Nico sometimes wondered if that was something Ben had a problem with, although he’d never said, but he didn’t have to answer because Teilo did.
“Nico shot me because he loves me.” Teilo’s smile could light up the room. “They ordered him to shoot me in the leg. They had a gun pointed at his head. If they’d have shot him, he wouldn’t have healed from that. We knew we couldn’t live without each other.”
“We thought…” Nico remembered that time vividly. Protection could take many forms. “We wondered if we should’ve taken each other out, me by shooting Teilo and them shooting me, but…”
“There was no guarantee they wouldn’t have found a way to bring us back, so we did what we did and now we’re here.” Teilo gave Ben a hug because he looked like he needed one. “So, yes, we know about shooting, but you’re worried about your brother?”
Ben nodded. He still looked shell-shocked.
“Then we’ll go and help him,” Teilo said brightly. “Take out those who shot at him. That has to make them the bad guys, right?”
“Does this fit?” Nico asked his cage brother. “With what we said, does this fit in with that, too?”
It was Teilo who nodded this time. “We have to go back. There’s unfinished business there.”
~/~/~/~
Teilo
Teilo hated that they had to go back to the place where they’d been held for so long. When they’d left the jungle, he was prepared to put that life and everything it represented behind him. As soon as Ben said it was his brother who’d been the target of the shooting, it was like the last piece of the puzzle slotted into the picture in his brain. It all connected. The dark man and the shooting of Ben’s brother. Gangs. Drugs. Guns. It all fit.
Kylo was a good man trying to do good in a river of darkness that flowed through their corner of the jungle, unseen by most.
And we were the soldiers of evil.Ben was busy on his device, talking to someone, arranging a plane, transport back…Fuck. Back there.
You are stronger now.
At Nico’s voice in his head, Teilo looked up and met his stare, and then, as one, they turned to Ben, who was watching Teilo, too. “You are stronger now, Teilo. We can do this,” Nico repeated out loud.
Ben didn’t look so sure. “I could arrange for you to stay with my family in Paraguay. I feel I have to be there. My brother is in danger because of me…”
“Not because of you.” Teilo shook his head. He knew that deep inside his soul. “This trouble that surrounds your brother now—it surrounds him because of the light he shines in the darkness. It’s been that way a long time. The men, the…” he waved at Nico, knowing his mate would finish the words for him.
“They often discussed law enforcement, especially in the later days just before they left us to die.” Nico had a way of saying things that stated the “just is” without the emotion—a skill Teilo had admired for so long. “Without context, we didn’t know what it meant. The lion, remember when the lion was brought in?”
“Yes, yes.” Teilo was glad of the prompt. “The lion shifter. You need to ask your brother if he was working with a lion shifter. He wasn’t one of the ones created in the lab. They brought him in, fully grown, but he wasn’t one of us.”
“How did you know?” Ben was tapping on his screen—sending a message.
Teilo pointed to his back. “He didn’t have the socket in his back. He couldn’t fight. He tried. Gods, how he tried…”
“When he first came in, he was strong,” Nico agreed. “He’d never lived without anything. He couldn’t cope without water and food. His animal was strong, but he didn’t have the edge—”
“The urge to fight,” Teilo jumped in, as he remembered the cage fight. “They put him in with a tiger shifter. There was blood splattered everywhere. The tiger didn’t kill him…”
“The scientists wouldn’t do that,” Nico said, and his tone was bitter. “The lion was collateral, so they said. They were holding him as collateral.”
Ben looked up from his device. “There wasn’t a tiger shifter in any of the cages when me and my brothers found you.”
“They shot him in the head. Bullets are cheap.” Nico shook his head. “He made too much mess. There was talk, scientists taking bets about who would win if they put the lion in with me and Teilo, but the lion took too long to heal, and then they deserted us and left us to die, anyway.”
“There was a lion shifter that went missing from Kylo’s division.” Ben’s voice trembled. “Shit, is that the dead lion that we left back in the basement? Think. Please. This is really important. Did the men who held you, did they force him to shift, to talk at any time?”
Teilo glanced at Nico, who thought and then shook his head. “The lion wasn’t with us for very long. Newcomers were all made to fight when they first arrived, if they weren’t like us. A test of their worth. After the tiger made such a mess of him, the scientists said if they made him shift back, he wouldn’t make it, so the trainers left him.”
Ben glanced down at his screen again. “My brother wants to see you, but…”
“Yes.” Teilo nodded at Nico. That had to happen.
