Semper Mine (Sons of War #1)(7)

Biting my tongue, I lean forward and slap him on the back of the head.

He laughs. “Captain Sawyer Mathis, meet my sister, Katya.”

“We met at your brother’s funeral,” Captain Mathis says quietly. “She slapped me.”

“Katya!” Petr exclaims.

I ignore them both.

“No worries. Like a mosquito bite. Barely felt it,” Captain Mathis replies.

Get your jabs in now, jackass. The minute I’m out of the truck …

“Choking down the cookies she sent was worse.”

I gasp, staring at him.

“Ex-nay on the ookies-cay,” Petr says, laughing too hard. “They were a nice thought, Kitty-Khav. We all appreciated them.”

Hurt, I glare at Captain Mathis. I’m tempted to slap the back of his head, too, but something tells me he’s more likely to go ninja on me than my brother will. I’ll settle for making his life hell this week, since we’ll all be spending it together.

There’s nothing wrong with my cookies. Baba loves them. He’s the one always encouraging me to send them overseas to help cheer up deployed soldiers. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised a man with a nickname like Iceman doesn’t like cookies. He probably steals candy from kids and tells five year olds there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny.

“Baba always asked what it’d take to keep you quiet, Kitty-Khav,” Petr says, smiling. “I guess the answer is a Force Recon Marine. God knows two Green Berets couldn’t.”

I’m glad he’s smiling. I just wish it wasn’t at my expense.

They chat about people they know, rattling off names of other service members. I’ve heard Petr mention a couple of them but can’t recall much about them. Gazing out the window, I watch as we exit the highway for a winding road leading through a forest. My family owns a lot of land along here. Our house is situated on about four hundred acres, a quarter of which was annexed from an old summer camp then renovated earlier this summer.

Mikael would love this camp idea.

Thinking of him makes me hurt inside. My chest gets tight, and my heart aches so much, I rub my left shoulder. I haven’t been to the forest since Mikael’s death. It didn’t seem right to return to his favorite place without him.

We turn down a dirt road, and Petr, too, falls silent. I have a feeling he’s thinking the same thing. I’ve gotten good at sensing his mood after sitting with him for most of the past four months. I was there when he awoke from his coma and when the night terrors seized him. He’d wake up screaming, and I’d crawl into the hospital bed with him and hold him until he stopped shaking. I helped him eat and take his meds when he was too weak or fevered to do it himself, and we developed our own little language for those days where he was too tired from the many surgeries to speak.

My eyes are blurring as I stare outside the window at the forest. I blink back tears.

“Kitty-Khav,” Petr says, stretching his arm back over his head towards me.

I reach forward and take his hand. He squeezes.

“We’ve never been out here without Mikael,” he explains to Captain Mathis.

He doesn’t deserve to know. I want to say something, walking be damned, but there’s a lump in my throat that prevents me from speaking.

Captain Mathis catches my eye in the rearview mirror. His attention lingers for a moment before shifting back to the road. He doesn’t say anything, and I glare at the back of his head.

Of all the people my brothers served with, why does he get to be here?

“We’ll be okay, Katya,” Petr tells me gently. “You keep making cookies, and I’ll keep working out.”

I don’t want to smile, but I do. I love my Petr so much. I didn’t simply put my life on hold for the past four months, I straight out ditched everything to be with him. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, too, even if I’m not sure how things will ever go back to normal. My life is a disaster right now.

Deal with that later, Kitty-Khav, I tell myself. Someday I’ll have to pick up the pieces but not today.

“Oh, god, you didn’t invite Harris.”

I lean to see what Petr is looking at. The camp is less than a quarter a mile ahead, and a group of men and one woman are out front of the log cabin welcome center, at the flagpoles. There are three men clumped together, guys I recognize from pictures Mikael sent home. Even if I didn’t know they’re members of his and Petr’s teams, it’d be obvious by the way they were built and how they moved.

“We’re even,” I reply.

“I can’t stand him, Katya.”

I’m not about to tell him I didn’t invite Harris Westwood the Third, either. I had nothing to do with the list of camp counselors, or Captain Mathis never would’ve made the cut. I imagine one of our father’s assistants put together the list of camp counselors and chose Harris because of how close his family is to ours.

“Who’s Harris?” Captain Mathis asks.

“A friend,” I reply curtly.

“He’s been stalking you since you were sixteen,” Petr retorts. “Like a wolf after a sheep. Not the good stalking.”

“You’ve never spoken to him for more than five minutes, and I traveled to Europe and South America with him,” I point out. “He’s not a wolf or stalking me. He’s a friend.” Sorta. In truth, Harris makes me uneasy sometimes, because he can be a little too intense. Not sexy-boyfriend intense. More like … obsessive serial killer intense. “You’ll get along well with him, Captain Mathis.”