Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ELLIOT
“Do it again,” Mother snaps. Her cane pounds the floor as the Strays and we run this circuit again.
The day after the tea party, Mother calls the Top Dogs in for group training at five in the morning, and of course, like dogs, we’re all here. Diora was called in, too. She’s a pipsqueak next to us men, over six feet and packed with muscle that took years to develop.
None of us are as out of breath or sweating like her, but she’s only been training for about a year, and it’s only been seven months since she started training with Mother.
It’s so hard to look at my Little Crane. It hurts to stare at her and see that fucking scar on the back of her hand.
It’s my fault she has it. I should’ve fought her harder to stay home. Hell, I should’ve locked her up in my apartment bathroom and refused to let her go on that rescue mission.
“Diora, come in last again and I’m giving you another hour of running.” I guess she’s done being nice. Mother couldn’t hide her anger if she was a four leaf clover in a forest of dense moss.
I know I’ve put a target on Diora’s back now that Mother knows I like her. I hope she doesn’t find out I actually love her.
As much as a serial killer can love someone, anyway.
I watch as she pants, resting her hands on her knees as she tries to catch her breath. It takes everything not to go scoop her up and just walk out of this training room.
I have a face to put on. I can’t let Mother win.
Not over Diora, and not over Enyo.
“Put your hands behind your head, Dee,” Roan, the brute strength of the team, mutters as he passes her. Her cute face scrunches as she slowly follows his suggestion.
It helps regulate breathing; a lot of athletes do it. So, it helps, but she doesn’t know that.
Walking back up to the beginning of this overly done obstacle course that’s recently been put in, we get ready to run it once more.
We’re used to this kind of training. Stamina is the safest training in the whole damn Society.
Diora seems ready to murder. Her eyes light as the thought must go through her brain. Her deep brown eyes appear lighter brown than normal.
I can practically feel the happiness it brings me to see her like that in my fucking gut.
“Go,” Mother yells, and I watch Diora jet off toward the monkey bars. I go slow, jogging to the monkey bars instead of sprinting, and I see Enyo doing the same.
The mud pile is next, and I drop to the floor once, when Diora is already halfway through the mud. Crawling underneath the electrical net, we make it to the end with minimal shocks, but completely covered in mud.
Racing toward the end, Tom, the newest member besides Diora, makes it across the finish line first this time. Then Parker, Jones, and the others do, too, before Diora does. Last is Enyo, then me.
I stand in line with the rest of the team. I know I shouldn’t have lagged behind, and I already know what’s coming as Mother comes to stand in front of us. Everyone does.
Mother’s voice is sharp in the stillness of the gym inside the Society’s headquarters.
“Leadership is a valued skill. My Sons have shown their ability in it year after year, and while that is admirable, life isn’t fair.
We leave soldiers unfit behind. I train you to let your comrades die.
Though you did not come in last Diora, you earned not just yourself, but everyone, an hour. Go again.”