Chapter 27 #2
Eli shifts his weight, boot squeaking faintly against the floor.
“When I went to check into my room,” he begins, “the clerk was talking to another staff member in the small room off to the side of the desk. They didn’t see me at first.” His hands move restlessly, fingers flexing and curling into his palms. “I only caught part of it, but it was enough.”
Anxiety swirls in my stomach. “Enough for what?”
He glances at Wren again, as if debating how much to say in front of her. “Enough to know we’re walking into something uglier than any of us could have thought,” he says. “They were laughing about the colonels coming in and how you would all be treated. About you, specifically.”
My jaw tightens. “What about me?”
I’ve long since discarded the notion of giving a shit about what people think about me, but with Wren attached to me here, suddenly it matters more than ever before.
“That you could rack up all the commendations in the world and they still wouldn’t let you into the inner circle,” he recites, voice flat. “That you’re too squeaky clean, and that it makes you unbendable to their true desires.”
The words crash into my mind, causing my head to jerk back.
I knew there were higher ranking officers closer to the General, men who moved in tighter orbits around him.
But I always assumed it was due to experience, results, and the usual status of hierarchy.
I didn’t realize there was a line I was apparently being tested for, to advance in that.
My mouth feels dry as I try to find the words. “Inner circle,” I repeat. “Did they say what that means?”
Eli’s shoulders tense, and for the first time since he walked in, he looks genuinely unsure. His gaze flicks toward Wren.
“Say it,” she urges.
He looks back to me, apology already in his eyes.
“They…” He pauses, jaw clenching and unclenching on repeat.
“They alluded that the inner circle’s wives are…
trained. That they ‘know their place’ and don’t complain.
One of them joked that they’re ‘assets to be leveraged’ and that if the men want to advance, the General will ‘invite them to share.’”
My hands drop to my side and curl into fists before I can help it, nails biting into my palms. Wren goes very still near the window as her lips press together.
Eli rushes on, words tumbling out faster now, like he wants to be done with them. “They laughed about the previous colonel who was protective of his wife being sent away for ‘disobedience.’ That after seeing how you both reacted in the lobby, that you’d likely meet the same fate.”
He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t have to. The implications are enough to sour the air and my stomach.
“I didn’t want to repeat that in front of you,” he says, voice dropping, directed at Wren now. “But you needed to know. Both of you do.”
She doesn’t flinch. If anything, something in her expression settles, like a suspicion has just been confirmed.
“I knew he was a bad man,” she says quietly. “The earth thinks so too.”
Eli blinks rapidly at her, thrown off balance by the sudden shift. “The earth…thinks so?” he echoes.
I have to resist the urge to sigh at her recklessness in saying things like that in front of Eli.
She pushes off the table and steps closer to me, arms wrapping loosely around herself as she speaks. “When he touched me downstairs,” she explains, voice growing higher as she continues, “when he kissed my hand, it finally spoke to me again. A warning.”
My mouth opens to remind her that she shouldn’t be sharing these things, but I’m cut off.
“So when you say the earth thinks he’s bad…” Eli presses, brow furrowed. “You mean—”
“I mean the earth doesn’t like him,” she says simply with a shrug. “And it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore that my instincts were right the moment he walked into my view.”
Eli lets out a low breath and drags a hand through his hair, somehow not even questioning how she knows that. “Great,” he mutters. “So the man who runs our entire government gives the earth a…bad feeling.”
Wren sinks down into one of the armchairs and nods, her gaze steady on the floor. “I know it sounds insane, Eli, but you’re just going to have to believe me.”
He doesn’t waste a moment in reassuring her. “I believe you.”
Their eyes meet and she offers him one of her rare, real smiles, nodding in appreciation. I have to ignore that churning feeling of jealousy that roars to life within me, the same as it did in the jeep when he told her it's good to hear her laugh, laying a hand on her shoulder.
I begin to pace back and forth myself, trying to break down and digest this shocking information.
All my life, the General has been a fixed point on the horizon—the heroic figure who led our initial rebellion, the cause we bled for, and tried to impress without ever really imagining you’d stand in front of him.
He’s the reason the rebels had structure; the voice on the broadcasts talking about sacrifice, duty, and the future of humanity.
I listened to those speeches when I was little and thought if I did everything right, maybe one day I’d serve under someone like that.
Now it feels like the ground under that image is crumbling, leaving something warped and rotting in its place.
“If that’s how they treat their own wives,” Wren says softly, more to herself than us, “I don’t want to know how they treat anyone they consider expendable.”
The phrase makes my stomach turn.
“What are you going to do, sir?” Eli asks quietly.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, the truth coming out of me before I can think it through and remember that I’m always supposed to have the answers.
I’m supposed to be the central figure that my people look to. To always know what the next move is that advances the cause we’ve bled for and lost people to.
I think of the pride on my parent’s face the day I told them I was going to enlist. The joy in their voices when I called them to tell them about each promotion I earned rapidly.
I carried my love for them and our people in my heart with every supernatural life I took, wanting to protect them from the injustices we heard of from the past. To protect them from ever feeling an ounce of that.
Silence stretches in the room and I see the surprise in both pairs of eyes staring back at me.
Two days ago, I thought I was coming here to present a difficult situation and ask for guidance, to be honest enough to protect my people while careful enough to avoid painting a target on Wren’s back, or mine.
Now every version of the conversation I need to have with the General that runs through my head ends with me thinking of him tearing Wren from my arms, for nefarious reasons I would have never imagined.
Not for her power, not because he thinks she’s a traitor, but to use her for his own pleasure.
And each scenario ends with me putting a bullet between his eyes.
