“I heard what you told Shaker. In the end, I think he knew you told him the truth. That Oliver wanted you to kill him. That he needed you to.”
Jonas turned his face away from her. He didn’t sit down but rather walked to one of the porch’s support posts and wrapped an arm around it, looking out toward the beautiful paradise hiswoman had created. The scene blurred, but he didn’t wipe at his eyes. It wouldn’t have mattered. Oliver’s name was tattooed on his body right under the GhostWalker creed. Right where the things that mattered most to him were.
“Oliver and I both felt as if we were going insane. It wasn’t just Oliver fighting for control every minute. He wasn’t alone in that. Our heads were splitting, pounding until we wanted to scream. Our bodies felt as if they were being torn apart. We felt the need to fight over everything with everyone. Everything felt like a challenge. All that testosterone raging in our systems. We would go off together and try to sort through it, try to find a balance.”
He pushed his forehead hard against the wood. Camellia ran her hand gently down his back, barely there but he felt it like a brand—deep. He didn’t know if he deserved her—not when Oliver was dead. Not when he hadn’t made it.
“It’s impossible to tell someone else what it’s like, that fight every minute of the day for sanity. For control. What it was like in those early days. The first weeks and months when we both tried so hard. Even now. It still scares me that the same thing could happen to me.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Jonas. You can show me.”
“I would never want you to think less of him. He was a good man.” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. He cleared his throat. “It isn’t as if I was blameless, Camellia. I had trouble, just as Oliver did. During combat situations, it was especially difficult to turn off the various temperaments we were called on to use. All of ours came with a high price. At times, that price was a blinding rage, and we would have to get away from our own people. The cost of using what we could to protect our team and risking their lives at our own hands wasn’t worth it to either of us, but it wasn’t always our call.”
Camellia laid her cheek against the small of his back andwrapped one arm around his waist, but she remained silent, allowing him to tell her in his own way. He let the story unfold in his mind so she could see just how difficult it had been for Oliver and him in those early days and how hard the two of them tried to get a handle on the enhancements Whitney had thought himself so clever for bestowing on them.
He wanted her to see the friendship between them and how they shared information. How they worked as a team, fighting through the painful revelations they learned about the various animal traits they now possessed. They studied each animal or reptile together, the good useful attributes they could draw out and develop, make stronger, and the ones that might lead to aggression and dissension on their team. They would discuss ways to suppress or rid themselves of the characteristics that posed a danger to their team.
No matter how hard they tried, the violent tendencies raged through both of them. At times, the aggression was useful, like when they were on missions, having to break through enemy lines or defend their team, but then they couldn’t just easily put it all away when the mission was done. Oliver found it harder and harder to control himself. He smashed things in his room, tore up fences, went to bars and got into fights. More than once, Jonas had to stop him from killing civilians and regular soldiers.
“The last mission with Oliver was a bad one. We knew we were set up. We walked right into an ambush. I warned Ryland we couldn’t go through the pass, but the men we were supposed to pull out were in that valley, and the only way in was through a narrow pass. There was steep rock rising on either side. I felt the danger. I could actually taste it in my mouth.”
“The underground network was telling you to stay back.”
He nodded and reached around him to take her arm and bring her to his side. Locking her against him with one arm, he strokedher silky hair with his free hand. He needed to touch her, to hear her heart beat close to him. He listened to the hum of bees, the steady drone of insects and the rustle of lizards and small rodents in the dried vegetation on the ground. The bright sound of water, as it ran over a series of rocks and fell into a shallow pool, brought a sense of harmony to the garden.
Jonas tried to ground himself in the blossoms and Camellia. He didn’t want to remember that valley and that day and night of blood and violence that ended with the loss of his best friend.
“It wasn’t that Ryland didn’t believe me. It was that we couldn’t find another way in. We were prepared for an ambush. Oliver and I went in first. It was overcast but still relatively clear, giving neither of us anything we could work with. I stayed to the shadows of the rock as much as I could. Oliver did the same.”
Jonas wrapped her hair around his knuckles, the silk trapped inside his fist. “We were good at blending in with our surroundings, and we could go up the rock fast if needed. I eliminated seven of their assassins, but it wasn’t enough.”
Guilt weighed him down. Pressed on his shoulders, in his chest, pounded through his skull as it did every time he thought of that time. “Half the team went down in a hail of bullets, wounded, the moment they stepped into the mouth of the valley. I should have known where all the enemy were. They were too far above us, and I didn’t have their locations.”
“Jonas, you’re taking on too much. You know you are. How could you know where every single man would be lying in wait? That isn’t even logical.”
“It was my job.”
“You had a partner. Where was Oliver? What was he doing while you were eliminating those lying in wait to kill your fellow team members?”
Jonas found himself uncomfortable. This was always themoment he hesitated when giving a report. He didn’t put that shit on paper, nor did he talk to a shrink about it. He wasn’t ever going to betray Oliver that way. Ryland and the others knew because they were wearing small recorders. He had destroyed every version he had but one. Ryland had insisted on keeping that one to protect Jonas. Jonas didn’t give a damn about protection, but he did about Oliver’s reputation and his legacy. As far as Jonas was concerned, Oliver had earned his hero status on the other hundreds of missions he’d run.
“He was having problems, Camellia. Sometimes the headaches are so severe, it’s nearly impossible to think straight.” He touched his temple where his head felt as if it had shrunk several sizes and his brain was trying to burst through his skull.
“Like it is for you right now?” she prompted gently.
He despised admitting he had a migraine, but that was the truth. He’d had one since he’d started out after Shaker and his team. He’d known from the beginning he would be racking up the kills. He didn’t want his woman to see him in that light. Not now. Not ever.
“It’s pretty bad this time.”
Instantly, Camellia reached up with her slender arms, sliding her palms up his chest, her hands going up his neck, her touch delicate as her fingers moved over his jaw. Her touch was light, but it was as if an electrical charge had rushed through his entire system, sparking every nerve ending to life. Blood thundered in his ears, rushing and receding like a never-ending tide, pounding through his temples to add to the mounting pressure in his skull.
Camellia’s fingers slid over his temples, barely felt, a wispy brush like a passing butterfly’s wing, leaving behind the need for more. The trail of her touch led straight to his hair. The pads of her fingers settled there, buried deep and began a slow rhythm, a fluttering dance, like the butterfly’s gentle awakening. Pumping wingsto dry them after emerging from the chrysalis. Each touch on his scalp brought relief to the pounding in his brain.
He became aware of the starships, those neurons with the outstretched arms, connecting with one another via synapses so that chemicals could flow to every part of his body, chemicals or electrical signals or both. Camellia sent a brilliant pink-red chemical flowing throughout his veins, carrying it to his brain. After the chemical, a series of electrical charges followed, flashing and igniting as they rushed to his brain. The little explosions should have made the migraine worse but instead seemed to knock it completely away.
For the first time all night and most of the day, he was able to take a full lungful of air. He dropped his chin on top of her head. “I don’t know how you manage to do what you do, Camellia, but don’t ever tell me you aren’t my angel.”
Her laughter was muffled against his chest. “Someday, I’m going to be really upset with you, and you’ll see I’m no angel.”
