Chapter Twenty-Three
Feralyn
His scars.
His hands.
Oh my God, his fingers against my scalp, massaging. Massaging.
But his scars.
My body already in pain, my soul wept. Filthy water dripped down my face. “Who took care of you when you were shot?” If a woman had bathed him like he was bathing me, what was left of my heart would cease to exist.
“I’m Delta, woman. I take care of myself.”
“You mean you were Delta Force.” He shouldn’t have quit.
Not for me, or this, or what’d happened.
I needed to tell him that, explicitly. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him to re-up.
But selfishly, now that I’d seen the gunshot scars and the raised lines like a knife or shrapnel had cut into his body, I didn’t want to tell him to go back.
“Training still stands.”
It did. I saw it when he’d rescued me, and I saw it every time I looked at his eyes. Scanning, calculating, taking in every detail in single glances, then intentionally making his features relax like he wasn’t on alert every waking second.
“You gonna talk about it?”
So engrossed in my head massage, I had to ask, “About what?”
“How those motherfuckers worked you over.”
He may as well have poured acid over me. The involuntary tightening of my muscles burned, and my mind reached for a shutdown switch. The reply was a hoarse whisper. “No.”
“You can’t keep that shit in. It’ll eat you alive.”
I wasn’t going to talk about it with him. He’d kill Ghost. I didn’t want to see Ghost ever again, but not for the reasons Helios wanted to end him.
I didn’t want to see Ghost ever again because it made me feel weak.
Ghost, Helios, Ares—I was the weak link in their chain.
If terrorists could hunt and kidnap me to get at Ghost, they could just as easily do so to get at Helios or Ares, and that I couldn’t live with.
It made me feel worse than weak.
Seeing Ghost had only intensified this… this guilt. Like I had failed. Except I hadn’t just failed a half brother I didn’t know. I’d failed all three of them.
Now I was their Achilles’ heel, and it felt worse than being a child no parent wanted.
Helios picked the showerhead back up and began rinsing my hair. “I can hear that head of yours spinning.”
“I’m not spinning.” I was. Badly.
“Don’t fucking think for a second you own any of this.”
That was the other thing I didn’t know how to process. I hadn’t seen Helios in years, but it felt like he knew me better than I knew myself. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“You think I don’t know trauma? Survivor’s guilt?”
Helios had never spoken to me as an equal. He’d never spoken down to me, but we’d never had conversations like this. “I’d never assume what being in a Delta Force unit was like.”
“It isn’t the Unit that fucks you up. It’s goddamn war.
You do your job because if you don’t, people die.
The brother serving next to you dies. You stay one motherfucking step ahead.
Keep your shit together. Fight like you goddamn mean it.
Sine Pari—Without Equal.” He ran a gentle hand down the length of my hair.
“Then, when the mission ends, if you’re lucky, the only shit you exfil with is the baggage in your head. Most guys aren’t that lucky.”
“Including you,” I dared to add.
“Woman, I am one of the lucky ones. I walked out on both legs.”
Never before, in all of my sheltered naiveté, had I imagined a world where luck was measured by intact body parts. Now, I not only understood it, I feared it.
Worse, I spoke it. “I don’t want you to ever go back.”
For a long moment, methodically rinsing my hair with tepid water that dripped down my body, Helios didn’t say anything.
Then he cut right through my fears as if he truly saw me. “It’s good to see you, too, Haven.”
Desperate to hold it all in because I didn’t know how much more pain I could take, I didn’t reply.
I sat naked on a Tier One operator’s thigh as he gently rinsed me off, then shut off the shower and grabbed a towel.
Silently wrapping it around my hair after squeezing out the excess water, he took another towel and carefully patted down my back and limbs before tossing it and my soiled, soaked hospital gown to the floor.
Easily reaching toward the sink counter with his long arm, he grabbed my wrist brace and put it back on with professional swiftness as if he had medical training.
Then he picked up my boot, and with the same proficiency but also the gentlest touch, he fit my foot back into the bulky contraption and adjusted it until the previous pressure that had been surrounding my ankle and lower leg was back.
“You seem to have experience with casts.” I wondered if he’d broken bones in addition to getting shot and however else he’d gotten those scars.
“Watched the ER docs brace you up.” Grabbing a fresh hospital gown from where he’d stacked towels on the counter of the small bathroom, he shook it out.
