To his surprise and satisfaction, she didn’t move away when he trailed the pad of a finger along her forearm.
“I will never abandon you, Shay.”
Something in her eyes shuttered, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a humorless smirk. “See, that’s a promise you can’t keep. No one can.”
Once again, she stepped around him, this time to move through the open door. There’d been a somber note in her voice, as though her playfulness had been chased away by bitterness.
Drakkal turned and followed her into the corridor. “You don’t believe me?”
“Everyone leaves”—she glanced at him over her shoulder—“whether they want to or not. It’s not always up to you.”
His brow furrowed, and he fought to ignore the nagging, dreadful pang in his chest that cropped up at the thought of losing her—or of being forced away from her. “That’s not abandonment, Shay. Abandoning someone…betrayingsomeone…that’s always a choice.”
She looked away from him, but not before he caught the regret and hurt in her eyes. “I know.”
He reached forward with his right hand, took hold of her upper arm, and halted her. “Look at me, Shay.”
She tugged on her arm, and for a moment, she seemed about to pull away and keep walking. But she didn’t wrench herself out of his grasp—she turned toward him, eyes ablaze with challenge, and asked, “What?”
“I want you to look me in the eyes and hear me,” he growled, leaning down to put his face on level with hers. “I willneverabandon you. So long as there is life in my body, I will fight to be at your side. I swear it on my blood.”
“And I believe you, Drakkal.” She let out a terse laugh and shook her head. “You barely know me, but I have no doubt you’d die for me. Now hearmewhen I say that I don’t want you doing that.”
Frustration and helplessness welled up in him, and he railed against them. “It’s not your choice.”
Her shoulders sagged, and she bowed her head with a sigh. “I know that.”
Drakkal exhaled slowly, sobered by her sudden change in demeanor; he’d never seen Shay look so…defeated. He loosened his hold on her to gently smooth his palm up and down her arm. “Who did you lose?”
“My parents.”
Curling a finger beneath her chin, he lifted it, bringing her eyes back to his. “Tell me about them.”
She pressed her lips together, looking as though she would refuse for a few moments before sighing.
“When I was little, my dad was my world,” she said softly. “He was special forces, and I think his unit was attached to some branch of the Volturian military a lot of the time. He’d be gone for months and months at a time, but I always knew that when he came home, he’d spend all his time with me. He’d take me out camping and teach me to hunt and shoot and survive, teach me how to defend myself. To fight.”
A soft smile touched her lips. “He used to say that bytwelve I was already better trained than most of the UTF’s standing army. Sometimes he’d have friends over, other soldiers like him, and they’d teach me, too. Some of them were women, and I thought that was socool…I wanted to be just like all of them.
“And when he wasn’t around, it was me and Mom. She was a badass in her own way, even though I didn’t fully understand it while I was a kid. She’d been active duty, too, a combat medic. She met Dad in a combat zone. Saved his life from a blaster wound. They married a couple years after that, and once she got pregnant with me…she chose me over her career and was honorably discharged from service.”
Her smile fell, and a sheen of tears filled her eyes. “Dad was going to retire when I was seventeen. He’d already put in twenty-five years of service, and even though he was as tough as ever, I could tell he was tired, too. He was ready for peace. But they begged him to run one more mission, said they didn’t have anyone as qualified for it as him. And my dad was the kind of guy who couldn’t turn away when they asked him like that. He couldn’t turn his back on his duty. So…he went. And I was soangry. He wasn’t supposed to leave again, and Momlethim. She didn’t fight him, didn’t demand that he stay. She let him go. And…he never came back.”
Shay’s tears spilled, and Drakkal caught a whiff of their saltiness. Frowning deeply, he brushed away some of the moisture with the side of his thumb.
Sniffling, Shay rubbed angrily at her other cheek, as though the forcefulness of the action could stop her tears. “I despised the UTF for taking him from me after that, but I hated Mom forlettinghim go. So, I did everything I could to show her my anger. I made trouble in school, being as disruptive as possible, started a lot of fights with other kids—and it really wasn’t fair for any of them, even the boys bigger than me. My dad was adamned good teacher. After I broke the quarterback’s arm in three places, the school had finally had enough, and I was expelled.
“I ended up running away not long after that and got mixed up with some bad people. I guess it was pretty typical stuff, but it was all exciting at that point, and everything I did was basically a big fuck you to the government for taking my dad. Drugs and extortion at first, just street-level gang shit. But they liked me because of my skills, and I started moving past the petty stuff quick.” She snickered, again without humor, and shook her head. “They wanted me as muscle. Seems pretty ridiculous when you look at me in this city, doesn’t it?”
Despite everything, a corner of Drakkal’s mouth lifted. “No,kiraia. It doesn’t.”
“You’re a bad liar, kitty.” She frowned and wet her lips with her pink tongue. “Cops brought me in a few times, mostly on little stuff. And even after everything, after all the stupid, hateful stuff I said, my mom kept bailing me out. She never said much when she did, and…and I know that she had every reason to have chewed me out or just abandoned me all together, but she didn’t, and it justhurtwhen she was quiet because it felt like she was judging me, you know? And it almost made me hate hermorethat she kept helping me. Like part of me wanted her to blow up, wanted her to get pissed, wanted her to speak up like she should’ve done before Dad left.”
Fresh tears fell from Shay’s eyes, faster than before, and her voice was thick when she spoke again. “And through it all, I was blind to the pain I was causing my mother. Blind to the pain she was going through at having lost her husband…and in the process of losing her daughter, too.
“But I…I was the one who losther. She was driving home after bailing my dumb ass out of jail again, and there was anaccident. An automated freight hauler glitched out, and her car was the first thing it plowed into. She was gone instantly.”
Shay tipped her head down, pressing her cheek into Drakkal’s palm, and her tears flowed hot over his fingers. She lifted a hand and swept back loose strands of her hair toward her bun, which she grasped in her fist and squeezed until her knuckles were white.