by Elise Faber
Honestly, there was no easier way to her heart than coffee and cleaning.
Her insides went a little gooey, her heart did a pitter-patter. And maybe it was a little sad that such a small act of kindness touched her so deeply, but she’d been alone for so long that—
Oh crap.
He’d turned for the door. The one she was standing outside of.
Her arms were empty because she knew that Suz hadn’t really sent her for supplies and she’d expected him to be long gone. But Mason didn’t know that. Plus, she was going to look like an even bigger idiot if he caught her staring at him again.
Fucking hell. Once again, why had she thought it was a good idea to practice magic in the infirmary?
Stupid and thoughtless and dangerous—
Stopping that train of thought because it was only dangerous if the man had been at risk of death-by-paper-cut. Or Post-It. Or paperclip. Or—
Focus.
Sighing and mentally shaking her head at herself, she whirled away from the door and walked—cough—ran to the nearest corner. This hallway was rarely used—a section of the Colony left empty as the Rengalla’s population had dwindled—and full of shadows, so it should hide her effectively.
She’d just tucked herself against the wall when the telltale screech of the infirmary’s door opening came.
It closed with a click and footsteps sounded softly on the wooden floor.
They got quieter and quieter until Gabby heard nothing.
A relieved breath slipped from between her lips.
He was gone. She wouldn’t need to explain herself, wouldn’t need to talk about the secret that threatened to shred her to pieces, the one that filled her with shame.
Waiting for her heart to steady, she pushed off the wall then turned back to the hallway that led to the infirmary.
And shrieked.
Mason stood all of three feet away, leaning back against the wall opposite her, his arms crossed, his feet spread. He looked both absolutely comfortable and completely dangerous. Forcing her breaths to slow, her heart to stop racing for the second time in as many minutes, the panic to subside, she began walking toward the infirmary . . . and, by consequence, toward Mason.
“Where are the supplies?” came his slightly rough voice.
A brief hesitation, her feet wanting to stop, but the fear in her mind and heart propelled her forward.
Away from him. She had to keep moving away.
“Gabby?”
She shivered as his voice flowed through her, and—God—she even registered the rustle of his clothing as he pushed off the wall and followed her.
But she would have known that even without the slight noise.
Her body was so in tune with everything about Mason—the liquid way he moved, how he seemed confident in every situation, the slightly golden sheen to his hair that separated him from his two identical brothers.
The sound just . . . made it real.
He was there. He was talking to her.
He’d never noticed her before.
She’d spent so much time watching him, practically obsessing over him, and he’d just now taken a second look.
Because she’d acted insane.
That was it. He was feeling protective. Nothing more. She’d triggered the overbearing, pushy, had-to-make-sure-everything-was-safe-and-okay gene that all LexTals seemed to possess.
So even though the faint rustle of his clothing may as well have been a train-whistle for how her body reacted, making goose bumps prickle down her spine and her cheeks heat, causing the spot just behind her belly button to clench hard, ratcheting up the urge to turn around, to throw herself into his arms and confess everything, he could never feel the same way.
Anywho, she digressed.
Because obviously she ignored her attraction . . . and the man at her back.
For one, Gabby didn’t put herself out there. She knew it was safer to stay confined in the locked box, safer to appear shy when she felt anything but inside. Aside from her friendship with Suz and Daughtry, who’d all but cajoled and pushed her into hanging out with them, then to accepting their friendship, she didn’t interact in any real manner with anyone.
Superficial, she had down.
The greetings in the hallways, the polite inquiries in the cafeteria, the smiles and queries in the infirmary, she had down.
No one would say she wasn’t friendly.
But Gabby didn’t give anything of true substance. If she wanted to chime in with a sarcastic comment, to make a joke, or tease someone she shoved that feeling down and slammed the trapdoor shut. And threw the dead bolt on it, just for good measure.
That was safer for her.
Safer for everyone around her.
“I thought you were getting supplies,” Mason murmured, not letting the issue go as his voice coming millimeters from her ear.
She jumped, but only just barely. Progress, see?
Either that or she was just too damned aware of everything about this man.
Sighing, she said, “I think we both know that there were no supplies.” Gabby didn’t have the energy to lie, couldn’t find it in her to going to add to the mountains of excuses that had filled her life over the last six months.
If she were normal, she could just ask him out and get over it—use the requisite three dates to get over her infatuation. If she were normal, then she might even be able to have a real relationship.
But she wasn’t normal, so it was a moot point.
“You’re new here, right?” Mason asked. He stepped up beside her, his long legs easily keeping pace with her shorter ones.
Gabby couldn’t help but roll her eyes, because he really hadn’t noticed her. It stung that she’d been so obsessed, and he’d spent half a year not bothering to recognize she’d been there. Of course the LexTals had been busy trying to save their people from the Dalshie, protecting the Colony after a major attack, building up resources to protect them from another assault that was sure to come.
Lately, the soldiers had been venturing out on one mission after another, trying to locate remaining pockets of their enemy so the Rengalla didn’t have to be in such a heightened state.
