Page 24 of The Scars Within
“I’m sorry, Wylder. We don’t have a choice in the matter,” said another voice I couldn’t pinpoint.
“Noemi is not going to approve of this,” Rhodes snapped, growing more enraged by the second.
“Your dragon will have to get on board. This mission is not something to take lightly.”
A long pause followed.
“Fine,” Rhodes finally murmured.
“You are the only cadet we trust for this job, Wylder. Do not disappoint us.”
I heard boots shuffling on the concrete. Shit. I have two options: stay hidden or run down the stairs. The footsteps were close enough that neither option allowed me enough time to escape unnoticed.
The door swung open, and I stopped breathing. The man who stepped through had a grimace so evil it made me want to cower against the dark corner I was pressed into.
“Thorne!” Rhodes called from the rooftop.
I almost replied, but the man in front of me spoke first.
“That’s Captain Thorne to you, Wylder,” he snapped over his shoulder.
It couldn’t be. But it was.
Thorne.
A rare surname, one that lingered like a shadow in the back of my mind for years. I didn’t know much about my father, but I knew this: Thorne had no living relatives, not after his family was wiped out in the war effort. Which could only mean one thing.
I was face to face with my father.
The man who had walked out of my life without a second glance.
I had imagined this moment countless times, every possible scenario playing out in vivid daydreams. Some days, I planned to unleash the fury I had bottled up for years, to throw every ounce of anger in his face, to remind him just how thoroughly he’d failed as a human being. On others, I thought I’d let the deep ache show, let him see the pain etched into my soul that he had carved there. And then there were the days I wanted to rob him of satisfaction altogether, to make him think his absence hadn’t affected me in the slightest.
But all my plans went out the window the second I realized who stood before me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could do was take in every detail of his appearance. He was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing his military uniform, which did little to hide his apparent muscles. His eyes were a deep ocean blue, and his dark hair was trimmed close to his scalp. He was nothing like I had pictured in my mind.
“How much did you hear, cadet?” the captain asked. Myfatherasked.
“N-nothing,” I stuttered.
“Keep it that way,” he growled, walking right past me as if he didn’t recognize me.
He didn’t recognize me. He didn’t recognize me because he had left when I was just a babe. How would he know what I had grown to look like?
I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths. The significant encounter I had planned as a child was nothing more than one stranger coming across another.
It was nothing.
I was nothing.
Nothing to him.
“Next time, how about you try not to interrupt a conversation that doesn’t involve you?” Rhodes snapped.
I opened my eyes to see him standing just outside the cracked-open door, arms crossed, burning a hole through me. His stone-cold expression didn’t soften as he let out an exhale. He lifted his chin, looked towards the descending stairwell, and then back at me. I noticed his right pointer finger tapping on his upper arm.
I started to step backward down the stairs.
“Thorn in my side,” Rhodes tsked, shaking his head.
