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There was something miraculous, Exton decided, about watching Aerie sleep.
His comm had beeped a few times, waking him, but after checking the time, he ignored the messages for a few moments of peace with the woman he loved, and the one who loved him back.
She hadn’t slept well, obviously disturbed by nightmares, but when he curled her against him during the night, she calmed down. It reminded him of the night they shared on the Perdition, and he wasn’t surprised to wake up with her bedcover on the floor. The warmth between them was more than enough to shutter out the cold.
Exton looked down at her now, the soft glow of the early morning hours lending a gentle light to her features. Her golden red hair was loose, splayed out across the pillows, her breathing was gentle and easy, and her mouth had fallen open during the night.
The comm beeped again, and Exton knew he didn’t have much longer before the rest of the world demanded that his attention be torn from her.
How can she not know she is mine? Exton wondered. She belongs to me.
Knowing the truth about her parents was no small matter, but Exton had a feeling Aerie was still unable to admit she wanted her parents’ love and acceptance as much as she wanted his. Suddenly finding out the truth about her mother leaving them, and her father, would have shocked her. He’d known previously of her devotion to her mother, and, having grown up watching Emery toddle after their own mother, he even understood it.
And for all the evil St. Cloud had done in the name of the URS, Exton knew he was a man who kept his word, and that someone like Aerie would want his esteem.
He’d wanted that himself, not too many years before.
Exton sighed ruefully as he carefully untangled himself from her, before he stumbled out of the small bed. He tucked in the fallen cover around her, to keep in the warmth. He brushed a couple tresses back from her face, placing them behind her ear.
“Exton?” she murmured, and he paused.
“Wait for me, my love,” he whispered beside her, giving her a kiss on the forehead before he left the room and headed down the hall.
Exton was just about to respond to his comm when he stopped. Standing before him, glaring down at him, was Brock.
“What are you doing here?” Exton asked. He suddenly felt a lot better about setting the lock on Aerie’s door. He didn’t want her to be subjected to Brock’s surly attitude this early in the morning.
“I could ask you the same question,” Brock bit back.
Good to know where I stand with him, at least. Exton crossed his arms over his chest. “I know my way around Petra,” he said. “I was just checking to see if you were lost or not. Nothing else.”
Brock’s hands clenched into fists. “You were with Aerie, weren’t you?”
Exton felt the heat rise from around his collar, but he said nothing.
“If you really love her, you should let her go,” Brock told him.
“If I said that to you, you would be ready to punch me.” Exton glanced down at Brock’s fists. “Not that you’re not ready now.”
Brock gave him a reluctant smirk. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? It’s such a shame you can’t see what’s right in front of your face.”
“If that’s a threat—”
Brock grunted. “It doesn’t have to come from me,” he said. “The whole nation of the URS wants you dead. You think you’re smart enough to outrun them forever?”
“I just have to outrun them longer than they outrun me,” Exton replied. “That’s the way the game is played, isn’t it? Anything for survival.”
“You’re going to get her killed,” Brock said, pushing on, ignoring the attempts that challenged his reasoning.
Exton refused to let Brock make him doubt he was doing the right thing, but he had to admit he had already caused Aerie a great amount of pain.
An amount of pain, he thought bitterly, that Brock had been able to save her from. In the end, Exton knew Brock was his rival for Aerie’s affections, but their goal was the same. They both wanted her to be safe. And if that was the only common ground they had between them, he could find a way to respect Brock.
Of course, respecting someone doesn’t mean I have to like him.
“What would you have me do?” Exton asked.
“You should let her go somewhere else.”
“Aerie has been able to walk away from me for some time,” Exton said evenly. “She has a right to refuse me, too. But she doesn’t. She wants to stay with me, and I want to be with her.”
“She’s not yours,” Brock hissed. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll bet anything she didn’t tell you about our kiss on the cargo ship.”
Surprise briefly fluttered through him, but Exton remained calm. No, she didn’t, Exton thought, but she didn’t tell you about me, either.
If Brock thought he would get away with creating division between him and Aerie, he was a fool.
“You should give her the choice.”
“You don’t really mean that.” Exton frowned. “What you really mean is that you want her to choose you.”
Brock’s eyes darkened as he scowled.
Exton stood his ground. “Like it or not, she is mine, and she has been mine since she was captured and brought onto the Perdition.”
“She was supposed to be mine!” Brock yelled. “I was the one who rescued her from the Reeducation Center. I was the one who took care of her after she was injured.”
“You mean after St. Cloud injected her with Memory Serum?” Exton asked. “So she’d forget all about me and the Perdition?”
“I didn’t know about that.” Brock faltered only slightly. “But I still looked after her. When we were in school, I helped her train and made sure I earned her unit director’s respect so he would approve of me.”
“I know she considers you a friend.”
“I was her only friend in the URS.”
“If you are her friend, then you should be glad she’s here,” Exton pointed out. “She’s been named an enemy of the State. I might be on their enemy list, but now she is, too. She might be in enemy territory, but they don’t know about Petra.”
Outside of St. Cloud, he added silently to himself.
“If you don’t think they know about this place, you’re crazy. They will find you, eventually,” Brock said. “And then Aerie will die if you don’t let her go.” He turned on his heel and stormed away.
