Brie
One second, I’m standing, my feet firmly planted on the floorboards of the uppermost deck, and the next, I’m flying through the air with Sawyer, our bodies colliding with the railing and then bursting through it, the wood splintering painfully across my back and spine.
Logan shouts my name, but his voice drowns out, nothing more than a flicker of breath against the sound of the incoming ships trying to burst through the wall of fire so close to us I can feel the heat on my skin.
I’m… dangling. My legs are slack, my arms burn and stretch, and my head… aches, hurting so fiercely I can barely open my eyes. A sharp, heady, metallic taste fills my mouth. I try to breathe in, but the scent of blood is so heavy it makes my stomach roll with nausea. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
“Someone grab her! Help them!” Logan shouts, his voice lined with desperation and utter rage. My arms go numb, but my belly slides against the side of the ship as I’m dragged upward, and only when I’m roughly pulled back onto the upper deck do I realize I’ve been hanging precariously over the side, Sawyer holding my bruised, swollen wrists the only thing keeping me from dropping into the ocean, into the fire starting to creep toward us carried by the oil leaking from the wreckage.
The Asteria groans as the engines sputter to life, sending a hum across the floorboards. I’m suddenly on my back, my eyes lifted to the stars, and the hurried, desperate shouts of the crew on the deck below fade as Logan appears overhead, his hands resting on either side of my face.
Sawyer groans weakly, his shadow passing over me as he sits up, but my eyes are on Logan and the ring of light cast by the sunrise painting his face in shadows.
The ship lurches painfully, followed by more frantic shouts. The engines whirr, and the scent of oil and smoke fills the air, cutting through the blood staining my tongue.
“She all right?” Sawyer asks, his voice choked with his own pain.
“Broken nose, maybe. Brie? Can you hear me?”
“I’m okay,” I reply to the best of my ability, but the words fall from my tongue in a garbled whisper.
The ship lurches again and bursts free of the reef's hold so abruptly Logan has to brace his hands on either side of my head to stop from flying forward over the top of me. The helm spins out of control just a few feet away, but Logan’s looking down at me, his eyes wide and heavy with concern.
“I’m okay,” I say again, unsure if it's the truth, but I figure we have bigger things to worry about, especially the roaring engine noise sprinting in our direction as the few surviving enemy boats race through the wall of fire behind us.
“Get her downstairs,” Logan commands as he rises, looking at two men unfamiliar to me standing nearby.
I don’t fight it when I’m lifted and tossed over the shoulder of a man I don’t know like a sack of potatoes. My vision goes in and out while blood races to my head, and the sunrise fades to warm wood and the smell of wax and oil burning sconces. The inner sanctum of the Asteria is incredibly loud with the engines running full blast through the shallows. I’m carried down to our stateroom and deposited on the bed… the bed that still smells like me–and Logan.
“Let’s have a look at that,” the man who carried me down here says, sitting me upright against the pillows while the boat lurches and jerks across the waves, its hull scraping over the reef.
I blink blearily up at him, his face coming into view. He’s young–likely my age, maybe even a little younger. He presses a wadded up piece of cloth to my nose and holds it there, forcing me to breathe through my mouth. My head pounds as I take in his details–the scar on his cheek that looks deep enough that he likely needed stitches, healed to a faint silver line against a patchwork of dark freckles. His skin is fair and tinted pink from the sun, and his hair is a mousy dark blond but unruly, touching his shoulders in rough waves.
“Who are you?” I mouth, unsure if the words make any sense. I think I might have bit down hard on my tongue because it’s swollen and throbbing with echoes of dull pain.
“Jake,” he says simply, casually, shrugging one shoulder. He has a teenager’s build–tall and lanky, like he hasn’t quite caught up with his height yet. “And you’re Brie, the captain's mate.”
“Yeah,” I reply, my voice like gravel.
He pulls the cloth away and grimaces, shaking his head ever so slightly. “Your nose isn’t broken but you bit your lip.”
“What exactly happened?” I reach up to rub my forehead where a bruise is forming right between my eyebrows.
“You went through the railing. Beta Sawyer had a hold of you, though, caught you by the wrist when you went airborne, and you slammed face first into the side of the ship. All of us on the ratlines saw it.”
“Oh,” I breathe, embarrassment prickling across my cheeks as a blush burns to life.
“It’s not serious. You’re fine. You can obviously take a beating.” He presses the cloth to my nose again. I take it from him, dabbing my swollen face. “Well, you’re supposed to stay down here–”
A crash echoes from above. He winces, clutching one of the posters on the corner of the bed to steady himself as the boat scrapes over what feels like another sandbar. I slowly turn my head to the windows. The sun is up, the last moments of a stellar sunrise fading into the purest of blues.
Jake’s dark-brown eyes follow my gaze.
I gingerly slide off the bed to my feet, sniffling against the cloth. “I’m going back up.”