They wanted their people safe.
They wanted to live freely and without fear of attack.
But that he hadn’t even noticed her was . . . ouch.
Gabby lifted her chin. “I’ve worked in the infirmary for nearly six months.” They’d reached the clinic, so she stopped and pointed to the bright red lettering above the door. “Speaking of which, I need to get back to it.” The hint, hint leave me alone at the end of her statement remained unspoken, but she had the most disconcerting feeling that Mason knew it was there.
He smiled and it hit her with as much impact as if he’d punched her.
The man was lethal.
His eyes had always been her favorite part—not that she’d spent long enough staring at him to have a favorite part.
Lie, but a woman had to have some dignity.
Still, the glimpses she’d gotten of the swirling, ever-changing colors, the mix of brown and green and gold that was unearthly, beautiful . . . intoxicating had stayed with her.
She’d dreamed about those eyes.
Found their color matches in the mix of leaves and tree trunks and afternoon sunlight in the forest surrounding the Colony.
His eyes aside, she couldn’t even save her sanity, nor herself from the attraction by saying the rest of Mason was beneath notice. He was gorgeous and of the tall, broad-shouldered variety. Practically cover model material.
And . . . way out of her league.
That thought propelled her into action and she reached for the door.
His hand stopped her, gripping her arm, tugging her to a halt.
“Don’t!” She whirled toward him and Mason stepped back, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I just—” He broke off, gestured at her front.
She ground her teeth together�
�panic, shame, attraction, disappointment a tempest in her heart. “You just what?”
His eyes flicked toward her chest, and, for a moment, she got all tingly. Then her gaze followed his and she glanced down, caught a glimpse of blue.
There was Post-It stuck to her left breast, doing an impersonation of the worst ever pasty.
Perfect.
Anger, totally unnecessary and inappropriate, welled within her. She tore off the paper, crumpling it in her hand. “Motherfucker,” she muttered.
Mason—the fucker in question—seemed amused. “Why are you always so sweet to everyone else and not me?”
“You don’t even know if I’m new or not,” she muttered. “I doubt you’ve been paying me enough attention to know whether or not I’m sweet.”
He shrugged. “I always pay attention.”
So, he paid attention, just not to her.
She glared up at him. “Seriously?”
Another shrug.
Her hands plunked onto her hips, the Post-It she held in her hand crinkling at the movement. “You have absolutely no right to comment on how I act, you arrogant—”
He gestured at her. “Sure you still want to argue the point?”
Her arms fell to her sides and she sighed.
With her past, it was easier for her to be bubbly, to pretend to be happy and upbeat with those who just took her superficial mask in stride.
Mason, for whatever reason, saw through that.
Shaking her head, she turned back to the door, and her hand was on the handle when he spoke again.
“Why do you panic when I touch you?”
“You repulse me.”
The words slipped from her unbidden. They were hateful, cruel, and so far from the truth that it was almost laughable.
But they were effective.
Because Mason didn’t laugh. Because he didn’t know they were a lie, and when she dared a peek over her shoulder, it was to see his eyes had darkened, his lips had flattened, and though he didn’t visibly flinch, Gabby was somehow able to sense that the three words had wounded him.
Regret grasped her heart and squeezed. She wanted to apologize, to take the insult back.
But she couldn’t. Her words had succeeded where she had failed.
They had distanced Mason and they kept her safe from his questions, kept the truth that no one could know locked within her mind.
Where it belonged.
Where it would stay.
And since fleeing had become the only thing she was good at, Gabby grasped the handle and hurried into the infirmary. The loud slam of the door closing behind her made the cold emptiness that had for so long filled her soul seem even more stifling.
She didn’t fight it.
She held tight to the feeling.
Because that emptiness was all she deserved.
Four
Mason
He registered the click of door closing but couldn’t care less. He was already halfway down the hall.
You repulse me.
The statement was a lie. It wasn’t repulsion in Gabby’s eyes when she looked at him . . . and yet—
No.
It didn’t matter what she thought about him because. She. Didn’t. Matter. No one mattered. Except . . . somehow she mattered. A woman who shouldn’t even register on his radar, one who had been here for half a year (one he’d also deliberately ignored because from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her because he’d felt something inside him shift in that same instant).
Yeah, fucking alarm bells.
Because she was crazy.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t much for lying to himself, even in the name of self-preservation, so the mistruth didn’t stick. Hell, it didn’t even make it out of his mind before it was ridiculed into submission.
With a muttered curse, Mason turned and headed for the armory.
Which was becoming more crowded by the day.
Dante, his boss and the leader of the LexTals, had decided that every Rengalla should receive training in firearms as well as magical combat techniques, so, of late, the practice range had been filled with beginners instead of solely the soldiers.
But the newbies didn’t bother Mason so much as the Forgotten.
