He woke a second time, far more aware. He knew where he was and that he was alone. He thought he had been the one to wrap the vines around him and build a blind. There wasn’t so much as a single drop of blood on the leaves or ground to give him away. When the enemy got close to his blind, there were no tracks leading them to where he lay on the ground, covered by the vines. Looking back, he realized there had been a few flowers positioned exactly over the worst of his wounds.
Jonas shared his memories with Camellia. “All along, I had help and didn’t know it.”
Camellia nodded as they made their way up the stairs to the porch. Middlemist Red bordered either side, and the plant greeted them both by dipping her branches and running her blossoms along their arms.
Camellia smiled. “It’s nice to be home, Red.”
Jonas looked around him. “I love it here. I also love my home. We might have to compromise and divide our time between both places. We’d have a lot more privacy here. What do you think?”
She looked up at him with her blue eyes. He expected anything but what he saw. Amusement. He should have known. Camellia managed humor even in the worst moments. He appreciated that trait in her. She would need it with him.
“I think we’ll need both places. One won’t be enough. I’ll need a retreat and so will you.” She led him over to one of the chairs on her porch. “Sit down, Jonas. We may as well get this over with. Do you want anything to drink?”
He shook his head. “Over? By that you mean Oliver Borders? There is never going to be a way to get over Oliver Borders. Not for me.”
“I heard what you told Shaker. In the end, I think he knew you told him the truth. That Oliver wanted you to kill him. That he needed you to.”
Jonas turned his face away from her. He didn’t sit down but rather walked to one of the porch’s support posts and wrapped an arm around it, looking out toward the beautiful paradise his woman had created. The scene blurred, but he didn’t wipe at his eyes. It wouldn’t have mattered. Oliver’s name was tattooed on his body right under the GhostWalker creed. Right where the things that mattered most to him were.
“Oliver and I both felt as if we were going insane. It wasn’t just Oliver fighting for control every minute. He wasn’t alone in that. Our heads were splitting, pounding until we wanted to scream. Our bodies felt as if they were being torn apart. We felt the need to fight over everything with everyone. Everything felt like a challenge. All that testosterone raging in our systems. We would go off together and try to sort through it, try to find a balance.”
He pushed his forehead hard against the wood. Camellia ran her hand gently down his back, barely there but he felt it like a brand—deep. He didn’t know if he deserved her—not when Oliver was dead. Not when he hadn’t made it.
“It’s impossible to tell someone else what it’s like, that fight every minute of the day for sanity. For control. What it was like in those early days. The first weeks and months when we both tried so hard. Even now. It still scares me that the same thing could happen to me.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Jonas. You can show me.”
“I would never want you to think less of him. He was a good man.” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. He cleared his throat. “It isn’t as if I was blameless, Camellia. I had trouble, just as Oliver did. During combat situations, it was especially difficult to turn off the various temperaments we were called on to use. All of ours came with a high price. At times, that price was a blinding rage, and we would have to get away from our own people. The cost of using what we could to protect our team and risking their lives at our own hands wasn’t worth it to either of us, but it wasn’t always our call.”
Camellia laid her cheek against the small of his back and wrapped one arm around his waist, but she remained silent, allowing him to tell her in his own way. He let the story unfold in his mind so she could see just how difficult it had been for Oliver and him in those early days and how hard the two of them tried to get a handle on the enhancements Whitney had thought himself so clever for bestowing on them.
He wanted her to see the friendship between them and how they shared information. How they worked as a team, fighting through the painful revelations they learned about the various animal traits they now possessed. They studied each animal or reptile together, the good useful attributes they could draw out and develop, make stronger, and the ones that might lead to aggression and dissension on their team. They would discuss ways to suppress or rid themselves of the characteristics that posed a danger to their team.