24. Wolff
My head feels like it was hit with a fucking sledgehammer. My whole body aches. Fresh stitches pull tight across my side. My left shoulder is on fire. My wrists are raw meat from the cuffs.
I force my eyes open, squinting against the weak light creeping through the curtains. There’s a thick wool blanket over my chest. The couch cushions are stiff beneath me.
Sitting up slowly, I grunt through the pain. The room tilts hard. Vision doubles for a second before it settles.
Fuck me. How long was I out?
My eyes snap up.
Where the hell is she?
The cabin is dead silent.
“AJ?”
I push the blanket off and stand, grabbing the wall when the room tilts.
Jesus fucking Christ. Look at me. Pathetic. Can’t even stand up straight without holding on to a wall like some weak fuck. When I push the bedroom open, I notice immediately that the bed is untouched.
Shit.
My instincts kick in automatically, even through the fog.
I scan the corners, check the sightlines to the windows, note the positions of the two exits I can see from here.
This safehouse is ancient. A lot of mercs know about it.
If they found us while I was out, they would’ve put a bullet in my head, not left me breathing.
Still, I hate that I let myself crash this hard. First real sleep I’ve had in days, and it nearly got us both killed.
“Solnyshko?”
Every worst-case scenario races through my mind as I move. I check behind the couch, glance at the front door—boots still there, belt missing. I clear the kitchen quickly, eyes sweeping for signs of a struggle.
“AJ! Where the fuck are you?” I shout, my voice reverberating off the walls.
A faint clink of glass jerks my head.
I move toward the sound, shoulder slamming into the doorframe as the room tilts again, and I push open the bathroom door.
She’s curled up naked in the tub, surrounded by empty bottles of alcohol. Fucking hell. I go to shake her awake, yell at her for being so fucking stupid—for getting blackout drunk while we’re being hunted, for compromising her ability to defend herself, for making me deal with this mess.
But I stop when I get closer.
Tear tracks line her cheeks. Her hands tremble in her sleep.
Why the fuck does that bother me?
I don’t care if she’s been crying. I don’t care if she drank herself into oblivion. I hate how my eyes keep tracing the lines of her—the curve of her spine, the hollow of her stomach, the faint scars I know weren’t there before Akim took her.
My jaw clenches as an unfamiliar ache spreads in my chest.
I don’t know how long I was out.
But judging by the empty bottles and the state she’s in…it’s been long enough. I glance down at my side. The stitches are rough and uneven, but they’re holding. She didn’t do half bad, all things considered. I reach into the tub and lift her into my arms. Her naked body is limp against mine.
Gritting through the pain, I carry her to the bed and lay her down, then pull the blanket over her. My hands linger for half a second too long on the edge of the blanket.
I’m pathetic.
I locate the hidden safe in the closet, grab the gun and extra ammo, and swallow a handful of painkillers dry.
It takes me too long to get the fire going in the old stone hearth. Every movement sends fresh pain through my side and shoulder. My head is still fucked, vision blurring, balance off. The concussion is bad. It’s slowing me down, making me sloppy.
I need to do an inventory. Assess the damage. Figure out our next move.
That’s where my head should be.
Not here.
Not on her.
But my attention keeps shifting back anyway. Like something inside me is hooked in and won’t let go. A twitch hits my hand at my side. Unfamiliar and fucking irritating. The urge to reach out—to touch—is cut off fast with a long, steady exhale.
No.
Reining myself in, I turn and leave the room. Fucking focus.
It was a long shot that I even remembered this place—one of the mountain safehouses from my merc days. But it’s rotated through enough hands over the years that staying here is a risk on its own.
I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and walk back to the bedroom.
She hasn’t moved.
I drop onto the edge of the bed before I think better of it, the mattress dipping under my weight. My head throbs, pressure pulsing behind my eyes that won’t let up.
This is a waste of time.
There’s a plan to make. Routes to rebuild. Everything’s gone. My gear. Our papers. Supplies. My fists clench, knowing the ghosts from my past that I’m going to have to contact.
But she’s what my focus locks onto.
Lying too still for someone who never shuts the hell up. A weight settles low in my chest. Not like the pain in my side. Not anything I can fucking name.
Just there.
And wrong.
My fists clench. This isn’t happening.
And still…my eyes won’t leave her.
The softness beneath me wakes me first. Then the throbbing in my head. I don’t open my eyes right away. My mouth is dry. My skin feels too tight, and I can already tell I’m going to regret every single fucking gulp.
I try to sit up.
A heavy arm around my waist tightens and pulls me against a warm, solid body.
My eyes fly open as my breath catches.
“Wolff?”
