Chapter Six
Feralyn
Ten Years Ago.
Ares unlocked the front door to the house and used the keypad to disable the alarm he’d had installed years ago, before he’d left for basic training.
After stepping inside and scanning past the small entry hall, he held the door open for me.
“Just give me a minute to change, then we’ll go to lunch. Think about where you want to go.”
“Okay.” Smiling, holding the small piece of plastic with my picture on it, I walked into the house, but I didn’t have to think about where I wanted to go to celebrate.
Ares grabbed his Army-issue green duffel from where he’d dumped it on the floor an hour ago. “Did you hear from them?”
I glanced up. Ares was so much taller now than he was when he was eighteen.
And if I didn’t know his personality, his looks would remind me of Helios.
They had the same dirty-blond hair and light gray-blue eyes.
They also had the same muscular physiques, or they used to.
I hadn’t actually seen Helios in years, but I could imagine.
“Not yet.” I didn’t have to ask who Ares meant. Them was our parents. Well, my dad and his mom. They were in Costa Rica—again.
Ares tipped his chin, but his expression didn’t change, and he didn’t ask if I’d heard from Helios. “Be right back.”
“No rush.” I looked down at the small rectangle of plastic as Ares silently headed toward his old bedroom.
Finally, finally, I had my driver’s license.
I was free—well, legally—to drive anywhere.
Not that I hadn’t been driving for years already.
Just like Helios had before he’d gotten his driver’s license, just like Ares had after Helios enlisted and left, and just like I had after Ares enlisted.
Thankfully, none of us had ever gotten caught.
And despite growing up in kinda not great circumstances with absentee parents, I thought we’d all done okay so far, and that made me smile again.
We had each other. Well, me and Ares did.
Helios occasionally checked in via text or a rare phone call.
And while I didn’t like being alone, I didn’t mind it anymore when Dad and my stepmom were out of the country.
The house was quieter, and I could do what I wanted, which wasn’t much.
I kept to myself. I’d started photography as an elective and loved it, and I was getting good grades.
So I’d kept my promise to Helios on that front.
For a second, I thought about trying to call him.
But then I mentally shook the thought away and stared at the picture on my new license, dissecting every aspect of it. I tried to look at it how someone else would see me. Admittedly, how Helios would see me. Well, how he would see me now.
I felt my face flush.
Studying the picture for a second longer, I had to admit that Helios had been right all those years ago when he’d said my eyes were the same color as my hair.
At least in this tiny photo, they looked the same.
I’d put some eyeliner on before I’d gone to take the driver’s test to try to make my eyes look a different color.
Darker maybe, but it didn’t matter. They looked how they looked, and I’d listed brown as the color because they didn’t have an amber eye color option, but that was what my eyes were—amber. Not brown, gold or hazel.
I tucked the license into my wallet, then looked up at the hallway mirror.
My hair wasn’t amber, though. Not really.
It was more flax. Maybe golden blonde. I didn’t know. It was the same color my mother’s hair had been, and my eyes were somewhere between the color of my mother’s light brown and my father’s light blue.
Wearing civilian clothes instead of Multicam camo pants and a tan T-shirt, Ares came back down the hallway in dark jeans and a black polo made of that material that never wrinkled. “You ready?”
I smiled. “I am.” I loved and appreciated my brother.
Ares had timed his leave so that he could come home and take me for my driver’s test, and I was so, so grateful. If I’d had to wait for my dad, it would’ve been another month before I could’ve taken the test.
I was also grateful Ares had made sure to teach me all the driving rules before he’d left for Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training.
Then he’d followed in Helios’s footsteps and went through Airborne School before the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program.
But unlike Helios, Ares had come home almost every time he’d had leave.
I’d gotten to watch his transformation from teenager to soldier, then to Ranger.
If I thought about Ares at my age versus the war-hardened Ranger in the 75th Ranger Regiment that he was now, I would have been shocked at the metamorphosis. Inches taller, twice as muscular, he moved with complete silence, and he spoke even quieter now.
But he was still the brother I knew growing up—protective, caring, and considerate. Now he just came with a side of soldier. Okay, he was mostly all soldier now.
Taking me in with a single scan, a habit that’d shown up after he’d gone through RASP, his sharp gaze met mine. “Would you like to drive the truck or the new SUV?”
Yeah. That.
The new SUV he’d shown up in an hour ago, minutes before my DMV appointment.
To be fair, Ares had texted, saying he was running late.
He’d blamed traffic by the airport but promised he’d be here in time to take me to my driver’s test. Then he’d shown up in a brand-new Toyota 4Runner when he’d always rented economy cars or taken a rideshare every other time he’d come home on leave.
I didn’t mention the SUV earlier, and we hadn’t spoken about it. Like, at all.
