Page 54 of Specter Bred

Two dark braids. Sharp, angry eyes. Maeve.

Fairfield Base re-materialized, and my brows furrowed as my gaze dropped back to the blood still trickling down her arm.

If she noticed I’d drifted, she said nothing, rather watching me in silence until I forced my feet to move again.

Concern twisted beneath my ribs, sharp enough to make me want to stop, grab her arm, and find out exactly how bad her injury was. Then the anger came flooding back in, hot and immediate, with that concern still creeping around its edges.

I turned forward and kept walking, shaking off the brief flashback. When we finally stepped inside the base, I turned toward the locker rooms instead of the medical wing.

"Uh, sir? Medical's the other way."

I shot her a look that promised she was one smart-ass comment away from making this worse. Thankfully, she read it loud and clear and shut the fuck up.

"I'm not taking you to Medical. If I take you to Medical, I'll have to fill out an incident report. Then they'll pull you from training until you're cleared to return."

I glanced back at her.

"All because of your little stunt."

She said nothing, and her silence was my first clue that she knew exactly what she'd done.

"That wasn't confidence, Archer."

Still nothing.

"It wasn't courage either."

I pushed through the locker room and headed toward my office.

"It was reckless. Stupid. Dangerous provocation."

The silence stretched between us, somehow irritating me even more than her smart fucking mouth usually did.

I stopped outside my office, unlocked the door, and shoved it open. “I’ve got medical supplies in here.”

Stepping aside, I jerked my chin toward the doorway. “Get inside. I’ll stitch you up myself.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, which was fair, given my current mood. Stitching her myself probably sounded more like a threat than a medical treatment.

As we stepped into my office, Archer's gaze immediately moved around the room. My office was temporary, but I’d still made it my own. Her eyes landed first on the framed photo of my old unit hanging on the wall. I stood in the back beside Reaper, while Hawk, Mason, and Razor knelt in the front row, all of us younger, dumber, and smiling as if we had all the time in the world.

None of us knew how it would end.

That picture had followed me everywhere since. Hospital to hospital. Base to base. Mission to mission.

Then her attention shifted to the only other framed photo in the room, the one sitting on my desk. It was Stephanie, her dark hair framing equally dark eyes and a bright smile stretched across her face. I’d taken that picture the day she found out Command had tapped her for Specter Training, back when neither of us had any idea how much that moment would eventually cost us.

Another moment frozen before everything went to hell.

Archer’s attention lingered on the photo of Stephanie for a moment longer, and in that brief pause I caught it: a tiny crack in her usual hard expression. Something that looked a hell of a lot like jealousy before she buried it and moved on.

Her gaze swept over the books lining the shelves, the stacks of paperwork across my desk, and the training reports scattered over every spare surface. She was assessing, observing, and trying to piece me together the same way I’d been piecing her together since the day she arrived.

"Sit," I barked, crouching beside my filing cabinet and rifling through the bottom drawer for the medical kit I kept in case of emergencies.

A moment passed, but she didn’t move. I glanced over my shoulder and found Archer still standing in the middle of the room, shifting awkwardly. Her eyes darted around as if she wasn’t sure where to put herself.

“Uh, where, sir?”