Sweet Hatred
Chapter 120: memories

Chapter 120: memories

I turned to look at him like he’d grown another head. Maybe he had. But I wasn’t surprised. Not really. Just... confused.

Ivan laughed quietly to himself and went back to his word game like we weren’t minutes away from a possible slaughter. His voice drifted in the tense air again, soft but steady. "Humans are bound to die anyway. So what’s the use fighting it?"

I frowned. "It’s still something a normal person would fear."

"Because we’re taught to," he said without missing a beat. "From the moment we’re born, it is drilled it into us, that death is the end, that it’s something to run from. But... I think... it’s not all that bad."

"You only say that because you’ve never been close to it," I told him flatly. "If you had, you wouldn’t sound so damn unbothered."

He shrugged. "Maybe you’re right. I’ve been lucky so far. But the truth is... I just don’t care."

I stared at him for a long second. At his messy jet-black hair curling under the edge of his helmet. The silver of his eyes catching light like knives. The slightness of his frame, compact and coiled, like he was made to move fast and slip through cracks I didn’t know existed. He was so small, and yet somehow the most unshakable person I’d ever met.

I gave up trying to understand him and sat back in silence while he kept talking to himself, tossing questions from his game like pebbles against my skull. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to encourage him.

But just as we pulled up to the outer edge of Vareen, tires grinding against dirt and tension thick as steel in the air, he leaned toward me and muttered under his breath, "You wanna know why I don’t care if I die out here?"

I didn’t mean to care. But I turned my head anyway. "Why?"

He grinned. "It’s a secret," he whispered with a wink, then hopped out of the truck like this wasn’t a one-way ticket to hell.

And I sat there—annoyed, irrationally so—wondering why I even gave a damn about what that idiot had to say in the first place.

We moved through the lowlands for hours, slipping under the radar, the heat oppressive and the tension thicker than the smoke hanging in the air. Ivan was still humming to himself, but his energy had shifted. The easy chatter was gone, replaced with a quiet focus.

He wasn’t staring at me anymore, wasn’t asking questions about word games, and I was damn grateful. The closer we got to the target, the more the dread settled in my gut. I could feel it too—the weight of everything on our shoulders. We’d been tasked with clearing out a high-value target in a makeshift war zone. Nothing about it felt right, and as always, I knew something would go wrong.

And, of course, it did.

The first explosion hit like thunder, ripping the stillness of the night to shreds. The ground trembled beneath us, and the stench of gunpowder and smoke flooded the air. Chaos erupted all around us. I heard shouts, orders being barked over the comms. I didn’t need to hear them clearly to know we were being surrounded.

"Take cover!" I shouted, pulling Ivan down behind a stack of concrete debris. He didn’t argue, didn’t question—just moved with that same strange calmness I couldn’t wrap my head around. We were pinned, no backup yet, the enemy closing in fast.

"Requesting backup!" I snarled into the comms, hoping for a response, but all I could hear was static.

"Shit," Ivan muttered beside me. He didn’t sound afraid. He was still reloading his gun, like he had all the time in the world. I hated how calm he was.

"Get your head in the game!" I snapped, checking my own ammo before popping up to return fire. The flashes of gunshots stung my eyes, but we kept fighting, kept moving.

Ivan was a breath away from me as we exchanged shots, his focus never leaving his target, his body pressed to mine in the heat of it all.

And then, for a split second, everything went quiet. The lull before the next storm. I glanced at Ivan, just for a moment, before hearing the unmistakable whistling of a grenade falling through the air.

"Down!" I screamed, and before I even had time to think, I was pushing Ivan to the ground, shoving him out of the way with everything I had. My body collided with his, knocking him behind cover just as the bomb exploded nearby.

The blast tore through the air with a deafening roar. The shockwave rattled my bones, and the sting of shrapnel caught me in the side. I felt the hot pain sear through me as I hit the ground, everything going white for a second.

But I couldn’t stop. I had to protect him.

A high-pitched ringing swallowed the world, dull and endless, and debris rained down around us like ash from a dead sky. I didn’t even think. My body had moved before my mind could catch up, and the next thing I knew, I was over him. Over Ivan.

My chest was burning, every breath a knife, and I could feel the warm slick of blood soaking through my uniform, but I didn’t care. Not when I looked down and saw him staring up at me like that.

His eyes—those cold silver eyes—widened, stunned, like he couldn’t believe what I’d done. Like he didn’t understand why I threw myself into the fire for him.

"Kael..." he breathed. Just my name, caught somewhere between a gasp and a prayer.

And I couldn’t look away. Not from the sound of his voice shaking. Not from the way he looked at me like I’d ripped open the sky and stepped through just to reach him.

It wasn’t the pain that made my heart seize. It was that look. That stupid, beautiful look.

That was the moment I felt it—that shift. Quiet but deep, like the tremble before the quake. And I knew. Something had changed. Between us. In me.

I tried to roll away, but the sudden agony in my abdomen made it hard to breathe, let alone move. I gritted my teeth, the pressure in my gut unbearable as I forced myself to move regardless. Ivan was still on the ground, his face contorted with panic. But he was alive. We were both alive.

I looked down. Blood. My blood. Warm, sticky, and spilling down my side. My body screamed in anguish, but the pain didn’t register until after I’d pulled Ivan further back behind the wreckage of a building.

"You—" Ivan started to say again, his voice was tight with panic, but I gritted my teeth and pressed a hand against my wound to staunch the bleeding. It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting us both out alive.

"Keep fighting," I told him, my voice hoarse. "You don’t stop until I say so."

He hesitated, just for a moment. His silver eyes met mine, searching for something he didn’t find. I saw him swallow hard, his jaw clenched. And then he nodded, silent as always. He turned back to the fight, all business.

But me? I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was it. This was where it all went wrong.

I felt the life slipping from me, slowly, painfully. My fingers tightened around the grip of my weapon as I forced myself to reload. Another shot, a single deafening roar, and then—

I blacked out.

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