Cramming into the undersized hospital room, Helen, Tyler, Sef, Grayson, Pascal, Ron, and Tiberius line the walls in various states of discomfort. I stand on the opposite side of Verando as Sef contemplates what I dare ask her for, my gaze lingering on the tangled, messy twists of hair that he'd dragged into order with his fingers. My fingers twitch, but I keep my hands to myself.  

Healing my warlord wasn't something she had mentally prepared for when I asked for her help, but I'd feared that if I told her the real reason for the call, she might not have come. While he was healing quickly, full use of his hand would be ideal. The way the knife had been inserted had severed the tendons between the middle and ring finger; leaving that to chance seemed unwise.

That left us with our only option in Sef. Judging by the look on his face, Verando wasn't too excited about the prospect of kissing her either. 

"I think this should motivate you to stop using kissing as your only means of healing; you don't know what kind of diseases people have, let alone the personal nature of something like a kiss," I tell her bluntly. 

His less-than-friendly expression and size were rightfully intimidating to someone as seemingly sheltered as Sef. Next to the slim Native American woman, he lumbered like a menacing force, and his reputation in the Dead City was all too fresh. With Grayson and Pascal feeding the rumors of his brutality and his lack of denial, Sef was visibly pale at the prospect. 

"I just.. didn't anticipate..." Sef stammers, standing before the seated lycan with a growing blush overcoming her deep skin tone. 

"You kiss women, but this is an issue? You should be thrilled, he's pretty famous." Tiberius snickers, earning an elbow from Pascal. 

"Maybe it's because she finds him attractive." Grayson teases, and Pascal pinches the bridge of her nose in quiet shame for her brother's lack of respect. It was well known that my presence pettered down his temper; the twin felt comfortable enough in that logic to tempt fate.

"Do you forget who signs your paycheck?" She hisses. "This time you get the bullet."

Sef takes the gray-haired man's face in her hands, his jaw tightens with restraint, defying the urge to reject her touch. Something twists in the pit of my stomach; his discomfort is not foreign to me. I would struggle with it as well, and I didn't need to think about anyone else touching what was mine, let alone kissing him. Despite possessing the man's soul, I do get a sick satisfaction from seeing just how offended he is by the idea. 

"It doesn't take much involvement on your part, but the more in-depth the kiss, the quicker you will heal." Sef frowns, folding her hands in front of her skirt.  "Is that-"

"Let's get on with it." He retorts dryly.

She wasn't much taller than me, so sitting before her remained the best option. Taking his hand in hers, she inspects the injury, explaining that she needed to visualize what it was she was intending to heal. Gathering his face in her hands, the disapproving nature of the knitted eyebrows and hard light eyes makes her flush an impossibly darker shade. 

The kiss is short; I remember that from my own lip lock with the woman, though it was more involved than a peck on the lips. She tilts her head, only to suddenly break the kiss, breathless as she touches her lips. 

"Forget about the canines?" Verando flexes his fingers, quietly approving, as he stands.

"Hardly fangs." Tiberius chuckles. "Are they actually sharp?"

Retreating to Tyler's side, Sef seemed relieved to be away from the inferno that was an annoyed male lycan, unwilling to answer any of the Siren's probing. I can attest that, while they don't look pointed like a vampire, they still pierce skin. It was something I'd hardly considered when I kissed him, as my time with demi-dragons had gotten me used to a less-than-mortal lover.  

"Stick around and you might find out, Siren," Verando mutters, taking possession of the offered button-up from Ron. 

"Hush," I warn him, ignoring the sharp glare he shoots in my direction. "Be nice, she just saved you weeks of healing. Sef, I appreciate you doing this. We will work on expanding it to other areas of your body. I'd assume you're properly motivated now." 

It produces another chuckle from Tiberius, pleased to be involved. The Siren loved to remind us just how much entertainment we provided. Much as he wished to convey that he was, at the very least, neutral to our cause, I continued to struggle with his presence. With a heavy exhale, I turn to address the small group.

 "As you all know, Red made a move last night that resulted in the loss of a valued family member. Marisol succumbed to her injuries, but we were finally able to stop her, and there has to be a moment of victory in that." Verando and I had agreed that we could mourn later, for now, I needed to show them how easily they must move on.

