Chapter 26
Esme
Much to the utter shock of myself, everyone at camp, and likely the entire base back on Vir once they heard this story, the first thing Peter did when he saw us again was pull me and Ford into a joint hug.
Ford squeezed my hand while we were smushed in Peter’s embrace, that one little bit of pressure telling me everything I needed to know about how insane this moment was.
Peter had always treated me with a deeper note of affection than most, one that had only grown stronger since that fateful day where I’d rescued Ford.
But a hug, that was new.
Even Peter seemed to be moving ahead of himself, pulling back quickly and clearing his throat. Whatever he was about to say was lost when his eyes fell down between me and Ford, centering in on our intertwined hands.
I could tell he wanted to ask. Surely would ask, but not when we had company.
The border guard who’d spied our return ran off like his tail was on fire, alerting the camp that we’d all come back. Now, the entire camp was spilling down the hills towards the stables like a colony of ants finding their queen.
I wasn’t a fidgety person, but I felt a slight swell of nerves as we waited for everyone to join us. I took a peak at Bellamy, standing tall with a rich red folder tucked neatly into her side.
That was why I was nervous. To give people hope, to see eyes brighten as we promised them a way for their conscription to turn from a terrifying sentence into a stable, slow career.
If we were wrong, if there was a trick behind this all…
I saw the fear in everyone’s faces when Muli had launched their little attack.
We needed to light a fire under your asses, Elijah had quipped one night over dinner. Literally.
He’d gone on to note that we hadn’t suffered any casualties.
Where he meant it as a comforting assurance, it only made me more nervous.
They were clearly capable of an incredibly high degree of organization—and that was before we’d learned that they’d entirely fabricated the existence of Marks on Muli.
A light squeeze on my hand pulled me back to focus. I came back to myself right as Ford’s nose was nudging through the fall of my hair. “Who do you think is gonna be brave enough to say something first?”
I smiled, catching the watchful eye of Peter for a moment and suddenly feeling like a teenager who’s parent had caught them kissing their boyfriend.
We weren’t being exactly subtle.
I don’t do subtle, and you know that, the Bond said, rather unhelpfully.
It had been all types of helpful over the past twenty-four hours. Literally, and in the sense that it had taken all its pent up rage and shoved it all at me at once.
The second I’d given it an opening that connection with Ford was a real possibility, not some far off promise, the Bond had taken joy in turning me into a near feral animal.
My cheeks colored at the thought. After Caspian and Elijah had departed, promising to see us off the next morning, we’d all retreated to our rooms. Well, I was pretty sure Freya went for a ride.
The second Ford and I were alone again, I promptly latched myself to him like a succubus and didn’t let go until morning.
Granted, he’d reacted much the same way, grumbling when I rolled away from him after a particularly spirited round of sex and waking me up during a a rare bout of sleep with a frown on his face because I’d accidentally pulled a pillow between us.
“If you want something to hold, turn around,” he said, winding my arms around his body with a sleep-addled voice. When I called him adorable, he promptly woke up and insisted that he’d show me adorable.
As much as every part of me was screaming that this was the right path, I had to actively tamper the hesitant thoughts.
That this seemed too natural and too easy.
Ford was not one to question when things didn’t require change. I could stand to take a page out of his book. I matched the confident set of his shoulders and forced away any doubtful thoughts as the crowd around us grew.
It only took a few minutes—I’d seen people literally sprinting to the stables—for nearly the entire base to congregate.
My good mood was quelled as two people walked Carson down to the stables. He looked fine, if not a little uncomfortable.
Made sense.
He stopped only for a second to dip his chin at Soren before following his escort into the woods and back to the people he chose over us.
It was probably better we all stayed silent. There was a potent rage simmering off everyone, myself included.
The tension hung thick in the air until Peter said, “Why don’t we welcome everyone back,” which sent everyone into an uproar of applause before they started throwing questions at us.
“One at a time if you have questions!” Peter yelled with all the authority of a teacher well-versed in controlling little kids.
