“I’ll wait for that day. In the meantime, I’m just going to keep thinking of you as my personal angel.”
He sighed, determined to finish telling her about Oliver so he wouldn’t ever have to bring that day up again. He stepped back into the middle of her porch, tugging on her hand until both were standing where the Middlemist Red Camellias had the thickest and longest branches. The blossoms were spectacular. Red leaned toward them, the branches moving in a circular motion as if the huge tree-shrubs could surround them.
“Oliver went into crisis at the worst possible time. I had been keeping a close watch on him because I’d been worried for months. I knew the moment I took out the first assassin and saw the fight and smelled the blood that I was in for trouble with him. The battle was too much and tipped him over the edge.”
Before he could put a hand to his roiling gut, her palm wasalready there, pressing over the exact spot where the well of rage was always pooled, waiting for the aggression to overflow. Now it was gone, responding to her touch.
“You were trying to keep him quiet. Fighting him off the dying men. Trying to reason with him.”
She saw right into his mind.
He nodded. Oliver had gone into a fit of madness, foaming at the mouth, wanting to paint his body in the blood of the enemy. He seemed to be in a kind of fury, yet he refused to hunt, forcing Jonas to take the lead. Jonas could no longer trust Oliver at his back. Oliver had gone cunning and feral on him, not something entirely new—Jonas often had those traits spring to the forefront, but not quite like this. Oliver was off in a way that Jonas instinctively knew was dangerous to him.
Oliver watched Jonas as if he were an enemy. Oliver refused to make a single kill, yet as soon as Jonas did, Oliver would rush to the body and desecrate it in a manner that Jonas found reprehensible. Sickening. He found himself caught between needing to warn Ryland about Oliver’s behavior and needing to protect his friend. In the end, he had tapped a code to Ryland and sent him a short recording. If Oliver managed to kill Jonas, it would take more than one of the GhostWalkers to destroy Oliver. They would need to know what they were dealing with.
Showing Oliver’s sick insanity to Ryland—which meant showing it to Kaden as well—had felt like one of the biggest betrayals of his life. Jonas still sat in the dark thinking of whether or not it had been necessary to send an actual recording to Ryland. Would a simple warning have been good enough? He knew Ryland had saved the recording in order to protect him even though he had asked Ryland multiple times to destroy it.
Jonas had managed to eliminate seven of the enemy while keeping track of Oliver, but he’d been distracted and hadn’t climbed upas high as he should have. When Ryland signaled the team to come through the pass, Oliver was to continue climbing upward with Jonas, ensuring there were no more snipers or hidden units. Oliver didn’t follow protocol. Instead, he went to ground, stealthily moving back toward the GhostWalkers coming through the pass.
Jonas had been too afraid Oliver was going to turn on his team. He had stopped his forward scouting to go after Oliver. The guns above them caught the team as the last man moved out from the rocks of the narrow pass. Half went down with wounds. The other half dragged those wounded to cover and set up return fire.
Oliver became a madman, making matters much, much worse. There was no way to protect everyone from him, and the moment the team members were wounded, he acted as though they were enemies to be fallen on and torn apart, just as he had the assassins Jonas had sought to eliminate earlier.
“I had no choice, Camellia, I swear to you. They were helpless, some in bad shape, the others trying to shoot at the snipers pinning us down and covering the wounded with their own bodies or trying to stop the bleeding to keep those wounded alive. I dragged Oliver off Jeff. Kyle was trying to cover him. Jeff was badly wounded, and Kyle was doing his best to keep him from bleeding out. Oliver kicked Kyle in the ribs and head, and then threw him out into the open where the snipers above us could shoot him.”
Camellia gasped, seeing the images in his mind, the way everything happened so fast and the split-second decisions he’d had to make. Jonas used his speed and strength to save Kyle. Running so fast he was nothing but a blur, he caught up to Kyle, realized instantly he had broken ribs and simply carried him, attempting to shield him with his body as he sprinted back to the limited shelter of the rocks. Nicolas Trevane and Ian McGillicuddy, their sharpshooters, gave them covering fire.