The Rengalla had existed in isolation for a long time. The Dalshie had been created, or rather the Rengalla had lost a number of their own people to the dark magic and its perverse draw. And, funny story, those who’d lost the battle between good and evil didn’t go off and attempt to create a new type of cotton candy or to crossbreed fluffy and adorable malti-poos. They tortured. They hurt for pleasure. They’d horrifically experimented on humans and been party to some of the worst atrocities in history. The end result of those atrocities was a group of people—the Forgotten—who were no longer strictly human. Instead, they had limited magical abilities and longer lifespans. Logically, he knew that the Forgotten were what they were through no fault of their own—
Yet their presence still grated.
He made it his life’s purpose to eliminate all remnants of Dalshie, no matter how small or insignificant, from this world.
And as far as remnants went, the Forgotten were a big one.
Memories—pained screams, black flames—surged to the front of his mind. They threatened to take over, to pull him into the stranglehold of his past.
Thankfully before they could, he reached the armory and the voices leaking through the sound-dampening barrier made of air magic, the interwoven sounds broken by the rapport of the shooters practicing and the resultant thunks of bullets bursting from their guns, hitting their targets yanked him forcefully out of the past.
But he didn’t want to talk, and he definitely couldn’t have managed to exchange cheerful idioms to save his soul.
You repulse me.
Swallowing against that statement, against the surprising depth with which those words had wounded him, Mason pulled out his earbuds and cued up a playlist on his phone.
It wasn’t until the music was beating against his eardrums, a painful pulse of screaming guitar riffs and banging drums that he pushed through the door.
Inside, he nodded when required but otherwise didn’t speak.
Taking up the last stall on the end, he un-holstered his gun and proceeded to empty magazine after magazine into the paper target in front of him.
Nothing else mattered.
Only the reverberation of the bullets leaving the chamber, the slight burst of sound that kept in time to the music, the rapid pulsing of his fingers as he depressed the trigger.
Fifteen shots. Reload. Fifteen Shots. Reload. Rinse. Repeat.
He reached into the pocket of his cargos only to realize he’d already used his last magazine.
Something hard clapped down onto his shoulder.
Mason’s eyes flew down, saw the magazine, and pulled it out of the man’s hand that stood behind him.
It was empty in seconds.
A pause. Another magazine found its way to his shoulder.
More shots.
Only after the last bullet was fired did he turn and face the man at his back.
Six months and he still felt guilty.
But Mason already knew plenty about guilt—enough to understand that it never truly faded, that once its iron-like talons had grasped your soul, it never let you go.
A whir signified the target being pulled forward.
The motor turned off with a click and he and Tyler stared at the paper.
Or the little that was left of it.
“I think you got it,” Tyler quipped.
Mason felt himself smile. Somehow, despite the past, despite the fact that he’d shoved a blade into his own friend’s heart, Tyler was there joking with him like nothing had happened. Being his usual flippant self despite the fact that Mason had thought Tyler had succumbed to the dark magic and had turned into a Dalshie, then had done his level best in order to kill him.
He hadn’t succeeded.
Tyler wasn’t a Dalshi
e.
And he somehow didn’t hate Mason.
The world was a strange, strange place. That was the only reason he could think for why he played along. “There was a spider.”
A grin. “Hate those bastards. Glad you killed it for me.” A beat. “Pizza?”
Mason tilted his head, as though he were considering the offer. “You got beer?”
The skin around Tyler’s blue eyes crinkled in amusement. “Always.”
“Then I’m game.”
“Good. Cody’s coming.”
Mason raised a brow. “Daughtry finally let him have a free night?”
“Are you kidding? Cody’s the one who can’t stand being away from her.” He rolled his eyes. “But Suz and Gabby and Dee are having some reality TV binge fest tonight and Cody was by himself.”
“Poor guy,” Mason said, but the memories of his own wife, of her own Girls’ Nights—though they hadn’t called them that back then—punched him in the gut. He’d lost her before there was television, before Internet and streaming platforms. But all those years ago, Victoria had loved going to the theater with the other Rengallan women, enjoyed having tea or going for a walk with her friends.
It was harder than ever to picture Victoria’s face, to recall her delicate lilac scent. She’d been so sweet, so soft and feminine—
“You okay?” A gentle question.
Yes, gentle.
Tyler was too fucking intuitive.
Mason wanted to snap at him, but it wasn’t the other man’s fault—being able to heal psychically meant Tyler was more in tune with emotional and mental pain than any other Rengalla—but sometimes being his friend was annoying.
“How’s that pretty scar on your chest?” he asked, deflection at its best. It was an air ball in a world of free throws.
Thankfully, Tyler still bit, though not in the way Mason wanted—which was going off in a huff. Instead, his friend fixed him in place with sky blue eyes. “We’ve already talked about that,” he said. “I don’t hold you responsible.”
Which made . . . one of them.
Which was also why Mason didn’t respond—only stared back and waited.
After a moment Tyler sighed. “Okay, I get it,” he said. “You don’t want to discuss what’s got you upset.” He lifted one brow, his typical cheerful nature making a comeback. “Want me to guess what’s wrong and you can just say yes or no?”
