Chapter 31
Fairchild was halfway down the concourse of Sector HQ when the tears started to flow. A Merc wasn’t supposed to cry, but Fairchild made no effort to hide it.
She wasn’t a Merc.
Not anymore.
The idea was not entirely new to her. After losing her teammates on Thule, she’d often thought she would never work as a Merc again. Then Col. Barnes had come along with a chance for revenge.
Even then, Fairchild had figured her days with the Guild were numbered. One last job. Kill Slayn. Avenge Dane and Bryce. Tie up all those ragged and bloody loose ends. And after that… who knew?
Then those damned guys had come along and changed everything.
Reece. Dutton. Nash.
Fairchild’s mind time-traveled a week into the past, taking over Slayn’s ship with her guys, the four of them naked and bloody, killing everything that stood in their way.
She remembered the sound of their battle cries as they killed, the screams of their enemies as they died, the weight of the pistols in her hands, the smell of cordite and hot metal and death.
God, it had felt so good to be part of a team again. A real team. Fairchild knew she would never be able to find that with another group of Mercs. Not like how it was with her guys.
Her guys.
She stopped her feet and stood in the middle of the concourse, letting the last of her tears roll down her cheeks.
Around her, other soldiers marched by on their way to training sessions, mission briefings, loadouts.
A few of them glanced in her direction as they passed, but none of them stopped to offer a kind word or ask her what was wrong.
That was fine with Fairchild. She wasn’t looking for comfort.
The Guild had been her home for about as long as she could remember.
Before that, all she had were flimsy scraps of a childhood, ragged memories of scrabbling among ruins for something to eat or some shelter from the weather.
The Guild had given her the closest thing she’d ever had to a real family.
Was she truly ready to give that all up now?
Yes.
If she couldn’t fight alongside her guys, she wouldn’t fight at all. Not for the Guild, anyway.
But the way she’d gone about it was all wrong. She hadn’t just walked out on Lennox and Barnes; she’d walked out on Reece and the others too, without so much as a word of goodbye.
Damn it.
Damn it!
She wiped away the tears that were already drying on her cheeks and started to turn around. If she hurried, she could make it back to the briefing room before—
Her body slapped into another body, bigger and harder than her own. A massive torso clothed in a sturdy combat vest. A pair of arms bulging with muscle. Two eyes shining out from beneath the shadow of a weatherbeaten hood.
Reece. He had followed her.
Fairchild was so surprised, she couldn’t think of anything to say, aside from stating the obvious.
“You followed me.”
It was part statement, part question, and part something else grammarians didn’t have a name for. Fairchild cast her eyes back and forth as she said it, looking at the other two Mercs standing a step behind their leader on either side. Dutton and Nash. They had followed her too.
“That’s right,” Reece said. His voice was low, barely even audible over the hubbub of the concourse, but Fairchild could feel it rumbling deep within her body. “We would follow you to the ends of the galaxy and beyond.”
He lifted a hand to her face and thumbed away a tear she had missed.
“But…?”
“But what?” Reece asked. “Our new assignment? Lennox will have to give it to someone else. We’re retired.”
“What?”
“We, uh, tendered our resignations,” Nash said over Reece’s shoulder. “Shortly after you tendered your own.”
“That’s right,” Dutton added from the other side. “We quit.”
“What? No! You can’t just quit.”
Reece smiled inside his hood.
“Watch us.”
Fairchild couldn’t help but smile back, as she realized she’d said the same thing in the singular to Lennox just a few minutes before. But her smile was short-lived.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “Are you sure you really want to quit the Guild?”
“If the choice is between you and the Guild,” Reece said. “We choose you. I meant what I said back there in the briefing room. We’re not just a team, we’re a family…”
He touched her abdomen.
“…Literally.”
Fairchild knew it was still far too soon to feel anything stirring inside her.
It had only been one week since she and her guys had had sex without birth control for the first time.
The new life that was growing inside her was still microscopic at this point.
Too small for even a Merc’s augmented nerves to sense.
Still, as Reece placed his big hand against her belly, Fairchild could swear she felt something.
Her body was beginning to heat up, the way it always did around her guys.
“What will we do for money?” she asked.
“We’ll figure something out. A quartet of ex-Mercs will be in high demand.
Private security. Combat training. Consulting.
The sky’s the limit.” He grinned. “Besides, we don’t really have to worry about money, you know.
My family’s loaded. They made some good investments in the silk trade back in the day. ”
Fairchild looked back and forth between Dutton and Nash. She didn’t even have to ask if they were going along with their leader on this. They were a unit. Everything they did, they did together.
Including her.
Fairchild closed the gap between her body and Reece’s, letting herself feel how hard he was beneath his clothes, letting him feel how hot she was beneath hers. She stared up into his handsome face and smiled.
“Guess this calls for a little retirement party,” she said. “I vote we head over to the Joy District, get ourselves a room, and celebrate until every drop of energy has been drained from our bodies.”
“Fuck that,” said Reece. “I can’t wait that long.”
Before Fairchild even had a chance to react, he had swept her off her feet and flung her over his shoulder. Then he turned and headed back down the concourse in the direction they’d just come. Dutton and Nash followed close behind.