"Is there a reason you dragged us into the middle of the woods or do you just like going on spontaneous hikes?" Mason asks aloud as I finally stop walking and turn to face him and Kane.
It is barely dawn so everything around us is a tinted blue color. It had taken a lot of pleading plus multiple promises of what I would do for him later to get Kane to finally get out of bed and follow me into the woods at this ungodly hour. As for Mason, all I had to say was a simple "come on" and he was on his feet.
"We're not in the middle of the forest. The road is right there" I correct, pointing to my left where, barely a hundred feet away, the gravel road ran down the hill towards our village.
"Why are we even in the woods anyway Bridge" Kane speaks up, rubbing his tired eyes. "What do you possibly have to say to us that couldn't be said at the village?"
"I didn't want to be overheard" I answer. "Plus, I wouldn't put it past Aga to have security bugged all of the rooms. 'For my safety' I'm sure" I dryly state.
"And what do you have to say that you don't want to be overheard?" Mason asks, looking slightly worried.
I look over the two men in front of me before explaining. "I've been thinking about the kind of government we're going to create for Terrian. If Aga and the rest of them are right and the people choose me to be their leader, I want people around me that I can trust."
I sigh before looking at Mason. "I don't trust Aga to not try and gain power after I've done her dirty work and killed Jack. When that time comes there is going to be a power vacuum and there will be a race to fill it. I don't want another Jack so we're going to need to act fast.
"We need to immediately have elections and for that to happen I need to already have a group of people at my side that I trust and that I can go to for guidance. People I know that aren't corrupt. That don't just want to take as much power as possible."
Mason understands exactly what I'm saying. "And you want us at your side" he finishes for me.
I nod. "I know you're still new to the freedom of being able to make your own decisions and the last thing you probably want is to be dragged right back into that political shark tank but I'm asking you to consider, if the time comes, being my second-in-command."
Mason raises his brows but doesn't say anything. I take that as a cue to go on.
"If anything happens to me, I want to know that Terrian is still in good hands. If I should die or fail to successfully run the country, I want the position of president to fall onto you. You know how to lead people and I trust nobody else with this kind of responsibility. You would help me make decisions and policies and I would turn to you for guidance when needed. This is all hypothetical, assuming we are actually able to kill Jack and I am actually voted into office. But if that does happen, can I trust you to be my right hand man?"
Mason is silent, contemplating my offer for a moment. He finally speaks. "I can think of no greater honor than being your trusted second-in-command. I can not promise that when that time comes I won't have second thoughts on becoming that for you, but I do believe that if we get out of this alive, I would be honored to accept your offer."
I give him a small smile. "I don't need a definite answer. I just hope you'll think about it."
When Mason nods, I turn towards Kane who is studying me with nothing but respect in his eyes.
"Kane" I breathe out, feeling my insides warm at the simple glee I get from saying his name.
"Morgans" he replies with a hint of a smile. It has been so long since he has called me by my last name that I almost cry out in nostalgia.
But I straighten my spine and steady myself, never taking my eyes off of my biggest source of hope and happiness.
"If the time comes" I start. "And I should find myself to be the new ruler of Terrian, I would love nothing more than to have you be my head of security."
He lifts a brow at me. "You want me to be your main line of defense?" he asks.
"I want you to be my General" I correct and I don't miss the way Kane's chest caves in at the word. I know that, out of all of the things he had to leave behind when we fled the castle, his position as General of the Royal Guard was the hardest.
"You will assemble a new team of guards to protect the capital and the government officials who live there" I go on. "It will be similar to the Royal Guard except you will come up with the rules and morals your team is to follow. They will not be taking orders from anybody except you. I will not control them. Mason will not control them. Only you will have that power."
As Kane exhales, he tilts his head down and raises his hands to his face. His shoulders jump with unsteady breathing before he finally looks back up, tears brimming his eyes.
"You can't possibly know" he breathes out, a slight laugh of relief making his words shaky. "How much that means to me. The fact that you would trust me with that kind of leadership."
I smile softly and step closer to him until I am close enough to cup his face.
"You will be my protector" I whisper. "You will be my last line of defense. You will answer to no king or ruler. We will answer to each other. Whatever you need to create your security team, I will provide."
He lets out a relieved breath. "You are the best thing that has ever happened to me."
I give him a small wink. "And don't you ever forget it"
Kane opens his mouth to respond but is cut off by Mason suddenly hissing "do you hear that?"
All three of us still and strain our ears to hear the noise. After a moment I know what he is talking about. Off in the distance, down the gravel rode beside us, comes the sounds of pounding hoofs running far too fast to simply be another passerby.
