Page 50 of BounBound By Scars

“I’m losing him.”

“And I already lost her.”

The quiet devastation in his whisper stopped me cold.

I blinked. “What?”

“I lost her to this mission,” he said, his voice like sandpaper—dry, splintered, unraveling. “I just want this over, Amelia. That’s all I want.”

The haze of rage inside me ebbed into silence. My brother—the strongest, stillest one among us—looked hollow.

I moved toward him, slower this time. My heart was a painful thud in my chest. “Dylan…”

He nodded, but the gesture was loose. Not really a nod. More like an admission of how tightly he’d bottled it all up.

“I’ll do better,” I whispered.

He looked so tall still, but not invincible. His shoulders were hunched, his jaw locked, but his eyes—they were stormy, wild, pained.

“I shouldn’t have made assumptions,” he said finally. He straightened his spine and stepped forward, gripping my shoulders. “I’m sorry I put the mission before you.”

My lower lip trembled. I pressed them together, childishly pouting to keep from crying. A soft snort escaped him.

I punched him in the stomach—not hard, but enough to make him grunt and wrap his arms around me in the kind of brotherly hug I hadn’t felt in too long.

“I’m sorry, Dyl,” I mumbled into his chest.

“What for, Mellie?”

I groaned at the stupid nickname. He hadn’t called me that since I turned fifteen.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Sorry.” He honest-to-god yelped as I pinched his side. Hard.

He untangled from me with a mock glare. I smirked, but it didn’t last long. Not with everything that had been said. I sobered quickly.

“I’m sorry you lost her.”

His face went blank in that way he did when the pain was too close to the surface. Whatever feeling he’d let through moments ago, he tucked it neatly away.

He cleared his throat and pulled me into another hug. “You finish that speech yet, 901?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You want another pinch, 900?”

And just like that, he was laughing again.

Asshole.

Kabir

“What the—?”

I flinched, almost dropping the soldering iron. The familiar voice behind me was way too close for comfort.

I was in one of the spare meeting rooms at the Command Center. A room no one fucking visited because it was near that big server room marked ‘Do Not Enter’.

“I’m not ready to die at fucking thirty-six, asshole!”

I twisted around and shot a glare at Zane, who was already smirking like the nosy bastard he was.

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