Chapter 5
Esme
I couldn’t sleep. Of course, I couldn’t. I was stuck in a fucking tent with Ford, without the protection of my secrets or the suppressant.
I’d never lived a day in his presence without one of them. I wasn’t enjoying a future where I had neither.
I would get more of the suppressant soon enough. Ford was mad now, but he’d realize soon enough we were better for it.
Especially when the Bond made itself known again.
He’d be watching me now, and it would be harder to hide its effects.
It wouldn’t take long for him to get tired of me secretly stealing his clothes to quell my need to have his scent around or me keeping watch over what he ate or how he slept—primal, base instincts that the Bond sipped on like ambrosia.
I could feel it. Rumbling, threatening in the back of my mind. Waiting for the first chance to spring back out and ruin my life. I wasn’t even being dramatic, though melodrama was a guilty pleasure of mine.
Already, I was battling an overwhelming sense of relief at the fact we’d have to share a tent for the foreseeable future. Even though it was large, tall enough that I could stand up straight inside, it still felt far more intimate than the cabin we’d shared.
Those sterile beds, pushed far to the opposite sides of the room, made it feel more like the boarding rooms at my old university than anything.
But a tent felt…it felt different. Any more thought put to that and I would be handing the Bond the key to its cage. I was happy leaving it to snarl and claw until it broke through itself.
Until then, I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t stay trapped under this thick, oppressive fabric, listening to the sound of Ford’s breathing and letting precious time tick by. For all I knew, there was another attack coming in from Muli, striking again right as we were recovering from the first blow.
They would be after the Bridge, I was sure of it.
Maybe they were letting us do their dirty work for them, clean up the rubble and then pounce right when we had a clear path back to Vir.
Or maybe they just wanted to trap us here, dry us out of food and resources and our sanity before they finally drove home the killing blow.
All that fear, all that danger, and I was lying here concerned about Ford. It was odd, the way he’d just accepted my refusal to speak to him. He’d flown out of the tent like a bat out of hell, heading for a dip in the river and returning half an hour later, seemingly unaware that he was ice cold.
It was a good thing, I tried to remind myself, that he’d left when he did. I was seconds away from throwing caution to the wind and walking him through every torturous moment of our early Match, ending with a grand flourish and telling him how I’d nearly died saving him.
Not a sweet, swooning moment where I was overcome by fear that I’d lose my Soul Mate.
No, it was a horrifying, haunting trauma that had brought me so close to death, my brain simply shut out those memories.
Ford didn’t want that on his conscience.
Hell, I didn’t.
I’d had to explicitly tell Soren and Freya, the two witnesses to my little meltdown, to stop treating me like I deserved praise. I didn’t deserve shit. The people I’d hurt saving him were stains on my soul I could never scrub out.
At least I’d been numb to it before, a fun little side effect of the suppressant I lied about every time Peter asked. I could tell it had dampened my emotional range, taking out my highest highs and lowest lows.
I’d welcomed it at first, but my tune was changing.
A new friend in Bellamy, an inch of hope that we were making progress in this stalled war, the eerie similarities between Bellamy’s recent brush with death and Soren’s rescue of her—all moments full of emotions that felt just out of reach.
I pushed myself to a seat, careful not to make too much noise. Pulling my knees to my chest, I dropped my forehead to them and fought for calming breaths. For all that I’d had to survive, I wasn’t finding that same resilience now.
And when I took a deep breath in, only for it to be wrapped in Ford’s scent, I felt tears well in my eyes.
This was enough. I was done.
Carefully as I could, I gathered what I needed and inched out of the tent. Pulling on my riding boots, I started towards the stables, grateful for the bite of the fresh air pinching my cheeks.
Anything to pull me out of my body, to usher me away from the warm feeling that had been building in my stomach like a fire eating through a piece of parchment.
I heard the soft snaps of hooves behind me, knowing it was Sky and Shadow following.
My eyes were hazy, my movements unfocused and a little sloppy, as I entered the stables and gathered what I needed.
Extra water, just in case. A few treats, payment for forcing Sky off on his own.
A small, lightweight knife that could slip through the night sky and land in someone’s chest in the time their heart paused to beat.
Sky was starting to understand my intention, and was making his ire very well known. Dust clouded my vision from his stomps.
“I know, buddy,” I murmured under my breath, blindly finding the bridge of his snout with my hand, moving my fingers over the soft, short hair there.
The abrasion was a balm to my soul, the slip of rough sand over bare feet.
But the cool relief of ocean water never came. A perfect, precious moment, but…
I didn’t know what it was, or even how to ask for it, but there was something more I craved. Some type of…calm I hadn’t experienced yet.
Meandering thoughts weren’t appropriate right now, not when I had orders to disregard and hard truths to run from.
I led Sky out of the stables, taking the path Freya had told me was a blind spot for the night guard. I knew I couldn’t stop her from taking her midnight rides, no matter how much they scared me, but I could at least figure out how she did it.
It would come in handy at some point, and that time was now.
Sky put up a good fight, grumbling like the ground right before an earthquake, when I continued to pull him away from Shadow. I could barely look at her big eyes without feeling my own go wide with brewing tears.
I dug into my pocket and pulled out a treat, which she snapped up in seconds. I spent a full minute stroking my hands through her mane, giving her a sweet little braid in the center, before I’d finally coaxed enough submission from her to let us go.
“I’ll be back, I promise,” I whispered to her, pressing our foreheads together.
She was an animal, only motivated my instinct and survival.
