Sky Ain’t The Limit – Chapter 4 & 5 – ScarsLikeVelvet

Chapter 4 – Growing Up

Alpha Prime Sentinel Jim Ellison and Alpha Prime Guide Blair Sandburg stayed at the Sentinel and Guide Centre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until their newly adopted sons—Daniel Marcus and Evan Christopher—were declared healed/grown enough to make it through a flight to Cascade, Washington suffering no consequences.

The time spent at the Sentinel and Guide Centre allowed Jim to get settled into fatherhood and taking care of a newborn without anyone interfering in the situation. There was always someone around whom he could ask if he was unsure on how to handle a situation with the newborn Sentinel, but ultimately he decided that reading a couple of parenting books and listening to his own instincts were the only things he needed to do to get a handle on things.

He listened to Blair more than anyone else because Blair always had a knack for handling children of all ages, and he connected well with them even when they were too young to actually communicate.

Evan latched onto him more than blare though, which was absolutely curious. The little boy seemed to feel safe in Jim’s arms in ways only his brother seemed to offer and since they were trying to unwind the connection born of need between the brothers, it was a good thing that Evan wasn’t clinging to Daniel, who needed to focus more on his own healing than protecting his newborn brother, though Jim and Blair allowed them to spend time together when Daniel was awake.

When the day to travel came, Jim was antsy. He did not know how to handle the trip because he had not only his partner—who technically could defend himself better than anyone Jim knew—to contend with but also a newborn and an injured pre-teen.

“Here,” Blair said, offering Jim a baby sling. “This will keep your hands empty, but you can keep Evan close. We both know Daniel can take care of himself if necessary, since I showed him how to drop an adult in case they get handsy with him.”

Jim looked sceptical, but donned the sling before tucking Little Evan into it and smiling when the little boy immediately relaxed against his chest.

“He loves listening to your heart beat,” Blair remarked as he picked up the last things they had left out and put them into his carry-on bag.

“I know,” Jim replied and went to check on Daniel, who was in his own room of their isolation suite, packing up his school supplies. “Daniel?”

“Yes, Uncle Jim?” the pre-teen asked. Daniel had settled on calling both Jim and Blair uncle for the time being, because despite everything, he still considered Phillip Buckley, who had passed peacefully a couple of days after Evan’s birth, his father, and the Alpha Primes were fine with the boy’s decision. As long as he listened to them when it came down to it, they would always be fine with him considering them uncles.

“Did you pack up everything you wanted to take with you?” Jim asked him gently, looking around the room and finding nothing out of place.

“Yes. I took the books I didn’t want to keep up to the small library they have here in the public space, so they don’t get thrown out. The librarian was really happy to receive those books, because they are all books they didn’t have on their roster yet,” Daniel rambled, making Jim smile.

“That’s a very nice thing to do, Daniel,” Jim said. “Did you say goodbye to your sister?”

Daniel shook his head.

“Maddie didn’t want to see me. She told the nurse that she didn’t want to see traitors like me, though I don’t know why she considers me a traitor … it hurts … but I guess Mum hurt her more than anyone expected and losing her Spirit Guide damaged her even worse …,” he trailed off as he thought about his sister.

He turned and looked at Jim with a questioning gaze.

“I won’t ever see her again, will I?” Daniel asked.

Jim shook his head.

“No,” he confirmed. “Your sister has been deemed a danger to both you and Evan, though we wanted to give you a chance to say goodbye. Anything else would have been unfair to you. She’s been by your side all your life.”

Daniel huffed.

“She’s been complaining about my existence since I was born,” he admitted. “Mum only had me because Dad wanted both a boy and a girl. She was happy to have her own mini-me she could spoil rotten.”

Jim blinked. Daniel rarely spoke this frankly when Jim was the only adult around because he seemed to fear his displeasure.

“Sounds unpleasant,” Jim remarked.

Daniel nodded.

“Well, I don’t have to worry about that anymore,” he said while closing the zipper of his bag and shouldering it effortlessly, something that hadn’t even been possible the week before.

“That’s true,” Jim found himself agreeing, and he gently put his arm around Daniel’s shoulders as he guided the boy out of the isolation suite.

Blair was waiting for them in the corridor with their luggage by his feet and a diaper bag in his hands. He handed the diaper bag over to Jim before taking care of the rest of the luggage.

