Chapter Sixty-Four
Feralyn
Drifting between hard sleep and sensual dreams, I was floating somewhere in between when all of a sudden, the heat left my back.
I barely opened my eyes in time to see Helios tactically lunge out of bed and yank on his boxers. Then, in the next second, gun in hand, he was out the bedroom door, and his low threat was carrying in from the hallway. “Halt, motherfucker.”
Oh God.
Scrambling to get up, blindly reaching for my robe in the dark, I rushed to get dressed because the only person who entered this house so quietly that I wouldn’t hear him was Ares.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Ares practically yelled.
Shocked motionless at the sheer anger in Ares’s voice, I froze.
“Wake her up, motherfucker, and you and I are gonna have a much bigger problem than your goddamn bullshit,” Helios warned.
“YOU TOOK THE FUCKING PLANE DOWN,” Ares roared.
“You fucking judged her!” Helios yelled back.
“I WAS JUDGING YOU.”
Oh my God.
Never having heard Ares raise his voice like that, shocked back into motion, I shoved my arms into the damn robe, tied the belt, and rushed out of the bedroom.
Helios was aiming his Glock directly at his brother’s head.
Not moving, not showing an inch of emotion, Ares looked from Helios to me. Then he spoke in his preternaturally calm voice like he hadn’t just yelled. “Feralyn, I need to speak with you.”
“The fuck you do,” Helios barked at him before issuing orders at me. “Go put some fucking clothes on, Haven.”
“I’m dressed.” Sort of.
“A goddamn robe is not dressed,” he argued.
I didn’t know how Helios knew what I was wearing when he hadn’t taken his glare or his aim off Ares, but I’d stopped questioning his stealth tactics a long time ago. Instead, I went for the obvious. “You’re not dressed.” His formfitting black boxers showed every thick, solid muscle.
“Don’t fucking care.”
“Maybe Ares cares.” It was a bold statement, one I knew would incite, but I wanted to distract Helios from aiming his gun at his own flesh and blood because guilt was filling me faster than a sinking ship with a gaping hole.
“Repeat,” Helios snapped. “Don’t fucking care.”
Ares’s astute stare took everything in, but his eyes never left mine, and I knew what I had to do.
I put my hand on Helios’s arm. Then I looked up at the assaulter I could still feel over every inch of my body, and I used the only weapon in my arsenal that I had against his temper. I begged. “Please stop.”
Every muscle rigid, his face a masterpiece of warrior fury, Helios turned his aggressive, dominant focus on me.
For two impossibly strained beats of my heart, I got his ruthless, gray-eyed stare.
Then he lowered his aim, tipped his head back, and made an exaggerated sigh before looking back at me.
“Fucking Christ. I wasn’t gonna shoot his motherfucking ass, but he needs to understand that this?
” Helios tipped his chin toward my bedroom.
“Is happening. He doesn’t get to fucking ambush you or walk his ass into the bedroom while you’re sleeping.
This isn’t his fucking house. Why the hell does he still have a goddamn key? ”
Undeterred by his brother, Ares repeated himself. “I need to speak with you, Feralyn.”
“Then fucking speak,” Helios snapped.
“Alone,” Ares amended.
Helios went nuclear. “Not fucking happening.”
Ares’s intent focus on me didn’t waver. “I will draw on him.”
“Go ahead, motherfucker,” Helios provoked. “See what happens.”
Faster than even Helios, Ares drew. His eyes never leaving mine, his expression a stone mask, his aim unerringly centered on his brother’s forehead, he spoke so low and calm, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Unlike Helios, I will shoot.”
Helios stepped into the barrel of Ares’s gun, and my heart slammed into my throat. Then his voice turned lethally quiet. “Try it.”
As if Helios hadn’t moved or threatened him with retaliatory violence, Ares kept his outstretched arm dead still and his gaze locked on mine. “No one, and I do mean no one, has the right to control or restrict you.”
“Like you’re fucking doing now?” Helios snorted. “Pull the trigger, asshole. See how willing she is to talk to you then.”