“Captain Logan–”
“I don’t care what he told you to do. I’m not going to sit down here by myself.” My body aches as I hobble toward the door. Jake makes no moves to follow me until I’ve reached the door to the belly of the ship. However, I hear him grunt with resignation before turning on his heel, his boots echoing across the hallway and stairwell to the deck.
He’s behind me on the stairs when another crash reverberates through the boat, then another, and shouts from above cascaded down to us when I hurry up the last steps, Jake following close behind. I burst through the doors, blinded by bright sunlight. It takes several blinks to adjust my eyes to the brightness, but finally, I see why everyone’s shouting, and it’s not because we’re being boarded.
I lower the bloody cloth in awe as the boat sprints between two mountains through an incredibly narrow straight. The boat vibrates as it surges across what must be sand, only a dozen or so feet of water acting as a buffer. The sails are pulled in tight, and the engines shut off abruptly as the bright green mountains speed by.
We’re being carried out to open water again by the tide, just like Logan said we would be.
Tears well in my eyes, but not from the pain of slamming into the side of the ship..
Logan looks out over the water, panting, his arms braced on the railing as he watches the islands slip by, shaking his head in awe as his mouth pulls into a smile.
He looks wildly happy. Like this was where he was meant to be, what he was meant to do.
Beyond the islands, behind us, fires dance across the water like a flaming scar. It’s all that’s left of the armada–oil and smoke.
Everyone is cheering–from the lower deck to the top of the sails. Their voices ring out as they pump their fists. Logan whirls to the crew, his wide, brilliant white smile glimmering in the sunlight as his eyes crease with pure, unfiltered joy.
I’ve never seen him smile like that.
He laughs at something Sawyer says but then goes rigid as he slowly turns to look down at me, and that smile fades completely.
I try not to think about what that means.
He says something else to Sawyer, pointing at the helm, before starting in my direction. He skips stairs on his way down to the lower deck and stalks toward me. Jake gets lost, disappears into the crowd gathering along the rails to watch the fire as it fades from view, replaced by leagues and leagues of open ocean again.
Logan grabs my upper arm, and I wince at his touch. Something feels different now, but I’m not sure how to explain it. It bubbles up inside of me as he turns me back toward the stairwell, silently leading me to our room. He says nothing, and I’m thankful for it, because all I can see as he shuts the door behind us is that fading smile, like the sight of me robbed him of the happiness he felt in that moment.
“Let me see you,” he says gently, turning me around and gingerly prodding my jaw, my cheeks.
I wince away from his touch. “I’m fine–”
“I’m shocked you're upright,” he says with a hint of confusion in his voice, which is low and heavy with emotion I know he won’t name. “You slammed–”
“Jake told me.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine–”
“Brie–”
“You–you severed your ties with Silverhide,” I burst out, knowing full well it doesn’t matter to him, but for some reason, it matters a whole hell of a lot to me.
He takes a breath, his eyes scanning mine before he runs a hand through his dark hair. “I needed to be able to mind-link with the crew of this ship–”
“I get it.”
“But you’re angry?”
“You’re not coming home, are you? After this, after we get out of KiloKilo somehow… you’re not going back to Eastonia.”
His cheeks go a pale pink as he swipes his tongue along his lower lip, “Brie–”
“I asked you if you were going to do it–to go back to Emberfyll. You never answered the question. You asked me if I still planned on finding an Alpha to marry.”
“And you said of course, you will.” He steps toward me, raising his palms in surrender. “And then I told you I regret it–”
“That doesn’t matter if you’re–if you’re leaving.”
“Brie–”
“What were you going to do, Logan? Fuck me and then drop me off in Veiled Valley like–”
“That’s not what's happening here–”
“Then what?” I snarl, the force of my words sending fresh pain across my split lip and swollen nose. I’m sure I look insane right now, with my nose smeared with blood and my face bruised, but to hell with it. “What is this, Logan?”
“You wouldn’t have me if I did go back to Eastonia with you, Brie. Don’t act like that’s not still the case. I have nothing to offer you but the life of a captain's wife in your own father’s army. I don’t bring support behind me. I can’t pledge a pack to you, to Maeve. And I know for a Goddess damned fact you wouldn’t choose me over her.”
He could have slapped me, and it would have had the same effect.
“And I would never ask that of you,” he says quietly, sternly, his eyes holding mine. “But I spoke to Alex. I’m sure the same kind of magic guarding KiloKilo wraps around Emberfyll. It felt the same when we went through it.” His voice is barely above a whisper and rough, like it’s taking all of his strength to get the words out. “Alex has enough stones to get us out of KiloKilo. He has just enough to get us to Emberfyll after that.”
My heart quakes. “You told him.”
“I offered his pack a lifeline. A home–”
“If he offers you an army in return!”
“My father was Alpha King!” he shouts. “I am, by blood, the Alpha King of Emberfyll. I have a duty to whoever’s left there to return, to take back what’s mine.”
It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever said, but I can’t stop myself when I say, “What about me? What about Aviva and Ryan? Lexa? Nora? Your family? What about us?”