A Cruel Kindness

Chapter 16

Bellamy

I woke up the next morning, fully pinned to the bed by Soren’s body.

Panic was the first emotion to set in, because he had me so thoroughly trapped there was no way I was going to move on my own.

He was on his side, his arm slung low over my waist and his hand tightened around my side so hard his fingertips would surely leave marks on my skin. His leg was thrown over one of mine, hooking in the way you would to override someone’s balance and knock them to the floor.

His breath coasted over the top of my head, as warm as if his hand was brushing over my hair in comforting strokes.

I couldn’t move, but I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.

I normally hated feeling constrained, reminding me too much of my younger years where I had the restless desires of a teenager but was unable to work through any of that extra energy.

This was different. This was … comforting, I realized. So much so it hit me with the force of a freight train, making me realize how dearly I’d been needing comfort over the past couple weeks.

I was on a different planet for fuck’s sake, away from all of the friends I didn't have and the family who barely tolerated me. Even then, they were still who I had.

And now I had Soren … a Soul Mate who had been the first person to make me smile since being here. Who had been the only one to ask a single question about me, even if it was a begrudging acceptance of the Bond’s demands.

My eyes started to well with tears and I fought hard to blink them away. It wasn’t because I was embarrassed of crying. If anything, that meant I was actually feeling my emotions rather than pushing them away, which would let me bounce back from them easier.

It was because I knew that if Soren woke up and I was lying in his arms crying, he would either hate himself or go ballistic, asking me what had hurt me before I had to admit that his unconscious possessiveness had been the tender care I craved so badly.

I was able to control my tears, but that seemed to be the only part of my body willing to cooperate with my wishes to stay separate from him. My body was buzzing with the need to press closer, as close as any two people could come.

Where the thought of us together, in that intimate sense, had once registered with a great deal of panic and a fair bit of never going to happen , now it just felt exciting.

I used to be able to push away the feelings with an internal promise that touching Soren wasn’t an option, but now the only way I could refocus was by saying not yet .

When Soren shifted in his sleep, drawing me closer to his body and some very evident hard parts of him, the not yet flew right out the window and my body demanded right now .

That wouldn’t do.

I wrangled back my control with the effort it would take to stop a bucking bull from moving. By the time I slipped out from Soren’s hold and sat up in bed, I was so winded it was an effort to keep my breaths quiet.

No more than three seconds after I’d done so, Soren shot up in bed and breathed, “ Bell ,” with so much fear in his voice, it set off the Bond’s warning signals in my own head.

My hands took over, grabbing Soren’s face to make him look at me. It took several blinks for his vision to clear and for him to realize that it was actually me in front of him.

The moment of vulnerability was cut when Soren’s jaw went hard and he ripped himself from my hold with a frown marring his perfect face.

That was one of the first times I’d seen him look genuinely upset. It was always cool rage or a vaguely amused expression. I’d even made him smile a few times, which made me prouder than I cared to admit.

“We have an assignment today. Go to breakfast ready,” he said, his voice sounding depleted of all energy. I didn’t even realize I’d jumped off the bed to follow him until he closed the bathroom door behind him.

The Bond did not appreciate the fact that there was a piece of wood between us. I let it bitch and moan in my head while I quickly changed. I was just pulling on a tank top that was tight enough to skip undergarments when I heard the bathroom door open.

There was a creaking sound that followed, like wood that started screaming when too much pressure was applied to it. I turned to find Soren with that same frown on his face, if not more angry than when he’d woken up.

Even though I got the sense that the Bond—on either side—would not appreciate what I was about to say, I charged forward anyway. “I’ll meet you outside. I need something from Esme.”

I swiped my toiletry case from the bathroom then marched over to Esme and Ford’s door. I knocked rather insistently.

Esme was the one to open the door, looking far too fresh faced for the early morning hour.

“Do you have any moisturizer?” I asked weakly.

Esme’s soft brown eyes dragged slowly over my face, then down to the bag of products in my hand, my moisturizer sticking right out of the top. She looked back up at me, and I dropped my passive expression to let her see the anguish hiding underneath.

“Sure,” she said, with a slow dip of her chin, stepping aside so I could walk inside. Ford was walking out of the closet in a long sleeve again. He didn’t pay me any mind as he walked out of their bedroom and right out the front door.