 We were not nearly done burying bodies if this was any indication of how the rest of this attempt would go.

Of all the people I expect my gaze to fall on, Helen ends up capturing my attention with the obvious self-loathing etched so clearly on her face. She has a bandage around her head; her hair is tied back in a messy clip due to its short, self-chopped length. Copious amounts of thick, white bangs fall to frame her face as she bows her head, hands clenched into fists. 

It was shorter than when I last saw her. The woman must have grown frustrated with the length and sliced it off with something blunt, perhaps a knife. I remember her not taking my calls, and now I understand why. While I wonder if her anguish stems from lycan bonds, I can sense my warlord before he speaks.

"What happened?" Verando demands, locking his eyes on her, the heat resonating off his body makes me shudder.

Helen shrinks back momentarily as Tyler puts his arm around her to reassure her; the whiplash effect of the pair was unsettling. "I..." But the excuses aren't coming, Helen shrugs Tyler off, standing before the former Alpha with the blood of his ex-lover on her hands. "I failed. I don't know what happened. I was looking ahead like you taught me-- Everything went black; someone must have hit me over the head."

"She had a concussion," Tyler explains for her—an innocent fawn with her bunny best friend, standing before the lion. 

I want to tell Tyler to stay silent, that interfering in lycan politics would only make things worse for Helen, but my own interjection was not welcome.

"Someone must have?" Verando insists, disappointment thick in his tone. "So you don't know, because you have not investigated your own shortcomings? You come in here with no answers, with nothing but shame, as if that will atone for what's happened? Who was watching you, Helen?" His tone is sharp. 

He wants the only thing that can give his calculated mind any peace- answers. 

Silence responds; everyone exchanges awkward glances, and it becomes obvious where our newly appointed leaders have their shortcomings. They are horrendously undertrained and underprepared; they hold no loyalty, no honor, and no one wishes to lay down on the pyre for a woman they didn't know.

Dragging his tongue over his teeth, Verando mutters to himself in quiet disgust. My warlord was an odd man in his anger; the lower the tone, the deeper the rage.  Rarely ever had I seen him yell, and yet on the day after the death of the only woman he had loved, I could sense the desire to lose it. 

"You are only as strong as your weakest link. If you can't tell me what happened, then what use do I have for any of you--"

Finally, Pascal steps out of line. "In our defense-"

"Excuses are for the dead; I want answers. I want you to tell me where the hell you were, where any of you were." 

It takes me back to those days on the road, trying to convince rebel soldiers that we stood a chance in the march against Ziduri. My body breaks into a cold sweat. I wipe at the nape of my neck before crossing my arms over my chest.

In their efforts to look for Red, nobody kept an eye on the man who slipped into the night the easiest. If they had tailed him more effectively, we would have reached him sooner. Marisol might still be alive.

The hindsight after the battle was almost more excruciating than the battle itself; mortal lives love to get caught up in the semantics. Details missed always meant lives lost.

"Marisol is dead. Do any of you comprehend that?" Verando demands."Do you understand that she is gone? She is never coming back, and that lies squarely on all of us. This was entirely preventable, this was a gaping hole in our defence, and it was so obvious that we had been instantly had." 

They don't know how to handle him; even the Siren shrinks back, guiding Sef out of the danger of these arctic eyes bearing down on the group. My electro-charged admirer finally emits a hardy laugh that only succeeds in raising the temperature of my companion. If the man had a death wish, he was thoroughly signing the documentation.  

"We've had very little training! What did you expect?" Grayson retorts through gritted teeth. "This never would have happened if you had stayed in the Dead City with us. You can't expect us--"

Verando responds with a look of almost bewilderment that causes the younger man to hesitate, pursing his lips, probably remembering the fate his sister suffered for lashing out. 

I gesture to Tyler to get a handle on his magic users, but Tyler looks just as uncertain as the rest. Grayson's retort had an effect, planting the first seed of doubt; examples must be made, and limits must be set. They were our in-command patrons; we could not afford a lapse in loyalty. 

