now it flaunted its absence with shaking limbs and a pounding heart.
“My imagination is just fine, thanks,” I said.
“There are worse things than spending a single evening with me every week, Sophia. Trust me.”
Trust him? No way.
He scrutinized my trembling legs and sighed. “Good thing for your patients you’re a better medic than you are a soldier.”
I crossed my arms. “How do you know whether I’m a good medic? Was that in my research file too?”
He did nothing other than offer that tiny smile I wasn’t sure even existed.
“I’m not that good at it,” I admitted to him, then wished I hadn’t. Lucas Scott didn’t need to know my weaknesses or insecurities.
His head cocked, curious again. “Everything you learned about the human body, you learned through sheer will and determination. You can fly under the radar in med school. There’s no skirting by in the field.
You know how to save lives when there’s no electricity and barely clean water.
You’re better than a doctor. You’re a combat medic. Own it.”
“Yeah,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “What a respectable title to have.”
“Better than cold-blooded killer,” came his answer, icy and sharp and edged with bitterness.
I forced my aching body to straighten as I looked him in the eye. “You earned that title.”
“No,” he bit out. “Many titles I’ve earned, but that one I did not.”
My heart raced at his sudden intensity. A million questions soared through my head, but would he answer any? I chewed on my lip and asked the only one he might. “What title have you earned then?”
His bare expression morphed, now absent of the cold. “Doctor.”
I narrowed my eyes. “No way. I don’t believe you.”
He shrugged and struck once more.
When my endurance finally imploded, he walked me to the door. “I have something for you.”
Once again wary of innuendoes, I faced him.
He wiggled a silver key in my face. “It goes to the front door. In case you arrive before me again.”
Suspicious, I tested it. The key slid into the knob and turned without a catch. Hmm. Alright, then.
A crease formed between his eyebrows as I pocketed it. “Why do you always assume I’m lying to you?”
“Because you’re a traitorous murderer.”
He expelled a long breath. “Keep that key on you at all times.”
First the knuckles, and now the key. “Are you always this bossy?”
“Yes.” He patted the top of my head like a dog. “And you’re such a good girl.”
My teeth snapped with how hard I gritted them. “You have no idea how much I hate you.”
“Mm-hmm. I hate me too. Have a good night.” He pushed me into the darkness and shut the door in my face. I left sore and nursing several bruises, questioning every moment I’d spent with him.
Less than a year ago, this same man had arrived at Unity Square a newly minted colonel. On our television screen, three dozen condemned men and women stood against the familiar bloodstained wall, bound at the wrists and ankles. Each month, the execution changed locales, but that one was ours.
Those people were ours.
And Lucas Scott was assigned to kill them.
Like every other execution day, we’d gathered in the common room, jostling for the best view of the screen, each of us desperate to look, but scared to see.
Tekqua had gripped my fingers, her gaze riveted to the screen.
When Lucas appeared, tall and sharp, his features cut from stone, his dead eyes stared straight into the camera.
“Good evening,” he said in a robotic voice.
“I am Colonel Lucas Scott. In accordance with…” He droned on with the same speech they all spoke before those unlawful executions, pretending as if an executive order was enough to forego all due process.
After he finished his address, and the unseen audience echoed the All hail the Commander, he stepped toward the line of prisoners.
But he had no weapon. I remember my perplexity with crisp clarity. Normally, the executioner chose from the torture devices on the table, but Lucas Scott had appeared empty-handed, as if he planned to kill three dozen people with his bare hands.
But then he paused.
The image was still etched in my memory. He stood beside the first prisoner and cracked his neck, a spark of silver flashing at the tip of his finger. I’d squinted at the screen, my stomach falling when Adam whispered, “Is that a scalpel?”
In the next several seconds, I discovered that the method a man chose to deliver a death sentence told me everything I needed to know about him.
Catlike movements brought Lucas Scott before the first prisoner in line. He gripped the man’s shoulder and punctured his neck. A quick crank of Scott’s wrist, and he moved to the next one while the dying man dropped to his knees.
My head spun at his indifferent efficiency, less messy than his fellow Blood Colonels, but more cold-blooded.
Ninety seconds. Twenty breaths. Fewer than two hundred heartbeats.
He’d killed them all. Like a robot. Wholly inhuman.
I’d never seen anything like it.
On the screen, bodies littered the ground, pools of blood spreading through the dust. Pale as death, Lucas Scott twirled his scalpel around his fingers like a pencil and tossed it over his shoulder. He’d disappeared offscreen, leaving us to stare at the carnage he’d left behind.
Now, that same man had me beguiled. Who was this person who killed like a machine but took time out of his life to train me to survive?
I wanted to understand every word he said and action he took.
Why was he doing this? Why take this risk when he didn’t seem to hold the Defiance in any esteem, when he had no problem murdering us in broad daylight?
They hurt my sister.
Where was his sister? Did she live in this city with him?
I brought my concerns to Theo, and he confirmed he still didn’t know the whereabouts of this mystery girl despite several attempts to locate her.
Still, regardless of his motives, Lucas Scott’s information was on point.
Over the next several weeks, while I struggled beneath his deadly hands, he passed along guarded NAO secrets.
Upcoming plans, battle tactics, locations of interest—all in Theo’s grasp.
We learned their food and supply routes, the many locales of the Stability bloc, how they rotated women through the House.
Week by week, the infrastructure of the NAO made its way to Theodore Harrison, and a notorious NSF Blood Colonel, the man who’d greeted us with the coldest execution in the NAO’s history, became the greatest asset we’d had since the start of the war.