Finding Ella

Chapter 10

It was a few days later that the next emotional revelations were laid bare between them all. Ella's mind and body had continued to heal under the care of her five protectors, each of them going out of their way to make sure she felt safe, valued and accepted. In fact, she was finally feeling strong enough to start coming up with a plan to help Cassie and the others she'd left behind. Freeing them and bringing down the bastards who'd taken them all into the very depths of Hell was not going to be easy, but she was determined and it was looking like the guys would be her best chance to do that.

What she wasn't prepared for though, was to discover that the guys had their own demons to overcome.

Ella was sitting in one of the overstuffed armchairs in the living room watching as Blaize, Ryder and Storm battled it out on the Xbox in a rather unsettling game of Call of Duty. Wolf had just finished explaining how the explosions, firefights and decapitated bodies was actually not that far from the real thing when it came to the experiences they had all gone through during their time in the military. Whilst Wolf sounded slightly impressed at the realism of the game, Ella was horrified. She'd witnessed and been subjected to her fair share of violence, but what she was seeing on the screen was beyond anything she could've imagined.

"You mean this is literally what it was like for you when you were stationed overseas?" she asked with a shaking voice.

Hunter looked over at her, "Not always, but there were times when it was."

Storm gave a triumphant yell as Ryder's head exploded onscreen.

"Oh yeah! Who's your daddy now sucker?" he crowed as Ryder groaned and Blaize laughed, giving Storm a high five.

Turning her attention back to Hunter, Ella asked, "Did you get hurt?"

Wolf and Hunter couldn't exactly be described as 'fun' even at the best of times, but they'd been sitting watching the antics of their brothers with mild looks of amusement on their normally stern faces as they sipped their beers. At Ella's question however, they both stilled. Sharing a quick look and doing that weird silent twin speak thing, Hunter focused his attention back on the screen as Wolf answered quietly, "Yeah, we got hurt."

Sensing the sudden tension between them, she almost let the subject drop there and then, but the guys had all been encouraging her to speak up, saying that she could ask or say anything she wanted to them and they wouldn't be angry. Screwing up her courage, she asked the question that she wasn't sure she really wanted to know the answer to.

"Did... did you... lose anyone?" The question came out as a stutter, her voice small and almost drowned out by the sound of the television. Wolf heard her though.

"We lost our brother, Tyson," he replied, his deep voice gruff with emotion.

The moment he said the name, everyone stopped. Storm looked over in surprise, Blaize paused the game and Ryder's fingers tightened on the controller he was holding until his knuckles turned white. The sudden silence was almost deafening.

"You... you had another brother?" Ella asked tentatively, unsure about whether it was such a good idea to push any further.

Wolf nodded, "He died two years ago. We were ambushed while on a mission in South America, never even saw it coming."

"Oh my God," Ella whispered, "I'm so sorry."

The silence was tense as each of the guys seemed to get lost inside their own memories of the tragedy. Ella was alone in the world, but she'd never actually lost someone important to her that she could remember, Cassie was the closest thing she had to family. To lose a brother would be almost unbearable. Finally, it was Storm that broke the silence.