Seventeen

seventeen

Zhen

Every man in a relationship knows what I’m talking about when I say if your beautiful, amazing partner sat down and won’t look at you, won’t speak, and there was nothing on her face at all—I’m talking no expression whatsoever—then you might as well pick your grave plot, brother, because you were on the extinct species list.

There was a smidgeon of a chance that my wife wasn’t completely done plotting out my funeral arrangements, and I’d somehow be able to smooth this over, but it was, like, a five percent possibility.

So, of course, I just went for it.

We’d met back up at the gas station-slash-mercantile store, mostly because we were all starving after being up all night and it was the only place nearby that sold food. I ordered something hot for me and Kris, then sat next to her at the back patio table. It had stopped raining, so it was safe to be out here. I mean, we were still wet, so even sitting on a wet bench wasn’t going to do much.

She stared dead ahead as I settled in next to her. Her eyes didn’t even so much as twitch. Now, any sane, normal man would approach this situation with caution. But I was the brawny twin, not the brainy one, so I jumped right in.

My death would absolutely happen because of me saying things at the wrong time. Likely sarcastic things.

I slid an arm around her waist and tried canoodling. “Hi, honey, you doing okay?”

Her eyes cut toward me. There was enough ice in those grey eyes of hers to refill the Arctic.

“You broke your ankle again, didn’t you?”

Granted, I’d been limping like crazy on it, so I could see why she thought that. “No, sweetheart, I swear I didn’t.”

“You’re limping.”

“I may have bruised it—”

“And you didn’t say a word to me.”

“I didn’t realize how bad it was at first—”

“And you still didn’t say a word to me.”

Someone, anyone, help. I was sinking fast over here. “I’ll buy you pretty danmei books.”

She finally turned her head to look at me straight on. This was not a sign of improvement. There was a funeral dirge going on behind her furious expression.

“Joseph Zhen Barre.”

Fuck. I was in trouble.

“We are out here in monster-infested woods , with a hastily put together raiding party, no idea where the enemy is, and our best tank is now injured with a foot he shouldn’t be using for the next week. At least. And you think buying me books will somehow solve this problem?”

Dammit, buying her books was supposed to get me back in her good graces. Kris, unfortunately, made several good points, though, which made it hard for me to calm her down.

My mouth chose this moment to operate without my brain. “It’s really sexy when you use gamer terms, did I ever tell you that?”

I honest-to-god flinched at the look in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a very small voice. Mostly because she scared the living crap out of me just then.

“Zhen. We share a bed. Remember this.”

I started praying for me. Only prayers could help me now.

“How many other monsters are in these damn mountains that we can run afoul of while trying to hunt down the Raven Mocker?”

“Uh. To be honest, that’s a great question I have no answer to.”

She huffed out a breath and abruptly stood.

I stood with her on instinct.

“ Sit your ass down .”

I sat down just as quickly.

“I will get the food.” Kris glared at me, her words promising pain upon disobedience. “You will keep off that leg.”

I knew better than to argue. I was reckless, sure, but not suicidal.

Kris passed Jake in the doorway, and he gave a low, almost soundless whistle as he joined me at the table, his food in one hand and something wrapped up in a towel in his other.

“Here. Ice bag.”

“Thanks, man.” I already had my bad foot propped up on another chair, so I put the ice bag on it immediately. Kris had given me medicine earlier—she carried both painkillers and an anti-inflammatory in her purse, which made me wonder what else she had in there—so my leg wasn’t absolutely throbbing. But the ice did make it feel a little better.

“So, uh”—Jake threw a glance at the closed door—“on a scale of one to ten, one being she wants to strangle you, ten being she’s got your grave all planned out, how much trouble you in?”

“I’m going to give that a solid nine point nine.”

“Kinda what I figured. You really should have said something, Zhen.”

This time I sulked. How many times did I have to say this? “I really didn’t realize it was that bad at first.”

“I’m curious, do your pain receptors even work properly?”

“Rude.” Probably a good question, but still rude.

Jake popped a bite of biscuit into his mouth, brown eyes twinkling with laughter. “I’m just asking ’cause last case, you were still trying to fight even with your ankle broken.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use my past faults against me.”

“Why? Not like you matured any in the past two months.”

I pretended to swoon. “How dare you! Where is my fainting couch? I must fan myself and clutch my pearls.”

Jake snorted and kept eating his breakfast.

