Page 36 of Brawler
“What? I don’t…understand.”
His father’s gaze sharpened. “We never did finish that discussion, did we?”
“You were scared for me,” Flash rasped. “That’s why you were so mad. I thought it would be better not to talk about it. To spare you the pain. But you…you weren’t one to dodge the hard stuff.”
“No.” His father’s grip tightened, the weight of it bruising. “Neither are you. You chose war, Jae. I didn’t want that. I wanted you to live. But you’ve chosen, and now you have to carry it farther. Beyond the battlefield. Beyond blood. Beyond who youthink you are.” His voice grew sharper, too loud in the hollow of Flash’s chest. “Why’d you do it, Jae? Why’d you choose war?”
The question punched deeper than gunfire. Flash’s throat locked. “To save people. To save the world.”
The older man’s head tilted, a look Flash knew down to the marrow. Disappointment threaded through it. “Are you saving it…or just fighting it?”
Flash’s pulse thundered. “That’s the same thing.”
“Is it?” His father’s expression didn’t change. “You run toward the fight. But maybe you’ve forgotten why.”
Static crawled his skin, prickling through the tattoo across his back until it felt like wings ruffling under his flesh. His chest tightened, his head buzzing. “You’re not real,” he rasped.
Pain flashed, and as the eyes held him anyway, heavy with knowing, the wings sprouted, wide, powerful, ancient, shredding his shirt, his vest, his bones cracking, changing, weaving into something impossible. He threw his head back, his cry of agony going fierce, primal, an eagle’s scream of defiance into a nothingness that felt like everything.
The feathers were blue, then red, then white. His lower body pulled up into his torso, talons flexing into the ground, sharp for fighting, sharp for hunting. He screamed again, nothing but a bird’s sharp cry. The agony intensified until he felt crushed.
He beat them and he hovered on the ground, feathers now a glittering white with flecks of red and blue gleaming like bits of the cosmos. Star-spangled.
The world shivered. His father’s outline blurred. Voices bled back in, his team shouting through comms, boots hammering through brush. He looked to the canopy, to the open sky, and a rush of freedom flashed through him. He could fly. He could find her. She needed him, and without her, everything would die. The clearing spun and blackness descended.
He opened his eyes, flat on his back, breath tearing ragged, the trees blotting out the light. He frantically felt his chest, lower body. Everything was just as it had been before he’d become the eagle. What the fuck had just happened to him?
“Flash!” Easy’s voice cracked above him, urgent. Hands gripped his plate carrier, hauling him up. Shark cursed low, steadying his shoulder. “What the fuck happened?”
Flash blinked hard, mouth dry. He couldn’t tell them he’d just seen a ghost, that he’d transformed into Lechuza’ságuila estrellada, her star-spangled eagle, but he hadn’t. It had all been in his head. Couldn’t say he suspected the jungle was whispering a message with his dead father’s voice that he couldn’t understand. That was a one-way ticket to medevac and white coats.
He searched desperately for Brawler, the one man who already knew too much, the one anchor he had left.
“Where’s Brawler? The fairy queen?”
“Gone. He and Emily tumbled down a steep hill they couldn’t climb. It will take a few days, but they’re going around to meet up with us,” Tex said.
Panic stabbed through him sharper than any bullet. He wasn’t sure he could stop the unraveling in a few days. Without Brawler, everything he experienced had no sounding board. He needed Brawler…now. His team was fractured, his anchor torn away. Inside, the cold realization settled. Maybe his father was right. Maybe he wasn’t saving a damn thing. Maybe he was just losing it.
Flash forced a grin that didn’t touch his eyes, shoving the words out between clenched teeth. “I was following the family just to make sure they got out safely. Just tripped. Jungle’s a bitch.”
But the look in Tex’s eyes was sharp calculation. “I didn’t give you an order to follow them. But it doesn’t surprise me you protected them.”
Flash tried to grin, but his mouth wouldn’t seem to obey. He reached for his humor but the wit he relied on felt dull, unreachable. Instead, he shrugged. Lying to his CO and his teammates was such a breach of their trust, but Flash had no choice. He could barely look them in the eyes, the cracks widening inside, no duct tape in the world strong enough to hold them together.
Emily moved ahead,shoulders brushing against broad leaves, the jungle as familiar to her as the streets of Manhattan. The humid air pressed close, thick with the musk of loam and the faint sweetness of fruit gone overripe. She stopped briefly at one of her cameras, sliding the card free with practiced fingers, relief warming her chest when the light blinked green. Sombra’s path was stable again. The cat was still circling her territory, the cubs alive. That steadiness felt like a small miracle.
She tucked the card away, then started to reach for her SD card stash, but hesitated. She looked over at Brawler…Christian. Wow the name still made her stomach do flips. “Ah, do you have another SD card to spare? I’m running low, and I have more upcoming cameras to change out.”
“You asking me for a favor?” his gruff voice held a note to it…a soft undertone that hit her in the heart before she even knew it was coming.
“If your next question is what do you get out of it? I might think about?—”
“Nut-punching.”
She giggled, giving him a sidelong glance. “As tempting as that is…no, rubbing you down with pixie dust and turning you free in front of Flash.”
“Low fucking blow.” He swallowed hard. “Possibly worth every smart-ass remark from that bastard if it means having your hands on me.”