Sentinel Howard Hollander stepped up to help him, but Blair waved him away.

“Thank you, Sentinel Hollander. I’ve got it handled,” Blair said as he started walking out of the secure part of the Pittsburgh Sentinel and Guide Centre toward the entryway, where he knew Guide Helen Hollander was waiting to say her goodbyes.

Daniel walked between Blair and Jim, knowing better than to slip out of a Sentinel’s sight. He also could feel his little brother’s senses focused on him, though it wasn’t as intense as it had been.

Blair guided the pre-teen into the backseat of the sentinel-safe cab waiting to take them to the airport.

Jim slipped into the back with Daniel, leaving the passenger seat to Blair, and he reluctantly settled Evan in the baby car seat sitting between him and Daniel. Both Sentinels instinctively reached out and rested their hands on Evan to keep the baby calm during the drive, which was an absolutely new experience for the little one.

——

The airport was quite busy, but Jim’s imposing height and the Sentinel aura he projected allowed them to pass through the masses quickly to check in for their private flight. Neither Blair nor Jim had the patience to travel commercially when their private plane was available and much safer, and less fraught with things that could cause a newborn Sentinel to spiral straight into a zone-out accidentally.

They went through the TSA check, and when the agent tried to get handsy with both Evan and Daniel, Jim’s jaguar Spirit Guide made an abrupt appearance and roared into the woman’s face so loudly she pissed her pants and fainted.

Blair rolled his eyes and apologised for the inconvenience, but reminded the other TSA agents that touching a Sentinel’s children inappropriately was just asking for trouble.

The head agent apologised and allowed them to go through without further issues, though Blair knew he would need to write a report about the situation because there was no way he could allow someone so stupid with their and everyone else’s lives to stay on the job. It was just sad.

Before he could spiral, Blair focused on getting Jim and the boys settled in their plane, and getting them into the air before Jim decided to turn around and lay waste on Pittsburgh for an uneducated woman’s transgression.

——-

The rest of their family’s journey to Cascade went off without a hitch, and they found Jim’s boss and friend, Simon Banks, waiting for them at the airport to give them a ride home.

Jim approached him slowly, not because he was feeling hesitant, but to allow Evan to take in their surroundings in peace. He knew Simon would want to look at the baby, and Jim felt inclined to allow it, even though touching was a no-no because Simon was mundane, but sensitive, and his shielding was still a bit on the shoddy side some days, so it was safer to not allow any physical contact between him and the baby until Evan was able to hold his own shields without effort.

“Jim, Blair,” Simon Banks greeted them with a smile before looking at their companions. “And who are these young gentlemen?”

“Our sons,” Jim stated proudly, reaching for Daniel and putting him in front of himself. “This is our oldest, Daniel Marcus, and the little one here is Evan Christopher.”

“So they are the reason why you told me to pull you from the roster,” Simon questioned absentmindedly while kneeling so he was face to face with Daniel. “Nice to meet you, Daniel. How are you doing?”

“Daniel,” Jim said. “This is my boss and friend, Simon Banks.”

“Hello, Mister Banks,” Daniel said a bit shyly, leaning against Jim, though he was careful about his little brother, who was resting in the baby sling.

Simon smiled, the crow’s feet beside his eyes crinkling happily.

“Let’s meet the little one,” Simon said, carefully rising to his feet again. He hadn’t touched Daniel because he had seen the wrist band denoting him as an active Guide, something that was rare but not unheard of.

Jim shifted the cloth of the sling out of the way so Simon could look at the baby, but when he tried to reach out toward the child, Blair suddenly stepped between them before even Jim could utter a sound.

“No, Simon,” the Guide growled, his eyes glowing with psionic energy. “No touching the newborn Sentinel.”

Simon froze and stared at Blair.

“Are you telling me the baby is online?” he asked, his voice raspy with shock.

Jim inclined his head.

“He’s the reason we left so abruptly a couple of weeks ago,” he admitted to his friend. “And the reason I can’t go back on the job. He won’t tolerate being apart from me for months if not years to come, and I can’t exactly take a baby into the field with me, no matter how much you’d like me to do so.”

“Yeah, no, not happening. I get that,” Simon said, holding his hands up so both the Alpha Prime Sentinel and Guide could see them. “I wanted to talk you out of resigning, but I can see that resistance on my part is futile, but I insist on staying in your lives all the same. The boys deserve an uncle who spoils them rotten.”