On another day, I might have made a joke about how he left burn marks in his wake, he was moving so fast. As I walked quickly to Esme’s bathroom, I noticed that the beds were pushed to the far sides of the wall, the furniture oddly construed so that there was a small table and a set of chairs between the beds.

I made quick work of washing my face, and when I got to the step in my routine where I applied moisturizer, Esme extended me her own, “Try this. It’s from a store in Pax. Oh, and also, working out helps shut it up.”

Esme fled the conversation a moment later, leaving me slack jawed and confused.

I applied some makeup, hoping it would make me look more awake than I was. I stayed up far too late staring at Soren, which was so ridiculous I would have to lie if anyone asked why I looked so exhausted.

Soren was waiting on the front steps when I left the cabin. The second I closed the door to the cabin, he took off towards the Main House. I followed him, feeling a strong yank in my middle as if tied to him by a rope.

I wasn’t convinced that wasn’t the case anymore.

?

Soren

I was hanging on by a fucking thread.

Not because of the many things that were appropriate for me to be focusing on. The fact that my formerly departed Match had defected to the other side with concerningly little remorse.

The fact that the assignment we had ahead of us today was dangerous and might turn out to be an ambush.

Oh, the war in general and the soul-crushing knowledge I would never be getting out of it.

But no, no, I was focusing on the fact that Bellamy wasn’t wearing a bra.

I’d walked out of that bathroom less than a minute after I’d walked in, intent on apologizing to Bellamy for my abrupt exit. I had no plans for my explanation if she pressed, because I certainly couldn’t tell her the truth.

I’d felt her leave the second she slipped from my grasp this morning, and in my sleep-addled haze I thought someone was ripping her from me.

My eyes snapped open, intent on shoving the knife I kept under my pillow into the neck of whoever dared to take her from me. When I saw it was just her, looking at me with wide, shining eyes, relief hit me so hard I was seconds away from kissing her.

When I realized that I promised not to, for reasons I wasn’t remembering at the moment, I had to get away from her before I threw those promises out the window and spent the morning showing her how thoroughly she fucked with my head.

And now she was sitting in front of me in a tight shirt with nothing else underneath. I’d spent enough time sneaking glances at her chest to know that the difference was almost nonexistent.

That made me unreasonably angry, because any other asshole who tried to steal a peek at her perfect breasts would have gotten a similar view. Half of me wanted to blind anyone who had even looked in her direction before this. The other half wanted to smile like a smug bastard because she was mine .

I had to bite the edge of my coffee mug when she started talking with her hands, trying not to look and see if her excited movements were doing anything to her chest.

She and Esme were laughing about something that I couldn’t quite process, because the only thing I heard was blood rushing through my ears.

I liked when Bellamy spoke with her hands.

One, because I knew that we were both raised with the instruction to sit on our hands when we spoke and that her forgetting to do so meant she was actually invested in her conversation. She talked with her hands a lot around me, and even though I was sure it was primarily from exasperation, it still made me unreasonably happy.

Two, because when her hands were raised in front of her, speaking rapidly, the neckline of her shirt would move with her, exposing the branches of her Mark curling over her shoulders.

Someone was walking around with trays of food, looking to get rid of leftovers. I called them over, silently motioning for them to put more food on Bellamy’s plate. She cut off in the middle of her sentence, looking down at the plate, then up to me with a confused expression.

“We have a long day,” I explained simply.

“Are you controlling what I eat now?” Bellamy asked, with a bite in her tone that made my pants feel tight.

“Just eat it, princess.” I did not miss the way Bellamy’s lip tried to quirk up at the use of that endearment. “I don’t need you fainting on my watch.”

Bellamy’s lower lip pushed out in a pout. I wanted to nip it. “Aw, are you not strong enough to carry me?”

I wanted to keep going, keep bantering with her until it wiped away the tightness in my chest, but again, I was hanging on by a thread and her pouty, glossy lips weren’t helping matters. “Your blood sugar dips after about four hours. We might be pushing that.” I slid her plate towards her. “Eat.”

Shock flitted through Bellamy’s features, but she picked up her fork and stabbed it rather aggressively into a breakfast sausage. She was getting stabby. I liked it.

I was content to watch her munch away, looking at her eyes reacting to Esme’s story about a Muli party she’d crashed when Peter caught my eye from across the room and dipped his chin once.

