Theirs To Defy: a Reverse Harem Romance

by Stasia Black

  Garrett, predictably, whooped. “That’s right, baby! Eat that fuckin’ nitro!”

  But now that the bikes had gotten ahead of them, they were crisscrossing in front of their armored truck and were firing back in a constant barrage.

  Ping, ping, ping, ping as shot after shot hit the windshield. The glass of the windshield was holding just fine against the bullets, though. They were designed for this.

  “Oh shit, grenade!” Garrett shouted.

  Just in time too, because Eric had been focused on a couple of bikes that had dropped back and were driving on either side of the truck.

  He yanked his attention back to the motorcyclist in front of them just in time to see him hurl his arm backwards and a small orb fly through the air.

  Eric jerked hard to the left and a BOOM sounded behind them as the grenade went off.

  The bike on the left barely managed to pull away in time. Eric didn’t care if he bashed into the guy.

  …Which was actually a great idea, come to think of it. He was just about to readjust to try to take out the bastard on the other side of them—because what if Drea wasn’t the only one crazy enough to try that trick with nitro?—when Drea suddenly pulled out of a side street in front of all of them, heading the pack.

  “What the hell is she doing now?” Eric growled.

  He already had the pedal to the floor but he gritted his teeth like he could make the damn truck go faster through sheer force of will alone.

  He didn’t have to wait long to see what Drea was up to, though. She weaved back and forth across the road, arm dipping into the bag across her chest several times and then arcing outwards.

  “What is she throwing?” Eric asked.

  “Caltrops,” Garrett answered, a grin on his face like he was proud. “Don’t feel bad. I didn’t know what they were either before Drea told me. Now hold on, this is gonna get a little bumpy.” He grabbed the oh-shit-bar and Eric clenched his hands on the steering wheel.

  Eric had no idea what a ‘caltrop’ was but anything that had that crazy motherfucker Garrett reaching for a hold of something was definitely something Eric should brace himself for.

  “Oh shit,” Eric swore as the truck sped down the road toward what had first just looked like shiny dots against the dark pavement. He’d been confused about what Drea was tossing on the road but as they got closer, the realization of what they were settled in with a horrifying certainty.

  “She wouldn’t,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Oh fuck yeah, she would,” Garrett cackled. “Where do you think I been when I disappeared for hours at a time all week? I was welding these babies together.”

  “Oh fuck, oh fuck, OH FUCK!” Eric shouted, not daring to slow down in case it tipped off any of the motorcycles.

  There were still a few motorcycles in front of him. Eric made sure to steer clear of them as they came up on the first of the road spikes.

  Because that was what Drea had tossed out.

  Homemade fucking road spikes.

  As if they hadn’t had enough fun with the damn things the first time around.

  The motorcycles hit the spikes and went flying all fucking directions. Two skidded out and the third flipped end over damn end.

  But Eric barely had time to take in the carnage before their own truck was running over the damn things.

  Eric cringed in preparation and held the wheel as steady as he could.

  Da-dump, da-dump.

  And then… nothing.

  What the—

  Wait. Was that— it?

  Eric didn’t know. He glanced in his side mirror. Not that he’d really be able to see if the tires were blown out but—

  All the other motorcycles were taken out, that was for damn sure. Right as he looked, he saw the last one try to skid to a stop right before hitting the spike.

  They almost stopped in time, but still ended up skidding out halfway across the road.

  Eric whipped his head back around front. His racing heartbeat only calmed down when he saw that Drea was still there, leaning over and speeding along like nothing at all was the matter.

  Like she hadn’t just risked her damn life a hundred times over pulling all those bullshit gymnastics.

  Meanwhile Garrett was laughing so hard he could barely breathe. Eric glared his direction but he only laughed harder. He literally slapped his knees.

  “What the fuck is so funny?” Eric snapped.

  “Armored trucks,” Garrett broke off, dissolving into another fit of laughter before gulping and continuing, “can drive on flat tires.” He slapped his knee again. “So Drea just used the spikes on all of us!”

