by Amelia Jade
“You’re literally sitting around a poker table,” Kiefer said dryly, his eyes rolling.
Maximus’s hand twitched and Kean, one of the young brothers, moved. He was the closest to Kiefer, and had the best chance of reaching him.
Which is exactly why Kiefer had shuffled his angle and shifted his weight in a certain way. As Kean rose, Kiefer leaned back slightly and his booted foot lashed out, hitting Kean square in the face and sending him tumbling into Maximus. The elder Koche snarled and flung his younger brother away, charging at Kiefer.
But he’d been ready for this, and even as his foot snapped back to the floor Kiefer hauled with all his might. The rack groaned and then crumpled, bombarding the brothers with heavy tools and boxes, scattering their attack.
From the door outside shouts sounded and booted feet stormed down the aisle between racks, coming to Kiefer’s aid.
Maximus had avoided the falling rack however, and his flying tackle took Kiefer in the stomach. The pair went down, rolling across the hard ground. The Koche brother got the better of Kiefer and a well-timed push-off sent the lieutenant crashing into another rack, the solid steel frame bowing inward under the impact.
“Ow,” Kiefer muttered as he fell to all fours. Pushing off his fingertips, he stood upright and closed with Maximus. “No!” he shouted as several MPs turned away from the brawl with the other Koches, who were now extracting themselves from under the rack, and prepared to help him. “He’s mine.”
Maximus smiled and advanced. “That’s what you think.”
“Why are you such an ass?” Kiefer asked, his tone genuine.
“Why are you such a stubborn, stuck-up, brown-noser?” Maximus returned in the exact same voice.
Kiefer blinked at him. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called a brown-noser before. I may not be an ‘outlaw’ like yourself,” he taunted, “but I’m far from being a sycophant.”
“You let others dictate what you want to do,” Maximus said as the pair circled each other, their shadows twisting wildly on the walls as the light flickered wildly, having been knocked aside in the fray. “That’s pretty much the same thing.”
“We don’t live in a world where we have to take from the weak,” he returned. “There’s plenty to go around to keep everyone happy, fed, and sheltered. The only reason to prey on those weaker than you is because you’re insecure in who you are, and feel the need to take it out on others.”
Maximus snarled at the insult and charged. Kiefer, instead of doing the expected thing and darting to one side or the other, met the man’s headlong rush with a flying knee. Maximus’s eyes flew open at the unexpected challenge and he wrenched himself violently to the side. It wasn’t enough to avoid the blow entirely, and teeth clicked together as Kiefer’s knee sent the Koche brother tumbling to the side.
Maximus was on his feet in a flash, but Kiefer was already there, and his fist descended in a blow that took the other shifter right in the temple. Maximus hit the ground hard, but bounced right back up, his legs scything out and depositing Kiefer on his back. His growl reverberated off the walls as he lashed out at the rogue shifter with another kick of his own.
“I’m going to kill you for that,” Maximus raged as the kick opened a gash on the side of his face. Blood poured down his cheek and began to soak his shirt.
Kiefer leapt to his feet just in time to dodge a right hook that would have leveled him.
“We’ve already added assaulting a superior officer to your rap sheet,” he said with a shake of his head, “I suppose we may as well add threatening one as well, right?”
Maximus’s only response was a full-throated yell. He advanced on Kiefer, throwing fists wildly, his anger having gotten the better of him, causing him to lose control. Any semblance of technique and style left him. He was simply trying to brawl now. Kiefer easily ducked and dodged the fists, waiting for his opportunity.
With what seemed like boundless rage the Koche brother over extended too far with a left, and Kiefer made his move. His feet carried him to his right as he swayed back out of range of the blow, and then followed in behind it with a one-two combination chop to Maximus’s neck. The flat-blade attack nearly crushed the shifter’s windpipe and Maximus’s eyes went wide.
But Kiefer wasn’t finished. Still side on to his foe, he grabbed Maximus’s shoulder and pulled it down, even as he drove his left knee up into his stomach.
Air rushed from the shifter’s lungs and Kiefer knew he had him, even as he dropped a two-handed hammerblow to the back of Maximus’s neck. The shifter, already bent over trying to recover his breath, simply dropped straight down, his face slamming into the hard concrete with a sickly cracking sound.
Kiefer had just broken either his jaw, his orbital bone, or both.
Frankly, he didn’t give a damn.
“Okay,” he said to the MPs with a weary gesture. “Now you can take him.”
The four MPs who had stood by watching approached, snatching up Maximus and bodily hauling him from the room, even as they gave Kiefer looks that bordered on respect, to nearly accusing him of being insane. He just waved them on out of the room.
“Make sure a detail comes in to clean this up and repair it tomorrow,” he said to the MP who had been left to guard the storehouse.
“Yes, sir.”
Kiefer nodded at the reply and headed off into the night, following the MPs back to the base prison. He would need to fill out some incident reports, among other things. And notify his replacement that they had to start early.
