Page 101 of Duty Preserved

“I know.”

“I was the one who said he was ready.”

“And you might have been right. Ready doesn’t mean invincible. I’ve released animals back into the wild that were strong and healed and had every chance, and something killed them the next week. That doesn’t mean I was wrong to release them. It means the world took them in spite of that.”

He sat with that. Turning it over somewhere inside himself.

“I can’t promise you nothing will happen to these rangers,” I said. “Neither can you. But the alternative is they face what’s coming with nothing. No training. No preparation. Just uniforms and rifles and whatever they can figure out on their own. That’s what they had before you got here. And it wasn’t enough.”

He exhaled. Long and slow. His shoulders dropped by a fraction.

“You train them the best you can,” I said. “And then you trust them to use what you gave them. That’s all anybody can do.”

He reached for my hand. His fingers closed around mine and held on. Tight.

I didn’t pull away. I didn’t try to say anything else.

I leaned into his shoulder and stayed there, his hand around mine. I couldn’t truly make his burden any lighter, but I could make sure he didn’t have to bear it alone.

Chapter 28

Donovan

I slept through the night.

That alone was enough to sit with for a minute. I was dressed and perched on the edge of Sarah’s bed, holding a coffee I’d gotten up and come back with. The cabin was still dim, the first light just starting to push through the blinds. Sarah was in the bathroom with the door half open, pulling her hair into a braid.

I’d told her about Owen two nights ago. Everything. How I couldn’t stop seeing him in these young rangers. I’d said it all out loud in the dark and waited for the ceiling to fall in, and it didn’t.

The burden was still there. It would always be there. But for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t carrying it alone.

Train to the best of your ability and then trust them.

Her words. Sitting in the space where the dread used to live, quiet and steady and not going anywhere.

“I’m at the temporary setup until noon,” Sarah said from the bathroom. “The eland’s sutures need checking, and I’ve got the dart inventory to reconcile.”

“After noon?”

“Lab work. I want to finish the tissue analysis from the second carcass. KWS asked for supplemental documentation.” She came out, the braid finished, and started lacing her boots on the chair near the window. “Staying close today. What about you?”

“Training. All day.”

“The contact drills again?”

“We add more the more they master.”

She pulled the lace tight and looked up at me.

“You slept pretty well last night, it seemed like,” she said.

“I did.”

“Good.” She finished the other boot and stood. She smiled. “That’s good.”

The smile didn’t quite hold. She caught herself and looked toward the window. I could tell she was starting to think about the poachers.

“Patrol coverage is solid,” I said as I stood up and walked to her. “All the access roads, the waterholes. We’ve got better eyes on the northeast sector than we’ve ever had.”