“Alright, we’re heading out,” I said to the table. Esme raised her eyebrow at me, clearly unhappy I’d interrupted her story, but rose to stand, taking her plate with her quickly.

Ford followed with a frown, grabbing her forgotten coffee mug.

I snatched Bellamy’s plate before she could do anything, nodding at the door.

She grumbled a little, but ultimately listened to my silent command to wait for us by the door.

When I got to her, her arms were crossed over her chest and she said, “Who are you to order me around?”

Oh, she could not have given me a more perfect in. “Technically, I am the captain of this unit, though I much prefer my other title.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” Bellamy shot back her eyes lighting with fire, just the way I liked them.

I leaned close, dropping my voice to a whisper. “ Paranima . No higher honor.”

A blush teased her cheeks, and I almost lost it again.

When she realized that was what I wanted, Bellamy frowned, which made her look rather cute.

I ushered her outside, intentionally walking a few steps behind her so that I could check her holsters and equipment without having to put my hands on her. The last time I did that, I debated delaying the Cross for several hours for over a hundred people just so I could carry her back to our room.

Esme caught up to her as we walked toward the stables and quickly resumed their conversation. Watching Bellamy react to her story, continuing to build their friendship, made warmth spill through my chest.

Ford fell into silent steps next to me. It was a comfortable silence, one that I always appreciated from him.

When we made it to the stables, I didn’t miss how Bellamy picked up her pace to get to Clover faster.

“Hi, sweet girl!” she said, a massive smile on her face when she saw Clover’s head peek around the corner. I stopped dead in my tracks at that smile.

Ford laughed as he passed me, patting me on the back twice in sympathy.

Bellamy was speaking quietly to Clover, running her hand down her mane in soft strokes. Lucky peered over her neck from the back of their shared stable, huffing contentedly.

Yeah, you and me both, pal.

I was clearly chopped liver to Bellamy now that she was with Clover, because she didn’t even spare me a glance as she led her out of the stables and into the loading area. I’d taken the liberty of loading her saddle bag with everything we’d need last night when we got back from Pax .

When I hopped on Lucky’s back and led him outside, Ford, Esme, and Bellamy were ready. Peter was approaching with Ella in tow.

Bellamy spied him, turning to me asking, “Is that everyone?”

I shook my head, waiting for what we knew was coming next.

“Sorry!” Freya yelled from across the field, running towards us in a full gallop astride Starlight.

Arthur, her Match, was leaning against the barn with his arms crossed and eyes downcast. Pain pinched my chest at the sight of him, reminded of the lot he’d drawn.

Bellamy watched as Freya stopped Starlight in a cloud of dust, breathing heavily from her morning ride. Her gaze slid over to Arthur, then back to Freya.

“We ready?” Freya asked me as she reached up to redo her braid.

I nodded right as Peter and Ella arrived. Though this was my unit officially, there wasn’t any formal hierarchy. Esme and Ford often went off by themselves, and only God knew where Freya went half the time.

Bellamy was studying Freya closely, and I just knew that she was seconds away from figuring it out. Ever since the Cross, I felt like my intuition when it came to her was getting sharper and sharper.

Honing our Bond, making us better in tense situations, was the goal really. The problem was, the thought of those very situations, of putting Bellamy in them, made me sick to my stomach.

I rolled my shoulders back, forcefully pushing the Bond’s shaking fear to the back of my mind. Lucky stomped his foot on the ground, sensing my discomfort.

Even Bellamy seemed to notice, her eyebrows pinching together in concern.

“The camp is about an hour’s ride away, due west of Pax. Muli soliders up and left with no explanation about a week ago. Assignment is intelligence gathering and weapons seizing,” I said, my voice dropping into an authoritative tone.

Bellamy’s shoulders pulled back, sitting up straighter on Clover. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she liked that tone on me.

Find out , the Bond commanded.

I can’t , I snapped back.

“That camp was in a strategic position. There must have been some reason they pulled back,” Ford said, sitting comfortably on Shadow’s back. Shadow, meanwhile, was trying to avoid Sky’s loving nips.

“I haven’t heard anything,” Esme added, though we would have known if she had.

“Are we sure it’s not a trap?” Freya asked, though she was smiling. She was a little crazy under all that unbridled joy. I recall her mentioning once that she thought bombs were pretty .

