Cold sweat covers my skin as I sit on the hard surface of the military bed.
Deafening silence surrounds me, and I jump up, my feet making no sound on the floor.
The images from the nightmare redden my vision and play in slow motion in the dark corners of my subconscious.
Everyone and everything I cut from my life have been slowly returning to my immediate presence. Not in person, but as ghosts and shadows.
I stare down at the cuts and marks slithering over my skin, serving as a constant reminder of what happened before I got here.
The reason I escaped it all.
It’s also the reason I have this fucked-up need to return and rule it all. Every last bit of it.
No one can control me if I’m the leader. No one can deny or order me to do anything. In fact, it’ll be the other way around.
But that’s neither for here nor for now.
I throw on some pants and a T-shirt, then slip out of the room and into the empty training camp. The soldiers were granted a night out, so they all fucked off to get drunk and get some pussy while they could. Including my own men, who usually follow me like wannabe shadows.
All the better. The empty darkness gives me the needed space that allows me to run and push myself to my physical limits. It’s a sure way to recharge and erase the gory events from the nightmare earlier.
Or more like a memory.
Despite the bright moonlight in the middle of the sky, it’s freezing. The cold air hits me deeper in my bones with every passing minute, but I’ve always found solace in the freezing weather.
Something about harsh natural circumstances allows me to blend with them and see myself as part of the ecosystem.
I’m an entity of destruction with no qualms about stomping on everything in my path.
My choices are unlimited, and everything I do will be labeled as a natural disaster.
I didn’t choose to be this way, but it happened, and instead of fighting it, I embraced it. Fully.
Without any questioning.
Either that or I would’ve been collateral damage in a bigger and more dangerous game.
A groaning sound reaches me from the other end of the track, and I stop.
It comes again as a low “Ugh” in a very familiar voice.
I follow it discreetly, without making a noise. The night serves as my camouflage and the silence is my cover.
Sure enough, when I reach the source of the noise, I find a dark figure doing push-ups against the soil.
Only, it’s not all dark.
The arms that peek through the T-shirt are pasty-white in the night, and his face is red with exertion.
His movements are disoriented, uncoordinated, and his limbs shake uncontrollably.
“109, 110, 111, 112…” With each whispered number, he grows weaker, his rhythm, breathing, and impatience all spiking up until he’s a myriad of turbulent energy.
I lean against a pillar, legs and arms crossed. “You’re doing it all wrong.”
Lipovsky lifts his head to look at me, then stumbles and falls sideways, his frail muscles finally giving up on him.
For a second, he observes me from his position on the ground as if I’m some twisted form of salvation that got thrown in his path.
He did it a week ago, too, when he asked—begged—me to take him as part of my team with his nonexistent skills.
That was a bold move. And he’s an insolent little fucker, considering the way he’s staring at me without a hint of a salute.
This guy either has a death wish, or he simply shouldn’t be in the military—as I previously tried to convince him.
It could be because of my stare or, although it’s a very slim chance, that he realized his insolence because he finally stands with great difficulty and salutes. “Captain.”
He looks rough at best in unflattering cargo pants and an oversized T-shirt that’s soaked in sweat at the front and the back.
“If this is your way of proving yourself, then you might as well give up. My men do 200 in a steady rhythm without blinking an eye. No limbs shaking, no groaning or whining or looking like an amateur.”
Lipovsky’s eyes widen, appearing alarmed for a moment before he remembers to school his expression. “I’m improving compared to my previous record, and I only compare my achievements to myself, sir.”
No clue whether I should laugh or smack him upside the head.
I’ve met a lot of types in my years in the special ops, but he’s the only one who’s had this infuriating habit of talking back, even to a superior.
“That’s a foolish way of saying you’ll never improve. The past you isn’t a measurement of success, and if you only do self-comparison, the world will move by you before you know it.” I straighten. “On the ground, Private.”
His eyes study me for a while, probably wondering if what he heard is correct.
“On. The. Ground,” I repeat. “Continue what you were doing.”