When Ares had first pulled into the driveway, I’d been so excited to see him, I ran and hugged him before he’d even gotten out of the driver’s seat.
Hugging me back, he’d held me tight and lifted me off my feet as he got out of the SUV.
Then he’d set me down, grabbed his duffel, and jogged it to the front door.
After he’d tossed it inside the entryway and locking up, I’d driven us to the DMV in the old truck.
I stared up at Ares for a moment, but I couldn’t read anything in his reserved expression. “So, that’s not a rental?”
“No. It’s your new vehicle.”
Mine. Right. “Who bought it?” Even though I asked, I knew Ares would be aloof about who’d actually paid for it.
In fact, he’d probably say something like it was a gift from the family.
But I had my suspicions about who would actually buy me a new SUV, and it definitely wasn’t my dad.
Despite his success in property development in Costa Rica, my father didn’t like to pay for anything brand-new.
And that shiny white 4Runner looked like it’d just come from a dealership’s lot.
Ares reached past me to pick up the keys from the entryway table. “It’s a gift, Feralyn.”
I asked outright. “From you?”
“From all of us,” he replied as a tiny flex of his jaw showed, confirming my suspicions on both what he’d say and who had purchased it. “Ready?”
Helios had bought the 4Runner, but he’d made Ares pick it up and bring it home.
That was why Ares had been late in getting here this morning.
I was also sure Helios had told his brother to tell me the SUV was from everyone, probably more like threatened him with bodily violence if he didn’t say that.
I should be grateful and not mad. I really should.
But Helios hadn’t bothered to come home for one holiday or birthday or anything. Most of the time, he didn’t even remember holidays. And forget about birthdays. When he did text, it was sporadic, always bossy, and I’d stupidly saved every one he’d ever sent.
“I’m ready.” As I grabbed the old truck’s keys, my cell vibrated. “But I’m driving the Ford.” Fishing my phone out of my purse, I glanced at the screen. Speak of the devil.
Helios: You better have passed that test.
“One second. It’s Helios. I need to reply.” That was another one of Helios’s rules. If he texted, I had to reply. But if I texted him? It wasn’t the same rule. So I’d stopped initiating texts with him years ago. I’d also stopped calling.
Ares stood silently by as I quickly typed.
Me: Of course I passed.
His reply was almost immediate.
Helios: Need proof.
“Oh my God,” I muttered, taking my license back out of my wallet and snapping a picture before sending it to him. I waited a second to make sure it went through, then I dumped my cell in my purse. “Okay, now I’m ready.” I turned toward the front door, and all of a sudden, it burst open.
With his six-foot-six height and the width of his shoulders taking up the entire doorframe, wearing tactical pants in Multicam, impossibly large combat boots, and an olive drab T-shirt stretched across his huge pecs and even bigger biceps, stood Helios.
Narrowing his eyes, he looked from the keys in my hand to me. Then his voice—deeper, rougher, harder—filled the entire entryway and wrapped around me as he held up his cell phone. “If you passed the test, then why the fuck are you driving that old truck instead of the new SUV?”
“Helios,” I whispered, awestruck.
“Feralyn,” he mimicked, overexaggerating a whisper.
For an impossible second, all the air was sucked out of my lungs and Ares was all but forgotten as I stared at the beast of a man my stepbrother had become.
Then Helios smirked. “Jesus fucking Christ. Sixteen years old, huh?”
“Sixteen,” I repeated, completely stunned at the sight of him. He didn’t even look like my stepbrother that’d left for the Army. But he really, really, really looked like Helios. Or how I would’ve imagined Helios would look as a Tier One operator, but more so. A lot more so.
The corner of his mouth tipped up, and he held out an arm. “Come here, Haven.”
Forgetting every single reason over the past ten years why I was mad at Helios, I rushed to him. Melting under his arm, wrapping mine around his hard waist, I inhaled the long-lost familiar scent of laundry soap, but now it was mixed with something new and masculine. “You’re here.”
Squeezing my shoulder once, he kissed the top of my head and lowered his voice. “Yeah. I’m here.”
“Lunch?” Ares asked.
“Hell yes.” Helios dropped his arm. “I’m fucking starving.” He snatched the 4Runner’s keys from Ares. “But we’re not taking that old-as-shit truck, and I’m driving.” He glanced pointedly from my purse to me. “You got your meds?”
I hated how he said meds, and I wasn’t a little girl anymore who needed to be reminded to carry my asthma inhaler.
Especially now that I’d started running to both build up my strength and increase my lung capacity.
But I was too happy to see him to explain any of that or argue over his choice of words. “Yep.”
“Then let’s go.” He turned toward the door.
Smiling, I looked back at Ares.
His gaze trained over my head, staring after Helios, his jaw ticked.