Chapter 19 Gedeon #2
Him nestling against me had to be a form of a tranquilizer. The constant whirl of thoughts and the hunt for solutions ensuring the survival of our people ebbed, dissolved into wisps of air. I floated suspended between them, in an illusion of serenity.
Running my fingers through his damp hair, I scratched down his scalp. He thawed, his groan choked. Two minutes later, he became so limp and drowsy, I wondered if exhaustion had seduced him.
He never passed up an opportunity to snooze.
Anywhere, including dozing off while waiting in line for his turn at the training rings.
He had passed out next to me on too many occasions to count.
Sometimes drunk off his ass, like when we were teenagers, and I had to haul him to my parents’ house.
Not only had he blacked out while hogging two thirds of my bed, but his sweaty socks had stunk up my room.
But now I got to hold him in my arms.
I dragged my nails along the top of his nape. “Zion?”
His barely audible grumble was all the response I got.
“Did you put a dent in my car?” Someone had to be at fault for that crater in the bumper, and that same someone deserved a punishment.
“I made it easier on the eyes.” His cheek moved against my shoulder, giving way to his smile. “Now it has curves,” he mumbled. “Like Kali.”
My core tensed as I attempted to suppress a chuckle. I would put a thousand dents into my car myself, pull it apart and set it on fire if it meant Zion wouldn’t have to suffer the same—the dents life put into you. The ones I had put into him myself.
Distance had given me time to think. Walking among the dead, and then rising from behind the veil, it had put things into a new perspective.
He had stood by me unrelentingly, year after year, and somewhere along the way, things had…evolved. Except, my stubbornness and fears had raised a wall I now knew was called denial.
But the mere sight of Kali and Zion together, how she had made him laugh, freely and sincerely, had disintegrated the first brick of that wall.
Tracing the burn scars distorting his forearm, my callouses snagging on the uneven skin, I concentrated on drinking in the feel of him against me, on memorizing the slackening angles of his face, on deciphering his incomprehensible murmurs.
“You have our kitten’s claws,” he mumbled as I scratched the side of his head, along the shell of his ear. “So good.”
I tensed my diaphragm to hinder the mirth seeking to wiggle out of me. “Where is she, Zion?”
“She’s in your room,” he mumbled, the last word a breath instead of a sound.
As sleep snatched him from me, I stared at the milk-colored ceiling. Shadows swirled in the corners, free to roam the bedroom as the night had released its leash. Time lost its meaning as I counted Zion’s inhales and exhales.
But once he began lightly snoring, I gingerly shuffled away, stuffing a pillow under his head and hoping it would serve as a distraction until my return.
Sparing no time to search for clothing, I entered the hallway, the doors lining the walls still at rest, the apartments behind them unoccupied.
The ceiling lights had been dimmed, drenching the tunnel-like space in an eerie glow that clung to you, as relentless as the dirt crumbs sticking to my soles.
At the end of the hallway, I slowly lowered the handle and slipped inside my bedroom. Curled up in the center of my bed, Kali slumbered. The thin navy duvet tucked underneath her armpits exposed the item she had snatched earlier—my hoodie.
The too-long sleeves were rucked up around her wrists, the neckline loose, the black hood one with her dark hair.
I brushed away the strands stuck to her parted mouth. A speck of crusted blood marred her upper lip, the crimson shade rattling my bones. Her nosebleed was the consequence of her fight with the commander on the roof in Ilasall.
If a person could survive the fall from a ten-story building, I would have hauled him back to the compound and given him to Eislyn to use as a dummy for first aid training. After Zion had inflicted the necessary injuries, of course. He would appreciate a new plaything, a blank canvas to draw on.
Increment by increment, I pulled the blanket off Kali. My smirk arose at how she was fully covered in my clothing, from the hoodie to the matching pair of sweatpants.
Quietly, I maneuvered her to lay on her back so I could scoop her up.
“No,” she sleepily protested, but hooked her arms around my neck. “Put me down.”
“I will,” I promised as I carried her down the hallway and into her bedroom.
Zion had fully embraced the large pillow, his snoring partly muffled by it, and I gently deposited Kali near him.
Finally, both of them, a fighter and a sinner, were exactly where they belonged—with me.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she murmured as she turned her back to me and moved closer to Zion.
Sitting on the bed, I buried my face in my hands.
There were two of them beside me. Her from Ilasall, him from our compound.
But I also existed. Two versions of me in their minds, three of me in my own.
Cold and distant, angry and brooding, overprotective and controlling, an asshole and a killer, quick to snap and violent.
Mix and match. Choose what you wish. What you thought of me.
Not many saw the truth. How such a life as ours forced you to grow up training in how to take a life most efficiently and how to extend the pain for as long as their lungs functioned.
How it taught you to distance yourself from the emotions of others.
How fury became your constant companion, fear of losing a close person a weight on your chest, and the lack of patience a blade at your throat.
There was only one thing I truly wished for. All I asked for. All I dreamed of.
Safety.
I could take whatever insulting thoughts, feelings, or words Kali and Zion had for me, but I could not give them what I did not have.
Which meant I could not take their existence for granted. So I was going to ensure it. Keep them alive. Protect their smiles, their laughter, the flames in their eyes, and the pouts of their lips.
To the end of my life.