He’s about to object. I can see it in his deep hazel eyes, a curious mixture of earth and forest. And since it’s freezing winter here, they seem to be stuck in a different universe at an alternative time with nontraditional customs.
A protest lurks on the tip of his tongue, but he has the self-preservation mentality to slowly lower himself to the ground for push-ups.
“One,” I count and he goes down. “Two.”
“How many am I supposed to do?”
“Until I stop counting. Three.”
He remains in the same stance, but there’s a slight curve in his back.
“Four. Five. Six.”
“Sir, may I speak?”
“You already are.”
He glares at the ground. I see it because I’m in a bilateral position, where I can watch the entirety of him and his slim, bony body that shouldn’t have been accepted into the military in the first place.
“My limit is 120, sir, and I already finished that. I’ve been adding ten a day for six days, so I can’t go anymore.” He strains with every word and his ass curves up.
I jam my boot on his back and push it down so that he’s straight. “Your desire to join my team should be the deciding factor on whether or not you can go more. Seven.”
It takes a moment, only a few seconds of heavy breathing and half groans and grunts, before he lowers himself farther.
I count faster and keep my boot on his back, then on his ass when he starts getting sloppy.
His face goes redder at that one and I’m tempted to keep it there just to fuck with his head. However, he’s smart enough to slightly raise his back and draw my attention to it.
Once I switch my boot to his spine, he doesn’t raise his ass again. Not even once.
He’s on the verge of collapsing, though.
Good. He’s obviously never pushed himself to physical exhaustion where he no longer feels his limbs, and that’s exactly why I’m doing this.
He needs to realize that limits are only invented in his mind and could only serve as a self-made cage.
I’m twenty-eight now, so I can understand that, but a long time ago, when I was younger than him and had to deal with my father’s games, I was as oblivious as this kid.
“Sir, I can’t take it anymore.” His voice and limbs tremble.
“Thirty-five.”
“Sir…”
“Thirty-six.”
“I’m—”
“Thirty-seven.”
“I can’t…” His voice chokes and he falls over, going limp all of a sudden.
Did he just…faint?
I tap his sweaty face once, then pause. That day, when I saw those soldiers cornering him, I heard sideways remarks. Things like:
He’s so girly.
A weakling.
I bet he takes it in the ass.
A sodomite.
Usually, I would’ve walked away from such a scene, and in view of how persistent this shit has become since I saved him, I probably should’ve let him be.
But I didn’t.
I wonder why. It probably had to do with the desperation on his face, and the way he intended to take the beating, no matter how brutal it got.
Now, I’m thinking about those soldiers’ words again. More specifically, the girly part.
His skin is so soft, it’s almost like butter beneath my fingers, and that’s…fucked up.
Not because of the feminine part, but the fact that someone as delicate as he is, is hell-bent on joining the army. It’s a place for brutes and outcasts like myself.
People who only know how to kill and need a license to do it freely and with a justified cause.
This is a nest for the orphans, the poor, and men who usually have no place to turn back to. Those who protect society are the very ones who were rejected by it.
I’m ninety-nine percent sure Lipovsky is a woman. The only reason I keep addressing him as a he is because that’s the gender he chooses to display on the outside. In fact, he’s making a lot of effort to avoid standing out.
He starts wheezing, his breathing morphing into an irregular rhythm. I grab him by a fistful in his shirt and turn him over so that he’s lying on his back.
My boots are on either side of his waist, and I pause again at the sight of his face under the bright moonlight. Delicate, gentle features, small nose and mouth, soft facial curves.
Am I really the only one who sees the signs?
I’m about to release him when I sense something taut on his chest, right beneath the oversized T-shirt. I let his head fall to the ground and reach toward it.
A smaller hand grabs my wrist, halting me in my tracks. Lipovsky’s eyes shine in the darkness, resembling a feral injured animal. I’m almost sure he’ll start to snarl and hiss any moment now.
Like a powerless kitten.
He shakes his head once, whether in warning or suppliance, I’m not sure. This little fucker has the audacity to touch me.