“Also watched them put one of these fucking gowns on you.” Draping it over my front, he secured the tie at my nape before carefully threading my arms through and tying off the closure halfway down my back.
Staring at the only leg he’d gotten wet, at the hard plank of thigh muscle that I was currently sitting on bare-bottomed, I didn’t comment on either of his statements.
I looked at the wet material formed around the sheer bulk and length of his leg, and at the size of his massive booted foot as he announced his intent.
“Standing you up in three, two…” He moved. “One.”
Pulled upright with his hands under my arms and his long fingers grasping just above my breasts, I pushed out a short breath, but then I swayed.
“Steady,” he both comforted and ordered, pulling my gown closed behind me.
I shut my eyes against the sudden dizziness. “Oh…”
“You gonna faint?”
Ringing in my ears made his voice sound like an echo. “What?”
I heard a curse.
Then I was airborne, and pain shattered like breaking glass, stabbing me from the inside.
A merciful blink later, everything stopped.
Darkness.
Cool.
Soundless.
Perfect.
“Breathe, Feralyn.”
Air filled my lungs and pain exploded, unfurling like a giant bird of prey taking flight. “Eagle,” I rasped, suddenly terrified as the image flashed through my mind.
“Eagle?”
Oh God, I wanted this pain to end.
“Look at me, Haven.”
My eyes fluttered open to the too-bright hospital room and a gray-blue gaze surrounded by deep frown lines. For the first time since the car accident, I thought about taking a picture.
Of him.
And me.
But I was….
I looked down at my horizontal body. Hospital gown, wrist brace, booted foot, bruises. Dark purple, green, brown, black, yellow. Oh God. All the bruising.
Don’t panic. In hospital. Breathe.
Now I knew why it had been dark in the bathroom. “I-I’m in the bed.” He’d kept some of the lights off.
“You fainted. I carried you. What eagle?” Helios demanded.
My breath was short, the memory had been as fast as a snapshot, but the fear was acute. Turning my head, I closed my eyes. “Sleep.”
The weight of two blankets was pulled over me. “Okay, but you’re gonna tell me what eagle means later.”
“Do you like eagles, whore?” Brutally grasping my throat and choking me out, he slammed my naked, beaten body against the rough concrete wall.
Pain exploded as sharp edges of moldy, damp cement abraded my back.
Gripping my wrist with his free hand, he twisted, then crushed the fine bones with unspeakable cruelty before dragging my fingers over the inked surface of his half-exposed chest. “Do you like to feel real power?” the Devil asked, smiling.
No reply came. No sound at all passed my lips.
“Look at it, Feralyn Grayson,” he taunted, forcibly rubbing my hand left to right as the tips of my purpled fingers spread apart the sides of his partially unbuttoned shirt even further.
I stared, but I tried not to look.
“Does your Ghost have this kind of power?” Abruptly shoving my hand down with brute strength, he made me stroke his erection.
“How do you like that, whore?” His free hand slapped my face so hard, my head whipped to the side.
“You like sucking dick when you’re not busy being a good little sister and keeping your brother’s secrets? ”
I vomited bile.
“You hear me?” Helios asked, tucking the blankets around me.
“Yes.” But I was never going to tell him about the eagle.
“Good. Get some sleep.” He pulled the towel off my head. “When you wake up, we’ll get some food in you. Then I’ll find a comb and try to tame that hair.”
Too tired to reach up, too traumatized to care, I didn’t touch my hair. “It looks bad?”
“Woman.”
When he didn’t say anything else, I let out a slow breath and whispered, “Brush.”
“I’ll get right on that.” I heard the chair scrape across the floor as it was pulled closer to the bed.
Sleep threatened to drag me under, but the intrusive thought I’d been trying to ignore came back.
If I hadn’t been so focused on photography and quitting school, maybe I would’ve noticed that car coming.
Or paid more attention to that guy following me on campus.
But I didn’t, and photography had made me too distracted. “No pictures.” Never again.
“Wasn’t gonna take any.”
“Not you. Me.” Talking hurt. Taking pictures would be worse. “Never… shooting… again.”
“Yeah, you are. Already ordered you new equipment. You’re not giving up photography, Haven.” He was quiet a moment. Then his deep voice lowered and pulled me back to the edge of consciousness. “You don’t give up on shit you love.”
I wasn’t giving up. I was protecting myself.
But I was too tired to tell Helios that.
Sleep took me.