Chapter 58 Gedeon
GEDEON
We hurried down the road, ignoring the last fights breaking out in the dimly lit street.
Deep-seated trust whispered to me that our people would deal with the surviving enemy swiftly and ruthlessly, because the fundamental truth was simple: us or them.
Eat or be eaten. Hunt or be hunted. Kill or be killed.
Mercy had no place in our vocabularies.
Stopping thirty feet away from Kali, I plucked a handgun’s magazine from the front pocket of an Ilasall’s soldier sprawled on the ground, his black helmet still clasped under his chin.
A loaded gun was faster than your fists. Had a longer reach. I checked the magazine to find it half full and reloaded the gun I had snatched off a corpse an hour before.
Zion surpassed me, fixated on Kali failing to peel a soldier off Malaya, and I hauled him back behind me. “No.”
Creases appeared on his forehead, stretching the splatters of blood dotting his skin, but he dipped his chin in agreement and fell back in line.
I could not let him run in front of me, face first into danger, not after the last months. The last few days. So much had changed that there was no going back. Not that I would even begin to consider such an option.
Arrows with tips dipped in acid pounded my chest any time a thought of not having them both close, protected, and happy, had decided to latch onto me, conjuring images of their bodies lying on a battlefield as a result of the war they craved.
“Should we…” Eli trailed off, lingering nearby, beside Ava throwing questioning looks our way.
Mute, I shook my head as we slowed our approach to the trio.
Kali should have a few seconds to grapple with the soldier.
She would appreciate it. And it could potentially drain the adrenaline spiking in her blood.
Because that was another thing about battles: staying clear-headed.
Emotions were capricious and could influence your decisions by clouding your logic and luring you into the trap of a fatal mistake.
“Let. Her. Go!” Malaya screamed, barely standing on her legs, her belly swollen, about to burst any day now, yet she kicked the backs of the soldier’s knees with one of Zion’s favorite moves.
The man twisted out of her foot and shoved Kali into a building. Her cheek struck the brick wall as he backhanded her and then clamped down on her neck. Malaya’s yelling pierced the night as she sought to claw him away from her.
A tide of wrath carried me to them, and I hit the man’s temple with the handle of my gun from behind. He sagged to the filthy ground, his head slightly swaying as he dizzily stared into nothing. A trickle of scarlet flowed along his ear and down his jaw.
Zion lifted Kali’s chin to examine her nose. “It’s not broken.”
“I’m fine. I’ll just have a bruise.” She pushed him away and frowned at the blood painting him, her fingers feather-light in their inspection of the wounds marking his bare torso. “Is it bad? Will you need stitches? Do I need to get Eislyn?”
“A few. But he will be fine,” I assured her before Zion could state that he was good when he was not.
No one could be that when you had found them practically collapsed at the corner of a street, lost in a haze of rage, covered in grime, clotted and fresh blood, their front cut up and painted in crimson, their chest heaving erratically, their back sticky under your palms, and no recognition of their surroundings in their wild eyes.
A cornered animal about to turn rabid. The past repeating had taken him from me, but I was going to tear it to fucking shreds to get him back.
He was mine.
Using the hem of my shirt, I wiped the scarlet off Kali’s chin. “Do not act so careless again. Not until you know how to defend yourself and disarm an opponent.”
“I can take care of myself,” she sputtered as she ripped my shirt up, examining me like she had done with Zion.
I had taken a few fists, but my bones remained intact, and no gushing gashes marred my scarred abdomen.
Using firearms and taking cover instead of storming with a cold weapon in hand had helped.
“I do not doubt it,” I said, studying her figure. She moved without wincing, thus most likely covered only in superficial cuts and bruises numbed by the high of the fight. “But he hit you.” I gestured to the unconscious soldier at our feet. “Anyone who tries that dies.”
She blew out an exasperated sigh. “I want to be the one to do that. I have killed before, and I can do it again.”
So bloodthirsty. “I know. I left him alive for you.”
Incredulity pouting her lips, a habit she must have picked up from Zion, she harshly kicked the bordering-on-passing-out man in the ribs. He let out a pained sound, and she rocked on her heels, beaming at me. “Thank you.”
Tipping my head down, I stole her lips, drinking her fully, memorizing the outline of her being.
