Page 9 of Ashes of Honor

Abel’s dark brown eyes kept steady on the ground. Meek in appearance, but the lack of softness behind his gaze reflected zero regrets. I groaned, unsheathing the small blade at my side.

“Out of The Ring, Riley,” I grumbled, wanting a real fight and not the exhausted one he’d be able to provide.

He didn’t budge. Instead Alexiares stepped between us. Messy brown hair fell over his narrow eyes. “What’s the problem?” Alexiares asked.

“Fine.” I huffed, raising my knife in his face. “Then don’t.”

The lean on my right leg gave me away. Alexiares was quick. His arm latched on to my shoulder out of reflex. I looped my free arm around at the cusp of his elbow and put all my weight into my left leg. Leaning back, I kicked out, meeting Riley quickly in the chest and then under his chin. The movements weren’t full force, but enough to let them know I wasn’t fucking around. I needed to exert this energy and if they couldn’t handle that, then they needed to step out. Now.

Riley fell back at the impact. The point of our spars was to simulate. Getting rid of frustration or not, they were always a lesson. You fell as the opponent would fall and you figured out whattheywould do to get out of it. Alexiares went for the knockdown, but I turned it on him, using his own move as leverage. With Riley down, I put all my strength into putting Alexiares on his ass. After a punch to his temple, he tapped my wrist in mercy.

I let them up to catch their breath, circling them like a shark in murky waters. “Sloan’s dead.”

“The fuck …” Alexiares said, a hint of sadness in his tone. They’d never truly warmed up to each other, but he respected her—who she was when we left.

“Abel,” Riley growled, his hand resting on his lower back as he feigned injury. I knew Riley. He had no tells but pretending to have one. It was how he blended in. The more programmed, disciplined side of him would never let him show weakness.

“He saw it,” I said, deciding to take Alexiares head-on instead. He was watching me watch Riley, unsuspectingly. It was a ploy. Alexiares was always ready. Always on guard.My Bloodhound. I walked toward him with a smirk, watching his arm steady on my shoulder again. “Months ago.”

Alexiares whistled, a dare in his brown eyes as I tossed an elbow, freeing myself from his grasp. It was back up in the blink of an eye, aiming for his nose. He dodged it with a cackle. “That’s a tough hole to dig yourself out of, Abel. She is 100 percent pretending this is you right now.”

I turned on my heels, tossing out a kick to the torso. He caught it, throwing me against the ground in rag doll fashion. Mental gymnastics whirred in my mind, a tangled equation, as I debated dropping the knife. I reached above me for something to grasp onto. I found his ankles, but not before Riley pounced.

Sliding across the floor, the boys gave it their best shot. But they were no match for anUmbra Mortis. I kicked out to escape Riley’s hold, using the momentum to twist toward Alexiares’s thighs. He released me and I set myself on Riley, wrapping myself around his neck with my legs.

Abel kept to the corner of The Ring, his head now held high. I could hear his gulp from here. “No hole to dig. I had no choice, man.”

I scrambled for my knife off to the side, keeping my eyes on Alexiares, who had decided to circlemeas his prey.

“I’m sure you acted within reason,” Riley gasped out definitively, struggling from the force of my locked legs.

I found the knife, throwing it toward Alexiares, who was attempting to approach from the side. It grazed his ear, drawing the thinnest line of red. A drop of blood pooled, glistening in the hot sun of the approaching Monterey summer.

“In front of everyone?” he asked with an arrogant, lustful smirk. Alexiares was taunting me, letting me get this anger out. This insane amount of rage that continued to simmer within a never-ending well of pain. Of sorrow.

“You know this to be fact?” Riley asked, tapping out gently against my thigh.

Alexiares stopped his stalking approach at the sight of something behind me. I let Riley find oxygen and pushed myself off the ground to see what gave him pause. Moe strode toward us, her long raven hair tied into a loose braid. There was color in her tawny skin, though the dark circles under her eyes were a dead giveaway to her current mental state.

She slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans and took in the scene. “Oh. She knows?”

I held in a calming sip of air. She was about to be the next person down in this ring if I couldn’t channel any more patience. I was sucked dry of it from these past weeks.

“You too?” I questioned in disbelief.

“I told you to take your time with your goodbyes,” she answered dryly. “That’s all I was at liberty to say.”

She didn’t need to defend herself and, honestly, neither did Abel. Anger was pointless when we had rules in place for a reason. I’d been gung ho on following them up till now. With everything else spiraling out of control, an emotional response to Sloan’s death was the only thing I was capable of. One moment to react, tofeel,before I had to put my responsibilities and priorities first again. I sighed. “What do you need, Tomoe?”

“I think Seth was the leak for the bunker—how Ronan knew you tortured the guy. Probably for other things, too. I’ve been searching my memories like you asked. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Alexiares

Amaia was gone by the time I woke up. She hadn’t been anywhere in our quarters, at Riley’s or The Kitchens. Given the time, that only left one place. A groan sounded as Amaia rounded the corner and spotted me perched in a tree. Getting rid of the maze Riley crafted for battle was pointless. Still shielding us from any incoming Pansies and soldiers alike, we’d only sought to enhance it, changing up the patterns of trees every few days. Amaia had taken to running a half marathon each morning, scouting the areas that had succumbed to bloodshed. I’d been there each night as she silently cried. Theonly indication of grief being the soft shaking of wherever we’d laid our heads that night.

When she did sleep, she tossed and turned, the whispers in her sleep betraying the words she wouldn’t ever ‘burden’ the rest of us with during the light of day. Monterey had been a place of peace for her. She’d created the world she had always wanted to see, brick by brick. Cobblestone by cobblestone. No part of her self-proclaimed haven remained.

So instead, she tortured herself. Forced herself to retrace the steps of her fallen soldiers every day as a reminder to stay focused on what she was fighting for—why she kept going. Security to prevent her from reaching for the bottle now that times had gotten hard. Harder than they were before, that is.

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