I shook my head. “Watch out for landmines or animal traps. They would have no reason to believe we’d send a large group there, so unless they find joy in a few casualties, any threat would be from leftover defenses.”

“Ooo!” Freya said, clapping her hands together. “Maybe they left some guns. I like Muli guns.”

Freya, in all her sweet, bright wisdom, was also a particularly gifted engineer and resident Muli weapons expert who loved to spend her time dissecting their machinery to try to understand them better. In another world, one free of war, her intelligence could probably be honed to combine the best of both worlds, moving technology forward for the betterment of people on both planets.

“On that lovely note,” I said, trying to hide a smile. I liked Muli guns too. “Let’s head out. Ford and Esme trail, please. Freya, try to stay in line.”

Freya simply flipped me off, moving Starlight over to where Arthur was leaning against the barn and muttering something to him quickly. I made myself turn away from them, heading to the front of the pack.

Bellamy trotted up next to me a second later. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you say please.”

I pulled my lips into a grin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m very agreeable.”

Bellamy tipped her head back slightly, laughing.

My heart stopped dead in my chest. That was the first time I’d heard her do that, truly laugh. I made her do that. I was the one to wring that beautiful, bright sound from her.

Shit.

I made myself turn back and take the wide brimmed hat hooked to Lucky’s saddle and place it on my head, needing the protection from the bright sun to see where I was going.

Bellamy followed suit, grabbing her own hat and placing it on her head. When she looked up and saw me, I couldn’t see what her eyes did under the shadowed lip of her hat, but I certainly saw what her cheeks did.

Color poured into them, making them the most alluring shade of light pink.

I was seconds away from calling off this whole mission, before Lucky clearly decided he’d had enough of my drooling and took off down the trail, Clover following him immediately.

I looked behind me briefly, making sure that everyone else was trotting along as they should.

I’d put Esme and Ford at the back because unless their riders had the pleasant excitement of heading to Pax, Sky and Shadow tried to nip and bother each other the entire time, wanting to play no matter what their riders wished.

I picked up Lucky’s pace, leaving some room in between each set of riders. Well, Freya was on her own, but still.

Once we had a little space, Bellamy asked, “What is going on with Freya?”

Knew it . “What do you think is going on, princess?”

“I’m going to start calling you prince just to get you to stop,” Bellamy grumbled, which drew a laugh from me. It took her several seconds to continue speaking. “Her Match. There isn’t … something isn’t right.”

There would be no consequences for sharing this with Bellamy, not when she was entitled to every little detail about me, but I wanted to see if she’d reach the truth on her own. “What do you think?”

Bellamy turned, her neck pulling tight with the motion. The skin there would be awfully pretty with a mark on it, preferably from my mouth, maybe my hand.

I knew what she was looking at. Freya, probably looking happy as a damn clam, jaunting along without a care in the world. Certainly not one for her forgotten Match.

“I’ve been watching the parasepts ,” Bellamy said. “You can tell the Match isn’t perfect, but there is still something there. Her and Arthur … they’re like strangers. Either their Match isn’t up to standards or…”

“Go on, keep going,” I prodded.

“Or she doesn’t need one,” Bellamy finished on a heavy exhale.

“That would be contrary to everything we’ve been told about the Bridge,” I said.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

I breathed in slowly. “Her Mark has been on her since the day she was born. They had a hunch, so they shoved her through the Bridge to see what would happen. They got very lucky she was okay. She was twelve. She’s been able to bounce back and forth as she pleases ever since.”

Bellamy sagged an inch further in her saddle. “How far up the chain of command did it go?”

“They would have known. It was the Astors at the time.” The House that ruled before my own did, two before Bellamy’s family. The island they hailed from was covered in ice, and their hearts were just as cold.

Bellamy shook her head, astonished. “The Royals are too far removed from this War.”

I hummed in assent. That was the root of all of this, wasn’t it? People too distant from the pain of battle commanding us to stay in it. “If they’d ever allowed me to come back to Florus, I might have shared that thought with them.”

“They’ll pull us back now. They’ll want to show us off,” Bellamy said. I’d figured that would be a possibility.

“How long do we think until those summons arrive?”

Bellamy laughed under her breath. “Not sure on timing, but I’d wager when there are a few weeks of bad press.”