Ryland fought off Oliver in an effort to prevent him fromkilling Jeff. Oliver had torn at Jeff’s wound, trying to rip it open further, laughing gleefully, yelling he would tear out Jeff’s heart and eat it. He sounded maniacal. Oliver was abnormally strong, nearly crushing Ryland in spite of Ryland’s enhancements. It was only Jonas’s powerful snapping front kick delivered to Oliver’s thigh, giving him a dead leg, that forced him to turn his attention to Jonas.
He dropped Ryland and turned with a cruel, distorted grin on his face. “Jonas. They really think they can stop us. We can kill them all. Let’s take them together.”
“Oliver, we’re sworn to protect these men. They’re our friends. Our teammates. We’re surrounded by the enemy. Right now, we need to concentrate on killing them, not fighting among ourselves.” Jonas did his best to circle around Oliver to put his body between his team and his best friend.
“Weaklings, look at them. No one can take us.” Oliver shouted it and then rushed out into the open, exposing himself to the snipers above them on the rocks. Multiple shots were fired. He leapt into the air, giving the enemy the finger and laughing with delight. No bullet touched him. He ripped his shirt from his body, threw it down and declared himself invincible.
He walked slowly back to stand behind the slim wall of rocks and glared at Jonas. “You’re either with me or against me. I’m going to kill them all. Everyone. Either they’re worthy of living or not. Stand with me, brother.”
“You know I can’t do that, Oliver.”
“Then you’re going to die. Right here. Right now.”
Camellia winced at the sight of Oliver’s snarling, twisted face, a mask now, so distorted, his mouth foaming and bubbling until long strings of saliva hung down on either side of his jaw. The fight was vicious and brutal, a terrible savage brawl more animal than human, two lethal predators coming together in a fight to thedeath. She had never seen anything like it, and she never wanted to again. Jonas knew he shouldn’t share the images with her, his intimate memories of that brutal killing, but he wanted her to understand his fears for their future.
Jonas buried his face in her neck. “Do you see what I’m afraid of for you? For any children we might have together, Camellia? I never want to turn on the ones I love the most. First it was Oliver and then his brothers. Whatever concoction Whitney put into them, he put into me.” He tightened his arms around her, holding her to him. The last thing he wanted to do was give her up, but what else could he do if he was going to protect her?
“Jonas, look at me.”
Her voice. That soft, gentle tone that wrapped him up in silk and peace. In all the good the world had to give. That was Camellia. Whitney had failed to twist her into something dark or terrible. She was Jonas’s personal miracle. He lifted his head and looked down at her, into those eyes that held so many secrets.
His breath caught in his throat at what he saw there. His lungs burned. His heart hurt, thundering in his chest. Camellia’s long lashes framed her blue eyes, windows to the soul some said. And if that was the truth, he was looking at love. The real damn thing. Raw. Honest. A gift beyond any price. After what she’d just witnessed, it made no sense, and that meant all the more.
Both of her hands framed his face, her touch delicate, like the wings of a butterfly. So gentle, but he felt them like a brand.
“I see you, Jonas. All of you. Into you. The heart and soul of you. Who and what you are. The good and bad. Everything. You can’t hide anything from me, not with Middlemist Red connecting the two of us. I can’t hide anything from you. So hear me when I say it would be impossible for you to turn into a cold-blooded murderer or tip over into insanity. You are always in control. Always. I have watched you closely. You strategize. You use your brain. Youdon’t kill mindlessly or easily. You regret every life you have to take. You think you don’t have compassion, but it’s that wellspring of compassion in you that makes you hurt all the time. At first, in your memories of Oliver, all I could see was the battle because, yes, it seemed brutal and vicious, but then I realized you were doing your best to subdue him, not kill him. You only defended yourself, blocking his blows and trying to land those that wouldn’t actually damage him too severely.”
“Camellia...” He wanted to protest, but she was right. He had done that, but it was Oliver. He’d done everything he could to save him.
Oliver had known what he was doing. In the end, Oliver had given him no choice, at one point coming in close, knife in hand, gripping Jonas to him and whispering that Jonas had to kill him. No one else could do it and it had to be done. It was the only way to save him. He’d said, “If you love me, Jonas, do it. Kill me now before I kill someone I love.” That had nearly broken him.
