AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dom scowled and crossed his arms. “I told you. He’s?—”
“The sector’s best shot at cleaning up the Dead Zone to give the Insects a home so they don’t destroy us all,” Garin finished for him. “Yes, you mentioned that yesterday, but there’s something else.”
Garin had spent the better part of an hour the day before trying to convince Dom this was a terrible idea. That he had his fully packed bag slung over his shoulder showed how well that had gone for him.
Garin shifted his weight onto his left foot as he waited for Dom to open up. “You didn’t have to come all the way here yourself, just to pass me off as a resource for our sectors’ last great hope.”
“Fine.” Dom heaved a sigh and looked away. “He’s my friend.”
Garin tried and failed miserably, judging by Dom’s wince, to hide his surprise. “Your friend?”
Dominic Turner didn’t have friends. Garin spent his every waking hour glued to the younger man’s side, and he knew the younger man did not possess a single friend. Some of that was self-inflicted. After all, Dom had created horrible weapons, dismissed others, was cruel to his younger brother, and acted with ruthless and cutthroat ambition in a desperate, failing attempt to win his father’s affection.
So, some of Dom’s isolation was blatantly unfair, petty, upper-crust snobbery and politicking. But most of it was a cruelly cyclical self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Yes, my friend.” Dom’s shoulders crept up. “We worked well together on the turbines for Tava and now…I don’t know…” He shrugged and his shoulders brushed his ears. “We’re friends. And I think I’m friends with Bar’in, and Tar, and Fal’ran, and a little bit Patrick, too.”
“Oh.” Garin blinked. He had noticed Dom spending more time communicating with the Klah’Eel military, and that he seemed to have a scientific partner he actually liked, but Dom had been cagey and possessive of his private time with them. Now Garin understood. Dom hadn’t wanted to risk anyone else witnessing his attempts at friendship, in case they blew up in his face. “I’m happy for you.”
Dom blushed and stared at the ground between his feet. “Thanks.” He scuffed his foot on the floor and waved a hand at the door. “So, you know, don’t let Sazahk die out there and make sure all his wildest scientific dreams come true.”
Despite his engineer parents and brothers, Garin had no idea what wild scientific dreams might be. He didn’t understand what occupied Dom for hours in his lab, or what exactly had driven Sazahk to the edge of tears when all his samples had ended up on Garin. But he understood keeping someone alive. “And you make sure you don’t die, either.”
Dom rolled his eyes. “I’m in the middle of a Klah’Eel military compound. I’ll be fine.”
“Do not underestimate the danger you’re in, Dominic.” Garin stepped forward to heighten the effect of his scowl. “There are a lot of people out there that want your head on a spike.”
“Can you blame them?” Dom’s upper lip curled and Garin’s heart twisted.
“That’s not the point.” Garin didn’t disagree with people’s right to abhor the man in front of him. But he had seen more of Dominic Turner than anyone, and what he saw more than anything was a young man who’d never been loved in his life and who strove to fulfill the role he’d been groomed for by a father who treated him as nothing more than another corporate asset.
“Can we just go, please?” Dom straightened from his lean and gestured at the door. “You have other things to worry about now.”
As much as Garin still wanted to shake some sense of self-preservation and self-worth into Dom before he left, he conceded and lead the way out into the hall without complaint. Dom was right about one thing; Garin did have other things to worry about now. It was time for him to shift his focus. His life and the life of another rested on his ability to observe his surroundings, decide fast, and act faster. He couldn’t afford to be distracted.
“Beaty’s a smart woman, you know.”
Garin stopped dead. So much for not being distracted. “What?”
Dom stopped too and turned to face Garin when Garin rounded on him. “Beaty can handle taking care of the family while you’re gone.”
Garin narrowed his eyes. Dom barely knew Beaty. “What makes you say that?”
Dom lifted his chin in that classic Turner show of dominance. “Because she told me.”
“You talked to her?” Garin had spoken to Beaty that morning, and she hadn’t mentioned anything about talking to Dom.
“Of course I did.” Dom turned on his heel and continued toward the compound’s gates. “I wouldn’t send you away without checking that your family could handle your absence. I know your mother’s not well.”
“And how do you know that?” Garin pinched the bridge of his nose as he followed Dom out of the building and along a dusty path. He didn’t know what shocked and upset him more: that Beaty hadn’t told him Dom had contacted her, that she’d told Dom she could manage without him, or that Dom had believed her.
Dom threw him a deadpan look. “You know all Turner Corporation employee communications are monitored, right?”
“I know that.” Garin scowled. “I just didn’t know you actually paid attention to the finer details of my family drama.”
Dom looked forward again, but Garin saw the tops of his ears flush. “Well, I do. I don’t read everything. I understand the concept of privacy. But I do pay attention.”
Garin was still mad at him, but he had the sudden desire to fling an arm around Dom’s shoulders and scrub the top of his head. Garin had taken to being a bodyguard like a duck to water, and it didn’t take a psychoanalyst to figure out why. He’d played the role of protective eldest brother his whole life. Becoming a bodyguard merely meant slotting Oliver and Dominic into the little brother position.