After what I’d put her through, it was only natural that she wanted to be assured with my safety at all times. I didn’t think Ford even realized how much she fussed over him, always protecting his left side—though he hadn’t lost that much vision there.
With one last drag of my knuckles down the bridge of her snout, I turned to Sky and hauled myself onto his back.
I clicked in the back of my throat, ushering him forward. He didn’t move an inch, except for the stretch of his head towards Shadow, nuzzling into her neck.
A vision flashed, sharp and unwanted. A memory of Sky doing the same thing seven years ago, sparking a twist of jealousy so potent in my chest I thought my ribs were pulling apart.
Jealous, over a horse.
It didn’t seem so insane at the time.
“Let’s go, Sky,” I softly beckoned, pulling lightly on his reins. He listened, though he made his feelings about doing so quite clear.
For the first stretch to the tree line, his trot was jostling and jumpy, forcing me to counter his movements. I’d pay for the strain on my muscles in the morning.
Right now, the pulls of fresher and fresher air I dragged into my lungs the farther away we got from the camp were too liberating to ignore.
For now, while I was still in control of myself, the relief was potent and all-consuming, rushing into every limb and each corner of my mind. It brushed up against something locked away, the gentle caress of fingertips over a cheekbone.
Not enough to wake, but just enough to lift out of deep sleep. The opening of one eye, testing to see if the sun had risen.
I shoved it back into the darkness, refusing to acknowledge it. That seemed like a good plan.
Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.
The word repeated in my head as I trotted along with Sky, keeping watch on the ground for any branches or twigs that could have him tripping, even though his vision was better than mine.
I didn’t want children. I’d raised myself, and that was enough.
I had Sky and Shadow, and I was content to mother them.
And it was certainly the instincts of an overprotective mother that had me watching his steps as we crested the hill that protected our camp and officially stepped over into enemy territory.
Not that I’d ever thought of it like that. I’d felt safer running through the fields of Muli than I did in the home I grew up in—not that it was much of one.
Still, Peter would likely be furious with me if he knew I was sneaking off alone. I just wanted to look, to see for myself what had happened.
Surely, if there was that blatant of an attack on us, Pax wouldn’t go unaffected.
It made sense that the leaders of the largest—well, only—smuggling operation between Muli and Vir would want to snoop around their stock to see if their network was crumbling.
Right as the thought crossed my mind, the distant lights of the barn that housed Pax’s bar came into view, flickering softly in the moonlight.
The first though that popped into my head was Roger’s well being. The sweet, soft man who owned that barn. Once apart of an isolated farm far into Muli’s wild and free rurals, now turned into a bar that helped soldiers relax from the stressors of war.
Roger had become a very, very rich man over the years, and yet you’d hardly know it. He lived a humble life, choosing to send the money he earned back to Muli’s capital. I wasn’t sure where it went, seeing as he was notoriously tight-lipped about the sore spots in Muli’s society.
All I knew was that Roger could have lived like a king if he wanted to. Just the cut he got from our trade, his payment for housing most of our goods in the cellar under his barn, was enough to fund a lavish lifestyle ten times over.
At least someone was reaping the benefit. Ford and I both had stores set aside, but it was hard to do much with the money we technically earned from our smuggling operation when our accounts were monitored with a careful eye back on Vir.
That was the only way we’d gotten this idea approved. Spying by way of borderline illegal—well, fully illegal—activity, so long as we didn’t actually take a cut of any earnings.
And people wondered why I cared so much about my jewelry. I could buy a house in the wealthiest part of Florus with just the necklaces circling my throat.
Just then, my hand clenched in Sky’s reins, the thin rings that sat stacked on each finger biting into my skin.
Delicious, distracting pain that pulled focus away from the ache in my chest.
It took everything in me to keep Sky moving at a gentle pace, avoiding the crashing sound of hooves on the ground.
What felt like ages later, we made it to the barn. There wasn’t a soul in sight, though the lights were on. What ghastly change from the boisterous music and free laughs I’d come to expect.
Even Sky sensed something was wrong, shifting under me uncomfortably. He kept looking back towards the trees, like he was debating making a break for it and hoping I got my shit together fast enough to jump onto his back before he left me in the dust.
After several seconds of soft cooing to get him settled, I finally stepped down off the saddle and made to move away from him.
I kept my hand on the gun at my hip, poised to whip it out with the barest notice. It wouldn’t do well to take it out now. For all I knew, there was a trigger happy sniper in the woods who would blow my head off if they saw the silhouette of an intruder with a gun.
Inching towards the south wall of the barn, I lingered by a patch of wood I knew was weathered and worn and notorious for letting sounds slip through. I paused for a few moments, hearing nothing more than the shuffling of shoes over dusty ground and the occasional rattle of a crate.
Roger was probably just cleaning up for the night.
Right as I was about to take a few steps forward, another sound, a little more distant, caught my attention.
There was a distinct click the kind that came from an expensive boots, rather than the sturdy sound the leather heel of a riding boot made.
I didn’t have any time to investigate, because at that very moment the hairs on my arms rose and a spark of awareness shot down my spine, sending heated panic spilling into my stomach.
In a flash of movement so quick it would have sent most people tumbling to the ground, I turned in the arms of my attacker right as they wrapped around me, shoving the barrel of my gun up and under their chin.
It wasn’t until my back hit the wall of the barn and I stared up into forest green eyes that I registered what had happened.
Too late to escape his fury, to find anywhere else to be than trapped in between the hard length of his body and a wall of wood as Ford sneered down at me, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”