Page 32 of Scars Run Deep

Well, not literally.

No, literally, I was beyond needing rest too. That rough and wild fucking had zapped the last vestiges of my energy.

I sank into Asher’s warmth and stared out at him.

“Not just tonight. Just… don’t leave. Promise… promise me?”

I hadn’t promised.

Sure, he’d fallen asleep, so I hadn’t been able to.

But would I have?

When all this was said and done, when the mission was over, the war was won, and I had my dad back, would I just walk away?

I hadn’t thought about it in a definitive way.

I’d originally intended to leave Hexwood as soon as I was done. It had been simple then. Find my dad, bring him home. End of story.

But that straightforward path had been twisted into an unidentifiable one now. It barely even resembled its original construction.

Because I hadn’t seen this coming.

I hadn’t seen them coming.

Bonding with them.

Growing closer to them.

Becoming a part of them.

And worse, them becoming a part of me.

5

~Killian~

She hadn’t responded to any of my texts.

Well, except for the one thanking me.

That thank you text hadn’t been enough. Or what I’d wanted.

I hadn’t done that for her to get appreciation in return, I’d done it to try to make her feel better, to give her some semblance of comfort. But it had fallen short. Because she hadn’t given me much choice. I’d wanted to be there for her. And I’d needed to see her, to see if she was really okay after what had happened. She’d nearly fucking died, for shit’s sake. On the drive back, she’d closed her eyes, but I knew she hadn’t been asleep. She’d been right against me, I’d heard her wildly thumping heartbeat, indicating she hadn’t just been awake, but majorly on edge, still shaken by what had gone down.

She’d been putting on a brave face because, even though we’d been making a retreat at the time and speeding away from battle, we’d still been out in the field. Not to mention, Asher and Jonah being there. She didn’t like to drop her guard around them. She wanted them only to see her badass side, the hard outer shell. It was an obvious defense mechanism. And more than that, maybe she believed they wouldn’t respect her if she showed them anything beneath, any softer, more human side of herself. But with me she could show me that. When I’d come over to her place after she’d been stabbed, I’d basically walked in on it. And because I’d already seen it, the cat was kind of out of the bag already, so she’d been more comfortable showing it to me going forward—at least in little spurts here and there.

Jonah had filled me in on what had happened after I’d taken off to get Olivia and the intel to a secure location. As if the fact she’d almost died hanging off that bridge hadn’t been bad enough, something had gone down in that basement beforehand where Asher had put her when she’d been in shock after the whole Olivia-looking-the-spitting-image-of-her-mother thing. Something that had ended in her emerging soaked in blood. The Heretics’, not hers. That wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you could simply shrug off, that you could be unaffected by. But she hadn’t said a word about it. It would’ve been easier to get it out of her the night of, before denial set in and a shitload of walls went shooting up.

But now that opportunity had passed on by.

And every moment that continued on was just cementing the cone of silence regarding what had happened, what she’d done. If she thought she could swallow this down, compartmentalize it, or anything along those lines, she had another thing coming.

The longer she bottled it up, the harder she tried to bury it, the more the toxicity would spread and grow in potency.

Fuck.

This morning had been a strange one.

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