Misted (Team Zero #5) by Rina Kent

If he’ll help Mist, then he can stay. I can always kill him later.

“Hawk!” She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Stop being lost in your own world and ignoring me.”

“I’m not ignoring you.” I click the bullets in the chamber of my semi-automatic gun. “I always hear everything you say.”

“Then tell me what you’re doing.” Her voice lowers. “The deal is done with Hades.”

“Nothing is done with Hades.” I face her, still holding the gun. “Did Ink tell you what it’s like down there? Omega deprivation is only the beginning of it. The physical torture was nothing. It’s the mental torture that fucked me up. He kept on showing me footage of you being beaten on repeat. I watched it over and fucking over again. I knew it was old and from training days, but the more I watched, the more the blurrier the lines became and I saw you dying again and again without being able to do anything about it. It drove me fucking insane.”

“Hawk…” She places a hand on my arm.

“He’ll do the same to you and destroy you because he thinks you killed Nero. He’ll never let you go.”

“I was ready for that when I made the deal.” She purses her lips even though her fingers are shaking.

“You’re ready to leave me all over again? You’re repeating the past?”

“No, of course not!”

“Then what the fuck is it? Because the more I think I have you, the faster you slip from my fingers. Have you even thought about me as much as I thought about you? Did I consume you as much as you devoured my every fucking thought? Sometimes, I feel like you don’t even care about us.”

“Fuck you, Hawk.” Tears rim her eyes as she rummages through her bag and produces a very familiar journal, the dagger I gave her, and the ring I thought she threw away. She thrusts them at my chest with stiff fingers. “These have always been my treasure and the only items I carried with me everywhere. Whenever I held them, I imagined you were there and derived strength from it all these years. You were in every waking thought and in every dream while I sleep. If you think I don’t care about us, then fuck you.”

“Then don’t leave.” I let my voice fall. “Don’t fucking leave.”

“Do you think I want to after all the time we spent apart? But… but… I can’t give you kids anymore and I’ll be damned if I don’t keep you safe either.”

“I don’t give a fuck about kids, Hellion.” I clutch her chin with my hand. “You’re the only thing I ever cared about.”

She blinks back the tears. “But you said you wanted many kids back then…”

“The only reason why I wanted that child and any future children was because you’d be their mother. I have no need for kids who don’t come from you.”

A sob tears from her throat and she buries her head in my chest. “How can you lift so many years off my chest with a few words?”

“Hug?” I ask.

“Hug,” she snorts a laugh through her tears. I place the journals, the dagger aside and cradle her into me.

My hand find hers and I slip the ring where it always belonged on her finger. “Don’t remove it this time. Hold on to it for me until I come up with a fitting proposal.”

“Hawk…”

I brush my lips over her forehead. “Just wait until it’s all over.”

She looks up at me through wet lashes. “Are we fighting Hades? I can ask Ghost and the others for help, but you know we can’t go on a full war with him. Not only, he still has some of the Zeroes, but there’s also his secret international partners who will hunt us down like dogs.”

“We’re not fighting Hades.”

I reach behind me and retrieve the syringe filled with the anaesthesia Eloise left behind. “I’ll be the one fighting.”

Before Mist can react, I jab the syringe in her arm. Her eyes widen, and then they fill with betrayal and pure horror. Only she’s not scared about the shot. She’s scared about me. Her fingers dig into my arm and she shakes her head. “Nooooo…Haaaawk…. Pleaaaase….”

Her grip loses strength. She whimpers softly as her eyes flutter closed and tears stream down her cheeks while falling limp in my arms.

I stroke her hair and plant one last kiss on her forehead. “You’re not the only one who’d risk it all, Hellion.”

I’d willingly go back to my worst hell for her.





39





Mist





The past can’t stay in the past when it haunts our present and future.



Someone is shaking my shoulder. My limbs spasm and tears stream down my cheeks.

I startle awake to find myself in a bed with Ink and Scar by my side. Ink is the one who’s shaking my shoulder. Scar is meditating at the foot of the bed.

“Where’s Hawk?” I wipe my cheeks. Why the hell am I crying for a dream?

Scar continues meditating. Her T-shirt has ‘Forbidden Fantasy’ written over it, seeming to be mocking me.

“He left,” Ink says ever so casually. “We didn’t catch him. When we came to check, he was gone.”

“No…” I scramble to my feet and my limbs feel weak. As if I… was drugged. “No. It was only a nightmare. It didn’t happen.”