As the Muli horizon brightened with the rising sun, making the rich colors of the landscape glow, Bellamy gave me the one thing I didn’t know I’d been missing over the past several years.

A reminder of home.

We fell into easy conversation, if not idle gossip, talking about the other Royal families and things I’d missed that were hidden from the news, not that I’d ever paid attention anyway.

The first week after I’d been drafted, my younger sister’s face was on the front page of the printed news, and I ripped up every single copy I could get my hands on.

I didn’t realize how starved I’d been for that form of companionship until she rested it in my waiting hands. When the realization hit, it started to tear down my walls.

The Bond’s true thoughts started to pour through, resisted by a poor attempt at distancing it under the guise of having more important things to accomplish.

My goal had been to find out what happened to Carson. I did know, now.

It was enough to make my excuse feel ridiculous, to have no good response to the Bond’s insistent questioning about why we were willingly putting space between me and Bellamy.

I like her. She’s mine, the Bond chanted on repeat, a low hum in the back of my mind during our conversation.

The hour passed by too fast. I could have spent hours more on horseback, walking through the most beautiful natural scenery I’d seen, save for the wonders of the Rystrom islands.

That joy was cut off too soon when we broke through a line of trees and descended upon an abandoned wasteland of a camp.

It didn’t look all that different than our own base. There were quickly constructed wooden structures dotted in between flat expanses meant for tents. It looked like everyone and their possessions simply vanished into thin air.

They’d left quickly, that much was clear.

As we strode into the camp, I dismounted first, running my hand over Lucky’s mane with a silent command that he stay close. I held up my hand, telling everyone else to halt.

I needed to make sure this wasn’t a trap. They would be able to take out several critical members of our operation if it was.

A second later, Bellamy’s boots squished into the ground. I was halfway to chastising her before she cut me off. “You really think it will let you?”

She was right. The Bond, either in my head or hers, wouldn’t let us separate for long.

We were sharper together.

Bellamy took her gun out of the holster, her hand rising steadily in front of her to stand guard.

I could hear the distinct sounds of Ford assembling his rifle, surely planning to use the scope to peer deeper into the camp.

Smart.

I heard rustling to my left and cocked my head at Bellamy to follow. Without having to say anything, she knew to follow me, covering my back.

The sounds were coming from a row of larger tents, large enough to obscure several waiting figures.

I approached slowly, making sure my steps landed on smooth, soft ground that wouldn’t make a sound. I could feel Bellamy at my back, and the Bond confirmed what I was feeling in my soul. She’s got you .

I approached slowly, keeping my gun positioned for the fastest reaction time. I snuck past one tent, prepared to shoot around the side and get the jump on whoever was hiding there.

When I did, I startled a wolf feasting on discarded food. It yelped at me, launching towards me with a snarl before running off into the woods.

The next thing I knew, someone was laughing behind me. I blinked and took back in my surroundings, and realized I had my non-shooting arm tucked behind my back, holding Bellamy tightly to me.

I realized it was Ford laughing, low under his breath. In a rare show of intimacy, Esme smacked his arm.

“Soren, darling, I’d prefer if you let me go,” Bellamy said, the words muffled against my back.

“Call me darling again and I might,” I shot back, the banter feeling far too easy.

“Darling, I can’t breathe.”

That was a double whammy, calling me an endearment that made my stomach too tight and invoking the Bond by saying she couldn’t breathe.

When I turned, she had a knowing smile on her face. “Smart ass,” I grumbled, though I was smiling as I said it.

“That wolf was kinda cute,” she said, looking over my shoulder to the line of trees it disappeared into.

“Cute until they think you’re your next meal.”

“Very true,” she said, her eyes lowered as she went to holster her gun. She missed on the first try, her hands shaking a little too hard, but managed it on the second.

Before I knew what I was doing, I lifted her hand between my own and pressed down, trapping them in warm pressure.

When I let her hand go, the shaking was gone. Bellamy blinked up at me under confused brows, but her eyes were the issue. There was clear gratitude there, and I couldn’t look at that for too long unless we wanted a problem.

At the dip of my chin, everyone hopped off their horses, gathering what they needed.

Ford had his rifle slung over his back. Freya had an empty bag that she intended to fill with trinkets.

Esme didn’t have anything special, but she never did. Her memory was uncanny in its strength. She could rifle through discarded documents and walk away with a near-perfect recollection.