"You're right, you're not soldiers, not a one of you. But the majority of men who die for good causes aren't either." Verando insists, to my surprise, it is Pascal who looks to be in the most agreement. "This is life and death; we are it. When the world goes to shit, we are the last ones standing to protect those who live in ignorance.

Training is something that must come with your will to survive; there are those who achieve and those who die on the forest floor for the rest of us to trip over. It is time to acknowledge that this is a bloody death march if that is what you allow it to be. You have more comforts, more knowledge, more ability at your fingertips than either of us, and you're squandering it with this helplessness that is frankly disgusting.

You are a bunch of lazy, sorry fledglings, unable to comprehend that your own incompetence caused the death of someone that I loved dearly. Wake the fuck up, people. We are in the middle of an active war zone, like it or not. And none of you look tired enough to have put in any effort at that rally."

Washing his hands of them, I interject, pursing my lips in quiet disapproval for the lackluster pep talk. "We have two short weeks before Verando and I have to go to France, and then you will be on your own to defend this city. You will be the last thing standing between these people and all that wishes to see us fail. Where there is dark magic like this, there are far more evil things than Red lurking beyond the borders." 

It doesn't surprise me that we aren't met with a battle cry and lifted spirits. What remains after our failure is dwindling morale and sullen faces. These were not warriors; they were not the same as the people we had fought alongside so many years ago. They had had centuries under the boot of learned helplessness, and to fathom taking on something like we were purposing was more terrifying at each encounter.

It's an unfair expectation, but they are the last frontier. They didn't ask for this, just as we hadn't, yet here we all were. 

"I know you're scared." I attempt. 

Finding the words in the mixed colored tiles on the floor, Tyler seems to pay close attention to them instead of me. It wasn't often I caught Tyler showing any uncertainty; it was no surprise that, all of a sudden, death caused people to worry about their own lives. 

"We are scared. We're exhausted. Nicolas... this was supposed to involve fixing the weather, and you're telling me there are people out there after us? What if we can't do this? We didn't think it would be so difficult. Fix the whole damn country? These roots go too thick. What if we can never cut it out?"

He was the last person I expected to falter. I'm uncertain if it's Helen's injuries that give him pause or the fact that what we were doing continually made her question him. Over and over again, we proved that everyone had a part to play, and that made him uncomfortable. 

Tyler liked being the 'father', the one who had the answers, and he'd messed up.

I had been blessed with motivation, fear, and discomfort; those things spurred the wars of our times, and yet this was a silent killer. The changing climate, however, had not affected them drastically enough to increase their discomfort, and now things were quite acceptable as the weather returned to some normalcy. 

Some people had never even seen the sun; this new world we had created seemed like a good alternative if the old one couldn't be restored.  We were at a stalemate. Why keep pushing when things are okay right now?

 "Because there are those of us who believe the earth didn't get this way by accident. It is up to us to fix this, because children deserve to grow up outside of resperators and my sisters deserve to go to school like normal children, not be banished to the shadows for who they are." Helen hisses, pulling him back towards her as he shrugs out of her grasp, upset with her just as she is with him. "We will improve. We will keep pushing. We can do this." Helen assures us.

"How much harder can we push? Perhaps we should focus less on this army and more on our contingency plan in case we lose. Like how we'll survive, grow crops in fields that haven't been planted in over a decade, and teach people the importance of recycling. That is what I want to talk about; that is what I signed up for."

"You don't.." Verando responds. His tone was low. "The end of days is upon us. This is the final stand; if you want to back out to catch up on your sleep, then by all means, walk out that door because I do not have time for this. You are wasting what little time we have left on this falsity that we will survive when all this is over.

 We didn't ask to be brought to this point; you brought us here to fix this, and I'm starting to think that Nic and I are better off on our own than dealing with this dead weight. In two weeks, we are leaving for France. Whatever remains here is up to you to decide. You are all dismissed until morning. Collect your people and your lycans, and meet us at the compound tomorrow morning. 

Do not come if you're not prepared to give your life for this, as that may very well be the price." 

Helen shoves Tyler out of her way as she storms out of the room, and the twins follow behind her. 

