Page 115 of A Cruel Kindness

The Prince and Bellamy weren’t even formally engaged yet. He certainly didn’t seem dumb enough to give us that much of a break until there was a priest blessing the union.

While there was a part of me—in addition to the Bond—that was happy that the marriage was pushed off, the logical part of me knew that couldn’t come at the expense of any one else’s life.

Tension was thick among everyone. It had been a while since we’d had something as pressing as this, and half the people here had never actually seen bloodshed. The early days I’d been here, where we were in a pattern of ambush and casualties, had taught me well, but that didn’t mean that was a formative experience I wished on everyone.

One of those people was Bellamy, though she seemed incredibly steady.

Is she okay? I want to make sure she’s okay, the Bond said, knocking against the confines of my mind.

I’d been wanting to ask the same thing for hours, but I didn’t know if I had the right to. As pissed as I was about this situation, Bellamy seemed … sad.

Even just acknowledging that the glassy haze to her eyes and the loose muscles of her face signaled her mental state made the Bond go fucking insane.

It was supposed to be my job to help her when she was sad to the extent I could.

Anything I did would make this worse. If I comforted her, it would make our inevitable separation that much harder. If I ignored her, that was contrary to everything I wanted to do.

“We’re just going to scout,” I told her under my breath as she stroked her hand down Clover’s mane. “You’ve done it before.”

Bellamy hummed and I felt the sound in my lower stomach. “This feels different.”

I agreed. Even then, I said, “For all we know, they brought everyone back to start building your wedding venue.”

It was meant to be a joke to break the tension, but it only had the effect of making Bellamy’s face fall even further. Her forehead fell to Clover’s neck, obviously seeking some of her strength.

Oh, I was a fucking asshole. “Bellamy, I—”

“Alright!” Peter’s voice clapped through the group, cutting me off. “I want all of you in your same units. I don’t want to risk anything happening because you’re still working through your training wheels.” Thank God. If they tried to separate us, I’d probably descend into insanity. “That being said, you will all be covering a radius of about two miles, so you will have to separate.”

Motherfucker.

As if Peter could sense the direction of my thoughts he said, “I don’t want to hear any lip. We have to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Look for minefields, animal traps, left over materials. Anything that signals anything out of the norm. Use your horses, follow their trail.”

Lucky started snorting next to me, big heaving breaths as his body prepared to warm up. He would bristle at leaving Clover, but their mating bond was strong enough to call out to each other over several miles.

God forbid something happened to one of us, they’d know.

“Look for darker ground,” I said to Bellamy as Peter rattled on another set of instructions. “That means—”

“Someone just dug it up and buried something,” Bellamy finished with a good-natured smile, letting me be protective but calmly asserting that she knew what to expect.

My hand was smoothing down her hair to cup her face before I could stop it. It was unnatural restraining the urge to touch her and hold her, and dammit I couldn’t stop my instincts when there was this much stress around us.

Bellamy couldn’t seem to either, because her eyes closed on a heavy exhale and she pushed her face lightly into my hand, deepening the touch. “It’s going to be okay.”

I didn’t know if she was telling me that or herself.

She was pulled to my chest in a crushing hug a second later. We weren’t able to say goodbye earlier, so I was taking the opportunity now.

One last embrace before I’d put distance between us and let her go so that she could help stop this war.

When I’d said the same thing to Ford when we were on our way to the camp we’d found the prisoners in, he’d told me that I was technically doing the same. That I’d had every right to put a stop to it.

A Soul Match technically outweighed marriage in the priests and priestesses’s eyes.

Still, it didn’t seem right to think that when I hated every second of this.

With a final, deep breath in to cement Bellamy’s scent in my lungs, I made myself step back. When I did, I caught the tail end of her thumb shooting up to quickly wipe a tear from the corner of her eyes.