“Ford and Esme, hit the main building. Go for offices first.” They both nodded, heading off together in silence.

Peter and Ella didn’t even need instruction, moving towards the right to take the perimeter.

Freya, meanwhile, was buzzing with barely contained excitement. I sighed, “Go on. Please try to bring back just the essentials.” It was a useless warning, but I heeded it anyway.

Freya disappeared in a flurry of red hair, happy to scavenge.

That left me and Bellamy alone. “We’ll take the left side.”

Bellamy nodded, falling easily into step next to me. We were truly alone for what felt like the first time.

God, I shouldn’t love that thought as much as I did.

“Walk me through this,” Bellamy said as I walked to the first tent and peered inside.

“Muli has camps set up all around the Bridge, some close some a little farther, but we are surrounded on all sides. Our main priority is protecting the camp. We aren’t here to invade, just defend. Most of the real harm comes from us pushing out to one camp trying to get them to retreat. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. This is the second camp they’ve abandoned without pressure from us in as many months.”

The last time I’d done this, mere days before we Crossed back and Carson defected, we’d been doing something eerily similar, walking through an abandoned strongholds in the mountains.

If you had told me then that I’d be walking next to my Soul Mate, watching as her angular brown eyes widened as they rapidly tried to take in every new detail, I’d have probably tried to push them off the cliff at the back of the stronghold.

Bellamy hummed in the back of her throat, considering. “It’s slowed down.”

I nodded as we moved to the next tent. This one had a book left behind. I crouched as I flipped through it, finding it to be Muli-written. I stood, tucking it into my back pocket to take it back with me. “In the early days, it was much bloodier. But now … we don’t have the resources to push much farther other than protecting the Bridge. Muli hasn’t tried to wipe us out completely yet. Though, I’m not convinced that’s not coming.”

The next tent, one left bare. “Have they tried to negotiate?”

I nodded. “They would send an emissary about once a week for a while there. It stopped a few years into my enlistment. Nothing could really get solved when every meeting dissolved into a screaming match about who was at fault. They would always claim we were the aggressors, we’d argue the same.”

“How do you know they weren’t right?” Bellamy asked softly.

I tilted my head in confusion. Bellamy knew this story as well as I did. “When the Bridge was discovered, we sent someone through. We waited two days until we sent more. You know what we found.”

Bellamy nodded, her eyes going a little distant. “At least two thousand men ready to march on Vir. Our emissary dead, his head cut off.”

“Any sign of weakness on our part, and that is happening again,” I said, right as we walked into another tent. As if to prove my point, there was a collection of discarded weapons covering the floor, ammunition piled high in the corner.

“Yell for Freya,” I told Bellamy, if not to keep her out of view of this many guns at one time.

As Bellamy called for her, I shook my head at the force of destruction before me. I hated this war, but that didn’t mean I would let Muli invade Vir.

I loved my home. Not just the Rystrom islands. I had been forced to adapt to my new reality, but underneath it all, I knew that I was ultimately protecting something I loved.

Because of my age, I’d likely become the Emperor one day. By that math, it wouldn’t be until I was well into my sixties, if I made it that far. Even this far removed from the way I’d been groomed to know that responsibility was coming, I’d never forgotten my sworn duty to protect Vir at all costs.

I heard Bellamy’s sharp yip a moment later, and it took no longer than twenty seconds for Freya to come running through the flap in the tent, looking as excited as a child promised a room full of candy.

“Oooo, gimme!” she yelled, paying me no mind as she sank to the floor and started tearing apart weapons.

I walked out of the tent with a laugh and a shake of my head. Bellamy was standing there, with her hands folded over her chest. The wind was whipping through her midnight black hair, sending strands shooting across her face.

Mine. I wasn’t sure if that was the Bond speaking or me anymore.

Bellamy noticed I’d come back out, and she turned to me, her lips pulling into a wide smile. “Onwards?”

I nodded, partially because I didn’t think I could speak.

We walked through several abandoned tents, not seeing anything, but falling into comfortable conversation. With every step we took further and further into the camp, the feeling that something wasn’t right continued to swell in my chest.

Ford was correct. This was one of their most advantageous strongholds.

