by R. H. Scott
She rolled her eyes at him. “On your ready, Daniels.”
He eyed her up and then suddenly took a step towards her. Sloan immediately stepped into him, spinning around to bring her left leg up towards his head. He blocked just in time—he was fast. He grabbed her leg, throwing it down, and pulled her towards him with a rough tug. He wrenched her back up against his hot chest.
He tucked his head into her, his mouth over her neck, his arm crossing her chest. “We fit pretty well, Radcliffe.”
She grabbed at his forearm with one hand, reaching back for his head with the other, and with all her force she threw her body up into the air and slammed down to the ground, landing on her knees. Elijah flew over her, rolling into the grass. She jumped to her feet, barely up before him. They squared off.
They stood, in stance, with loosely clenched fists. He struck at her with lightning speed, but her anticipation of his movement gave her the opportunity to block. She landed a solid hit to his face, and then a kick to his inner thigh. His knee gave in and she struck him as he struggled for balance. He pivoted on his knee, turning out from her as he got to his feet.
She went for another hit but he got ahold of her forearm and spun her around, planning on putting her in an arm lock. She grabbed onto his hand with her own, spiraling around him to turn his intended lock on himself. In an instant he was free of her grip.
He spun, aiming a kick at her head. She ducked, crouching low as she returned the favor—landing a swift kick in his abdomen. He backed up and they both retook their stances.
“Nice move,” he approved.
“Jared taught me that,” she answered wickedly.
He was good. He was very good. Sweat dripped down her body, and her abs rippled with tension. She would need to connect a very strong hit in order to win.
She feigned going for a roundhouse kick, swapped legs and then aimed to land a forward kick to his diaphragm. He moved too quickly. He grabbed her extended calf and pulled her forward until her thigh was up against his ribs, her calf locked around his lower back. He spun her and landed on the ground, lying directly on top of her, in between her legs, his face hovering just above her own.
Realizing the intimacy of their position, she grabbed his throat and squeezed with all the force she could muster from her confined position. He grabbed her hand and slammed it back over her head. Finding the other hand, he did the same, heaving up to hold her arms away from her. His arching back pushed his abs against her own; his wide hips pinned her legs down. She was stuck.
He stared down at her with intense green eyes, looking at her as though he had never seen her before. He was taking her all in. Consuming her. His full lips fell slightly apart and his breath was heavy against her face. The beads of sweat trickling down his chest mixed in with her own, and his grip on her hands loosened enough to let her break free, but she didn’t . . . and she couldn’t help but really look at him.
His face was undeniably near perfect, but it was the way they had fought that had stunned her. They had been so in sync. He further loosened his grip on her hands, but still she didn’t move. Hurt him, she urged herself, but his stare was paralyzing. She needed to look away; she willed herself to look away. Finally a movement in her periphery drew her glance. Jared was there.
Jared!
She wriggled underneath Elijah. “Get off of me.”
“Pretend like that’s really what you want,” he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear.
She wrenched her right arm free and swiftly brought it between them, hitting him in the face with her elbow. He rolled off her. She couldn’t imagine how this looked to everyone else. Or rather, she could imagine it only too well. Elijah was on his feet in an instant.
Had he pinned her on purpose? Had he seen Jared coming? She didn’t care. She leaped to her feet and turned on him. With unbridled rage she swung. She clipped him on the jaw, and it surprised him.
Their fight wasn’t over.
He spun, aiming a kick at her. She blocked and landed a strike to his neck. He buckled and she kneed his chin. She struck at his face and he stumbled from her. He regained his stance, anger replacing surprise. He leaped at her, striking viciously. She blocked, parried; he grabbed her arm and with surprising might threw her to the ground. She rolled back in a somersault, getting to her knees, ready to lunge—but Jared was now fighting in her stead.
He had stepped in and he and Elijah were going full force. Elijah lunged and Jared deflected, striking at him mercilessly. Elijah countered, hitting Jared in the jaw, and Jared turned out, clipping Elijah with a backhand.
Sloan got to her feet slowly, watching in horror as the two viciously brawled—Elijah was too tired for this fight. Jared was entering the spar fresh and angry. He kicked Elijah’s knee in and came behind him, locking his forearm around Elijah’s neck.
“Come near her again and I will end you,” he growled to Elijah.
“ENOUGH!” West’s voice boomed over them.
Jared let Elijah go, immediately walking away.
West stepped towards Jared but Jared didn’t stop for him, instead he shot a glare at Sloan, his blue eyes on fire.
“Dawson,” West called but still Jared didn’t stop. He left them all standing there.
West looked from Elijah to Sloan, shaking his head. “What the hell happened, Radcliffe?”
I wish I knew.
CHAPTER 3
Sloan leaped out of the pod and looked around her living quarters. Where was he? She crossed the room and turned into their bedroom. Jared was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
“What the hell was that?” she asked, stopping in the doorway.
He had just left her there to deal with West. He had intervened in her fight.
“Do you have feelings for him?” He asked the question so quietly she almost hadn’t heard.
“What? Feelings for who?”
He raised his head, staring at her. Had he been crying? “Don’t be like that, Sloan. For Elijah.”
