Page 4 of Ashes of Honor

“You fought?” I couldn’t hide my shock in the sputter of my question, nor could Tomás hide his followed up look at the unintentional insult.

“Was my leg supposed to keep me from doing my part same as every other individual was doing to protect this place?” Tomás crossed his arms over his chest, the veins in his toned arms creating a surprisingly pleasant distraction from the conversation.

“Well, no, I just thought?—”

“Whatever you’re about to say can’t possibly be politically correct.” An arrogant smile pulled at the hard, stoic lines of hisface. My eyes fell to the ground as I bit down a grin. He seemed to be my kind of person.I think.

“… is that like, safe though? What if it came off, or it broke or something?”

“It’s an apocalypse, Reina. Everyone here is a survivor of some sort,” he said, brushing past me and over to the arm that was now a shattered mess across the floor. “Every day is an opportunity to become a little more badass, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah actually, I would.” I smiled as I trailed him around the room. He stopped at the mock up I’d sketched out on the wall next to a clay replica of Abel’s upper body Riley’s girlfriend Yasmin had sculpted for me. “Want to help since Alexi bailed on you?”

Tomás stiffened, his head craned slightly as though he was asking the Lord for some patience. “How do you know?—”

“It’s the hour before dinner,” I said. This routine was one I never expected Amaia to fall out of. “He’s with Amaia. It’s kind of a whole thing. He must’ve forgotten to let you know.”

“Since my calendar unexpectedly cleared, show me what you’re working with.”

Amaia

The least Prescott could have done was get his affairs in order before he up and died. Everything was a damn mess. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what the hell I was looking at. A bunch of numbers and political jargon that wouldn’t make any sense to me even if I had it explained as if I were six years old.

When I’d told Alexiares that our economy did some cyclical economic shit that I didn’t understand, I’d been dead fucking serious.Aren’t I supposed to have an advisor or something? Who set this all up?

Right,we did.

“You haven’t touched your pie,” a raspy voice whispered in my ear.

The tips of them turned red as Alexiares’s hands fell to my shoulders and offered a gentle massage. “Neither have you,” I said, meeting his eyes and catching the shadows carved under them. I’d been scouring over the same documents for the last few days, still not coming to a final conclusion on how to move forward.

“Dessert before dinner is still weird for me,” he teased, taking half the stack of papers from the desk.

Life at Monterey Compound didn’t just come to a halt, even though we’d lost 10 percent of our population and 40 percent of our infrastructure during the attack. In fact, life here seemed to be speeding up with the influx of newcomers, quickly replacing the numbers we’d lost but with half the space. Which meant more paperwork and shit to figure out with an imminent due date. People needed jobs, things to do to keep them busy and us safe.

A message from Elliot had arrived in the night: Outside of what they could grow with their hands and the natural cycle of their garden harvest, they were low on food. Duluth had gone months locked in their bunker. Ronan had been relentless in his attempts to destroy them, so they could only come out when necessary. Under normal circumstances, Monterey would help—try to establish a new trade deal until they were able to adjust, but we were hurting too.

With Covert’s ‘emissaries’ sitting in on every council meeting and morning debriefs with our soldiers, I had little say in operating as business as usual. We didn’t have a choice. No matter the sick, sweet revenge I was still intent on bringing to Ronan’s front door.

“I’m in way over my head here,” I groaned, slouching down in the heavy leather chair.

It still had the imprint of Prescott’s ass on it. A joke popped into my mind, wanting to endlessly tease him that the evidence of his ‘laziness,’ was here all along. Except the thing was, Prescott wasn’t lazy. In fact, he did it all. He was a good leader. A sound one. Both in judgment and in practice. I couldn’t top that. The only one who could had been Jax.

Scattered papers fluttered to the floor. A few landed on his black boots as I pushed The Compound ledger and register toward the middle of the desk. The perfect amount of room to slam my head against it in shame stared back at me as a shiny wooden surface. I smirked.

“Is there a reason you’re refusing to ask for help?” Alexiares asked, swiping a stray strand back into his carefully slicked back hair.

“Huh?” I questioned, turning my body completely toward him. “What are you talking about?”

He offered a nonchalant shrug. “Do you need me to say it in Spanish? Is there a specific reason why you won’t ask Luna or anyone else on The Council for help?”

I thought it over. The answer was yes, but it was also no. So maybe, I don’t know? But what was I supposed to say? I was now the face of certainty and I had to remain that way for everyone, him included. “Trust isn’t a factor here, so not particularly, no.”

“Then why are you stressing yourself out for no reason?” There was a glint in his eye, a slight narrowing of them at my lie. He wanted to call bullshit, but wouldn’t. It would all come out in the end. It always did with him.

“Because this is what was expected of me,” I replied, motioning to the rustic-looking room adorned with wooden planked walls and ceilings and trinkets from God knows where. “This is what Prescott wanted. He didn’t have help, he simplydid.”

“How do you know this is what Prescott wanted? All he said was to take care of the place. And he did have help—he had the two of you.”

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