Chapter 11 Bash #2
“Yeah,” I rasp, opening my eyes to find him watching me too carefully. “I heard. How’d you weasel your way out?”
He glances at Cato again, but Cato only crosses his arms, shoulders thrown back.
Xeni releases a shaky exhale and gestures towards the chairs. “It’s a long story. Can we sit?”
I study him, searching for the cunning he loves to use to his advantage. There’s none of it now, only weariness.
Against every instinct, I nod.
We move to the table, and Xeni sinks into the chair. He rests his face in his palms, then speaks without looking up.
“Ljómur was destroyed because of me.”
“What?” I demand.
He lifts his face and meets my eyes for a second, then looks away.
“I met two people… two good people, then discovered they were mates. They were smart enough to hide it, and I tried to help them. I kept their secret. Eventually, they ran off together, but the new commander had a personal vendetta against one of them.”
He glances up, and I keep my face impassive as I wave for him to continue.
“He was furious they escaped from under his nose, and he started questioning everyone who knew them. If you didn’t have information, you were executed on the spot. And, well… I had information.” He scoffs quietly, shaking his head. “They were gone. I didn’t think it would matter.”
“You never learned that actions matter,” I say with more venom than I intend. “They always matter.”
“I know,” he whispers as he ducks his head, his cheeks flushing. “I never expected to see them again. They weren’t supposed to show up at Ljómur, but they did, and if I hadn’t spoken up…”
He pauses, swallowing again as he glances up at me. “My actions almost cost them everything. If I had just kept my mouth shut, they wouldn’t have known. But I didn’t, and it was my fault they were in those cages.”
The urge to comfort him crashes over me.
I know him too well.
The careless grin he wears like armor.
The jokes that deflect everything sharp.
Underneath them, Xeni feels too deeply, and carries every wound in silence until it festers. Knowing he was the reason those two people were caged would have torn him apart from the inside.
“The commander didn’t stop there, either,” he continues, fingers fidgeting on the table. “He made me take part in their torture.”
“So, what happened?” I ask, voice softer than he deserves. “How did their capture lead to the place going down in flames?”
Xeni is quiet for a long moment before he shakes his head. “I couldn’t live with what I’d done.”
Jealous anger surges through me, sitting heavy like acid in my stomach and eating away at everything rational.
He couldn’t live with betraying them—these strangers, and whatever fragile trust they’d built—but when it came to me, to us, he’d done it with no hesitation, and without a backward glance.
What does that say?
That I wasn’t worth the same conscience?
That the love he claimed was so all-consuming wasn’t enough to stop him from abandoning me?
That I was expendable in a way they never were?
The questions claw at me as the silence thickens. I stare at him, searching for something—regret, understanding, anything—but his face is a mask of quiet resolve, and it only fuels the burn.
He couldn’t live with betraying them.
But he lived just fine after betraying me.
“Go on,” I say, hating the waver in my voice.
Xeni hesitates, but eventually he continues. “I came up with a plan to get them out of their cells, return to my barracks, and pretend it never happened. At least they’d be free, even if I couldn’t be.”
Another punch of grief hits me square in the chest, and I shove away from the table and turn my back to him to keep him from seeing how much I’m affected.
“And?” I ask when he doesn’t speak.
“Things… didn’t go as planned.”
A bitter scoff pushes from my nose. “Funny how that happens.”
“Bash,” he whispers.
I shake my head. “Finish your story.”
Another long beat of silence stretches between us, but I don’t give in, and eventually, he talks.
“I got them out, but they refused to leave the other prisoners behind. We opened their cages, but the alarms triggered and everything turned into chaos. We got most of the mates loose and outside, but the building came down. Anyone left inside was killed.”
“That doesn’t explain how you escaped,” I say.
“They brought me with them.”
“Even after you betrayed them?” I demand as I glance over my shoulder at him.