I jerk my wrist from his hand and stand to my full height, but I don’t change my position, so I’m glaring down at him. “Do you or do you not know that you fainted, sunshine?”
A red hue creeps up his neck. No shit. It splashes over the pale skin and spreads until it fully covers his ears.
Is he…blushing?
“I told you that I couldn’t take it anymore, sir,” he all but announces as if this is some sort of amateur training that he gets to quit whenever he wishes.
“Say that again.” My voice has turned chilly, deadly almost, with no hint of coolness whatsoever.
Any smidge of red disappears from his face, and he meets my gaze with his weary one.
“Cat got your tongue?”
He purses his lips but has enough self-restraint to stop from talking and unavoidably earning himself a disciplinary punishment.
“You’ll continue to do this training every day and you’ll also add a muscle-building routine. Every night. Every morning. If I find out you’ve missed any, you can kiss the military goodbye, because I could—and would—get you discharged, Private.”
An expression of pure panic covers his features and his voice comes out a bit weak, apprehensive even. “I…can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t. It’s not safe for me out there.”
“It’s not safe for you here either, if you remain at this level.”
He sits up, desperation coating him like an aura. “Please, sir, don’t have me discharged.”
“Begging is rather pointless. So instead of indulging in futile things, how about you do as you are told?”
He inches closer and grabs the threads of my boots in a fist as his eyes shine under the silver light.
I’m not sure if it’s desperation, a last resort, or something in between.
“Sir, I—”
“Captain.”
Lipovsky’s words die in his throat as a new presence materializes in the silence. I don’t have to look back to know who it is.
“A word,” he insists in his gruff voice.
I crane my head to catch a glimpse of my longtime companion, my bodyguard since we were kids and the man who would offer his life for mine on a platter.
Viktor.
He’s built like a giant, has more muscles than he needs, and he’s been my right hand both before and in the army.
Needless to say, he enlisted just because I did. In fact, most of the men in my unit are the same as Viktor and have a similar level of infuriatingly persistent loyalty.
Part of their annoying behavior is cutting in without reading the atmosphere. The live example is how Viktor interrupted whatever Lipovsky was about to confess.
He slides back on the ground and then pushes to a standing position and watches Viktor peculiarly. As if he’s seen him before.
If discomfort could be observed on someone’s face, Lipovsky’s is emanating it in waves.
The view is worth watching, but not enough to have Viktor take interest in him, or worse, put him on some sort of shit list.
“Remember what I told you,” I say, then turn around and head toward my guard.
Viktor throws one last glance at the private before he falls in step beside me.
“Who was that?” he asks with a note of doubt, suspicion, and every other synonym in the thesaurus.
Being distrustful is both his strongest and his weakest point.
“No one you should worry about.” I glance at him. “What are you doing in camp? Shouldn’t you be drinking or making sure the others aren’t drinking too much?”
“Too late. The fools are wasted.”
“No surprise there. They’re celebrating being out of your dictatorial reign, Vitök.”
“Are you sure that shouldn’t be reversed to you, Captain?”
He’s staring ahead, having not a care in the world after he threw out the statement as if it’s a given.
“You must be tired of living.” I speak in my usual somber tone, but that doesn’t affect Viktor one bit.
“Speaking of living.” He moves in front of me and stops, forcing me to do the same. “Your father is demanding your immediate return to the States. Apparently, things aren’t the best.”
“When have they ever been?”
“He said it’s an order.”
My jaw clenches.
The reminder of my so-called home and my father always brings a bitter fucking taste to my mouth.
It’s too early to go back to that blood pit.
Not that there isn’t blood here, but here, it’s on my terms and with my methods.
“Let me guess, you’re going to ignore him again,” Viktor says, his brows drawn and that usual calculation passing through his gaze.
“You guessed correctly. Give yourself a pat on the back.”
“Kirill, no. He will not let this slide.”
“He can’t do shit to me here.”
“But—”
“This discussion is over, Viktor.” I brush past him. “Let’s bring the men back before someone gets in trouble.”
They’re the only people who matter. Everyone else, my family included, doesn’t.