“The fact that I’m standing here, weapon drawn, speaks for itself, Feralyn.”
Yes, it did.
Slow and steady, fear clashing with anger, sick to my stomach over what this had come to, keeping my eyes on Ares, I slowly raised my arm. Then I put my hand on Helios’s chest. “I’m going to talk to Ares.”
“Just like that?” Helios asked, but it wasn’t a question. It was anger and hurt masquerading as incredulousness and disgust, and it hurt me.
It hurt so badly, I felt like I was stabbing Helios in the back, and my immediate instinct was to appease him.
To say anything to get that tone out of his voice and get back the Helios I’d had in bed.
Not the one who’d turned my world upside down, but the quiet dominance of a protector who held me in his arms and brushed gentle lips against my temple as I fell asleep.
I wanted to do anything I had to in order to get that Helios back.
Which was the very reason why Ares was right.
“Yes.” My heart crushing, I looked up at Helios. “Just like that.”
Immediately snapping his gaze over my head, denying me any more of his focus, Helios strode into his bedroom and slammed the door.
Ares holstered his gun. Then his hand landed on my back between my shoulder blades, and he ushered me down the hall, across the open-plan living area, and out the back slider door to the lanai.
The still air of predawn darkness surrounded us as Ares pulled out a chair from the outdoor dining table and silently directed me to sit.
I sat.
Ares pulled out another chair and faced it toward mine, then lowered himself onto the edge of the seat. Legs spread, elbows on his knees, he clasped his hands.
Then, without preamble, he went there. “Helios is the only man you’ve ever had relations with.”
Stating the fact so calmly and with such surety, Ares almost made me question how open I’d been with him over the years when I knew I’d never been that open. “You’re my brother. I’m not discussing this with you.”
But a part of me wanted to—not details, just my feelings.
But as soon as I thought it, I realized it wasn’t true.
I didn’t want to discuss any part of me and Helios with Ares.
I just wanted Ares’s blessing. Because if I got it, then this—this consuming, intoxicating, exhilarating, very wrong but oh-so-very-right madness—would somehow be validated.
“Did you discuss it with him?” Ares asked.
Oh my God. What was I doing? “That’s none of your business.”
“I want you to understand that I only have your best interests in mind. Can you say the same for Helios?”
“Ares. He’s your brother.”
“He’s Helios, Feralyn.”
“Yes, he is.” And I realized I didn’t need Ares’s or anyone else’s approval. I didn’t need validation to legitimize my feelings. “And he has a point about your judgment.”
“If you think my judgment is bad, what do you think Raine or our parents will think? What about everyone who works with Helios? Or your clients? Everyone you interact with, Feralyn, is going to have an opinion, and none of them will be in your favor.” Ares held his intent stare for a deliberate pause, then he delivered his aimed hit. “Most will be hostile toward Helios.”
Little pieces started to crumble. “I know what you’re doing.”
“I want you to know what you’re doing. Because I don’t think you do. Did Helios tell you why he has a new Citation?”
Ares knew he hadn’t. “You can’t condemn Helios for something you yourself are guilty of.”
“The Citation was shot down,” Ares continued, as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Helios was piloting. I was second chair. Concealing that he was critically wounded, he got behind the controls. With three other souls on board, a fuselage riddled with bullets, he took off over the ocean. We lost fuel, then he lost consciousness. We blue-water ditched, Feralyn. The cockpit was submerged by the time I got him onto the life raft.”
Tears were falling, but Ares didn’t care. He kept going.
“Helios should have died that night. His actions created the hot extraction. He lost his temper in the op. The chain of events were a direct result of his single-mindedness.”
“Stop it.” Helios had told me six months ago what that mission was about, and Ares was going to weaponize Helios’s motives?
Ares didn’t stop. “What do you think happened with the Phenom, Feralyn?”
Shoving the chair back, I stood.
“Sit down,” Ares barked.
Stunned, I sat, but an anger I’d never had for him ignited. “You’re crossing a line.”