  Eric clenched his jaw so hard that his teeth ground together.

  Yes, they’d definitely be having a long talk when they got to the caves.

  Chapter Fifteen

  GENERAL DAVID CRUZ

  David had plenty of qualified platoon leaders who could bring back the women who called in with an SOS. But after a brief conversation with their leader, Drea Valentine, he decided to go himself.

  “Hello, Alpha Hawk speaking.” David paced the circle around the huge stalagmite columns that towered like fat giants in the center of the cavern deep under the outskirts of San Antonio. Other people watched on. It was so packed down here there were few places to go to actually get any privacy. And this was with only about two thousand of his seven thousand troops down here in the more than two miles of caves. The other five thousand were left fending for themselves out in the hill country, more and more being picked off by Travis’s forces every day. “Who is—”

  “I don’t care,” she cut him off impatiently. “It’s Drea. We need transport across Black Skulls territory and we need it now. We just pissed on the hornet’s nest, so the sooner the better.”

  David narrowed his eyes and turned away from Jonathan’s questioning gaze. Jonathan was his top Colonel, right hand man, and best friend for seven years now.

  “We have protocols for this sort of thing, ma’am.”

  “Fuck protocols. I’ve got some very freaked out women here. They need to get somewhere safe and secure as soon as possible.”

  “Please identify yourself using your call sign. For all I know, you could be Arnold Travis’s agent.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t have time for this. Put Sophia Wolford on the damn phone. She knows me and even she could probably get a rescue team out here faster than some pompous stick-up-his ass Army robot.”

  David stayed cool-headed even though inside his blood was boiling. He’d met so many people like this woman. Did they appreciate the years he’d put into defending this great new country of theirs?

  No, they could only spit his service back in his face.

  That doesn’t make your job any less of a calling. His duty went beyond any one person. Including himself or his pride.

  “If you’re done with the insults,” he kept his voice mild, “then we can return to the protocol. Over the past week, you were given a series of rendezvous locations. Would you like to mention one of the phrases that would indicate, in a secure manner,” without name dropping their location or any more of the cave’s inhabitants, he thought in annoyance, “where you are so that we can discuss your extraction?”

  “Son of a—” Several moments of unintelligible gibberish over the line that sounded like swearing followed. Then, a female voice calling out, “Billy. Where are the— You know, that damn folder with the— No, not the bag of fucking script, the…”

  “Protocol locations,” David supplied helpfully.

  “Yes. The protocol locations.”

  David pulled back from the phone and stared at it for a minute before shouting on the other end had him pulling it back to his ear.

  “Charlie Alpha Nine. We’re at Charlie Alpha fucking Nine.”

  David snapped toward Jonathan. “Map.”

  Jonathan nodded, coming forward with the map he’d already had at the ready.

  Jonathan laid it out on the ground an
d David brought his oil lamp close.

  “We’ll have to wait for nightfall. The Skulls fly drones during the day to surveil the area. But we have a few trucks coated with anti-infrared paint, so we can move at night just fine.”

  “Well get your asses out here right after nightfall. Rendezvous point C or whatever the fuck. I got a lot of twitchy survivors out here and waiting around isn’t doing them any favors.”

  With that, she’d hung up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  SOPHIA

  “Dad?” Sophia asked, pushing through the small group of women that streamed in through the cave entrance. “Hello? Where’s the Commander?”

  “Whoa, Soph,” Finn said, “Back off. Let them breathe. Can’t you see they’re freaked out?”

  Sophia turned on Finn, mouth open. Of course she saw— Did he think she wasn’t— “I just need to know Dad’s okay, all right?”

  Finn was six months older than her and thought he knew everything just because he’d been going out on scrapper runs since he was sixteen.

