Guardian Angel

Chapter Thirteen

 Chapter Thirteen

The cafeteria at the bunker was exactly what you would expect.

A corporate break room made up of a few round tables with attached stools, a minimal salad bar, and one wall was home to the food bar where I could see a couple of workers dressed in all white chefs coats, obeying the barked orders of a small kitsune male that was behind the line. A few of the tables were occupied by what appeared to be other soldiers, and I recognized a few that had come with Aric to kidnap me.

The moment our eyes met, those soldiers rose to their feet and filed out, passing Aric glares, which he ignored because he was too busy glaring at his phone. He was checking the post he made about our engagement, and most of the comments were either congratulatory or condemnation, but it was almost like he was looking for a specific comment the way he scrolled slowly.

Aric approached the window, grabbing a plate without looking away from his phone and bypassing all the hot food to grab a premade sandwich and an energy drink. I felt weird just standing there, so I grabbed a plate, glancing at the steaming fresh hot food in the metal kitchen pans.

My mouth watered, but I was hesitant to eat. No way they would poison the cafeteria food, no way they could time it that well. At the same time, it felt weird eating while I was being held captive. I was surprised I even had an appetite, but I felt strangely starved.

"You must be Ryk," my eyes jumped up to see the bossy little kitsune watching me from the other side of the glass, his gold eyes glinting in the LED lights overhead, "I am Misaki. Rin texted me about you."

"Word spreads fast," I muttered. Misaki nodded.

"No secret stays secret long around here," he answered, making me frown curiously as he shrugged and gestured to the banquet, "Please, help yourself and eat as much as you would like. I prepare everything with only the freshest of ingredients. If something is not to your liking, please do let me know so that I may rectify it." He paused and glanced down the line where Aric was leaning against the wall, glaring at his phone still. Those gold eyes jumped back to mine and I watched his pupils morph, elongating and thinning, before abruptly returning to normal.

"I mean that with other things as well," he said. I was surprised by that, and also a little... embarrassed? How many people around here knew about Aric and I? What happened between us? Was it part of the gaps in my memories?

Misaki didn't elaborate and just explained the individual dishes available instead. I ended up walking away with a plate of steamed rice pilaf and grilled chicken breast. Aric led us to a table in the corner away from the line and exit and made sure he sat with me in the corner and on my right side, facing out.

It was strange how he felt overprotective of me here, when I never recalled him being that way in the first place. And considering what he was willing to fucking do to me, I called bullshit on him caring about me. There was another reason Aric was glued to my hip and it wasn't just babies.

Which still made no sense to begin with, so what the hell?

They knew something I didn't, something that made me a little more important to Aric than just a creepy obsession... And for a brief moment, I had a flashback to that cage. It was abrupt and caught me off guard, making me gasp and drop the fork on the plate so it clattered.

"Ryky," Aric chided, reaching for the fork to wipe it off as I withdrew my hands, suddenly feeling unsettled, "Eat like a big boy, come on." My muscles felt twitchy. I felt on edge. I blinked with the intention to just clear my head, but again, the cage was there, but I could see from the inside out. I could see my arm outstretched in front of me, blood pooling out from under me toward the bars.