Chapter 10

Chapter

Ten

April 16 th

12:39 P.M.

"Tuxedos are the worst," Scorpion grumbled as he tried his on.

Although Tank and Tillie were following in his and Beth's footsteps and getting married on the compound, while his wedding had been simple, the guys—including him—had worn jeans and shirts, Beth had worn a stunning white dress but not a wedding dress, Tillie wanted to go all out with the fairytale look. Which meant tuxedos for all the guys, including Andy who was going to be the ringbearer, formal dresses for the girls—in what he had to admit was a beautiful shade of green—and a full-on wedding dress with lace and beads for both the bride and Ruthie the flower girl.

"You'll be eating your words when Jess makes you wear one," Tank grumbled, looking no more pleased about having to wear a tux than any of the others.

Axe didn't mind them. He wasn't a fan, but growing up in a wealthy family meant attending a lot of formal events and wearing a lot of tuxes. From charity fundraisers to weddings, he had to have attended dozens over the years before he finally broke away from his family when they wouldn't accept his choices for his own life.

Scorpion likely made some snappy comeback, but when Axe's phone rang, he diverted his attention to it. Since this was the first time he'd been away from Beth—even if she was only in another building on the compound—since he woke up from his coma and they finally reconnected, they were both a little on edge. They'd already spoken and texted a few times, but he couldn't deny he was anxious to hear her voice again.

"Hey, wisp," he said as he answered the call.

Instead of Beth's voice greeting him, it was Jessica's, and she sounded panicked. Not a good thing considering not much made the former undercover cop panic.

"Axe, you need to get over here, now," Jessica told him without preamble.

He was already moving as he asked, "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Beth just zoned out. Went completely blank, eyes open but vacant, mouth moving but no words coming out. We know she had flashbacks and checked out a couple of days ago so we just kept talking to her, reminding her where she was and that she was okay. It seemed to be working, and we were going to call you and let you know that she was okay, but that you needed to come. Only then …"

"Then what?" he demanded, waving at the guys to follow him and running toward Tank and Tillie's cabin.

"Then she started freaking out." It was clear from Jessica's tone that she was equally as freaked out.

"What do you mean freaking out?" Dread pooled in Axel's stomach. So far, she had coped well with having such horrific memories return, but there were one lot of memories none of them knew about yet. One lot that had triggered her amnesia in the first place.

Those of the eight months she was missing.

A lot could happen in eight months.

While they had, of course, had her completely checked out physically, there had been no explanation for what had caused the healed and mostly healed broken bones or the bruises in various stages of healing littering most of her body. The only one who could provide those answers was Beth herself, and with her amnesia, there was no way she could do that.

Those bruises, those broken bones had haunted him for a year now. As much as he wanted to know what had happened to his wife during those months, he was equally as terrified. Especially of her getting those memories back when he wasn't there beside her.

"She's screaming and sobbing, won't let anyone touch her. When we tried to console her, she just freaked more and started throwing punches. Ariel's okay, but Beth managed to knock her down when she tried to help. We don't know what to do for her, Axe." Jessica's voice held no anger or judgment, and the only fear was for Beth, not herself and the others. The only thing Beth had said about those missing months was a cryptic comment she'd mumbled when they'd first found her running onto the compound.

After begging them not to hurt her, she'd told them that to survive you had to fight.

None of them knew what she meant, and when they'd asked her about it after she had been calmed down and given a medical examination, she hadn't even remembered speaking the words.

"Just keep talking to her, make sure she knows she's safe, but don't get too close to her." The last thing they needed was for Beth to accidentally hurt one of her friends. She was going to be in rough enough shape when she finally snapped out of her meltdown without having to learn she had hurt someone she loved and cared about.

It seemed to take forever to run from Trick's place, where they'd been trying on the tuxes, to Tank's where Beth and the others were. Logically, Axe knew it wasn't more than minutes, but it felt more like hours before he was bursting through the door.

His heart broke at the sight before him.

Huddled in a corner was Beth. Her eyes were open and wild, it was obvious that whatever she saw wasn't the sweet cabin. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her skin was much too pale, and her entire body was trembling violently, enough that he could see it from across the room.

Without hesitation, he ran to his wife.

"No, no, I don't want to hurt him," she wailed as he approached.

When he didn't stop moving, she began to kick out with her feet and fling out her fists. Her moves weren't random, they showed near-perfect technique, strength, and purpose.

Fight to survive.

The sick feeling in his stomach told him he knew exactly what had happened to his wife.