“How could you ask me that?”
“What do you expect me to think when you’re rolling around with him in the grass . . .”
“When we were fighting? You think nothing of it. You know I love you. It’s always only been you,” she answered, softening her voice as she neared the bed. She knew how it had looked; she knew how it would hurt him.
A memory from summer crossed her mind. They were camping, wrapped up in blankets, their bodies intertwined. “Swear you’ll always be mine . . . that this will always just be ours.” The order had fallen from her lips onto his still-hot skin.
He had cupped her face, nodding. “I would rather die than have this with anyone else, Sloan.”
Jared stood, running his hands through his short dark hair. “I can’t deal with this, Sloan. You need to stay away from him.”
“I’m trying to. If you just backed out of Fight Night or told me what the hell was going on it might make it a little easier,” she explained, following him into the living room as he walked past her.
“That’s not an option.” He shook his head.
“Well, I told him to back out.”
He spiraled around to face her. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I know you! If you two fight you will try to kill him. He’s good, Jared, really good. One of you will get hurt.”
Jared paced the room. “If you knew my reasons you would understand.”
Sloan collapsed to the sofa, running her hands over her neck. She was sick of this. “Then tell me!”
“I can’t!”
“I don’t get it. I don’t understand how you can be keeping secrets from me. You’re supposed to trust me.”
“I’m doing this for us, to protect us,” he argued.
“From what? Whatever it is—”
“No. Not whatever it is—you need
to know that I am doing what I am for the sake of you and me and I expect you to support me.”
Sloan rose, crossing the room and walking to him. “I do support you. You have had my support our entire lives, Jare. But you’re acting different . . . everything since Carson has been different. You never kept secrets from me . . .” she began but her voice trailed off under the weight of his stare.
His cobalt eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched. “Why would you bring up Carson?”
She grabbed his hands, willing him to hear her. “Because you’ve been different since that day. What are you even asking the Order to give you in Winnings? What will fighting Elijah achieve?”
“Review.”
He answered so curtly Sloan wasn’t sure she had heard him right.
“What?”
“I will have Elijah sent to Review—it’s my Winnings request.”
Sloan dropped his hands, stepping away from him. Sloan imagined the Order assessing Elijah. He would either be warned to fall in line or sentenced to Dismissal—execution by lethal injection.
“You—” Sloan couldn’t quite understand how he was saying this. “You can’t be serious.”
He stared at her with a challenging gaze. “Deadly serious.”
Panic seized her heart, a sharp contraction of muscles. This was absurd, it wasn’t tolerable, and it wasn’t Jared. She felt like she was staring at a stranger.
“Please don’t do this.”
“Why would you care if the Academy lost Elijah Daniels?” he asked, accusation hanging in his every word.
“I don’t! I care about losing you, you idiot! What sort of person would risk someone’s life over some petty dislike?”
“It’s not a petty dislike! I have to do this. I don’t have a choice,” he yelled, frustration welling.
“You always have a choice!”
“Not this time.”
“Jared, you can’t do this.”
He slammed his hand on the table, staring at her with frustration. “This isn’t up for debate—I need to do this.”
“And I don’t have a say? You would just risk someone’s life—”
“I don’t care about his life, Sloan!”
How could he be saying these things? What could possibly have caused this vehement hatred for Elijah? She watched him turn from her, resting his palms on their dining table, head bowed low as he tried to regain his composure.
“Do you think Carson would want you to do this?”
Jared spun around, his eyes alight with fire. Sloan instinctively stepped away and in an instant he had her backed up against the wall. He lashed out, hitting the wall beside her. She stood perfectly still.
He studied her for a long moment, eyes wild. “Stop bringing up Carson West.”
Sloan narrowed her gaze on him, pushing herself away from the wall, forcing him to back up. “Get the hell away from me.” She growled the order.
He backed away immediately, realizing his inappropriate behavior. “I’m sorry.”
Sloan shook her head at him. “You’ve been saying that a lot recently.”
He nodded, barely raising his blue eyes to meet her stare. “Please, please, just trust me. I have to do this. I need to keep him away from you. That’s why today when—” he began, but it was Sloan’s turn to cut him off.
“Today when you intervened in my fight?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I just—”
“No. Don’t apologize—just knock it the hell off. What you did today made us both look weak.”
The recognition of his own words coming from her mouth stunned him. He caught her angry stare and nodded. They had their unspoken rules and Sloan had learned to follow them—she wouldn’t live by any double standards.
She took a deep breath. She didn’t want them to be this way. “Jared, you and I—we know who we are. We are soldiers and all we have is each other and all we can rely on is our training to ensure we get the rest of our lives together. But that requires trust; staying the way we are requires trust. I need you to tell me the truth here.”
He ran his hands over his face, messing up his dark hair, his blue eyes falling on her sadly. “I am asking you to trust that I know what I am doing.”
Sloan shook her head at him. That’s not how it works.
Sloan couldn’t get to sleep. She lay next to Jared, watching him peacefully slumber, the slow rise and fall of his chest. She wished they hadn’t argued, she wished she hadn’t brought up the fight, she wished he would tell her the truth, and that she hadn’t brought up Carson . . . She wished for a lot of things.
