So far, he had yet to respond. What was the point? They all knew that Rose wasn't okay. There hadn't even been time for her to recover from what they’d inflicted on her, plus the ceiling falling on her. Now she had new wounds, including a gash on her cheek from where he’d hit her that would leave behind a scar.
One he would look at every day for the rest of their lives and be reminded that he was the one who had caused it.
Then there were her feet, and the fact that it was cold enough out that he wouldn't be surprised if it started snowing soon. How the hell was she in any way okay?
“She’s—”
“Don’t say it,” he snarled at Thunder, cutting the man off before he could offer the same platitude that did absolutely nothing to quell the fear pounding inside him.
“Try to think of this as just a regular op,” Blade suggested.
“It is a regular op,” Steel spoke without thinking.
“Lie,” Dragon said, twisting in the front passenger seat to look at him. The man’s violet eyes were unyielding, daring him to disagree, to argue the point.
“We all know Rose is important to you,” Voodoo spoke gently, and since he wasn't used to his team being so careful with his feelings, it left him floundering, spinning wildly out of control with nothing solid to ground him.
In the space of just days, Rose had given him something he didn't think he’d ever have.
Something he didn't feel he deserved.
“Not like you’ve put in much effort to hiding the fact that you're obsessed with her,” Lion added.
“We all heard you have sex with her,” Thunder said.
“Vividly.” Blade winced and gave an exaggerated shudder, causing the tiniest crack in the tension that threatened to break him.
“Obsessed doesn’t even come close to communicating how I feel about her,” he admitted. It was hard saying those words to anyone who wasn't Rose.
Rose didn't get it. Not really. She had her own trauma with her brother that was every bit as dark and painful as what he and his team shared with Dr. Gardner. But it wasn't the same.
She was an innocent. She hadn't done anything to deserve the hell her brother had put her through. They, on the other hand, had willingly signed up for the project, intrigued and excited by the idea of having their natural abilities enhanced to make them superior soldiers.
Even when things started to go wrong, Steel had been the one to convince his team to keep pushing through. His faith in the scientist had been complete, and because of that, he hadn't caught on to the fact that Dr. Gardner was a psychopath with delusions of grandeur. That the man cared only about playing God, and that as far as he was concerned, Steel and his team and the other men in the project were all just guinea pigs to be used and tossed away if they failed.
It was because of him that his team had been forced to give up their lives, walk away from their families, hide out in their home, locked away from the rest of the world.
How could he be okay with finding happiness and peace when his teammates’ lives were still in tatters?
“It’s okay to fall for her, you're not doing anything wrong,” Thunder told him.
Only it felt like he was.
“We all know it’s true,” Lion continued. “You caught feelings for our pretty little captive.”
Hearing his friend comment on Rose’s beauty flipped a switch inside him, and he growled as he wrapped a hand around his teammate’s neck. Lion just grinned at him and arched a brow, daring him to disagree that it wasn't just an obsession, it ran so much deeper than that.
With a huff, he released his hold on Lion’s neck and instead dragged a hand down his face. He and his teammates might be family, brothers in every sense of the word except for their DNA, but they didn't sit around and discuss their feelings. They didn't even admit to having feelings.
For the last decade, Steel would have sworn the only feeling he was capable of was anger.
Until Rose.
His little ladybug changed everything.
“You’ve been a good leader, Steel,” Voodoo said, his tone going earnest. “You’ve kept us together, kept us sane, kept us alive and safe. Going to Prey was your idea, and without that decision, chances are that Dr. Gardner might have found us long before now. You kept us going when it felt like we were never going to get a lead on the name of the scientist who tortured us. You were even prepared to follow through on hurting Rose, even after you realized something in her called out to something in you. You did that for us. Because you're our leader and you think it’s your job to always put us first.”
“But things change, and we’re not first anymore,” Blade said, no reproach in his tone. “Now your little ladybug is number one, and none of us fault you for that. You’ll always be our team’s leader, but if we finally kill Dr. Gardner and everyone else involved in his project, then you deserve a chance at happiness. Real happiness.”