Exton felt his suspicion deepen as he considered Brock’s warning. Did Osgood know about Petra? Exton wasn’t sure, but there was the question of where Brock had been planning on taking Aerie once he’d freed her. Where else would he go, but Petra, especially with a cargo ship like the one he’d taken?
But then, how did Brock know about Petra anyway?
Either way, he did save Aerie, and I owe him for that.
“Brock,” Exton called out to him. “You are welcome here, since you have no other place to go, and because even though you hate me, I am grateful for how you helped Aerie escape the URS.”
Brock whirled around. “I can go anywhere I want,” he said. “But I’m not leaving without Aerie.”
“She’s staying here.”
“We’ll see about that,” Brock snapped.
“I suppose you can think that you can leave at any time,” Exton remarked, “but I know the punishment for betraying the URS, and even you don’t deserve to pay that price.”
Brock fumed even more, but he said nothing as he stared murderously at Exton.
“I think it’s fair to give you a warning,” Exton said. “I’ll be monitoring you. I won’t have you hurting my community, Aerie included.”
“How is this place any different from the URS then, if that is the case?” Brock grumbled.
Exton didn’t get a chance to answer as Brock walked away.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned to see Emery. “If you want, I can get see about arranging that transport for him.”
“I’m tempted to let you,” Exton muttered. “But I don’t want to risk Aerie’s wrath. And I don’t think you should, either.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Emery said with a small smile.
“What are you doing up?” he asked. “Did your comm go off, too?”
“I was the one who contacted you,” Emery said. “When you didn’t answer, I thought I would come get you.”
“Something wrong?”
“Henry’s got an update for us,” she said. “The Perdition has been working to find and locate the different Craftcarriers, now that we have some more intel on them. One of them just went off course.”
“Headed toward Petra?”
She grimaced. “It looks like its headed for the area where the cargo ship crashed,” she said, “but we’re not sure.”
Exton felt a familiar, unwelcome feeling. “What else is happening?”
“What do you mean?”
“What else is happening around the URS capital and their bases? If we can check their movements, we might be able to get a better idea of what they’re planning.”
“I don’t know,” Emery admitted. “But I’ll have Henry and the others check.”
“We’ll have them check,” Exton said, as he headed down the hall with her.
“Henry said that there are a few shuttles from the Perdition that will be making rounds to Chaya and here.”
“Delay their arrival here,” Exton ordered. “I don’t want anything coming here until we see what the Craftcarrier is up to.”
“You think an attack is coming, then?” Emery asked. Her eyes were worried.
Exton knew it was not the time to lie to her. “There’s a good chance,” he said. “St. Cloud told me that he wouldn’t tell Osgood about Petra if we returned Aerie. He could still attack us, but now we have the added pleasure of her brothers and her sister here. It can’t be a coincidence.”
“I can’t believe he would really attack with all of them here.”
“Loyalty to the State is everything, Em,” Exton reminded her. “St. Cloud shot up a Redbird at the Perdition. He allowed the SBD Heatseekers to launch, while Aerie was onboard, no less. He signed the arrest warrant for Aerie to be assigned to the Reeducation Center. Merra faked her own death to escape him. What further proof do you need to know he’s a ruthless, sociopathic monster only loyal to the URS?”
“I guess you have a point,” Emery said with a sigh.
“There’s also the not-so-small matter of how he killed our father,” Exton continued, barely registering that Emery had agreed with him. “And now, our brainwashed friend Gerard is in third command of the entire country, and he was responsible for Aerie’s torture—”
Emery’s gasp pulled Exton out of his tirade. He took one look at her face and realized he was losing control of himself. He cleared his throat as he mentally berated himself.
I’ll have to work on that. I can’t let St. Cloud get to me. That’s how Aerie got into trouble the first time.
“Sorry, Em,” he muttered.
“Meredith will be so sad.”
“She saw it, apparently.”
“I didn’t know that.” Emery’s face crumbled. “She must know that we’ll likely have to kill him. I was worried about that.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” Exton said. “I know she was in love with him before, and they were going to get married, but she has to see that the man she loved is gone.”
“She’ll be devastated, but she’ll understand. In time.” Emery glanced up at him. “What are the chances we can capture him and bring him here?”
“I thought about that. I’m not sure we would be able to cure him at all,” Exton said. “Just having him here could be dangerous to others.”
“I guess so. Maybe there’s a chance he’ll remember who he is, especially if he’s away from the URS.”
“I hope so.” Exton sighed. “I’d hate to hurt Meredith, especially after Tyler and I promised her we would try to save him. If she’s been content to work at the Reeducation Center just to be near him all these years, she’ll probably need a lot more time to recover than we have.”
“We’ll have to give her all we can,” Emery said. “She’s Tyler’s sister.”
Exton nodded. We’ll find a way to make it work out.
They entered into a command hub, and Patty glanced up from over a console. “Hey, kids,” she called. “Early day?”
“Henry just contacted me,” Emery said. “We’ve got a problem.”
“And possibly a big one, too, by the looks of it,” Exton said.
Patty picked up her large container. “Thank God we have coffee then. Tell me what’s wrong.”