“Helios crosses a line every day of your life.” Yanking my chair back toward him, Ares lowered his voice. “And he’s going to keep doing it.”
Suddenly, I was almost glad for my parents.
I was glad for every way I’d been forced to learn how to protect myself.
How to hide in the quiet. How to breathe in the space between other people’s outbursts and anger, between violence and intimidation.
How to exist when anxiety filled every molecule.
How to be still in the face of an antagonizer, tormentor, or oppressor.
Because I’d lived it. I’d survived it, and I’d weather this storm.
But I never thought it would be Ares that I would have to protect myself from.
I couldn’t help my wet face. I wore my frustrations in tears the same way Helios wore his with swears. But I could control my next breath. I could protect myself with silence.
“What do you think Helios was doing when he forced that bailout?”
What did Ares think he was doing right now?
“Do you think that was about you, Feralyn?”
I knew it was. Helios was that crazy. But his heart beat in tandem with mine. Soul fucking deep.
Ares kept pushing. “Helios had more to prove to himself than to you on that Phenom.”
No, Helios hadn’t.
Then Ares pushed too far. “He’s calling you Haven now.”
I sat up straighter, and my voice came out even, calm. “He’s always called me that.”
“Not in the way he’s using it now, and not exclusively. Don’t you think that if any of this was healthy, you would’ve discussed it with me?”
I buried his healthy comment. Then I took a moment to try to separate my emotions from what he was saying.
I knew Ares cared for me. I knew he was concerned.
But all I kept seeing was the utter stoicism that had replaced the kind boy I had met who was named after the Greek god of war, and I wondered… .
Was this always where these two brothers’ lives were heading?
An angry, fighting Helios becoming the sun at the center of my world, shining his light onto my darkness.
An empathetic, tenderhearted Ares becoming a resolute warrior so firm in his convictions that he could no longer hug the only sister he’d ever known.
Two brothers. Polar opposites. And yet so deeply intertwined.
I’d never wanted to come between them.
Reaching for Ares, placing my hand over his, I knew he wouldn’t turn his palm up like Helios would have.
I knew he wouldn’t move at all. But I still grasped at the solid strength that was a practical twin to his brother’s hand in size and shape, and I squeezed.
“All these years, your service aside, we’ve never kept secrets between us.
I’m sorry if you feel I’ve kept something from you, and I thank you for your concern, but don’t misunderstand my love for you as tolerance.
I’m not discussing Helios with you. I’m also not the only one in this conversation who’s withheld something.
There’s a lot that you haven’t been saying lately. ”
Watching me closely, Ares didn’t respond.
He didn’t have time to.
Apparently having reached the end of his patience, now wearing jeans with his Glock shoved into his back waistband, Helios stalked out to the lanai. Then he laid down the law. “Conversation’s over. Leave.”
Ares stood.
“Keys, motherfucker.”
Sad, hurt, frustrated, uncomfortable, I still couldn’t let this go unchecked. I turned toward a six-foot-six warfighter. “Ares is keeping his keys.” We’d all been living here, one way or another, for eight years.
“No, he’s not,” Helios argued. “It’s your fucking house, Haven.”
Ares stared down at me. “Do you understand what you’re getting into?”
I was already in it. So deep, I didn’t want or know how to surface. But before I could reply, before I could speak for myself, an angry Helios ignored my direct request.
“Insult her again with your bullshit, and you’re answering to me. Hand the fucking keys over,” Helios demanded.
Ares finally looked at his brother. “I don’t need keys to get into this house.”
“Don’t fucking care. Not your goddamn house, and you’re not coming and going anytime you want anymore. That ship has sailed. Keys.”
Looking back at me, moving with deliberate intent, Ares reached into his pocket.
“Wait.” I stood.
Ares placed his key on the table.
“Helios, Ares, both of you, stop this.” I looked between them. “You’re brothers.”
Helios said nothing.
Ares stepped past me. Then he walked back into the house and out the front door without so much as a backwards glance.