Tyler waits to leave last, and Ron seems happy to go home. My protege steals a glance at me, a frown deeply placed on his lips. Much to his dismay, I have nothing to say to him, and avert my gaze.

While I'd love nothing more than to use peaceful measures to get out of this, bad people would always exist, and there had to be someone to push back. 

"You people are so interesting...  I must compliment the gods; you two were quite the anomaly. I'll be there bright and early, boys." Tiberius twiddles his fingers as he disappears. Disappointed, the weight of our situation heavy on my shoulders, I sit back on the bed and run a hand through my hair again. 

Verando's seething, his entire body emanating his anger.  I watch as he paces the floor like a caged animal, quick and sharp, as if he were trying to contain the beast inside. I wish I could blink awake and find a different group of soldiers ready with answers, not excuses. 

Releasing these people back to their lives didn't seem like the right decision, nor did pushing for excellence in hopes of producing rewards worth having. I feel as though we're between a rock and a hard place, only this time, we don't have hundreds of obedient lycans at our disposal. 

"They're not ready." I sigh, stating the obvious if for no one else than myself.

"They're kids. I don't know what we expected. I should have done more, I should have put a guard on her."

I make a face. I was just a kid, though I had a good teacher. "There aren't enough of us. There are not enough eyes to operate on this scale against this size of a force. We're running on nothing; it's a wonder something didn't happen sooner. If we're going to enter her hotel, we'll need to do something and fast. Our only chance to catch them off guard." 

Anxious energy flows through me as I move, sliding off the bed, my arms wrap around him to force him to remain still. Resting my cheek on his chest, he fights with the urge to rid himself of me; his body quivers under my fingertips, and I exhale, willing him to let go. 

"How are we going to lead so many people through a heavily armed hotel?"

"We don't; we go in on our own." Verando lays upon me the stress he'd been harboring. He didn't want to sacrifice me, but that seemed our only option. I was the only one he trusted with his life.

At first, I want to be upset by his doom and gloom, but the longer I think about it, the more it makes sense. We were the most experienced and the fastest; with his street sense and my ability to control the elements, it could be a solution. 

"Are you that cocky?" I ask, almost sarcastically.

Shrugging one shoulder, he flashes me my favorite look, though I spot the exhaustion behind those light eyes. 

"I trust you. They can run interference; in my ideal world, I'd go by myself, but I'm not foolish enough to think you'd stay behind or arrogant enough to think you wouldn't be a tremendous help. I want our fate to be in our own hands, not resting on the shoulders of a bored teenager who would rather plant flowers and talk about peace." Taking my hand, he brings my knuckles up to his lips and kisses them lightly. "There is no one else I'd trust my life to; this has to go right. You are the only one I can think of to send on something like this."

Nobody saw me as he did, the man who murdered my parents, and carved me out of my husk so that I could be reborn as someone worth having. Even when I was at my worst, he saw me as someone of value, and I could never thank him enough for that. Gathering his face in my hands, I stretch onto my toes, kissing him. 

"So are we like those men in the movies, now? Sneaking around?" I adjust his shirt; part of me wishes to cope the only way I know how, while the other part wonders how we will ever find a peaceful moment to indulge again. 

How could I take him to bed, knowing what he'd gone through? 

When would it ever be the right time? 

"Is this what it's come to?" I sigh. 

"I'm afraid so. Helen needs to regain some trust before I will put my life into her hands again. They need experience, just as we did with the lycan army. It wasn't comfortable, and things got a bit touch-and-go, but it was good for them. They have to learn how to do this. Once we're gone- we might not be coming back."

He thinks just as I do, prepared for the worst outcome. His arms encircle my waist, holding me against the warmth of his body. Verando's eyebrows pull down in a quiet evaluation of the chill that had settled over me.

Frowning, I shrug, not wanting to delve into what was wrong with me. "I was having some... honestly dreadful.. memories during that speech." I attempt, pressing my lips into a thin line as he strokes my bangs back towards the bulk of my hair. Those full lips part, and I know I haven't derailed him effectively enough. "Enough of this talk... let's go see your son."

Cupping my cheek, he kisses me lightly on the forehead. "Our son."