"Go clean your hands," Dawn said, jerking his chin toward the bathroom. "You look like a horror movie reject, and if she wakes up and sees you like this, she’ll worry. And then you’ll feel guilty. And then you’ll brood harder, which I didn’t think was physically possible, but you continue to surprise me."

Dimitri glanced down at his hands. At the dried blood caked into every line and crease.

Dawn was right. If Felicity saw this, those soft fox ears would pin back, and her tail would tuck, and that crease between her brows would appear. The one that meant she was absorbing someone else’s pain into herself.

He wouldn’t allow that. Not from him, never from him.

He moved toward the bathroom without another word.

Behind him, Thane’s murmur carried: "He’s completely gone, isn’t he?"

Dawn’s response was barely a whisper, dry as bone: "Brother, he was gone the second she smiled at him. We’re just watching the wreckage now."

——

Back near the motel entrance, Tommy had appointed himself head guard. Nobody asked him, and nobody needed to.

He dragged a chair from somewhere, wooden, listing badly to one side, one leg shorter than the others and dragged it down the hall with both hands, the legs shrieking against the floor the entire way. He stopped in front of Richard’s door and turned to face the others with the gravity of a general addressing his troops.

"I," he announced, "am watching the TRAITOR tonight."

A few chuckles and a grunt or two.

Richard’s door was unlocked. Tommy noted this and chose to interpret it as a testament to his own formidable presence rather than an oversight. He shouldered through it, planted himself in the centre of the room, and fixed Richard with a stare that could have stripped paint.

"I’m on the night watch," he said. "No one enters, and no one leaves. Especially not the Stray."

Richard opened his mouth.

"Ah!" Tommy raised one finger.

"No."

"Talking."

"Traitor."

He spun the chair around and straddled it backwards, forearms crossed over the top rail, eyes locked onto Richard’s with the full and terrible weight of his conviction. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Richard did not blink. Tommy’s eyes began to water.

"Dust," Tommy said.

"You’re a rhino," Sarge observed from the doorway. "That’s normal."

"He did something," Tommy said, " a traitor trick."

"So, Richard... or should I call you Dick? If that is your real name." He let the name sit there a second. Or whatever your name actually is, he thought.

"Tell me." Tommy took one step forward, slow and deliberate, the way Sarge had taught him when you wanted something to feel the weight of what was coming. "Do you like puppies?"

"Because if you hurt one hair on her head..." his voice dropped, and he meant every word of what came next, "—I’ll make sure the only children you ever see again are the ones in your nightmares."

Then, as dramatic as he entered, he left, chin lifted, eyes closed, one hand raised in a gesture that said the matter was settled and the matter was him. Tommy made it exactly two steps before his face met the door frame with a sound like a bat hitting a watermelon. He stood there a moment, forehead pressed against the wood, blinking at the floor.

He stumbled forward, his vision swimming slightly from the impact. He could feel the warm trickle of blood making its way down to his upper lip, but he refused to acknowledge it. The hallway seemed longer than he remembered, the fluorescent lights flickering overhead like mocking eyes. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"Everything okay?" a voice called from behind him. Felicity’s soft tones made his ears twitch.

"Fine," Tommy called back, his voice slightly nasal from the injury. "Just... checking the perimeter."

He dabbed at his nose with the back of his hand, wincing at the crimson smear. Perfect. Just perfect. Not only had he failed to intimidate that smug bastard Richard, but now he was bleeding in front of Felicity.

The wooden chair he’d dragged into the hallway earlier seemed to mock him as he passed it. He’d positioned it directly in front of the hallway, a symbolic barrier that now seemed utterly ridiculous. Richard’s door hadn’t even been locked.

Tommy sank onto the chair, tilting his head back to stem the bleeding. The ceiling had water stains that resembled continents on some long-forgotten map. The motel was falling apart, just like everything else in this godforsaken world.

"What happened to your face?" Ash asked, appearing from one of the adjacent rooms. His expression caught between concern and amusement.

"Nothing," Tommy muttered, straightening up. "Just a... security measure."

Ash raised an eyebrow. "You ran into a door as a security measure?"

"I was checking its structural integrity," Tommy shot back, immediately regretting how defensive he sounded. "And keeping an eye on our... guest."

A low chuckle rumbled from Ash’s chest. "Right. Because the chair in the hallway is really going to stop someone from leaving."

Tommy’s face burned hotter than his throbbing nose. "It’s about sending a message."

"And what message is that? That we’re desperate enough to stay in a motel with half the windows broken and water damage in every room?"

Before Tommy could respond, the door to Richard’s room creaked open. Tommy shot to his feet, immediately regretting the quick movement as dizziness washed over him.

Richard stood in the doorway, his posture relaxed, his blue eyes taking in the scene with detached interest. "I heard a commotion," he said, his voice as measured as always. "Is everything alright out here?"

"Everything’s fine," Tommy growled, stepping forward. "Just going over security protocols."

Richard’s gaze flicked to the blood on Tommy’s face, then to the chair positioned in the hallway. His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes suggested he was finding the situation highly amusing.

"I see," he said. "Well, I was just coming to inform you that I’ll be stepping out for a moment. There’s something I need to check on."

Tommy’s blood ran cold. "No one leaves," he said firmly. "That’s the rule."

"The rule you just made up?" Ash asked, one eyebrow arching.

"The rule for everyone’s safety," Tommy countered, crossing his arms. "We don’t know what’s out there, plus, you’re still a traitor."

Richard’s expression remained impassive. "I assure you, I’m quite capable of handling myself."

"That’s not the point," Tommy said, lowering his voice. "The point is that we don’t know what you’re capable of, and I don’t trust you and definitely not with Felicity."

At the mention of her name, something flickered in Richard’s eyes, a momentary crack in his carefully constructed facade. It was gone so quickly that Tommy almost missed it.

"I have no intention of harming anyone in this group," Richard said, his tone still even. "But I do need to do something. It’s important."

"More important than staying alive?" Tommy challenged.

Richard sighed, a rare show of emotion. "Tommy, I understand your protective instincts. They’re... admirable. But sometimes there are things more important than immediate safety."

"Like what?" Tommy demanded.

"I need to use the bathroom," Richard said.