"It's okay, Beth. It's Axel," he said, fighting to keep his voice calm and soothing as he evaded a punch and managed to use his superior skill to grab hold of her.

She was fighting like her life really did depend on it, and it was a struggle for him to keep hold of her without hurting her. Since he didn't want her to hurt herself, he tightened his grip a little, so very aware of how fragile his wife felt in his arms. If she were a threat, he could easily have neutralized her by now even though she was doing exactly what she should to get out of his hold.

"Calm down, wisp. You're safe here. You're home. It's just me holding you, just your husband, you don't need to fight anymore. You did so good though, honey. So good. You did fight, and you did survive, but now you don't have to fight anymore. You don't have to fight here, wisp. Because this is home, this is your safe place, and you're surrounded by all the people who love you. Come back to me, Beth."

Sitting on the floor as he was, with Beth's back pressed to his front, one of his legs thrown over hers, and his arms locked around her torso, pinning her arms to her side, he'd subdued her enough that he was able to touch a kiss to her temple.

"Come on, Beth, it's time to come back to me."

As the fight slowly drained out of her, he wasn't sure if it was because she was giving in to whatever was happening in her mind or if she was starting to wake up. Whatever the reason, he began to rock her as he cradled her on his lap, touching more kisses to her face, gentling his hold so it wasn't as restricting to help her know she was safe.

"Please, wisp, wake up now. Come back to me."

For what had to be a solid ten minutes, Axe sat there, holding his wife, murmuring reassuringly to her, rocking her, kissing her. Slowly, she began to relax in his hold, her attempts to get away faded until she was completely limp, her tears began to slow until they were nothing more than a trickle, and her wails quietened until it was only the sound of his voice and her ragged breathing that filled the cabin.

When he felt her stiffen all of a sudden, he straightened and shifted his hold on her so that she was facing him. "Wisp?"

One slow blink and the vacant look in her eyes cleared, and fresh tears welled. "Axel."

"Right here, honey. Right here," he promised.

"I … I … my memories … I remember everything," she stammered through her tears. "They took me. Tomas Butcher told me I had to fight the men if I wanted to live. I had to kill them. I had to kill them," she repeated, pure shocked horror in her broken voice. "They were Baranov's men, I'm sure, I remember them from his house. Baranov was there, I remember him … watching. I did everything Tank taught me, and I fought them, and I survived. I killed them. At least half a dozen men. I killed them, Axel. I took lives."

On those words, Beth's overwrought mind gave out, her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped against his chest as she passed out.

April 17 th

8:01 A.M.

Waking alone in bed was not how she wanted to start her day.

Disappointment over Axel leaving her alone made Beth want to curl back up into a ball, pull the covers over her head, and hide.

But she'd done enough of that yesterday.

After the horrific memories of being forced to kill those men—good men or bad, they were still human beings, and taking a life hurt—she'd reached the edge of her endurance, and her mind and body had crashed. By the time she woke up after passing out in Axel's arms, he had already brought her back to their cabin and tucked her into bed, curling his own body protectively around hers.

That was how they had spent most of the day. When she wasn't sleeping in bed tucked into her husband's arms, she was sitting on the couch in their living room tucked into her husband's arms. Axel had been there beside her every second, he'd even run her a bath and sat in it with her, his gentle hands washing her body and her hair.

Axel wasn't the only one that had rallied around her.

All of Bravo Team had hung out in their living room for most of the day. They hadn't asked anything of her or pushed any expectations onto her. It didn't matter if she didn't contribute to the conversation or do more than pick at her sandwich. They showed her with their words and their actions that she was family, that they loved her, cared about her, and supported her.

Honestly, it was the only thing that got her through those first few hours.

But now it was a new morning, a new day, and she wasn't going to hide.

Fight.

That had been ingrained in her from birth.

Life was just one big, long battle, and if you wanted to survive to see another day you had to stand tall and face whatever came before you.

So that was what she was going to do, Beth just wished her partner was right here by her side.

Just as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, Axel stepped out of their ensuite.

"Trust you to wake up the second I go to the bathroom," he teased as he crossed the room and grabbed her biceps, pulling her up and into his arms. "How are you doing this morning?"

"I thought you had left," she said honestly. After losing her entire self and life to her trauma, then lacking the confidence to speak up and say what she needed for almost a year, there was no way she wasn't going to be one hundred percent honest from here on out.

A soft kiss touched her forehead. "Never, wisp. Wherever you are, I will be, too."

That made her smile, and she framed her husband's face and tugged it down so she could kiss him properly.