She thought back to that day when Jared’s world had shattered. She remembered General Stone prying Jared’s shaking hands off of Carson. She remembered the look on Jared’s face as he suddenly regained composure, wiping away his tears, his face turning cold and hard. She could hear Denise Carmichael’s overwhelming sobs and she could remember thinking, That’s the sound your heart makes when it’s broken. She had seen Jared’s blue eyes turn from an ocean, to a storm, to ice. “He’s gone,” Stone had said and Sloan had never really known if he was talking about Carson or Jared.
The Friday before the Betrothal Calling the quarterly War Front Collective was held, led by the Order for the senior students to receive necessary updates on the war effort. Sloan followed Jared into the senior conference hall, a large room designed like every other space in the Academy—bleached and clinical. Academy security lined the white walls, former students posted on base instead of on the mainland. The sentries dressed in all white, toting ivory weapons, indistinguishable from one another. It was odd, the way they blended in with their surroundings so well and yet were impossible to ignore.
Sloan shuffled into the first aisle and took a seat at the desk nearest where the Order would preside. The Order hadn’t arrived yet; Sloan consciously checked her uniform and hair, knowing the importance of appearances. Jared nudged her in the arm. “Stop fidgeting. You look perfect.”
They hadn’t said more than two words to each other since their fight. Every time she looked at him she found herself searching for his past self, for her Jared. The Jared who had taught her how to shoot crossbows, the boy who liked to brush her hair at night, the man who made her realize that love was as real as the war effort—something worth fighting for.
The seats around them began to fill with the loud shuffling and chatting of students. Becket Brock, lieutenant from 67, sat next to her, briefly greeting her before leaning over to speak to Jared. Sloan ignored the customary chitchat; she was too distracted by Jared and Fight Night to partake in idle conversation. Suddenly, an odd sensation overcame her.
Sloan was certain someone was watching her.
She felt heat rise through her neck and she craned around, scanning the crowd of her identically dressed peers. She glanced over them, grouped in conversation, some seated, some perched on desks. She could see Major West near the entrance, Erica and Mika two rows back, but all of them were absorbed in conversation, taking no notice of her. She scanned until her eyes landed on Elijah. He was seated five desks back, arms crossed over his chest.
Staring at her.
Their eyes locked, and she waited for him to look away first. He continued to stare, unyielding, unaffected by the bustling students and noise that separated them. Unaffected by Jared sitting right beside her. She could make out the dark shadows of bruising around his eyes but was unsure if that was her handiwork or Jared’s. She couldn’t hold his gaze any longer, his bright green eyes singling her out. She repositioned, forcing herself to look away. Yet, she could still feel his gaze on her. She quickly looked back, and with a half smile across his face, he winked at her.
Sloan spun around, immediately looking to Jared. He was still engrossed in conversation with Becket. The last thing she needed was Jared seeing Elijah watch her. Sloan kept her eyes trained o
n the panel desk ahead, determined to not look back. It took almost every ounce of willpower she had.
What have you done to Jared? Why won’t you leave me alone?
Abruptly, the guards took a step forward, cueing them all to stand, announcing the arrival of the Order. The room immediately silenced as they stood to attention. The Order was comprised of General Walt Stone, Lieutenant General Amelia Brass, Major General Joseph Carr, Brigadier Hans White, Colonel Christopher Don Luke, Lieutenant Colonel Kate Barden, and of course, their highest ranking member, Grand Marshal Ludo Romani.
The Order filed through, taking their stance behind the panel desk. Romani kept them standing, a moment of long silence and stillness. He was a small man, short and wiry in build, with jet-black hair framing a narrow head and large eyebrows mounting dark, deep-set eyes. He had a small, well-groomed moustache that didn’t extend past the corners of his mouth, and wherever Romani went, he wore pristine white gloves.
Their grand marshal might have been a small man, but he had an unnerving presence, a charismatic demeanor and a cutthroat nature—he was hardened by the war effort, they said. He had grown suspicious and erratic, they said. He rarely walked the halls of the Academy, like he once had, and he only ever spoke with his favored students and most trusted advisors on the Order. Sloan would be lying if she said she felt comfortable around him, but her status kept her in his good graces.
Sloan knew the Order through their day-to-day roles at the Academy—the major general, Joseph Carr, would at times lead training sessions, and Lieutenant General Amelia Brass oversaw the Infirmary, but largely, the Order, unlike the trainers and professors, had little interest in developing bonds with most of the students. Their role was deciding the fate of the Academy from a distance, and unless you were a champion, like Sloan and Jared, then you really had little interaction with them at all.
Romani finally saluted them, cueing them to take their seats. Sloan watched him sit, resting his chin on the back of his hand—how he always sat. The attentive position made Sloan uncomfortable, and she had long ago realized that garnering such an effect was probably exactly why he did it. Sloan glanced to Jared and saw as he watched the Order with a keen attentiveness, his mouth half turned in a smile. This was comfortable for him—for the both of them, really, aside from Romani—because they were finally amongst those who valued them most. While the Order tended to disregard the students, they made a point of knowing their champions.
