Page 70 of Mated to the Enemy
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Struggling to keep her breathing even, Jessica faced forward the entire way home. Her eyes stared straight ahead, not seeing anything that passed by. Next to her, Klaue sat in the driver’s seat, but she could feel his attention split between her and the road. It didn’t matter. There was nothing he could say that she wasn’t already telling herself.
Nothing had challenged them in the woods, and once they were on the far side of the wall and in force, the wolves had been reluctant to give chase. She thought. It was mostly a haze in her mind, and she remembered very little of the escape besides riding atop Klaue. That part was vivid because of the wolf.
It had come sailing out of the night from the opposite direction, and only an instinct had reached out and told her to look the other way, a sixth sense warning her of danger. Whatever it was, it had saved her life. Jessica hadn’t thought twice, she’d just pulled a move she’d seen in a movie somewhere. Somehow, it had worked and she hadn’t fallen off.
After that, the race through the forest, wolves at their heels, at least one of them attacking Klaue… it had all been lost to a fog. Her hands were covered in scrapes, and she had one on her face as well. Branches and things had whipped at her as they’d raced toward safety, minor pains compared to saving her life.
Now they were almost home. Klaue was guiding them into the underground garage. Then they were walking. His quarters appeared around her, the room shifting with every blink of her eyes. The cold was gone, replaced by…nothing. She couldn’t feel anything. Her chest hurt. The world grew brighter. Then darker. Klaue was there.
Klaue was there.
Some of the pressure on her chest disappeared. He held her hand, then touched her face. The warmth of his fingers, the tenderness of his caress sliced open the shell that had descended over her, freeing her from its constrictions. Jessica sucked down a breath of air, hearing how strained her lungs sounded as they gasped for precious oxygen. Once. Twice. A third, and finally the world slowed down. She continued to breathe.
Then the tears came. All at once, they cascaded down her face like an avalanche, burying Klaue in them as he clutched her to him, whispering in her ear over and over again that it was okay, that she was alright.
Didn’t he know? Couldn’t he figure it out? The tears weren’t for her. She was fine, just a few scratches. The tears were for the others. The injured. The dead. Oh, God, the dead. People had died! She remembered seeing the body now, hit by one of the mages’ blasts of blue energy and unable to defend himself. Charred and burnt. It was from that dead body that she’d pulled the gun and shot him.
She, Jessica, hadshotsomeone. In all her days of video game playing, uncaring of the gore and the people she dispatched, never had she thought it would feel like this. What scared her most was shelikedit. She liked knowing that an evil person had gotten just a taste of what was coming to them.
Klaue was rocking her back and forth now gently, trying to soothe her. “Jess, Jess. Shhh, it’s okay, we’re home now. Everything is fine.”
But everything wasn’t fine. The tears came for one more person.
“My sister,” she whispered. “My baby sister. They still have her, Klaue. They have Zoe. What are they going to do to her now?” she moaned. “Oh fuck, they’re going to kill her, aren’t they?”
She had to be in shock. There was no other explanation for her hysterics. A corner of her brain was railing against it all, saying that nothing could be gained by acting this way, but emotions, hormones and fear for her little sister overwhelmed all rationality at the moment.
“Your sister…Zoe, she’ll be okay,” Klaue said, trying to assure her. “As long as you’re still alive, she’ll be fine. Trust me, it’s going to be alright.”
Sudden anger flowed into her, scouring her veins of any other emotion, burning it away as her blood boiled over.
“Everything is not going to be alright,” she hissed, pulling away from Klaue, standing up straight. “How can you say that? How can you say that!”
Klaue stood, towering over her, but she wasn’t intimidated by him. Not at all.
“How can you say that?!” she shrieked, beating a fist on his chest. “People are dead, Klaue! They aredead!Are you too uncaring to notice? Did they mean nothing to you in the first place? Is that who you are? Do you just toss men away like they’re nothing, just more fodder for glorious Klaue as he ascends the ranks?”
The huge shifter stood stoically, taking her words, taking her fists. He stared straight ahead, unblinking as she unloaded upon him.
“Well let me tell you, Klaue, Ican’t. I can’t say it’s fine. I can’t toss them away. They died for me.Becauseof me, Klaue. That’s something I’m going to have to live with the rest of my life. And we didn’t even succeed. We failed. My sister is still there, and people are dead because of me. I should never have come here.”
Pushing past Klaue, she grabbed her sweater and pants from the edge of a chair in the bedroom and stomped back toward the door. “I shouldn’t have said anything. This is my fault, my mess. I should have gone and cleaned it up myself. If they kill me, then at least nobody else will die for what I’ve done!”
“This isn’t your fault,” Klaue said, speaking at last. He moved to block her path.
Jessica looked up at him, ready to lash out, but the coldness in his eyes stopped her in her tracks. She’d seen that look in him before, on several occasions, but never directed ather. When he’d looked her way, there’d always been warmth brimming at the edges, or filling his eyes.
Now they were cold. Devoid of all feeling. And pointed directly at her.
“Don’teveraccuse me of not caring again,” he said, his voice so quiet she took a step back, terrified of how angry he was. “Those men were my friends. I trusted them. You don’t know what that means for me to say, not recently, not after everything that’s gone on. I trusted them so much I asked them to break the rules. They did so forme. Because I asked them to. I will have to bear that guilt for the rest of my life.”
She opened her mouth to speak but Klaue slashed his hand violently between them. He wasn’t done.
“We failed, yes. Guess who’s to blame for that?” he growled, shaking with anger and emotion. “Nobody anticipated that the mage would be there, on Canis property. We all expected him to be out running from Kvoss and his crew. That ismyfailure, Jessica. I should have planned better. Should have done more to ensure we were trained to defeat him. But I didn’t. I was arrogant and thought we would be okay with what we had. I waswrong, and because of it, my people, my brothers, died.”
He inhaled slowly, shuddering. “Don’t tell me that I don’t care just because I haven’t shed tears. I will grieve. But right now, my duty is to those still living. The men have been cared for, and those still alive will heal.Youare my biggest worry now. It is you that I fear for, because I can see in you much the same I’ve seen in others before. You’re about to do something stupid.”