***
An hour later, all his reports filed, Kiefer walked out from the prison, hanging a hard left. He glanced back at the squat building, one of the few on the base made from concrete and not wood. Shifters generally preferred to make their own buildings from the trees and land around them, but in the case of the prison, they felt something tougher than wood was necessary. So they’d built a superstructure of concrete, and then installed the prison cells underground. It was blunt, boxy, and efficient.
Nobody seemed to think style mattered when it came to prisons, and Kiefer tended to agree with them.
As he walked back through the deepest hours of night toward the officers’ barracks, he passed by the guest quarters. There was only one light on, but he couldn’t see any figures moving about inside.
The building was often empty, but the sight of it occupied didn’t faze Kiefer. There were four people there right now, all of whom were recovering from an ordeal until they headed home. He wasn’t sure when that would be, as he hadn’t been involved with them at all.
His eyes strayed from the single light on the first floor up past the second and third stories, until they came to a rest on the roof. Kiefer wasn’t sure why he looked up, but when he did, his heart nearly stopped.
Someone was standing there on the edge. He could see the figure outlined against the brilliant sky, swaying gently with the breeze. Even as he watched, they—no, it was a she, he realized—moved closer to the lip of the roof. There was no railing or wall to stop them either. It was just a flat terrace, not usually designed for people to be wandering about on. Kiefer knew because he’d helped build the entire structure. That could only mean one thing.
They were going to jump!
His adrenaline levels spiked again, having crashed post-fight, and he did the only thing he could think of.
Kiefer sprinted inside, heading for the stairs and the roof, hoping against hope he could get there in time!
Chapter Three
Peyton
She couldn’t sleep.
Again.
Like previous nights, her insomnia eventually guided her to the roof. With summer in the air, the previous three nights had been decently warm, enough so that she could be out there in one of the light jackets provided to her without being chilly.
Looking up at the stars helped to calm her, and she often found herself imagining what the worlds around those stars were like. How many of them had planets, she wondered? Had any of t
hem gone supernova between now and the time the light she was just now seeing had left the star? Some of the lights twinkling in the sky were thousands of light years away, so it was possible that at least one of them had.
A warm breeze brushed against her cheeks, a likely signal that the next day would be just as unseasonably warm. Not that she was complaining though. Warm weather was something she much preferred over the chill of winter’s touch. She’d be okay if the temperature notched up a few more degrees the next day.
A crick in her neck caused her to look down, surveying the landscape around her, instead of the imagined worlds surrounding other stars. There wasn’t a whole lot to see from her vantage point, at least not at night. Oh there were lights, here and there. Enough to allow her to make out several buildings. She could see the Headquarters building of course, the sharp, angular structure visible to her from where she stood.
There were also at least three other buildings that had some lights around them, or in the windows. Peyton wasn’t sure what they were though, because she’d never been to that section of the base. In fact, ever since she’d been brought there, she hadn’t seen the inside of any building except for hers, the Headquarters, and the Infirmary buildings.
True, she’d been allowed to walk the grounds of the place, simply called Base Camp. That wasn’t as much freedom as it sounded though. Peyton was only allowed to wander while escorted, and certain sections had been clearly stated as being off limits. Which only made sense she conceded, seeing as this was a military base of sorts. Still, the severely curtailed “free rein” had weighed heavily on her after the first day, and after another pair of days had passed, it positively pressed in upon her from all sides.
She wanted to leave, to go. Like the others had. But she couldn’t. There were…reasons for that, and Peyton agreed with them.
That didn’t mean she liked the situation though. Nobody would like her situation, not if they were sane. Words couldn’t convey how much it irritated her, weighed against her, occupied every waking moment, and many of her nightmares as well.
But up here on the roof, she was at peace. Calm and alone, able to relax, freeing her mind to wander, until at last she would drop off into a restless sleep. It had become a pattern for her in a matter of days.
The darkness helped, she was sure. Not only that wrought naturally by the sun’s absence from the sky, but also the lack of ambient light. There were very few lights throughout the base, and in the middle of the night, when the majority of them were bedded down, Peyton could only see the outlines of many of the buildings, vaguely visible in the dark.
It was one reason why she wasn’t escorted at night. The shifters could see just as easily as if it were daytime, but not Peyton. Her eyesight failed her miserably, and she was just as likely to run into a building or fall down a hill as she was to walk around peacefully.
All in all, it was a rather convenient way to ensure that she stayed where they wanted her.
Not that anyone was willing to say it of course. They never did. It was disguised under layers. More tests were necessary to determine she was okay. They wanted to ensure that she was ready to go out into the world. And so on, and so on. But after three days’ worth of it, Peyton was beginning to see through it all.
She’d gone from one group of shifters to the other, and she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. Oh, to be certain, being rescued had majorly increased her quality of life. She no longer lived in an eight by eight cell, and she was fed properly, allowed exercise, and generally treated nicely.
The shifters of Fenris, as she’d learned her original captors had been called, had not been so kind. They were at war with Cadia, the shifter territory she currently occupied. Or they had been at war. She wasn’t entirely certain, as most of her knowledge on the matter had been picked up by listening to various conversations as she meandered the grounds of Base Camp. It was infuriating having to put together a story that way, but nobody had volunteered an explanation, and she didn’t want to embarrass herself by having to ask.