I whirl around and through the trees I catch a glimpse of the brown horse that gallops down the gravel road. As soon as it is close enough for me to see the rider atop it, I am sprinting to them.
As I near the rider and her horse she slows the horse to a stop and climbs off of the beast so graceful I would have believed her to be an expert horse rider.
That is, if I didn't already know the woman to be so much more than that.
Wren shoots me a grin. "Hope I wasn't gone long enough for you to actually start worrying."
My arms are immediately around her. "Thank the gods" I mutter into her hair as what feels like a 20 pound weight that has been sitting there for the past 2 weeks finally leaves my chest.
As soon as I pull away Wren is opening her mouth to say something.
But she doesn't get it out before another person steps in front of me, immediately cupping her face and examining her exposed skin for any sign of a wound.
"Are you hurt? Did they hit you? Whip you? Were you caught? Did they try and torture you? Did they put a chip in you?" Mason hurtles through these questions as he frantically scans her neck for any sign that she now had a chip in her.
Wren simply rolls her eyes before pulling Mason's hands away from her. "Please, I'm far too fast for them to catch, let alone hurt. The only thing they messed with was my patience. Bridget, I can clearly see why you decided to become a guard and not a maid."
I smirk back. "Laundry isn't my thing."
"And I now know it is most definitely not my thing either" she responds.
Mason visibly relaxes at her assurance that she is fine and I can't help but study the way he refuses to look anywhere else but at her. The way he seems completely lost in the relief of having Wren back.
I suddenly realize that Mason wasn't just worried about her because she was one of our friends and allies. There is no way a reaction like that could have come out of Mason from just anyone.
"Wren, it's great to have you back" Kane greets as he joins our circle.
Wren shoots him a quick smirk. "I suppose that's as cheerful a greeting as I'm going to get from you General Stone."
"Did you find out anything?" I ask, getting straight to the reason I was hoping she was back so early.
"Yes" she replies as her voice lowers slightly, as if she doesn't want to be overheard by anybody, even though we are surrounded by trees with not a person in sight. "The castle's programming tower. Do you know where that is?"
"Yeah" Mason speaks up, brows furrowed. "It powers all of the electricity in the castle."
"Well apparently it doesn't do just that" Wren continues. "It's also how all of Jack's chips are being programmed and powered."
"Wait," Kane pauses. "You're telling us that the thing that is powering these mind controlling chips is the same thing that runs all of the electricity in the castle?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying" Wren confirms. "If we find a way to destroy the tower-"
"The chips become useless" I finish for her. "They no longer have the ability to control the people they are put inside of."
"If the tower goes down, Jack loses practically all of his forces" Mason breathes out. "He will have nobody protecting him while we'll have our entire army plus the hundreds of guards pissed off for being manipulated by him."
Wren grins. "Destroy the tower and it's game over. He'll be powerless and that is when we can strike."
"Wren I could kiss you right now" I say through a cheerful laugh as I run my hands through my hair in disbelief. We have a chance now. We actually have a chance of winning this thing.
"Wren, how on Earth did you get this information?" Kane asks, not quite believing our luck either.
She moves to look at me. "I was told this by a girl named Dakota. She said she knew you."
The world seems to stop as I find it hard to breathe, let alone speak. Luckily, Mason does that for me.
"What? Dakota is alive?" he asks, recognition and confusion on his face as well.
"Yeah" Wren nods, looking back at me. "She told me to tell you this information. She said to tell you that even though you two have nothing else in common, you both share a similar hatred for Jack. That you now owe her a life debt."
Her words make me stumble back slightly. Luckily Kane is there and I allow myself to lean my weight onto him for support.
"How can we trust her?" Kane asks the question I can't form.
Wren shrugs. "She said it was the information Jack told her himself and that he had no reason to lie to his personal whore."
"Oh my god" I retch. The things she had to will herself to do for that monster. It doesn't matter to me anymore that we had a past relationship of hating each other, nobody should have to go through that. To please the very monster that has killed his own family members and many others.
Wren looks away and I can see the similar horror on her face, except hers is fueled by similar past circumstances.
"She warned me that the guards suspected me" Wren continues. "She's the reason I was able to get out alive with the information I have."
Mason drops to his knees and I don't blame him. The very woman he used to ignore and resent with a passion was the same one that just saved one of our dearest friends.
I feel sick at the thought as well. As I begin to remember past events where I insulted and fought her, I feel a hatred for myself start to grow.
"Her life debt will be repaid" I finally say. "That is a promise I intend to keep."
