Chapter 24 Sanctuary #2
“The war. I thought they’d want me as a medical major, but the Defiance took more men than anyone was led to believe.
The NAO was desperate for bodies, and I hadn’t finished my medical training.
Plus, I had a head for strategy. They shipped me to Ontario for intelligence and command.
Dad was promoted to a one-star general once Haynes realized he was losing half his army to a rebellion.
“My sister tried to join the rebellion. She was twenty-five, and Dad had no grounds to stop her, but he tried anyway. He trapped her in DC, where trying to escape would have been suicide, especially for a single woman.”
Once again, he studied me, and I diligently chewed.
“I didn’t even think to refuse,” he said.
“In the military, they groom you to fall in line, to love your country before everything else. Duty, honor, country. All that. It was easy to join up when Haynes wasn’t president.
Plus, it’s what my father wanted for me.
This country… It used to be great. But when the NAO took over, I hated every second of wearing that uniform, of looking like I supported their hate.
I knew what was happening was wrong, but I didn’t know how to get out.
My father raised me on patriotism, and I was using this country to pay for school.
I’d promised them four years of service.
“Sophie, though. Sophie was the smart one. She hated this regime from the very beginning, shaming me and my dad for serving a dictator back before he truly was a dictator. I remember arguing with her that I was just serving my four years and getting out, and she’d laugh and say I sold my soul for med school tuition. ”
He lapsed into a long silence, and I sat frozen, staring at the hunch of his shoulders.
“I wish she hadn’t been right,” he murmured after a bit.
“So how did it all go down?” I asked.
He glanced my way as I ladled broth into my mouth, allowing a small smirk to surface that faded as he spoke again.
“They shipped me to Canada to fight, and I was there for more than a year. We were given very little information about what was happening back home. I’d heard of the Defiance, but I didn’t really understand. I didn’t know.
“Then the Defiance got stronger, and Haynes needed more protection domestically. He pulled thousands of troops back into the States to serve the NSF, including me. I was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given a battalion of Hunters to command. My father was promoted even higher. The only good part of it was that I’d returned home to DC. ”
“Back to Sophie?”
He nodded. “That’s when I learned about the prisoner camps and brothels.
It’s when I learned about Executive Order 16389.
I had no idea how bad it had gotten. Sophie was miserable.
Angry. Dad… It’s like he was blind to it.
She told me what the NAO was really doing, and I…
Christ, I didn’t know what to do. The violence in the country was escalating.
Civilian riots were killing innocents and soldiers alike.
Theodore Harrison was both aggressive and smart, and his losses were nothing compared to the NAO’s. ”
“It didn’t seem that way on our side,” I muttered.
He shot me a knowing look. “The propaganda is misleading. Again and again, your Prime Delegate approached Haynes for peace talks, but he wouldn’t even consider speaking to a woman.
The news painted it like he was protecting us from the dangerous rebels.
Sophie wanted us all to defect, and I wanted to.
I really did. But I couldn’t find a safe way to escape. ”
I sensed a darkness looming in his story, and I almost stopped him. Did it really matter how it ended? Wasn’t this bad enough?
“She was serving as a spy,” he said, so soft I could barely hear him. “The whole time, she was stealing information from our dad and giving it to the Defiance. At first, I tried to talk her out of it, but then…”
“You helped her, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “We did it for months before they discovered her. It was the middle of the night when they knocked down our door. Commander Haynes confronted my father directly. He thought Dad was aiding Sophie. They had no idea I was involved.”
Another silence stretched, and I wished I was close enough to touch him, to offer any sort of comfort. “So Haynes shot your father?”
“That’s the gist of it. Once Dad convinced Haynes he wasn’t a spy, Haynes then considered him an idiot for letting a woman steal from him.
They arrested Sophie. I was told she’d be questioned and processed like any other citizen arrested for a crime, so I thought I could bail her out. I’d find a lawyer. I’d free her.”
My heart sank.
His gaze slid my way. “I didn’t know at the time what the NSF considers due process.”
I set my empty plate aside and scooted closer to him. “Which Blood Colonel processed her?”
His eyes flashed. “Jack Miller.”
My mind blinked over the pages I’d memorized months ago—intimate details of Jack Miller’s weaknesses, his schedule, his entire life—and it all began to make a morbid kind of sense.
“You’ve been hunting him, haven’t you?”
“He transferred her to the House,” Lucas said. “For correction. One day, I will tear out his heart.”
This was far more dreadful than I’d imagined, and nausea churned in my gut. “Lucas, I’m so sorry.”
His mouth stretched into a humorless smile.
“It gets worse. They put a scarlet patch on my shoulder like it was an honor, then shipped me to the most active combat zone as punishment for my father’s crimes.
I’d been in combat before, but that first execution was the first time I had ever killed anyone in cold blood.
I tried to make it quick, as painless as possible, but instead of leniency, people only saw my inhumanity.