Blair groaned while Jim laughed. He had known Simon would come around to seeing things his way immediately upon meeting the boys.

“Why do I see this whole situation going awry?” the Alpha Prime Guide asked.

“Because you know me,” Jim asked, waggling his brows teasingly before motioning for Simon to take the lead toward the car.

——-

Life changed a lot for Jim and Blair. Blair returned to work at Rainier University as a professor for Sentinel and Guide Studies in the Anthropology Department, since he had finished his degree and broken stereotypes worldwide left, right, and centre while doing so.

He was now the official breadwinner of the family, while Jim stayed at home and managed his family’s business portfolio while also homeschooling Daniel and raising both him and Little Evan, his tiny Sentinel shadow.

——-

“He walked for the first time today,” Jim told Blair excitedly when his Guide came home.

“Jim,” Blair replied. “He’s just nine months old.”

The disbelief was clear in his voice until Little Evan as the family had taken to calling their youngest, came meandering out of the living room toward them. His steps were shaky, yet sure at the same time.

“Pa, Pa,” he screeched as he started to walk as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him toward his fathers. He slammed into Blair’s legs faster than the man could kneel.

“Told you,” Jim said, sounding utterly satisfied while Blair knelt and hugged Evan, all the while praising the little boy, both for differentiating between Blair—Pa—and Jim—Da—for the first time.

Daniel joined them in the hallway and leaned against Jim’s side with a happy grin.

“It’s because of all the psionic energy, right? He’s growing faster than a baby should,” he murmured under his breath.

Jim smiled down at him.

“Yes, but I don’t mind taking care of him as he grows as fast or slow as he likes. No one is forcing him. For some reason, he sees the need to speed things up a bit, and we can’t realistically stop him without endangering your health, which we won’t do. It isn’t hurting him, Daniel, so do not worry about it,” the Alpha Prime Sentinel explained.

Daniel hummed, deep in thought.

“If you say so,” he eventually said while watching Blair rise to his feet, holding Evan’s hands and walking the little boy back into the living room where things were cushioned for the little one’s safety.

——-

“Uncle Jim?” Daniel called out, drawing the attention of his guardian, who was currently working in his office.

“Yes, Daniel?” Jim asked.

“Should Evan be able to recite my English homework?” Daniel queried, when the Sentinel appeared in the door to Daniel’s room, where the boy was watching his little brother while doing his homework at the same time.

Jim blinked slowly and listened to Evan uttering full sentences from the Winnie the Pooh book Daniel had chosen to write about for his English essay clear as day, when realistically he should still be babbling incoherent sounds.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Jim remarked while pulling his phone from his pocket and recording Evan’s soft voice to show it to Blair when the man came home because there was no way he would believe him without evidence.

Daniel laughed.

“It’s your own fault. You listen to the Spirit Guides all the time these days and are more into connecting with the Psionic Plane than even Uncle Blair,” he teased his father figure.

Jim rolled his eyes, but couldn’t deny it. Things had really changed for him over the last year.

——-

“He’s reading well above his grade level,” Evan’s first-grade teacher remarked.

“He’s been reading alone since he was two and we’ve tried to hold him back a bit, believe us. He insisted on reading everything his big brother read, so he is currently at middle school, near high school level,” Blair told the woman calmly.

“Is he a certified genius?” She blurted out, causing Jim to laugh reflexively.

“No, we never sought out testing. Our son has been online since before he was born due to extenuating circumstances, and as a result of the treatment of his brother, he has been bathed in psionic energy since that day. This resulted in advanced development both on the physical, mental, and metaphysical side of things. It wasn’t something we could have prevented unless we had forced both boys dormant with no chance to ever come online again,” Blair explained.

“So I can expect a lot of strange things happening when it comes to your son?” the teacher asked.

“If you don’t feel comfortable with teaching him, we can get him tested and he can join whatever grade he tests at, but he will have to go to the creche then so he can join his peers in age to have a balanced life as he grows,” Blair replied calmly. They had homeschooled Daniel until he was old enough to join middle school as he had stabilized fully around that time and was able to hold his own shielding stable for hours on end, and without having to rely on either Jim, Blair, or god-forbid Evan for support.