  Several other women from town ushered the women down the long diagonal back and forth staircase that had been cut into the rock more than a hundred and fifty years before, back when these caves had been a tourist attraction. The caves were thirteen stories down, created by underground rivers ages and ages ago, a whole system of them.

  Sophia turned back to the mouth of the cave, willing her dad to be the next to step through.

  Finn just let out a dismissive puff of breath. “The Commander? Nothing can hurt him.”

  Sophia ignored him. Why had he even come up here?

  “Oh come on, Soph. Are you seriously worried? He fought at Texarkana. That was the ugliest battle of the whole war for Independence. And wasn’t he in the army before that? Nothing can kill that tough old bast—”

  Sophia turned, long brown hair swirling as she spun to glare at Finn again. “Are you trying to jinx him? God, shut up already.”

  Finn held his hands up. “Damn, girl. I was just trying to make you feel better and stop worrying.”

  “Well you’re bad at it,” Sophia shot back. “So stop.”

  Seriously, the guy needed to get a clue. How was bringing up times when her dad had been in life-threatening danger in the past supposed to make her feel better about the danger he was in now? If anything, it meant something was more likely to happen to him now. If life was a game of odds, didn’t that mean it was more likely for his number to come up now if it hadn’t then?

  She glared at Finn. “I just need to know he’s okay. Besides, what do you even know about it? You’ve never been in a war.”

  Finn’s eyes flashed. “Just ‘cause I was still too young by the time the last one finished. But this is war now and you can bet your biscuits I’m gonna do my duty. I’ll be the last one standing if that’s what it takes.”

  It was Sophia’s turn to scoff. She let her glare fall on Finn again. He had the shape of a man—broad shoulders, scruff on his face from not shaving for several days, defined facial features—but all she could seem to see when she looked at him was the boy who used to snap her training bra back in the township’s equivalent of a junior high.

  “You sure talk big, Finn Malone. But don’t forget I was there the day you about peed your pants when that bee stung you in seventh grade.”

  “So you think about me a lot, huh?” Finn sidled up beside her, bumping her shoulder with his. “To be remembering something like that from so long ago?”

  Sophia gave him a sugary-sweet smile. “Oh no, it’s not that. I’d just never seen a boy so big screaming his head off because a big, bad bee stung him. I wasn’t used to seeing boys cry. My dad was military, like you said.”

  Finn didn’t look fazed an inch by her words, he just kept grinning that annoying toothy grin at her. “All I seem to remember about that day was this cute, brown-eyed girl coming to sit beside me and asking if I was hurt, all sweet-like. You remembered what you asked me?”

  Sophia paused, caught off-guard by this unexpected little trip down memory lane—especially with Finn of all people.

  “I asked if I could take the hurt away,” she said, blinking in confusion at the way Finn was suddenly looking at her. Not like a boy—but the way a man does at a woman.

  “It was my first kiss,” he said, looking at her with more intensity than he had a right to.

  Sophia tried to laugh it off. “I pulled out the stinger and then kissed your arm.”

  “So? Still counts.” When he said it, though, his eyes were on her lips. Like he was imagining what it would feel like to kiss her there.

  Even the thought had her heart beating erratically in her chest and her breathing going all funny.

  She stepped backwards, shaking her head and breaking the spell. Good Lord, what on earth? She really must be upset about Dad if she was letting Finn Malone fluster her.

  “Another group’s coming,” Diego called from the mouth of the cave ten feet behind them.

  Dad!

  Sophia only just managed to stop herself from running to meet him. She could wait. She knew that lingering too long at the entrance of the cave was dangerous for all of them. The General was bringing the groups back in several vans painted in anti-infrared paint and then the people hurried from the vans to the caves with stiff blankets covered with the same paint over their heads. Still, if anyone in the capitol was looking too closely at this location with the infrared satellites and there was just one slip… Sophia shuddered. It would be bad.

  So she kept back as the next group was ushered into the cave.

  So only when the boulder was pushed back across the entrance and the blankets were lowered did she run forward and find her dad. It was easy because he was always a head taller than anyone else in the crowd.