“I still have to go to that meeting,” I say at last, the words heavy. “But I’m not walking in blind anymore.”
It’s not much to settle my racing heart, but it’s all I can cling to. I still have two days to figure out what I’m going to say.
Eli nods once, the line of his mouth grim. “I’ll keep my ears open,” he says. “If I hear anything else, I’ll come to you first. Until then, I’ll be the boring guard who doesn’t know anything about anything.”
I incline my head in acknowledgment. “Thank you.”
His gaze flicks to Wren, softening. “You’ll be safe with him,” he tells her, and there’s no doubt in his voice when he says it. “But I will be with you every time he has to leave. Don’t go anywhere alone if you can avoid it.”
She nods, looking back and forth between him and me. “I won’t.”
Eli hesitates, like there’s more he wants to say, then seems to think better of it and pulls in a deep breath. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he finally says. “Goodnight, Colonel. Wren.”
Once the door shuts behind him, the room feels sharper somehow, any sense of safety we could have felt in here stripped away. I stay standing where I am, staring at the woman I willingly brought here, thinking she’d be safest with me.
She crosses the space between us in a few quiet steps and when she reaches me, she doesn’t say anything right away. She just lifts a hand and lays it gently on my forearm, fingers resting over the fabric of my sleeve.
The contact is light, but it feels like a grounding anchor for the snarling thoughts twisting through my mind.
“You don’t have to decide everything tonight,” she says, voice soft and soothing. “It’s a lot to figure out in a few hours.”
I look down at her hand, then back to her face.
Her eyes are steady, worry and resolve mixed in them in equal measure.
She looks tired with shadows under her eyes, hair mussed from the long drive, but there’s nothing fragile about her in this moment.
She looks like someone used to holding impossible choices in her hands and still finding a way forward.
“I do have to decide what to say,” I answer, the words rough.
“Two days from now, I will stand in front of him and the rest of the high command, pretending like I don’t know they’re men who willingly barter their wives for their own gain.
How am I supposed to look at them and think they’ll be listening to what I have to say, all while not envisioning the General’s hands on you in that lobby? ”
Her fingers curl slightly, thumb brushing once along my sleeve in a small, grounding sweep.
“You’re not in this alone,” she reminds me gently as her dark lashes flutter with a blink. “You brought me here because you said we’re partners in this, remember? That hasn’t changed. Whatever you decide to say and whatever you decide not to say—we face the fallout together.”
The word partners hooks into my heart and pulls.
I think about the kings, about the way they look at her, and the weight of their history with her.
I think about the shifter calling her his mate on that wall and having to pretend I didn’t hear it despite being the closest to them, about the fae’s insistence on the month-long ceasefire just to appease her, about the vampire’s hand around my throat when I tried to stand in front of her.
I think about the way even the asshole king of wraiths pleaded with her to prove him wrong.
Whatever is happening in this small room feels like a faint flicker to what they have with her.
I have to focus on my vow to keep her safe, and nothing more.
“That’s exactly the problem,” I say quietly, a humorless chuckle escaping with the words. “You shouldn’t have to shoulder the consequences of my choices. You’ve already got the fate of the world arguing in your skull. You shouldn’t have to worry about what I’m going to face.”
Her lips curve up. “Too late,” she retorts softly. “You let me in the second you brought me to your home instead of putting me in a cell. You don’t get to pretend I’m not already in this with you, not when the choices you’ve made have been because I’ve asked too much of you.”
Her softness and empathy is what ensnares me every day in her presence, drawing me further under the spell she doesn’t even realize she’s cast over me by simply being her.
For a moment, standing there with her hand on my arm and the city lights blinking behind her, I let myself imagine a world where this isn’t a performance.
One where I brought her here as my fiancée because that’s what she actually is and the only thing on my mind is how to keep her from regretting saying yes to spending her life with me.
It’s a dangerous line of thought, and I cut it off before it can take root further.
I clear my throat and step back slightly, enough that her hand falls away from my arm. The absence of her touch leaves a ghost of warmth behind, but I ignore it alongside the way her mouth turns down for a moment, like she’s disappointed in my retreat.
“We can go over our story in the morning,” I say, forcing my mind back to logistics we can control. “Enough to sound convincing without tying ourselves into knots.”
She searches my face for a moment, then nods. “Okay, Ry.”
A shudder ripples through me at the sound of the nickname on her tongue for the second time. I have to put distance between us now, before I do or say something I’ll regret.
I gesture toward the adjoining room. “You should try to rest.”
She nods in agreement but quickly counters, “You need to sleep too.”
I almost laugh at that. Sleep feels so unlikely given everything I need to figure out, but I give her a small nod. “I’ll take the couch so you can have the bed to yourself. Lock the door as an extra precaution until the morning.”
She hesitates like she wants to say more, then just offers a quiet, “Goodnight, Ryoden,” and retreats toward the bedroom. The door clicks shut a moment later, the faint rattle of the lock sliding into place following in its wake.
I stand there for a long time, listening to the muted sounds of her moving around on the other side of the wall, drawers opening, and the shower turning on within the adjoined bathroom.
I cross to the window and rest my palm against the cool glass, looking down at the glimpses of the city I once longed to be invited to. To stand in front of my idol and earn his respect.
Nothing could have prepared me for discovering that there’s a rot here that I think I’m just beginning to scratch the surface of. Part of me is still struggling to believe it, after living my entire life glorifying our forces.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to them two days from now in our official debriefing. I don’t know what the right balance is between truth and survival. But I know this much: whatever else happens in this place, they don’t get to lay a hand on the woman sleeping in the next room.