“The truth of it was what hurt. Those strangers dropped at my feet, and I felt nothing. That was the point I began to realize the NAO had stolen my humanity. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing but getting Sophie out, but I couldn’t find her.”
I knew the story would get worse. Sophie hadn’t survived, after all, and I’d known it from the start. But I wanted a different outcome. I wanted an ending that allowed her freedom. I wanted a life for her.
“It was all so much harder than I thought it would be. I volunteered to take over prisoner registration hoping I’d get some sense of her location.
Before me, they didn’t keep good records of the prisoners, so locating her was nearly impossible.
Still, I prepared. I got food. Gas. Everything we would need to escape to Canada.
” He swallowed, but the motion looked painful, like the next words would gut him to say.
“I found her last February. It turns out Jack Miller took a shine to her. He treats Defiant sympathizers worse than dogs, and he used her like a toy. She didn’t survive him. ”
I stared at his profile, trying to process that. “She didn’t…survive him?”
“He chokes women while he rapes them. To assert his dominance.”
I wished I hadn’t eaten that entire plate, as it badly wanted to make a reappearance.
“I might have killed Miller if he’d been anywhere near me when I discovered it, but I was in the brothel, and Anna… She calmed me down.”
“Anna?”
“She’s the madame of the House in this region.
” He lifted his hand, where the gold band glinted on his pinky.
“She gave me Sophie’s ring and helped me use my anger to my advantage.
The Hunters didn’t know I’d discovered where Sophie was.
They assumed I’d stay loyal to protect her, and they abused that assumption.
It gave me the perfect opening to go deeper than I ever had.
Given my rank, I had access to a lot of information.
I learned everything I could, and every Friday night, I go to the House.
Anna’s network gives me what the women are able to steal from the officers who use them. ”
“And you bring it all to me,” I said. The puzzle pieces finally settled into place in my mind, forming an intricate, complex picture. He’d been a doctor in training, then a soldier following orders, then a brother protecting his sister, and now a vigilante seeking justice.
“My father deserved the death he got,” he said. “I deserve the death that’s destined for me. Sophie didn’t deserve any of this. The NAO can burn in hell.”
I scooted close enough to take his hand. “How long after you found out she died did you approach Harrison?”
“A couple of weeks, I think. I hoped he’d kill me on sight. And then I hoped he’d send an assassin to murder me. Instead, he sent you.”
“He sent me.”
He huffed out a small, bitter laugh, still staring down at the ground as if avoiding my gaze would make it all easier to say. “Another Defiant Sophia. The fucking irony.”
That first meeting in March, he’d been furious and cold as the sharp edge of a knife, licking his wounds by lashing out at the woman he thought would kill him—a woman torturing him with his sister’s name.
He’d come to me in pieces, shredded apart by circumstances beyond his control, broken by years of coercive abuse and fear.
We’d both arrived at this house prepared to relinquish our lives, perhaps even hoping for the end.
Instead, we’d found sanctuary.
I reached for him, and he gave no resistance. He let me pull him toward me, surrendering easily to my pleas to come closer.
“Kiss me,” I whispered, and he did.
His mouth molded to mine, urgent and gentle all at the same time. His hand dove into my wet curls, holding me in place while he drugged me with the kind of kisses I’d fantasized about since that night we’d slept together.
When I tugged, he obeyed, sliding up my body as I fell to the mattress. He cupped my jaw, deepening and slowing the kiss like it was some dessert he wanted to savor.
My heart slammed in my chest, pounding to the beat of his own, pressed right against my chest. The kiss was beautiful and terrible all at once, like a diamond ring on a bloodstained hand.
I was falling for a man who existed somewhere between the pursuit of revenge and a traitor’s death.
Even he knew his days were numbered, and if I handed him my heart, he’d take it to his grave.
Still, I found myself on my knees, giving it all to him willingly, and he snatched it with greedy hands.
We both needed something to hold on to. The great tragedy was that the thing we’d found to grasp was like crystalline water leaking between our fingers.
Fleeting. Impossible to keep.
His eyes burned bright as he broke the kiss. “You almost died in my arms, do you know that? My hands were soaked in your blood. I spent days begging you to open your eyes, terrified you never would.”
Any woman would have melted at the expression on his face, all hot and possessive and needy. I pulled him back for another kiss.
I burned in the fire—pain in my leg, pleasure against my mouth. His lips dipped to my neck, and he murmured endearments against my skin as if he wanted to tattoo them there. As my eyes fell closed, his caresses slowed, grew more calming.
“You’re making me sleepy,” I muttered.
“That’s the point,” he replied, kissing the thin skin covering the veins of my wrist. “You need rest.”
“I need you.”
“I’m right here.”
My eyes gave up the fight, but my fingernails scraped his ribs, anchoring onto him. “You’ll stay with me?”
He found a place beside me, enfolding me in his arms while his fingers traced shapes on my bare skin. “I’ll stay with you, Sophia. Until I die.”