Page 68 of Searching for Valor

Jax nodded, his eyes still on Scout. “Yeah. Been at it for a little over a year now. Scout, here is my third trainee.”

“Third?” Shane raised an eyebrow. “You must be good at it.”

A ghost of Jax’s old cocky grin flashed across his face. “Well, you know me. I excel at everything I do.”

“There’s the Jax we know,” Rylan muttered.

“Some things don’t change,” Shane said with a faint smile. “Like Steady’s ego.”

“Nah, Scout does a good job keeping my ego in check.” Jax smoothed a hand over the dog’s glossy coat. “I work with each pup for about six months, get them ready for service. They say it’s supposed to teach us responsibility, empathy, all that crap.” His lips twitched into a smirk. “But mostly, I think he’s just training me to fetch his toys.”

The dog watched Jax with so much love in his eyes, and Rylan felt a pang of something he couldn’t quite place. Maybe it was the way Jax seemed calmer, more settled, with the dog by his side. Or maybe it was the gnawing ache of Valor’s absence.

“Didn’t think you were a dog guy,” Rylan said.

Jax met his gaze, his expression unreadable. “I didn’t know what I was for a long time, but I’m figuring it out.”

“So,” Jax said after an uncomfortable moment of silence, leaning back in his chair. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this little reunion?”

Shane’s scarred face remained impassive. “Thought it was time we cleared the air.”

Jax’s eyes darted between them, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his features. “About what happened with Alexis? I thought we’d settled that at the trial. I can’t change what I did. I wish I could because I go to bed every night regretting that I hurt her. But I wasn’t me back then. I wasn’t… right in the head. I was angry. Lost. Everything was falling apart, and I didn’t know how to stop it. So I lashed out. Hurt the person that meant the most to me—Shane. I probably would’ve come after you, too, Rylan, given time. That’s what happens when you don’t deal with your shit.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Shane said. “It’s time to deal with it. All of us have been carrying that night like a goddamn albatross. Time to put it down.”

Jax’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, then he nodded as if coming to a decision. “All right. Let’s do this.” He rubbed his hands on the pants of his prison uniform like they were suddenly sweaty and exhaled hard. “I fucked up. I was overwatch. I should’ve seen it coming sooner. I didn’t, and you paid the price. All of you.”

Shane leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. “But I was the team leader. I had a bad feeling about that op, but I didn’t cank it even after you all voiced your concerns. I should’ve. I didn’t. So, yeah, I can see why you were pissed at me. Why you wanted to hurt me.”

Jax shook his head. “My anger was misplaced. I should’ve been angry at command for sending us in on faulty intel. At Al-Mansoor. At the fucker who launched a grenade into Alejandro.”

Rylan’s chest tightened at the mention of Alejandro. He could still see the fear in Alejandro’s eyes in the second before the rocket detonated…

“It was my fault.”

The words fell like stones in the quiet room. Shane and Jax both stilled, their gazes locking on him. His hands curled into fists at his sides, his voice raw as he forced the confession out.

“I saw the tango with the RPG. I had a shot. Clean line of sight. But I...” He swallowed hard, shame burning in his gut. “I hesitated. Just for a blink. I had never killed anyone, you know? But it was— by the time I fired, it was too late.”

His chest felt tight, like his lungs wouldn’t expand to draw a full breath. He’d never told anyone about that moment of hesitation, not even during the endless debriefs and psych evals that followed.

Shane’s eyes widened, a flicker of surprise crossing his face before it settled into something softer. Understanding, maybe. Or forgiveness. “Ry, even if you’d taken that shot a split second earlier?—“

“Things would’ve gone down the same way,” Jax finished. “None of us were getting out of that clean.”

Rylan pressed his fingers into his burning eyes, trying to hold back the rush of tears. He wasn’t going to cry in front of his teammates. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Jax said quietly. “Because I saw it all. I was overwatch. From up there, I had the best view of just how fucked we were from the start. We were outgunned and outmaneuvered. One shot wouldn’t have changed the outcome. We were meant to die that night. The only reason we didn’t is because QRF got there in time to save our asses. I thought—“ His voice broke. “When they pulled you both out, I thought I was the only one left.” He nodded toward Shane. “They told me he was going to die, and they couldn’t do any-fucking-thing but give him morphine to make him more comfortable until it happened. And you…” He trailed off, his gaze fixed on Rylan’s prosthetic arm. “You’d lost so much blood, they weren’t sure you’d make it either.”

Rylan felt the phantom ache in his missing limb, remembering the searing pain and confusion in those first moments after the explosion. He flexed his mechanical fingers, staring down at the prosthetic like he’d never seen it before.

“That’s a pretty cool piece of hardware,” Jax said after a long moment.

“Yeah,” Rylan muttered. “State-of-the-art. Better than the original in some ways.” He managed a faint, self-deprecating smirk. “Guess I should be grateful.”

Jax’s expression tightened as his hand smoothed over Scout’s fur. “I’d give anything to undo what happened. To put us all back together the way we were before.”

“Thorne,” a guard called. “Time’s up.”

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