Hand in hand, they walked downstairs and into the kitchen. It didn't even need to be a question, they both knew they would be making waffles for breakfast again. As Axel began mixing the batter, Beth grabbed glasses and juice from the fridge.

Expecting some sort of argument when she said what she'd woken up knowing with absolute certainty, Beth made sure she kept her voice calm and confident. Getting too emotional right now, while totally understandable given she'd just relived a lifetime of trauma in a couple of weeks, was only going to convince Axel she couldn't do this.

But she could.

More than that, she had to.

So calm and confident it was.

"Axel, I want to help," Beth announced.

"With breakfast? I got it, wisp. If I'm here in the morning I cook you breakfast, simple as that."

A small smile curled her lips even as the ball of nausea that sat heavily in her gut churned faster. She knew that, although those first few weeks they'd lived together, it had taken a while for her to get it. Taking care of the family's needs had been one of her jobs as a child, nobody had ever bothered to take care of her, and it had taken some getting used to when Axel announced it was now his job.

Today, though, that wasn't what she was talking about.

"Not with breakfast. With finding him," she said quickly before she lost her nerve.

The glass bowl Axel had been mixing the batter in dropped from his hands as he spun to face her, shattering at his feet with a loud crash and sending glass shards and waffle batter flying across the floor.

"What did you just say?"

Even though Beth knew Axel would never lay a hand on her in anger, never touch her and cause her pain, she couldn't help but wince at the pure, unbridled fury in his voice.

This was the warrior he rarely let her see.

Her husband was always so calm and in control, he oozed confidence and reliability, he knew what she needed, peace and security, and he gave it to her without hesitation.

Standing before her now wasn't her sweet, gentle husband, it was the man who had joined Delta Force, the man who was a lethal weapon, who could kill with his bare hands in a dozen different ways, who fought to make the world a safer place, and who rescued victims.

Two sides of the same man, only this side was new to her and scared her a little.

Still, this was one fight she wasn't backing down from.

"I have my memories back now, I can find my way back to wherever I was being held. I'm sure I can," she said. Beth stuck with her plan to sound calm and confident even if her heart was beating so hard it took everything she had not to rub her chest to soothe the ache.

"We don't need your help," he snarled. It hurt a little, but she knew his anger was coming from a place of fear and nothing else.

Besides, they both knew that wasn't true. She'd been home for a year, and missing for eight months before that. If they had been going to find where she had been taken and held against her will without her help they would have done it by now.

Truth was she was their best bet now that she had her memories.

"I need to help," she said, meeting his gaze squarely and not allowing the terror that threatened to crush her show.

A vicious curse fell from his lips.

"No," Axel said like it was as simple as that.

The problem was, nothing about this was simple.

"Besides, we thought the warehouse that blew up was where you were being kept," Axel said as though that put an end to the entire conversation.

For her it did not.

A warehouse didn't jive with what she recalled.

The place she had been kept hadn't felt like a warehouse, and what she'd seen of it didn't look like one either. It was too big, and there weren't any windows in most of it. The place she had been held felt more like it was underground.

"I don't think I was kept at that warehouse," she said slowly.

Axel sputtered, but there was nothing he could say to that. None of them knew for sure where she had been, but of all of them, she had the best chance at figuring it out.

Carefully crossing the room to stand before her husband, she took both his hands in hers, squeezing a little. "I'm not asking you to put me on the front line, Axel. I just want to help. I need to help. Leonid Baranov stole everything from me, he almost made me lose you. I want to be part of helping take him down. I just want to help you retrace my steps and find the place where I was held. I doubt anyone is still there, it would be too big of a risk, but there could be clues. Once I help you find the place I'll come back here and stay safe while you and your team do your thing."

His fingers curled around hers until they were almost painfully tight. Then he growled and dragged her closer until she was flush against him. "I can't lose you, Beth. Don't you get that? You can't ask me to put you in a potentially dangerous situation after I only just got you back."

"I'm not. I'm asking you to trust me the same way I trust you to keep me safe. I killed men twice my size, I did it because I had to come home to you. You're my everything, but as long as that man is still out there, we will always be looking over our shoulders waiting for another attack. All I'm asking is that you let me help bring him down so we can have the future we deserve."

Even before he let his forehead drop to rest against hers, Beth knew that he was going to allow her to work with him and his team. It didn't really feel like a victory, though, because this was terrifying and dangerous.

But it had to be done.

As Axel's mouth crashed to hers, she just prayed she was making the right decision for all of their sakes.