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He’d joined the military too, but he’d gone into a different unit than Sam and I. We’d tried to stay in contact online while we all moved around, but mission protocols limited what we could say about where we were or what we were doing. Then he’d gone dark a year ago.
It had been tough, and at times I’d despaired of ever seeing him again. Wondering where he was, what he was doing, and who had his back now.
“What are the chances we’d all end up here?” I wondered as I pulled back and let him go reluctantly.
“Pretty good, considering Maia is here. I managed to get in with a team that turned up at the Palace a week or so ago. They were talking about a girl named Maia that Ronan was hunting. I remembered Sam talking about his sister Maia, so I volunteered for the incursion team when Ronan found her here. I didn’t know it was her for sure, but if it was, I hoped I could find a way to help her.”
“You jeopardized your mission to try and help Maia?”
“Of course,” Pala said, looking shocked that I would even question it.
I swallowed hard. We hadn’t seen Pala in years and the fact he would risk his mission on the chance Maia was Sam’s sister, after everything he had sacrificed for it, had me feeling all kinds of ways.
“We tracked Maia here from the Palace, too. We heard the same thing on our surveillance and came to get her. It was one of our team, not Sam or I watching the feeds, or we might have spotted you there. How did you end up with the Palace team?”
“The Network got me into a division they’d had their eyes on, about a year ago. But it took me a while to work my way closer to the people who even remotely knew anything. There are circles within their hierarchy and you have to prove yourself before they’ll even let you near the outer rings. The guys on the outer edge don’t know shit about what’s really going on. They only care that the pay’s good if they keep their mouths shut.”
He sighed and glanced at his feet before shaking his head. Like his memories disturbed him. I got it. Sam and I had needed to do shit we’d prefer to forget, too. It came with the territory when working undercover. It didn’t make it easier, though.
Sometimes, in the still of a dark night, when everything felt so near and yet so far, my memories would press on me and refuse to let go until the sun rose. Mostly, it was all the times we’d had to look the other way to maintain our cover that haunted me. I’d sometimes wondered if any of it was worth the cost.
I stood by Pala, shoulder to shoulder, and let him have a moment while lending him silent comfort. I’d had Sam by my side through everything we’d gone through since we’d joined the military. We also had a team that we’d formed from guys who had become disillusioned with the military and were willing to back a change to the power structure.
They’d become a tight, loyal unit around us. Every single one had elected to come with us when we’d abandoned our posts and come home in search of Maia after the Crash. We’d been doing recon far from home when the Crash happened, and the journey back had been hell, yet we’d had each other.
Pala had been out there all alone, deep undercover, while the world fell apart. I couldn’t even imagine how hard it must have been, and probably still was.
Pala was perfect for the job, though. He was like a ghost, able to almost disappear from right in front of you. He was always so calm and unassuming, people often didn’t even notice him entering a room. Despite being one of the most strikingly handsome men I had ever met.
He had light caramel skin and glossy, straight black hair that fell past his shoulder blades, with a squared jaw and high cheekbones. His eyes were a dark brown, so deep they were almost black. When you really looked at him, it was easy to see the old soul staring back. He gave off an aura of calm strength, as if he was centuries old instead of decades.
His name meant ‘water’, and it suited him perfectly. He flowed around every obstacle effortlessly, taking everything in his stride. But I saw a darkness shadowing him that had never been there as a teenager.
“It’s time you came in, Pala. You’ve done enough.” I searched his face as I spoke, looking for my teenage friend in the harsher lines of the man before me.
He shook his head and looked up at me. I saw secrets and shadows staring back at me.
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Why the hell not?”
“What are you planning on doing with these alphas?” He asked, turning to lean sideways against the wall and staring at me intensely. “You and Sam, you’re not murderers, unless you’ve changed a hell of a lot since the last time I saw you?”
The question threw me. We were still reacting to the intruders, breaching the defenses on the farm just after we’d arrived. We hadn’t had time to plan, or even assess, yet.
“I don’t know. I don’t think they’re set up here to keep prisoners indefinitely. It’s going to take a lot of manpower we don’t have to keep that many alphas locked down. Not to mention feeding them. I imagine we’ll let them go. I know it means we’ll probably have to fight them later, but I don’t see another choice.”
Pala sighed again, deeper this time, and looked around him at what we could see of the farm from here. The lush fields cascading down the hill in the late morning sun, the winding river sparkling in the distance, the old water mill and the modern farm buildings, all framed by the forest beyond.
When Sam and I had staked the place out, the sound of laughter had drifted out to us regularly. It was so different from how the rest of the world looked and sounded right now. I’d felt an intense draw, a need to be inside even then.
It was a utopia, and the people who lived here seemed willing to go to great lengths to protect it. I didn’t blame them. This place had a strong sense of home and community, and I didn’t realize how much I had missed that. It reminded me of my family’s winery growing up.
I forced myself to pay attention as I turned and gripped his shoulder. “Just tell me.”
He said one word that froze the blood in my veins.
“Lexie.”
