Page 88 of Under Arthur’s Protection

He’d said that just because I had table scraps to toss at him didn’t mean I belonged at the head of the table.

He wasn’t wrong.

I checked the rearview mirror. It was clear.

But I still had no idea where I was going.

“Arthur?”

I ran my tongue over my lower lip to wipe away some of the dried blood. I didn’t owe her any explanation, but the words came anyway. “You remember on the ferry, when I told you about my father assigning me the command in Afghanistan?”

“I do.”

“Rick was one of the men who should have been given that role. The one who didn’t pretend he agreed with my father’s choice.”

“He got in a lucky shot.”

“No, he was better than me.” You shouldn’t have sent Lance to Malta. “He was better than me back then, and he was better than me tonight.”

“He knew about your arm.”

“He figured it out fast.”

“He targeted it. On purpose.”

“That’s what a real fighter does.” I flexed my right hand on the wheel, and my knuckles protested. “He finds the weakness, and he uses it.”

‘First Uther. Now your girlfriend.’

He’d found my weaknesses before. This was the first time he’d needed his fists to do it.

A year into Task Force Legacy, I quit trying to buy him and planned an op without him. A survey team needed protection at a burial mound south of Balkh, and I built it with the team I trusted. The route, the timings, the overwatch. I didn’t ask Rick for so much as a map.

Hours before we arrived, insurgents had set up a position on a ridge above the site. We eliminated the threat within minutes of them opening fire, but Galahad took a round in his shoulder. It was a graze compared to Prague, and they shipped him home to heal—which pissed him off more than the wound.

He didn’t ask how a spotter got onto the ridge without anyone flagging it.

I did, but I didn’t get any answers. Until three weeks later, when I found a report hidden in a stack of routine summaries with the truth: one of Rick’s sources had warned him about it. Four fucking hours before we arrived.

When I confronted him, he complained about comm techs. Said he hadn’t heard the intel until we were back. When I pressed, he said, ‘Get off my ass, Penn. You wanted the op yours. It was yours. Every part of it.’

I didn’t have proof he’d lied. Reports moved slowly every day. I took it to my father, and he let me get through maybe half a sentence before he told me to deal with my team like a Penn. How the fuck was I supposed to deal with a team member who’d risk one of us because his ego was bruised?

Rick wasn’t just a prick. He was a dangerous prick.

So I had him rotated out to a different province before Galahad got back. Before I had to look a man who’d become my friend in the eye and assure him he was safe under my command.

“What about Uther?” she asked. “Was he another one of your Pendragon team?”

The road opened up, the high beams revealing farmers’ fields on either side, then a road sign. We were on a rural highway, nearing Vichy. Where was I even going?

“It’s a code name,” I said. “Some of the guys from Pendragon use it for my father. He hates it. Thinks it’s condescending, as though the Arthurian legend is all anyone sees when they look at him.”

As though that’s not exactly what he built.

He’d named his only child Arthur. He’d named his company Pendragon. He’d let the press run with the parallels, laughed at the King Arthur jokes at industry events, and turned that myth into his whole brand. He purchased the cottage in Cornwall, the area linked to the original Arthurian stories, named it after the sword in the stone, and had the audacity to act wounded when people called him by King Arthur’s father’s name.

But Rick hadn’t used the name to mock my father. He’d used it to unbalance me. Because he was right. My father would have handled tonight differently. He would have bought the problem off, or buried Rick under a dozen operators.