He doesn’t say anything. He’s just…there. Pressed against me, chest bare, his breathing steady against the back of my neck.
I twist in his hold and throw my arms around his neck.
“Oh my god! You’re awake! You’re actually awake. I thought you— I was so fucking scared.” My voice cracks.
His arms flex, and I brace for him to push me away, but he doesn’t. I feel him breathe in slowly, like he’s not used to this.
“I didn’t know what to do… I thought you died. You wouldn’t wake up, and I—”
I stop. My face is so close to his. His eyes aren’t cold like they usually are. There’s…something else lingering in them. And then he touches my face, his rough palm cups my cheek, thumb dragging gently over my jaw.
I forget how to breathe.
A tear slips free before I can stop it, and his thumb catches it, wiping it away.
It’s too much.
All of it.
I lean forward to kiss him, and his grip tightens just enough to stop me.
I freeze, heart stuttering as he shakes his head slightly, his brow pulling tight like he’s pissed about something he won’t say.
“Don’t.”
“Why?” I want to. God, I want to kiss him so bad.
I lean into his palm.
His eyes drop to my mouth, his thumb brushing over my bottom lip. For a second, it feels like everything might tip—he leans back, taking me with him, ending the moment. My head lands against his shoulder, his arm wrapping around me again, tighter this time.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even look at me.
But he doesn’t let go.
I curl into his body, my head tucked under his chin, his hand moving slowly up and down my back. Relief settles in deep.
“How does your side feel?” I ask quietly. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I just… Did I do it right? Did I fix it?”
His thumb brushes my cheek again, softer this time. “Yeah.”
That’s all he gives me.
My eyes grow heavy, but I fight it.
“I had to drink.” Shame burns my cheeks as I think about how he found me. “I couldn’t stop seeing everything. I didn’t know how to shut it off.”
His hand keeps moving over my back. It makes it worse. Or better. I don’t know. It makes something in my chest flutter in a way I’m not used to.
“I just needed it to stop.”
Silence settles again, broken only by his breathing and the quiet slide of his hand. Sleep pulls at me, hard and insistent.
I don’t want it.
If I fall asleep, this ends. He’ll stop touching me. He’ll pull away. Go back to being…him.
So I keep talking.
“I knew a girl,” I say softly, the words coming out of nowhere—and not. My throat tightens. I stare at nothing, but all I see are the cages. The way they were stacked. The smell. “Those cages…the ones in the warehouse. They looked exactly like the ones they kept me in.”
A breath shudders out of me.
“I never knew her name. I don’t know what language she spoke. I couldn’t understand anything she said.” I blink, but it doesn’t clear anything. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”
His hand slows just slightly before I continue.
“She was young. Really young. I started calling her ‘Bird.’ She just…felt like something that didn’t belong in a cage. I tried to talk to her anyway. Didn’t matter that we couldn’t understand each other. It was…something. Better than nothing.”
My fingers trail the scars on his chest, his hard muscles twitching beneath them.
“They’d take us at different times. Different days. Sometimes, they’d grab her first, and I’d beg them to leave her alone. To take me instead. It didn’t matter.”
His touch presses slightly harder into my back.
“One time, they brought her back…and she wasn’t the same.” The words feel wrong even as I say them. “She didn’t look at me anymore. Didn’t speak. Like whatever was inside her died. And then one morning, she was gone.” My chest constricts, something ugly clawing its way up.
“I stopped asking why after that. It didn’t matter.
None of it did. I figured it out eventually.
Why I was there.” I swallow past my burning throat.
“The Sovereign’s sins have a price. Blood follows us everywhere, whether we want it to or not.
I could understand it for me. I was born into that world.
I knew what my father was. What all of the Sovereign are.
I knew what that meant for me. But she was just a kid. She didn’t deserve that. She didn’t—”
“You didn’t fucking deserve it.” He grips my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You are not responsible for any fucking choice a Sovereign makes. Your father’s sins are his. Not yours.”
Something shifts in his expression—not softer. Just darker and…protective.
“The blood the Sovereign spills? That doesn’t touch you.” He holds me tighter. “That’s on bastards like me. Men who pull the trigger. Men who know exactly what they’re doing every fucking time.”
It feels like someone reached into my chest and ripped something out. I want to believe him. I’d give anything to. But I don’t even know where to start.
“What happened to you isn’t your fault, AJ. It never was.”
The burn behind my eyes has more tears falling. I press closer to him, not fighting it, my face turning into his neck as his hand comes up, threading through my hair.
I don’t want to let go.
Not yet.
His scent wraps around me, warm and grounding, and I breathe it in deep, letting it settle somewhere under my ribs, somewhere I can hold on to. Just for a little longer.