"We need to figure out a plan now" Kane speaks. "We now know what we have to destroy but I doubt it's going to be easy. If Dakota is right and that is where every single guard Jack has is being controlled, I doubt the security for it is light. We need to find a way to both get to it undetected and destroy it."
I nod and look back down at Mason, still kneeling on the ground, hands curling into the grass.
"Kane and I should go start planning" I announce. "Mason can lead you back to the village whenever you two are ready".
Wren nods, her gaze on Mason as well. I take Kane's hand and together we head back down to the village.
Mason's P.O.V
I can't remember many times where I have felt as horrible as I do right now.
Dakota, the woman I had blamed for so many of my problems, the one I was so repulsed at the thought of marrying, is the one who saved Wren from being captured. Not the rebels, not me.
Dakota.
I had been so cold to her. So cold and resentful that I didn't even bother thinking of her at all after we left the castle. In all of the time since I fled the castle, I never thought about that woman once. Never wondered whether or not she was safe. Whether or not she was dead.
No, she was not safe and she was not dead. She was now practically a slave to Jack. My blood curdles at the idea of her being forced to share a bed with that man. How broken could she have been to place this kind of dangerous information in the hands of a stranger? How desperate was she to get Wren out alive so that we could learn this information and have a chance of slaying the demon I now know haunts her dreams as well.
The difference is I don't have to face this demon every night and have them violate me over and over.
I am shaking and I can't stop. Only when I feel Wren's hand on my back do I realize she has knelt to join me on the ground.
"I was so horrible to her" I manage to choke out. "She was the woman my mother and father wanted to marry me off to and I fought them so hard on it. Fought her so hard on it. I acted as if she didn't exist most of the time."
Wren pauses before speaking. "It's not your fault. Your parents pushed you to marry her. It's only natural you would start resenting her for it."
I look up at her, at the face that has been constantly flashing through my mind for the past two weeks. The face I have been going crazy over, wondering whether or not it was still smiling, still living.
I shake my head. "I'm no better than Jack" I let out in a whisper. My mind suddenly flashes to when I used her to try and forget about Bridget. When I saw her body as an escape and thought nothing of the human beneath it.
Wren stills. "You're telling me" she lets out in a shaky breath. "You-"
"No!" I exclaim immediately, realizing what it sounded like. I grab her hands. "Gods, no Wren. I would never do that to anybody. Never!"
She relaxes at my response. "Then you are infinitely better than Jack" she replies.
I study her dark eyes, intrigued at the way there seemed to be hundreds of different shades of brown ranging from dark to light hidden inside them.
I didn't realize how much I missed looking at those eyes.
"I was so worried" I admit, not daring to raise my voice above a whisper. "Worried that you weren't going to come back. That somebody found out who you were and took you away for good. That I was never going to see that smirk again."
At that she smirks and it takes everything I have not to crash my lips onto hers and press my body as close to hers as possible.
"I told you I was going to come back" she responds. "I never break a promise."
Right when I almost lose it and move towards her, she stands up and offers me a hand. I stand as well and like that, we start walking back to the village.
As we walk I take in her servants outfit. I suddenly notice the hint of blood that stands out against the gray across her chest.
I stumble slightly. "Who's blood is that?" I ask and pray silently that it isn't hers.
"Reeves's" she replies calmly. "I managed to take the chip out of him before I ran into Dakota."
"Reeves is okay?" I ask, a second wave of relief filling my body.
Wren tilts her head. "I don't know if 'okay' is the right word, but he is himself again."
My gut clenches at that. How many of the men that Kane had trained and who's protection is the reason that I was able to grow up are now prisoners in their own bodies?
I don't care how impossible it is, when I finally cross paths with Jack again I am going to tear him to shreds. Break him like he broke my guards. Only kill him after I have him pleading for death.
Wren must sense my dark thoughts because she stops walking to face me. "Don't go into that place" she gently orders.
"Go into what place?" I ask.
"That dark place. The one I can sometimes see you creeping into when you hear something or see something that makes you want to destroy everything in your path. You can't give into that destruction, that anger. The world is cruel and uncaring but don't let it change you into that as well."
"It's not like I don't have plenty of reasons to become cruel and uncaring" I huff out, feeling myself sink deeper into that cold and distant place. "I watched that bastard kill my mother and who I assumed to be my father. I've watched countless of people I care about die for me, their worthless excuse of a king. I've had any idea of somehow ruling my kingdom taken away from me and even though I'm relieved that I don't have that responsibility anymore, it is all I have been trained to do. I'm no good at anything else and most of the time I couldn't care less whether or not I come out of all of this alive."
Wren stares off into the distance, silent for a long time before finally speaking. "I was sold to a brothel when I was seven."
