His eyes snapped open, wild and unseeing, and he jackknifed upright so fast I barely had time to move. His chest heaved, his whole body shaking, and he made a sound—half gasp, half groan—that made my heart crack down the middle.
For a moment, he wasn't here. I could see it in his eyes—he was somewhere else, somewhere hot and sandy and full of gunfire. His hand shot to his throat, fingers closing around the dog tags like they were the only real thing in the world.
"Hey." I shifted closer, moving slowly so he could track me, keeping my movements predictable. "I'm right here. Feel that? Feel my hand?" I pressed my palm against his forearm, gentle but firm. Real. Present. "You're in Louisiana. You're in my nest. You're safe."
He managed a nod, his gaze still darting around the room like he was checking for threats. The morning light caught the scars on his arms, the silver line that ran down his ribs visible where his shirt had ridden up. Battle scars. Survival scars.
"Good. That's good." I kept my tone steady, the way I did with spooked animals at the shelter back in Chicago. Calm. Patient. No sudden movements. "Harper and Remy left for work a few hours ago. It's just us. Just you and me and Gumbo."
From his corner by the door, Gumbo's tail scraped against the floor. Still here. Still guarding. His ancient yellow eyes were fixed on Silas, watching with that unnerving intelligence he had. Silas's breathing started to slow. His eyes focused, finding mine, and I watched the present reality settle over him like a blanket. The nest. The morning light. The smell of coffee from the pot I'd set to auto-brew. Me.
"What time is it?" His voice came out wrecked, barely a rasp, like he'd been screaming somewhere I couldn't hear.
"Around nine." I sat up beside him, not touching, just close. My hair was a disaster and I was swimming in one of Remy's shirts, but none of that mattered. "You were dreaming."
He scrubbed a hand over his face, and I could see the lingering horror in the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders that wouldn't quite release. "Yeah." The single word carried the weight of whatever nightmare still clung to him.
I waited. Didn't push, didn't pry. Just sat with him in the quiet, letting the silence stretch until he was ready to fill it or leave it empty. The bayou sounds filtered through the window—birds calling, water lapping against the dock, the distant rumble of a boat engine. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
His hand found the dog tags again, thumb rubbing over the raised letters like a rosary.
"Today's the anniversary." The words came out rough, like they'd been dragged over broken glass. My breath caught, but I didn't interrupt. I'd known there was something—some date that haunted him, some reason he disappeared into himself sometimes. I just hadn't known what.
"Four years ago." He stared at his hands—those scarred, capable hands that had saved so many animals, that had touched me with such unexpected gentleness. Right now they were shaking. "We were running a routine patrol. Village about thirtyclicks outside the FOB. Intelligence said the area was clear." He swallowed hard, his throat working. "It wasn't."
I shifted closer, letting my knee press against his thigh. Warm. Real. Here.
"They hit us from three sides. Planned it perfectly—they'd been watching us for weeks, learning our patterns, our routes. We walked right into it." His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek. "RPG took out the lead vehicle. Then the gunfire started. We didn't have a chance."
I could picture it. The chaos. The noise. The sand and blood and screaming. The helplessness of being outmaneuvered, outgunned, watching your brothers fall one by one.
"There were six of us. I was the only one who walked out." The words tasted like ash—I could hear it in his voice, see it in the hollow look that crept into his pale eyes. "Martinez. Rodriguez. Peters. Jenkins. Kowalski. All dead in under three minutes."
"Silas..." His name came out soft, aching, and my hand found his thigh, squeezing gently.
"Martinez was twenty-two. Just got engaged—showed us the ring he'd bought her every damn day." A ghost of something that might have been a smile crossed his face, there and gone. "Rodriguez had three kids. Peters was supposed to rotate home the next week. Jenkins—" His voice cracked. "Jenkins was humming his daughter's favorite song when the first shot hit."
I felt tears prick at my eyes, but I blinked them back. This wasn't about me. This was about him, about the weight he'd been carrying for four years.
"I carried their tags for three days." He still wouldn't look at me, his gaze fixed on some point in the middle distance. "Through hostile territory, no backup, no extraction point. Just me and five sets of dog tags and the knowledge that I should have died with them."
The silence that followed was heavy, thick with four years of grief he'd been carrying alone. I thought about all the times I'd seen him go quiet, go distant, retreat into himself like a wounded animal seeking shelter. This was why. This had always been why.
"I keep thinking—" His voice cracked, and he stopped, his chest heaving with the effort to breathe through it. "If I'd been faster. If I'd seen them sooner. If I'd taken point instead of Martinez?—"
"Stop." I made the word firm but gentle, cutting through the spiral before it could drag him under. "I'm not going to tell you it wasn't your fault. I know you've heard that before, and I know it doesn't help."
He finally looked at me, his pale eyes raw and wounded. Waiting for the platitudes. The empty comfort. The things people said because they didn't know what else to say.
"What I am going to tell you," I continued, finding his hand and lacing my fingers through his scarred ones, "is that I'm glad you didn't die with them." Something shattered in his expression. Something he'd been holding together for four years with sheer force of will.
"That's selfish of me, I know." I gave him a sad smile, squeezing his fingers. "I never got to meet them. Never knew what the world lost when they died. But I know what I would have lost if you'd died too. I'm glad—so fucking glad—that you're here. That you found your way to this bayou, to that bar, to me."
The sound that came out of him wasn't quite human. A growl and a sob tangled together, wrenched from somewhere deep in his chest. His whole body shuddered, and then he was reaching for me, and I was opening my arms, and he collapsed into me like a building giving way to gravity.
I held him. Wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders and pulled him close, letting him bury his face in the curve of my neck. His whole body was shaking, and I could feel thewetness against my skin—tears he'd probably never let himself cry before. Not in front of the therapists. Not in front of his commanding officers. Not in front of anyone.
An instinct rose up in me, one I hadn't felt since I was young and hadn't yet learned to suppress every omega impulse. A sound built in my chest, low and soothing, almost musical. A croon. The sound an omega made to comfort a distressed Alpha.