My wife and Joe showed up, both with food in hand, and she set mine in front of me without fanfare before resuming her seat. Kris gave Joe no time at all before asking her questions.

“Joe. How many monsters live in these mountains?”

Joe paused with his sausage biscuit halfway to his mouth. “Um. A lot…?”

I internally groaned. Joe, dammit, couldn’t you be honest without being completely honest?

My wife’s expression changed infinitesimally. It took me a second to realize that underneath all the anger was something else—fear.

In that split second, I felt like an absolute ass. I kept forgetting she wasn’t used to any of this because she was handling everything else about the job so well. Hell, she hadn’t even gotten a chance to really train for this. I’d been trying my best to keep her out of the direct line of fire, but I hadn’t done a very good job of it. Granted, I’d not had a lot of choice—I’d tried going by myself and the damn bond had snapped me back to her. Still, if the choice had been going with her or not going at all, I should have chosen not going at all. Especially with my foot twinging.

Oh shit. The bond. She’d already been a bit stressed, and the bond hadn’t been entirely happy with me. Other than the hug, we hadn’t had time to appease it, either. What was the bond doing on her end now? I couldn’t imagine it was happy with her. That alone would keep her in a state of agitation. Couple that with the fear from last night, almost being snatched by the Raven Mocker, and the adrenaline crash that was incoming, and it was no wonder she was so mad. This coupled with my own fear of her being snatched, and all the trauma that came with past experience of EFTs, and that was a lot of unhappy emotions churning in my gut. Enough to feel sick over. I had put myself and her in danger when common sense said not to. Granted, my common sense was about as sensitive as my pain receptors some days, but for Kris’s sake, I really needed to step up my game here.

Now I felt more than guilty. I’d been very bad, and I kicked myself a few times for it. Poor Kris. I really owed her massive apologies and books over last night. I was also mad as hell at the bond. It had forced our hands to make a decision that had been detrimental to us both, in the end. If I could take this thing out and hack it into a million pieces, I would do so in this moment.

All right, me, for once let’s fight smarter not harder. Clearly this was the time for it.

I took the question more seriously for her sake. “Joe, I think what she’s really asking is, what else are we likely to run into?”

“Honestly, we shouldn’t have run into that Smoke Wolf,” Joe answered with a long sigh, putting his biscuit down for a second. “Not the right season for them, or even the right area. They shouldn’t have been this close to town. As the crow flies, we’d only been about two miles from town when we fought that thing.”

“Shiiiiit,” I breathed, realization hitting. I hadn’t noticed because it had taken a while to get back to the Jeep. My sense of direction had gotten a bit skewed with all of the rain, darkness, and fighting.

“Smoke Wolves don’t engage unless you’re on their territory,” Joe continued, face drawn into a troubled frown. “And this one wasn’t on its territory. Have a feeling the Raven Mockers may have driven it out.”

Kris stirred uneasily next to me. “So, really, you can’t anticipate what else will come at us.”

“Not at this point. I said this before, but now I’m more sure—I believe we’re dealing with a nesting pair. For one thing, the Raven we fought wasn’t an adolescent. For another, its wings were fine, and we know one of the Ravens has a hurt wing.”

Shit, he was right.

“So, odds are very good we’ve got a nesting pair up here, which ain’t good. All the more reason for us to find the Mocker and kill it, though. If they’re disrupting the hierarchy of things in this area, it’s going to be a domino effect of monsters being displaced, and there’s only so many directions to go.”

Fighting through a domino of monsters should sound like the best vacation ever, but right now? With my wife already scared and worn out, and me injured? Yeah, this wasn’t great. Part of me wanted to be excited about this, but when I thought over last night and how close Kris had come to being killed, my joy faded fast.

Silence fell at that point. I was too hungry for this talk to kill my appetite, and I was relieved to see Kris was eating, too. Not as much as she usually did, though, so she was clearly perturbed by everything.

With my stomach full, exhaustion started to kick in. We finished breakfast in relative silence and then just naturally broke up, going to our cars. It was way too early in the morning for any kind of planning session, and we’d definitely need one of those to figure out what to do. For now, though, sleep. Sleep was very much called for.

My parting to Joe was “Let’s meet up for dinner.”

“Sure,” he agreed with a tired grunt, then he promptly loaded up in his beat-up old Chevy truck.