I don't speak as she pauses for a moment before continuing. "My father's death was due to a noble man paying him back for stealing a few gold coins. My mother had no job so my family had no source of income after my father died. I had two older brothers so my mom sold me to a brothel so that she would have enough money to take care of them. I don't remember what she looks like anymore. I don't even remember her name.
"My mistress, the lady in charge of the brothel wouldn't let anyone touch me before I turned the ripe old age of 13. By then I was practiced in the arts of the bedroom and she sold my virginity to the highest bidder."
There is a ringing in my ears but I still manage to hear Wren as she continues.
"The men were usually double my age and as I grew older they became more rough. There were some nights where I couldn't bring myself to do anything but stare motionlessly at the ceiling. When I stopped being as- agreeable- was when the men started complaining. That was when my mistress started punishing me.
"She wouldn't allow her marks to be visible over fear of loss of profit, but she did punish me. She starved me, fit me into corsets that would crush my ribs, made me take double the amount of customers as usual. When I continued fighting her she only made it worse."
I have forgotten how to breathe. How to blink. My mind empties of former thoughts and is filled again with images of Wren being hurt by this woman and those men. I want to torture them all. To hear their screams to drown out the ones of Wren's now filling my ears.
Wren swallows hard. "One night when I was seventeen, I snuck into the kitchen to grab a knife. I was going to kill myself. Splatter my blood and be done with it all."
The screams and images finally cease and all I see is black as my blood chills over.
Wren lets out a shaky breath. "I would have done it too" she admits. "If it wasn't for one of your speeches coming on the tv and stopping me."
I finally find the strength to look at the strongest woman I know. She has tears streaming down her face and it is the worst and most beautiful sight I have ever seen.
"You mentioned prostitution being a problem in our kingdom. It was the first time I had ever even heard a political official utter the word, but you said it. Certain and unafraid despite your young age and the fact that people believed you to be the puppet of the king. Not only did you actually say that it was a problem, but you promised, that when you were king, you would outlaw it."
I suddenly remember the speech she is talking about. I received a severe scolding from my father that turned into a shouting argument which only ended when he slapped me in the face and my mother screamed for him to leave.
He believed it was foolish for me to bring that up considering how many important men had some stock shares or investments in brothels and for a second afterwards, I did regret mentioning it.
But now, knowing that what I said stopped Wren from ending her life, I know for certain that I would take a thousand of my father's slaps as repercussion for what I said.
She gives me a smile despite her mouth quivering. "Don't you ever say that you couldn't care less whether you are alive or dead. It's because of your 'worthless' life that I'm not dead and ten feet underground right now."
I move towards her swiftly and the moment my arms are around her, she finally crumbles.
"I am so sorry" I whisper into her ear, clutching her close as if I could wring out all of her pain if I held her tight enough.
Her shoulders shudder as she takes in a breath. "You are still the same person I watched on that television all those years ago" she stutters. "Don't you ever let this world turn you into something you're not."
I lean back to stare down at her. Even with tears drying on her cheeks, Wren still seemed like the most stunning woman I had ever laid eyes on.
"How are you still so strong?" I ask her, wondering how a person that has been through everything she has could still manage a smirk.
She lets out a breath. "I had Alan to lean on. He helped build me back into the person I was before that brothel destroyed me. And now I'll just have to find somebody else to lean on."
"Lean on me" I whisper. "You've let me lean on you. Let me return the favor."
She manages a grin. "Will you be able to handle the weight?" she asks.
My grip grows tighter as I pull Wren closer to me until our chests touch.
"I will help put you back together every single day if that is what it takes" I answer truthfully, resting my forehead against her own. "You have been a light to me in my darkest time and I will spend the rest of my life returning the favor."
Wren's eyes never leave mine, holding my gaze with the same intensity as my own.
"Promise?" she whispers.
"I promise" I reply before crashing my lips onto hers.
The kiss is gentle at first as I prepare for Wren to shove me away. To laugh at me. To yell at me.
But she doesn't do any of those things. Instead, she slowly raises a hand to my cheek and rests it there.
Then, all at once, she throws her other arm around me and pushes harder into the kiss, deepening it.
I walk us forward until her back hits a tree trunk and earn a moan from her as I cup her face with my hands.
I lose track of time as I get lost in her touch, in her soft lips, in the scent of pine that always seemed to come from her. I lose myself in the bliss of feeling this way and having somebody that still saw the good in me.
When I finally pull away, we are both gasping for air. As I struggle to breathe, she takes my hand in her own.
"Come on" she smirks at me, wrapping her hand around my waist. "We should get back to the village before they start to get suspicious."