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“You mean they’re counting on us to not be like them.” Sebastian raised his hand and pointed north. “You mean the best thing we can do is be cold, and calculating, and unfeeling, and disloyal—”
“No one here is fucking disloyal,” Garrett snapped.
Sebastian turned on him. “We’re leaving our men to rot in Klah’Eel cages!” Sebastian snarled, then turned his snarl on Hess. “Men that followed you, and trusted you, and gave you everything, you’re leaving to suffer and die. That sounds pretty fucking disloyal to me.”
“Better to lose a few men than the whole war.” Martha spoke for the first time and her voice sliced through their arguments with an uncharacteristic ruthlessness that brought Garrett and Sebastian both up short. But her furious eyes bore solely into Sebastian. “We knew we might lose Kaston and we did. We will not throw away everything else because you cannot stand to live in a world that doesn’t cater to your pampered ideals.”
“Martha,” Hess growled a low warning, but Sebastian barely heard him over the pounding in his ears.
How dare she? She knew how much he had sacrificed. She knew more than anyone! How dare she throw it all back in his face like a fucking insult?
“How d—” Sebastian started forward with his fists clenched, but Hess held up a placating hand, with his eyes still on Martha.
“What?” Martha turned her sharp gaze on Hess, but Hess didn’t blink.
“You’ve made your point.”
“Have I?”
“Yes.”
The blood pounding in Sebastian’s ears simmered to quiet as he watched Martha and Hess stare each other down. What the hell was happening between them? They had stared at each other like that the night before, when Martha had wanted to debrief Sebastian and Hess had wanted him to rest. Hess had lost that silent argument, but he didn’t look at all like he was going to lose this one.
Martha physically conceded with a step back. “Alright.”
Sebastian opened his mouth, ready to take any hint of opening to press his point, but one look from Hess and he knew it would go nowhere. Whatever steel was in his spine that had warded off Martha wasn’t going to bend for him.
Sebastian gritted his teeth. Of course Hess wouldn’t bend for him. If Hess wasn’t going to bend for the men he’d spent apparently his whole life fighting with and leading, then he wasn’t going to bend for Sebastian. Sebastian wasn’t that fucking special.
He spun around and paced to the window that Turner had been looking out of, and Turner stepped to the side to make room for him. Sebastian saw Mal’ik inhale as he walked past, and Sebastian shot him a poisonous look.
“Keep your nose to yourself, klah’eel,” he growled quietly enough for just the three of them as he planted himself in front of the window with his hands on his hips. He’d been in enough klah’eel to know their sense of smell could border on mind reading when people got this worked up. Hell, Mal’ik probably even knew what was going on between Hess and Martha, but Sebastian was in no mood to ask.
And he was in no mood to be broadcasting his distress to a hulking ex-captain of the enemy. Even if the giant of a man was strangely kind. Sebastian sighed and shot Mal’ik an apologetic look. Mal’ik had asked Sebastian his name, after all, back when he’d been breaking him out in Northern Tava, and almost no one ever asked Sebastian his name.
Mal’ik gave him a little nod and turned back to the table as the conversation stiltedly resumed.
Sebastian only half paid attention to the words, trying to keep his breathing and his heart rate and his fury in check. Something about the Carta Team fetching the scientist from the cartel, something about who was on the team, something about Garrett being pissy—but what else was new?—and something about when they were leaving. Sebastian didn’t care because all he could think about was their men.
So many men abandoned, and Hess abandoning them. Hess, who Sebastian had followed practically to the ends of the earth. Hess, who had held Sebastian’s hand as he screamed in pain. Hess, who had kissed him and put him to sleep in a bed he had made.
Sebastian screwed his eyes shut and ground the heels of his palms into them. This was not rational thinking. This was him letting his emotions cloud reality. Just like Hess had accused him of. Acting emotionally. Sebastian was getting emotionally attached to a man that didn’t exist because he was telling a story to himself that wasn’t true.
Hess wasn’t kind, and Hess didn’t care for him.
Then he paused, cocked his head, and looked over his shoulder as a confusing sentence from the conversation behind him made its way into his conscious mind. “What?”
The conversation quieted, and everyone glanced at each other and back at him.
Sebastian turned all the way back to face them as his stomach twisted back around in on itself, and just after it had finally settled after his last outrage. He pointed at Turner. “You. You just quipped about being on the wrong side of species state patent laws.”
Turner tilted up his chin, but Sebastian had studied him enough to know that that move was defensiveness disguised as aggression. “I did. I’m wanted enough as it is. I doubt the authorities will come after me for patent fraud.”
“Your family’s patents?”
“That’s right.”
“The gas.”
