Page 47 of My Forbidden Commander

The sling has been off my arm for exactly nine minutes when Okafor reports on the patrol.

“Callahan’s team took contact on the north leg an hour ago,” he says, standing in the doorway of the ops hut with rain dripping off his cap. “No casualties. They broke away and pulled back to the fallback position, called it in and walked home.”

“Nobody hit?” I ask, trying to keep my fist from clenching.

“Nobody hit, sir.”

I nod. It should reassure me, but it doesn’t. It’s been seven days since the ambush, seven days of having my arm in a sling, and I wasn’t there for the contact. We’ve been sending Okafor’s team out on shorter patrols or splitting them up between Callahan and Maddox’s teams for longer ones. I’ve not been there for any of it.

“Colonel,” Okafor says, and it sounds like a warning.

“What?” I almost growl.

“Doc cleared you for light duty, not full patrol rotation. Give it another few weeks.”

“I know what she cleared me for, Sergeant,” I shoot back.

He doesn’t argue with me further, just gives me that look he’s been giving me for weeks now—like he’s building a file on my reactions—then heads out into the rain.

I sit down at the map table and look at tonight’s patrol log without actually reading it, because what I’m really doing is calculating how many times Reyes has been outside the wire without me in the last week. The answer is four. Four nights where anything could have happened on a mountain full of men who want us all dead.

I understand fraternization regulations better now than I ever did when I was just enforcing them on other men. It was always framed as protecting the subordinate. There’s the power imbalance, the coercion risk, all the ways a senior officer can make someone’s life miserable if they don’t get what they want. None of that applies here. Reyes walked through my door, not the other way around, and he’s shown no sign of being coerced into anything except maybe extra push-ups.

Nobody warned me about the other direction, though. When the senior officer starts making decisions that put the whole unit at risk to protect one person. I’m not the commander who abuses his rank. I’m the commander who can’t think straight anymore because of it.

I close the log and go looking for him instead of finishing paperwork. I guess that would tell anyone watching exactly what they need to know.

He’s outside the med hut, sitting on an overturned crate with his rifle across his knees, running a cloth over the barrel even though I know that weapon is clean. He’s just keeping his hands busy while the adrenaline burns off—I know because I’ve done the same thing time and time again.

“Heard you took contact,” I say, trying to keep my tone casual.

Reyes looks up, and his expression softens when he sees it’s me and not Okafor doing another round of questions. “Wasn’t much. Couple of rounds. They didn’t stick around to trade more.”

I nod and look around to check that we’re still alone. “You good?”

“Fully caffeinated and unshot, sir. Two for two on my personal goals.” He sets the cloth aside and looks at my shoulder, where the sling used to be. “How’s the arm?”

“Doc cleared me this morning.”

“For light duty.” He says it like he already knows, and that makes sense. There’s nothing that happens on this base that doesn’t reach everyone within the hour. “Not full rotation.”

“I’m aware of the distinction.”

“You don’t sound aware of it. You sound like a man planning on ignoring it.” He stands and steps close enough for our shadows to merge into one on the wall of the med hut. “You want to talk about why you keep trying to walk back into gunfire you don’t need to be in?”

I lean closer. “I could ask you the same thing. You’re the one who keeps running across open ground.”

He narrows his eyes. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because I’m expendable and you’re not,” he says, his voice flat like it’s a fact and not an opinion. It hits me harder than the round did seven days ago.

“That’s not true,” I growl with more force than the conversation requires. “You are not expendable, Noah.”

His breath catches on his name, at the way I don’t check myself before I use it out in the open with anyone able to walk past.

“You keep saying things like that,” he says quietly, “and I’m going to start believing them.”