His fingers trace the strap of his eyepatch with a faraway look on his face. “Yeah. Even then. They’re good people, but my actions had a cost.”
“They usually do,” I mutter, scorn bleeding through my words.
Xeni is quiet again as he takes a deep breath, and he’s pleading as he looks up at me. “Will you please sit back down, Bash? Talk to me. Give me a few minutes alone.”
The request lands like a spark on dry tinder. I snarl and spin to face him, slamming my hands onto the table hard enough to rattle it.
“Give you a few minutes alone? I already gave you too much, and you threw it away. Don’t you dare ask me for more.”
“But—”
“Why are you here?” I demand, cutting off his protest. “You’ve told me why you were there, but not why you’re in Atlanta.”
His gaze darts to Cato again, and my temper flares hotter.
“He’s not leaving, Xenesis, so answer my question. You walked away clean. No real consequences—like always. So why come back now? What are you doing here, and why were soldiers chasing you?”
“I was trying to get information,” he says. “I took the job so I had something to trade.”
“Trade for what?”
“You,” he whispers. “I was looking for you.”
The room goes dead silent as his confession hangs there, and I straighten, fury and something worse churning together.
“You had years,” I say, my voice trembling with the anger that’s been poisoning me since that day. “Years to look for me. Years to give me some sort of explanation for what happened, to offer even a scrap of truth.”
Xeni’s single eye glistens with tears, and I’m hit with a fresh surge of rage.
“Stop that,” I snap. “You don’t get to cry, Xeni! Do you have any fucking idea what you did to me? Any at all?”
“Yes,” he whispers, the admission quiet but utterly destructive.
The fragile dam holding me back shatters and unleashes everything I’ve bottled up for too long, and I charge forward in a blur of fury.
My fingers grip the collar of his armor, yanking him to his feet in one desperate pull.
I tilt my chin up to meet his height, dragging him close until his scent floods me again.
Sweet amber.
Familiar.
Devastating.
“No.” I hold him there, our faces inches apart and breaths mingling in the charged air. “No, if you did, you wouldn’t be standing here right now. You wouldn’t dare.”
We stare, chests heaving in syncopated rhythm, as a single tear slips free from his eye, carving a glistening path down his cheek.
I shake my head as I watch it fall. “You don’t know the first thing about pain.”
“I do,” he argues, voice wobbling.
Anger narrows my vision as I shove him back again, but still, he doesn’t fight.
Shoulders back, palms flat, he offers himself to my whims. That hollow place inside me screams with the unfairness of it all.
I want to knock him to the ground and hurt him until he understands what it’s like to be half a person. Leave him to crawl his way back to something even resembling alive.
I want to fist his hair and drag him close and tell him it’s okay. Kiss him until I remember what it’s like to be whole, then hurt him all over again.
His eye closes as another tear falls.
I move to do something—anything—to fill this void inside me, but a hand bands around my arm.
“Dom, stop,” Cato says, pulling me to a halt inches from Xeni. “Whatever you do right now, you’ll regret later. Let’s lock him up until you’re ready.”
My breath comes hard and fast, and Xeni’s eye opens, meeting mine with that same broken edge.
“Come on,” Cato urges, tugging my arm with a gentleness that’s unlike him. “Let me handle it. Get some air.”
I drag in a few ragged breaths, tracing the lines of Xeni’s face one last time. Then I turn to Cato, the concern in his eyes steadying me as I slide my arm around his neck and pull him close.
“Yeah, alright,” I whisper against his mouth, holding his eyes before kissing him.
It’s slow and deliberate, and drawn out until Xeni’s rage crackles in the air behind me like a squall.
Heart pounding in my chest, I don’t spare Xeni another glance as I kiss Cato once more.
“Come to my room when you’re done with him, okay?” I say.
“Count on it,” he murmurs with a hundred questions in his gaze, but I can’t answer them now. I turn and storm out of the door, ignoring Xeni’s shout of my name that cuts straight through my soul.