Despite the thinly veiled threat in his tone, everyone once again erupted into noise, demanding to know how our trek into Muli territory had been.
Bellamy’s voice broke through the crowd, not an inch above the volume required to speak to a group of twenty or so people. Still, she managed to quiet a group five times that size with little more than a word.
“It went well,” she said, looking and sounding like the princess she was in that moment.
“Salona is quite beautiful, and we were treated with kindness and hospitality. The Prince—” her words were cut off by another wave of sound, pure excitement that was instantly quelled when Soren barked, “Oi!” into the air.
“The Prince was very welcoming and was as interested in learning about us as we were about him,” Bellamy continued, smiling warmly at Soren as she did.
Bellamy kept the rest of the update short and sweet, a choice that Peter quickly picked up on. He knew there was more we weren’t saying, but it wasn’t worth causing a bout of mass hysteria to reveal that our friends on Muli had been lying to us all.
The fear was one thing, but what really worried me, and what I’d spent most of the ride back rattling to Ford about, was aggression.
There would be many people who would feel like Muli had been toying with them, forced into a humiliation ritual of showing their Marks to people who were secretly envious of them.
But there was also a sizable chance that people would get a little trigger happy. View that discovery as proof that Vir was the chosen child between the planets and try to launch an all out assault against them.
Peter would know what to do. How to deliver the news, if at all. He’d certainly agree with Bellamy’s opinion that we shouldn’t share that little bit of information with her father.
It was treason to keep such a secret, of the highest order. If someone found out, all of our heads would be lined up on sticks.
“Hey,” Ford said low, squeezing my hand once. “Don’t worry until you have to worry.”
I looked up at him, ready to snap back that it was easier said than done, but the words died on my tongue. Something clicked then, putting words to something I’d always noticed about Ford and had never known how to articulate.
He just did. If there was a problem, he walked right into it, addressing every problem as it came up. He didn’t dwell ahead of time, nor after the fact.
Sure, there was a downside to that. The obvious one being that he accepted the lack of Bond between us and didn’t doubt it.
He addressed the issues he could change, honing his skills beyond that of nearly every soldier to step foot on Muli.
He’d made me as comfortable in our strange dynamic as he could, at least within the set of facts I’d allowed him access to.
And now that he did know, he didn’t shy away from anything. Whether it was the type of honesty and forthrightness that made my chest hurt or the kind that made my stomach flip with nervous excitement, both were a testament to how steady he was.
I loved him in a painful, twisty way for most of our relationship, but this new trust, this admiration…
God, I really needed him.
Unable to speak, knowing it would reveal how close I was to crying, I rose on my toes and planted one, soft kiss on Ford’s lips.
A shocked scream of “Yo, what the hell?” followed by a cacophony of equally mystified statements reminded me that we had company. Company who’d most recently seen me throwing a rock at Ford’s head and treating him with open disdain.
Let alone the way our relationship appeared externally for the past eight years.
A kid who had been drafted alongside us said, “When the fuck did this happen?”
Ford slowly pulled away from me, a far too mischievous look in his eyes for my comfort. “I don’t appreciate your tone, Young.”
“Oh, come on,” Young cried, with much the same voice he used when he complained when we didn’t get leftovers at dinner. “You two have been acting like you barely tolerated each other for years and now this?” He ended with a dramatic wave down at our joined hands.
Purely as a reflex, I tried to pull my hand away from Ford’s. It made me uncomfortable, and a fair bit embarrassed, to be confronted with the fact that we’d be so obvious in our separation. I’d always pushed that thought away as something I accepted, but never paid any mind to.
I had to get over that embarrassment very quickly, though, when Ford whipped his head around to me with a notch of hurt between his eyebrows. I couldn’t stand the thought that any of my own discomfort would make him think I was ashamed of him.
Fix this. Quickly. The Bond was clearly not pleased with me either.
“Young, let’s not assume you know what’s been going on behind closed doors, yeah?” I said, taking a step into Ford’s side.
“Oh, ew,” Young said, covering his hands with his eyes. “Please don’t tell me that’s some type of foreplay shit.”