I’d done as he told me to, slipping on the mask of cold indifference, pretending to be the ruthless man he believed I was when he first walked in those doors. My chest tightened with the mere idea of harming him. I hated it,loathed it,but my position and the game we were playing required fabricated soullessness.
Chin tilted to the sky, he poked his tongue against his freckled cheek repeatedly, a set rhythmfarfrom coincidence as he raised a curled fist. While my mask was back,hewas making it hard to maintain my character.
Switching my feet before he could react, my shin slammed into his side, the roundhouse kick one I’d perfected throughout the years. “Guard!”
He coughed but managed to stay on his feet once he found his balance. The steps he took to readjust himself sent a scowl to his face as he raised his arms to block.
“Your stance still looks likeshit,” I spat, internally cringing at the harshness of my words. “Are you that pathetically incompetent that you can’t understand simple corrections?”
“No,Commander,” he muttered. “You see, it’s just my back is a bit messed up from, well, agreatfuck.” He stretched, spreading his legs into a better stance than before.
“Glad someone was finally able totameyour unbearable nature.” Lifting a brow, I challenged him to keep pushing. “Did they admire the bruises adorning your body? Remnants of beatings equivalent to your worthlessness?”
“Licked every one, sir,” he said with a wink. “Though Idoremember, I did more of the tasting.” He raised his arms, form almost perfect.
Before he could react, I closed the gap between us. Sidestepping, I faked a right hook before sinking my hips back, my left fist greeting his stomach with enough force to lift him off the ground.
He gasped, dropping to a knee as his arms wrapped around his gut. “F-Fuck.”
“You’re lucky it wasn’t a blade,” I snapped, the anger in my words genuine for more than one reason.
General Valens had ordered us on an overseas mission to Venezuela to hunt down an ex-officer and execute him, alongside the coup those in opposition had organized. It was a simple task in any other instance, but with Oren by my side and my desire to protect him igniting tenfold, the minor flaws in his execution clawed at an already open wound.
I can’t lose him out there.
Whether he noticed the drop in my persona or not, his gaze softened. “I’m shit at this, aren’t I?” He slipped back into his stance, a singular breath exhaled as he gave me a nod. “Don’t worry about the hits, Commander. I can take them, and if I can’t, I’ll learn from it. Iwon’tbe a burden.”
My heartshatteredat the words, and for the first time in my life, I hesitated on the training floor.
“Commander?” he repeated, tilting his head to the side.
I can’t do this.
The pressure built in my chest, my breathing intensifying as I struggled to find my bearings. It felt as if the general’s hands were around my throat again, but the pressure was far worse than anything he’d be able to deliver. The weight of my responsibilities loomed, threatening to swallow me whole, and the panic set in.
If I couldn’t train him sufficiently, if I couldn’t equip him for what we would likely face out there, then what? It’d be my fault if he got injured, my fault if he lost his life, just like every other man I’d failed in the past.
My fault.
Myfault.
“Thorne?” Oren asked, his brows softening.
At my continued silence, he wrapped his hand around my wrist and tugged me to a blocked corner of the training room behind a couple of propped-up mats. Thankfully, the room was pretty empty. Oren stood on his toes to press his hands against my cheeks.
“You’re spiraling. What’s going on?”
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t fucking?—
He pressed a soft kiss to my cheek, his hands threading with mine. His citrus scent, with floral undertones, attempted to coax me, his voice soft. “Breathe, please.”
I tried but failed, the words tumbling from me. “I-If I can’t ensure you’re ready before we leave, then there’s a chance—a chance that you m-might…”
Memories consumed my mind, the bullet holes in my men's chests returning. There’d always been too much blood, crimson staining my hands as a mockery of my inability to stop its relentless stream. The whimpered breaths they’d released as they slipped from this life and into the next practically flooded my senses, each death rattle continuing to haunt me every fucking day.