Either way, the shifter stronghold of Cadia was somewhere she could at least deal with being detained. For the time being. Fenris had been…undesirable, to say the least.
Still, she could wish for some clue as to what was going to happen next, and if it was going to happen soon. Being entirely in the dark—about everything—was driving her mad.
Which might be what they’re afraid of. If you can’t—
Her thoughts were cut off as the door behind her exploded.
Peyton whirled as a yell ripped from her throat, quickly turning into a shriek as her left foot encountered not roof, but open air. She had been standing too close to the edge, and in her surprise had spun out off the edge. Her arms whirled as the figure charged out into the dark at her.
You won’t reach me in time.
The thought came to her with a certain amount of vindication as she fell off the roof in what felt like slow motion. To hell with them. They wanted her, well, they couldn’t have her! If Peyton was going to die, dammit, she was going to die without giving them the satisfaction of laying a hand on her.
Her body seemed to be disobeying her readiness to die, however, as her right foot slipped from the roof, her hands slammed down on it, trying to find a purchase even as she went over. It was too late though; there was nothing for her to grab onto.
This is it. This is how I die, she thought as the ground below beckoned at her.
There was a giant crash, and suddenly a hand stronger than steel wrapped itself around her wrist. Peyton cried out again as her shoulder was strained at the sudden halt of her motion, and then she groaned as her body slammed into the side of the building.
“Gotcha,” came a rather satisfied voice from the roof above her.
Then, with apparent disdain for the rules of physics as they applied to normal humans, the hand on her wrist simply hauled her up onto the roof, where she was promptly wrapped up into the arms of a rather large, rather delicious-smelling man.
She got a whiff of soft leather and fresh-cut lumber as those arms held her tight.
“It’s okay,” a voice murmured into her ear. “It’ll be all right. You’re okay now, you’re safe.”
Peyton simply sat still for a moment as she tried to process what was going on. The voice continued to speak to her.
“Whatever it was, we’ll fix it. These things tend to work themselves out—you just need to give it time. To let it work its own course. This isn’t going to help,” he said softly to her, almost as if she were a child.
It took a long moment for Peyton to understand what was going on.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, turning slightly to look at the face of the man who had almost killed her.
Eyes of a brown so pale it was nearly amber stared back at her, somehow visible even in the dark of night. They were framed by a round face with big ears and a thick beard that she could tell was bordering right on the edge of what was allowed in the Green Bearets. She didn’t know it for sure of course, but she’d yet to see one of the elite warriors with a full-fledged beard, so she knew it had to be close.
Low eyebrows covered the eyes that held an intelligence far greater than she suspected many knew. Eyes that were riveted to her, filled with surprise, concern, and…something else. Peyton felt her own eyes narrow as she stared, trying to understand just what it was she was seeing.
It wasn’t anger, embarrassment, sadness, realization, happiness, or approval. She knew the look, but she couldn’t place it. What was it! But her mind failed her, and just as soon as it was there, it was gone, concealed behind his walls as defenses sprang into place. He began to speak not long after.
“Saving your life,” he replied. The voice was a strong baritone, coming from deep within his chest, to the point where it nearly vibrated her torso as she sat pressed against him.
“Say again?” she asked, stunned at the response, despite expecting to hear it.
“I was saving your life, so that you didn’t die,” he repeated. “When you jumped from the ledge. You didn’t need to, it’ll work out, I promise. Whatever it is, you’ll be okay, you don’t need to do that.”
“You moron,” she said, exasperated. “I wasn’t going to jump!”
He frowned. “But I saw you step off the edge.”
“Because you scared the shit out of me when you burst onto the roof by destroying the damn door!” she raged, shaking with anger and also embarrassment.
“Uh. Oh. Um. What?” he spluttered.
“I wasn’t going to jump, you thick-headed numbskull. I was just looking out at the view. Then you came out here making more noise than a marching band, and when I spun to see what happened, I accidentally stepped off the roof. I had no intentions of doing that, despite whatever you’ve got as an excuse for a brain seems to think. You didn’t need to come white-knighting on up here just to try and save me.”
“So, what you’re saying is, you weren’t going to jump?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “The only thing dying up here tonight is you. Of embarrassment. Or at least you should be after that display!”
The shifter didn’t respond for a full minute, and the two of them sat there, staring at each other, their faces inches apart.
“I see.”
“That’s your brilliant riposte?” she asked. “Took you a full minute to come up with that?”
“Not entirely,” he replied, his voice becoming smoother, less chagrined-sounding. “As you said, I was up here dying. But I’m stubborn and too stupid to know when my time is up, so it took me a full minute to die of embarrassment.”
Despite her attempts at self-control an amused snort burst from Peyton. “I see,” she said, mimicking his earlier words deadpan.
The big shifter laughed, a rich noise that filled her with laughter as well. The two of them laughed for quite some time.
“Well,” the big shifter said at long last. “I suppose the only decent thing to do is to make it up to you.”
“What are you going to do, take me skydiving next time?”