That thought was only confirmed when we made it to the edge of the camp, which sat on a cliff that overlooked our base. With the cover of trees and from this distance, it was a hazy blur obscuring the landscape, but it would certainly give a good enough vantage point to see if we were gathering more troops than were normally stationed there.

“They are pulling their troops back,” Bellamy said from behind me.

I nodded, looking out over the expansive landscape, far too pristine to be the backdrop of war. The snow-capped mountains should stay white and spotless, not dotted with blood.

This camp was good for long-range viewing, but it wasn’t easy if you were planning a move forward. You’d have to go the long way down the mountain, unless you sent experienced climbers down the cliff face.

I took a step to the edge, looking over.

“Soren!” was the last thing I heard before the ground gave way from under me, falling down the vertical cliff face. I acted on instinct, reaching out for a root I saw sticking out of the ground when I approached.

Pain sliced through my shoulder as I caught my weight on the branch. I didn’t look down. The fact that I still hadn’t heard the boom of rocks hitting the ground below told me everything I needed to know about how far that drop was.

I wasn’t a dumbass. I’d tapped the ground with my heel before I approached to make sure it was steady. That meant this was a trap meant to deter climbers from scaling the cliff face in ambush.

No time to think about that now, when for all I knew, the root was the next thing to go. I took a deep breath and hauled myself back up, the move taking surprisingly less effort than I expected.

I realized why, when I hooked my leg back over the lip of the cliff and saw Bellamy’s hands wrapped around my arm, her eyes wild and chest heaving.

“ Back up ,” I growled, fear hitting me square in the chest. If that branch wasn’t enough to hold me, she would have gone over with me.

Bellamy complied, scurrying back on her hands and heels. I crawled after her like a prowling animal, nudging its prey further and further into a corner where it had nowhere else to run.

It wasn’t until we were several feet away from the cliff’s edge that I managed to take a deep breath.

“What the hell?!” Esme yelled, running up to us.

I didn’t look at her, not when my eyes were latched onto Bellamy’s as we both tried to rake in a steady breath.

She’s hurt, make it better. She’s hurt, make it better. She’s— The Bond repeated the command like a mantra in my head, over and over and over.

Fuck this. I was halfway to climbing over her, not giving a damn who saw, when Bellamy’s broken whimper stopped me in my tracks.

Her eyes were on my face, somewhere near my forehead. I reached a hand up, flinching away when a stinging sensation shot down my face. I pulled my fingers back, finding them covered in blood.

A rock must have nicked me when I fell. I was shocked that was the only thing that happened. Sure, my shoulder felt wrung out and sore, but that could have been a lot, lot worse.

Bellamy scrambled up, launching herself at me.

I held my hands at my side, staying as still as I could as she moved quicker than I’d ever seen her work, finding the small first aid kit tucked into the pocket of her tactical pants.

The sting of the antiseptic didn’t even register as she wiped it over my brow. I was too stunned by the look on her face, the way her lip curled with concentration, the way her nose pinched with every little ministration. The water pooling at the corners of her eyes.

I placed my hands over her thighs where she was kneeling in front of me, letting myself have a moment of peace after that near fatal fall and swiping my thumbs across her skin, relishing in the heat that rose in response.

Bellamy’s cheeks colored with a pretty blush as she took a butterfly bandage and placed it over the cut. Content with her work, she sat back on her haunches and finally took a deep breath in.

I wanted to ask her what the Bond was saying to her. I settled on, “Thank you.”

“Don’t ever do that shit again,” Bellamy said, the command in her voice reading far too adorable. I clearly wasn’t thinking straight.

I stood, shaking out my shoulder and extending my hand to help her up. Her skin was cold, not in the way that I’d come to crave to help cool the heat of my skin, but frozen in fear.

Fuck it. I’d be doing something about that when we got a second alone.

“I’m fine,” I said to everyone, but I was looking at Peter. His rich complexion had paled considerably.

He nodded, swallowing thickly then saying, “I think that’s enough for today. Everyone get what they need?”

Freya was the only person to nod. She had a bag full of toys to play with, but the rest of us were leaving even more confused than we’d been when we arrived.

In the clarity formed by the adrenaline still pumping through my veins, I knew one thing for certain—something was happening.

Carson defecting, Elijah being the Prince’s most trusted General, the odd abandoning of camps … it was signaling something I wasn’t sure we were prepared for.