Jake drove us back to the cabin. It was quiet and peaceful there, no signs that anything had gone wrong last night. I followed Jake in, pausing when I realized Kris had stopped long enough to give the huodou more peanut butter bones. It was so like her to remember that promise even while she was upset and scared.

I very carefully tested the limits of the bond by trying to ease into another room. Nothing happened, but I did feel like I’d just pushed it to the limit, too. Ugh, great, love being confined to a house’s distance. Love that for me.

I limped my way into the shower because honestly, I was covered in things I’d rather not have caked on my skin and I didn’t want to carry this mess into the bed with me. I was barely in there any time at all when Kris came into the bathroom, too, shedding clothes and throwing them into the wicker hamper in the corner.

Then she paused, looking at me through the glass shower door.

“Normally you’re making funny faces and encouraging me in for sexy shower time.”

Normally, you’re not pissed at me and scared as hell, so… Please note that I did not say that. I knew better. I had no desire to be the first case of death from foot-in-mouth disease.

“Honey, we’re both knackered. Even I have better sense than that.”

My response seemed to satisfy her, somehow, as she got into the shower with me at that point. Then she paused at the back of the shower, looking straight at my foot. Which I’d be the first to admit wasn’t a pretty sight. It was basically one big bruise from shin to past my ankle. It was mottled with black and purple, visibly swollen, and I wasn’t putting any weight on it, balancing on one foot and a hand because ouchy.

Tears welled up in her eyes. “You fought in that condition?”

Uh-oh. I could see her reliving the battle in her mind’s eye and remembering all of those moves I did. Yeah, I’d been in pain while doing it, but it was better than being dead. Or having my wife or friend die. Priorities, y’know?

Right now, though, seeing how upset Kris was, I felt like a bastard all over again.

“It’s really not as bad as it looks,” I promised her.

She didn’t argue. She came in closer and hugged me tightly. “Do you even feel pain?”

“Dammit.” I sighed, hugging her back. Her skin felt strangely clammy to me. Then again, she’d spent a night out in the rain getting soaking wet, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. “First my friend, now my wife. Am I really that bad?”

“Yes.”

“Ouch.”

Her arms tightened around my waist even harder, head buried against my shoulder. “Please, please don’t do this again.”

I felt something that wasn’t the water spraying against my chest. It took me a second to realize she was crying, and honestly, I would’ve rather fought the Smoke Wolf again with a broken ankle than see my wife crying and upset. Especially because of something I had done.

I thought of explaining to her that I wasn’t used to being cautious. That sometimes, being a little reckless was actually the safest path. But it sounded like an excuse even in my own head. What she needed from me right then wasn’t an argument, or justification, but assurance. A promise to do better.

I smoothed a hand up and down her spine and pressed a kiss against her temple. Partially to reassure, partially to buy me a second to think. I didn’t want to make a promise to her that I couldn’t very well keep.

“ Lǎo pó , I promise you I will not push myself again unless it’s absolutely necessary.” That much I could confidently say. “I promise you, too, I won’t put you in that kind of danger again. If we do fight, you’ll have the strongest protections I can muster.”

Her tense grip around my waist eased a little. She sniffled some before lifting her head, her red-rimmed eyes searching mine.

“You mean that.”

“I do.” I used one thumb to wipe a tear away as it fell. My heart felt like someone had punched a fist into it and then twisted. “Truly, I’m sorry. If I ever misjudge the situation again, and you feel like it’s going to be a repeat of last night, feel free to hit me.”

“I will hold you to that,” she warned me. She attempted something that may have been a wan smile, but it was so fleeting it was hard to tell.

“How is your bond doing? I’m sorry we couldn’t cuddle it out earlier.”

“It’s a little jittery but steadying out now.”

I breathed a little easier, feeling like I had forgiveness. Look at us being adults and talking things out. I felt like I could tease her a little now, try to jostle her out of this mood so she’d sleep better. And, y’know, not murder me in my sleep. “I know you love to read those Am I The Asshole Reddit posts, so…are you going to write one now?”

She pursed her lips, and I saw a spark of mischief come back to life in her eyes. “Am I the asshole for wanting to murder my husband after he took us on an all-night hike through monster-infested woods while he was injured?”

“Awww, honey, that’s mean.”

“It’s got a great ring to it. Who knows, it might go viral.” She grinned at me this time—the naughty grin I loved but right now feared.

I should have kept my mouth shut.