Killer Reign (The Chaos Crew Book 4) by Eva Chance & Harlow King

Author:Eva Chance & Harlow King [Chance, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ink Spark Press
Published: 2022-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Talon

I woke first as I often did, my muscles stiff from a night on the hard floor with only a sleeping bag for padding. I couldn’t say I’d slept well, having jolted awake a few times at distant sounds that sent a peal of warning through me but had proven to be nothing of concern, but I was used to operating on minimal rest from my time in the military. What we’d faced so far had nothing on my most intense special ops missions overseas.

But that didn’t mean the stress couldn’t weigh on us all the same. I sat up quietly, glancing across the sprawled bodies of my sleeping comrades—Julius’s spot empty while he took the current watch by the front of the building—to where Dess lay.

She looked almost peaceful in sleep, but there was still a tension to the way one of her arms was drawn up to her chest, her hand balled against her collarbone. A slight furrow marked her brow.

She’d set her sleeping bag a little apart from the rest of us, halfway between our cluster and the door that led to the room where we’d imprisoned her brother. For most of the evening, I’d sensed her pulling away from us, withdrawing into her own head.

The situation was obviously getting to her, stirring up more uncertainty than ever before. She’d had to kill almost her entire family, for fuck’s sake. She’d found out that even more of her life had been manipulated by outside forces than she’d already known. How could it not be bothering her?

I didn’t like the idea that she might feel she couldn’t turn to us for support, though. We were hard men, yes—and I was the hardest of us all—but I’d thought we’d shown her how much she mattered to us. Imagining her leaving set off a burning sensation all through my chest.

My instinct was to suppress the emotion and push it aside. This once, I didn’t let myself. I absorbed the full impact of the discomfort, feeling out what it meant to me. As I gazed at Dess, the sensation gradually transformed into something softer.

I knew this emotion. That was the feeling that had driven me closer to Dess over the months—the feeling that had convinced me to allow myself to feel anything at all again.

And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t hate it. It seemed right for Dess to hold this special place in my heart, to have opened it up in a way no one ever had before. She was special, after all.

Did she understand how much?

An unexpected impulse rose up inside me, but I didn’t hold myself back. I eased out of the sleeping bag and padded across the floor to where Dess was nestled. She’d opted to use her entire sleeping bag as a mattress and pulled a blanket over her. It’d slipped partway down her torso as she dozed.

For a second, I grappled with how to handle the moment. Then I sank down behind her,

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