After sparing the five seconds to catch my breath and look at her, actually look at her, I stepped into Zion, our teeth clashing, our tongues twining in the uncertainty of the moment, the past years, the morning to come.
He gradually relaxed, melting into my hold on his nape, and I turned the kiss deep and slow, mapping out his curves and lines.
Mine.
Necessity swirled in my gut to feel them, their warmth, their pulses, to see their smiles, faint and fleeting, to witness their lives not having reached their expiration date.
I finally had them both. Two wrecks lashing out with violence at anyone and everyone. They had both shattered into tiny shards of glass that were cutting them up each day they were alive and each night they dreamed their nightmares.
And I had no idea how to protect the pieces of them remaining. How to glue them back together. I was barely keeping myself together.
But I was certain of one thing. I was not letting them go.
My tattoos. My possessions.
Mine to protect, mine to destroy, mine to worship.
You could call me a territorial bastard. But once I had staked my claim, it was a done deal.
“Zion.” I exhaled his name and so much more. The wish tonight could take me back to the day I had met him and the night I had broken him. The apology for the past and the promise for the future.
“Gedeon.” His lip corners curled upward, and I chuckled at his amusement. Yet it did ease the pressure in my chest, relaxing the muscles between my ribs and subduing the regret.
“I’ll take care of him,” Zion said as he squatted before the soldier.
Leaving him to restrain the man, I joined Kali as she raised Malaya’s arms to check her over.
“Did he hurt you?” she asked.
Malaya leaned on the wall, panting. “I don’t think so. He wanted to take me back.” She tucked a blonde strand behind her ear and a button of her navy wool coat popped from the roundness of her belly. “He kept saying the next child would be his.”
His. Ilasall had begun adding green-banded to their military ranks. First the messenger, and now this one.
So that was what fueled their attack today.
Switching who took the ranking positions in their armed forces lessened the probability of another revolt, a repeat of the previous war.
Their commanding officers would see no need for it when they already had everything they could want waiting for them on a platter back in the city.
The opposite of the ordeal from the past.
“What were you doing here?” I asked Malaya as I pulled Kali closer and kissed her temple.
Okay. She was okay.
“Eislyn told me someone from the Matching wanted to run away, I mean to Ilasall, saying that this compound was, ahm, wrong.” Malaya paused, focused on our teams dispersing to restrain the still-alive soldiers.
They knew the drill. Captives were to be offered freedom in exchange for information.
If they did not agree to comply the first time—which had not occurred so far—Zion and his catch-and-play team would take matters into their own hands and extract the answers in whatever creative ways they could come up with.
Malaya continued. “She asked me if I’d be willing to talk with them as I’m barely more than a year older than them and went through the Matching, uh, sorry, the auction, most recently.
She suspected it might be useful for them to talk to me.
So sometimes I sleep here and chat with them about what I, ahm, actually went through.
It’s very different compared to the stories they feed to us in schools. ” She shrugged.
Not every citizen got as lucky as Malaya—freed from their claws twice.
Lucky. Disgust built deep in my throat.
“He’s awake,” Zion piped up.
I left Kali to care for Malaya and strode to the lanky soldier on his knees, his hands cuffed behind his back and strips of his torn uniform shirt looped around his ankles as cuffs, rendering him immobile and unable to stand up.
“Should I carve a pretty pattern or two into him to motivate him to speak?” Zion pressed the tip of his knife under the man’s clean-shaven, dimpled chin.
“He’s probably the one leading this operation.
” He pointed to the circular golden patch embroidered on the right shoulder of the man’s black and dark green uniform.
A sign of a squadron leader, a higher-up who pulled the strings controlling their smaller military groups, such as sections, which consisted of several crews.
“I doubt he’ll be willing to talk without… stimuli.”
“How did you know?” I asked the soldier, his sweaty brown hair plastered to his scalp.
Green-banded or not, they should assign high-ranking positions to those who had sufficient gray matter in their brains, not those who refused to wear standard-issue helmets their subordinates donned.
“Who told you this was where we kept them?”
He spat toward my boots, his aim far from what I would deem acceptable as the streaked-in-red blob of saliva reached the crack in the asphalt instead of my shoes. A leader or not, he should keep up his training regime to avoid humiliating himself like this.