  He was walking beside Drea and two men Sophia didn’t recognize. He looked haggard and tired and oh—

  “Dad,” Sophia cried. “Your arm!” It was in a sling, and gauze was wrapped all the way up to his shoulder. “What happened?”

  She wanted to throw her arms around him but didn’t want to hurt him anymore than he was so she grabbed his good hand, needing some sort of contact to prove to herself that he was real, that he was safe.

  “Soph.” He immediately drew her close, pulling her into his chest and wrapping his good arm around her. “It’s so good to see you, honey.” He squeezed her tight and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, just like he always did, ever since she was a little girl and he came home from deployments.

  Sophia’s entire body relaxed against him and when she took her next breath, it felt like the first time her lungs were fully inflating since she’d left his side in Fort Worth a week and a half ago. She hadn’t even been fully conscious of it, but she’d been so worried about him, her body had been tense the entire time he’d been gone. She wanted to smack him for being so reckless and making her worry so much.

  Of course, he wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if it weren’t for… that woman. Sophia leveled her gaze on Drea.

  Sophia was glad to have her dad back but ugh, couldn’t they have left Drea out in the wilderness somewhere?

  She felt bad as soon as she had the thought. It was just that Drea always brought out the worst in her. And now that Dad was back, Sophia wanted a little peace and quiet, just him and her. At least Drea wouldn’t be haranguing him every other second. There wasn’t exactly a township to govern down here in the caves.

  “Come on, Dad. I found us a quiet little cubby hole of a cavern and I’ve already got a bed pallet all laid out for you. Well, okay,” she laughed. “I’ve made it as homey as I could and I think you’ll like—”

  “Honey,” Dad pulled away from her and there was something in the tone of his voice that made the blood freeze in Sophia’s veins. “I need to tell you something.”

  Why was he using his bad-news voice?

  Sophia shook her head. “Dad…?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t wait for t
omorrow,” Drea said from several feet away. Sophia swung her head to stare at her. What on earth did she have to say about anything? But Drea just kept on talking. “We’re all tired, Eric. Let’s just get some sleep. We can talk in the morning.”

  Eric?

  ERIC?

  What the hell was going on? Sophia swung around to look at her dad. Who was looking at Drea.

  She hadn’t seen him for over a week, had been out of contact with him for a large portion of that time, terrified he was dead, and now he barely had two words for her and was busy staring at… her?

  Seriously. What the hell was going on?

  “Fine,” Dad said, the word ground out through his teeth.

  Sophia knew that voice. It was his I’m-losing-patience-with-you-and-you’d-better-shape-up-and-fly-right voice.

  Except when Drea ignored him and turned away, he didn’t snap at her for being disrespectful like he would have at Sophia.

  Duh. Because she’s not his daughter.

  Because she’s nothing to him.

  Nothing.

  Sophia took a deep breath in as Drea started down the long staircase with the other two men she and Dad had come in with and turned back to her dad.

  She threw her arms around his waist, careful of his hurt arm. Okay. Okay, everything was going to be all right now. She breathed him in. He was warm and solid in her arms.

  “Come on,” she said when she finally pulled back. “I know you’re tired, but I can show you a few things on the way to our cavern. Oh, and we can stop by and get some food, too.”

  Dad smiled at her but then his eyes flicked toward the stairs. In the direction Drea had gone.

  Sophia frowned and then went on, “Now that some of the soldiers are here, we go through food like you wouldn’t believe. Sometimes I volunteer down in the kitchens. You thought we stretched rations back in town? Well that was nothing compared to what we do here.” She laughed and continued rattling on about life in the caverns.

  Once they got to the bottom of the stairs, she briefly introduced him to the people who were staying in every larger cavern they had to pass through as they went deeper and deeper into the caves. But she couldn’t help feeling like her Dad was only half-present the whole time. And everywhere they went, his eyes were always searching around the room of each cave.