“It’s fine. Let’s try having him with his peers in age and keep him occupied with whatever material he needs. I would appreciate it if you could help provide for him on that front, though, since apparently you have done it for his brother already,” the teacher said.

“Of course,” Jim and Blair said in unison.

Evan looked up from his book with a smile. He really enjoyed being able to go to school at the Sentinel and Guide Centre in Cascade. Daniel had told him how fun school was and from what he had seen so far, his brother was right.

——-

Daniel met his Sentinel during his college orientation at the California Institute of Science, and his choice regarding where to study was made on the spot because there was no way that he would do it on the other side of the United States and leave his Sentinel, a good-looking slightly younger male with dark-brown, curly hair by the name of Charlie Eppes, behind.

Evan had snickered softly when he heard the name of his brother’s Sentinel.

“What’s so funny?” Jim questioned.

“Child genius with a focus on mathematics and stuff,” Evan said. “He is already published.”

Jim groaned.

“Oh hell,” he muttered.

Evan just grinned.

“You are used to it, Dad,” he replied before he went looking for his Papa to tell him all he knew about Charlie Eppes from the research spiral he had gone on.

——-

Evan finished high school early—no one was surprised—but what he decided to do after shocked his Papa to the core.

“No Evan,” Blair told his younger son. “Tell me this is a joke.”

Evan sighed and settled onto the sofa across from his fathers. He shared a long, silent look with his Dad before he spoke up.

“It’s not a joke, Papa. You know I’ve been working with Dad for years when it comes to the skills a Sentinel needs in the field,” the sixteen-year-old said calmly.

“Yes, I do know that. I went out with you two to train more times than I care to think about,” Blair snapped. “But I thought you wanted to follow your Dad’s footsteps and join the police academy. I didn’t expect you to decide to join the Naval Academy in Annapolis with the plan to become a fucking Navy SEAL, Evan! Do you know how dangerous that is?”

Evan forced himself to stop rolling his eyes before it could happen. He knew his Papa was worried, nothing more. Especially because Daniel rarely came up from CalSci to visit, because Charlie was so focused on his studies and his family that Blair and Jim had to go down there to visit, which took Evan out of his favoured territory and into Charlie’s who wasn’t all that happy about it either.

“I know you are overreacting, right now, Papa,” Evan calmly replied and rattled off the statistics regarding the risks he was facing working as a cop versus becoming a Navy SEAL. “I do not intend to join one of the assault teams as I think I’d prefer working more behind the scenes, so the risks are lesser than you’d expect.”

“You know that they do not care about what you want if they have someone with your skills on their hands. They will override all the choices you make for yourself while you are contracted with them,” Blair warned.

Evan looked at Jim, who pressed his lips together for a moment before he said, “Your father is right when it comes to that. A lot of people in the higher ranks of society think that Sentinels and Guides are cannon fodder and that it’s their right to make decisions about our careers and our lives. You need to remember that you are an Alpha Prime, Evan. One who will walk the Warrior’s Path. Your choices matter and you need to stay firm when it comes to them, else you will be dead before you ever find your Guide.”

Evan grimaced but didn’t protest because he knew his fathers were right.

“I promise to police my boundaries as firmly as I know how to,” he told them after a few minutes of deliberate silence between them.

Blair sighed and nodded a moment later.

“I’m not happy with your choice,” he told his youngest son.

“I know, Papa,” Evan told him. “But this feels right on a bone deep level. Becoming a Navy SEAL seems to be part of my journey and I can’t walk a path that isn’t mine. You always told me that.”

Blair sighed again.

“I hate it when you use my words against me,” he said.

“I told you it would happen eventually,” Jim spoke up.

“I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about what you two have been cooking up behind my back,” Blair told him firmly.

“There was nothing happening behind your back, Papa. We did it right under your nose, you just didn’t want to see it,” Evan reminded him.

Blair rolled his eyes and leaned against Jim’s side. He knew there was no way to dissuade Evan from the plan he had already made, and while the thought of his son leaving Cascade and moving to Annapolis and later on likely to Little Creek hurt, he knew that he would see his boy again.

They all had to walk their paths in life, and Evan’s was separating from theirs now after sixteen years of clinging to each other.

——-

The Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland felt just as much like home to Evan as Cascade did. It was a weird dichotomy, but Evan decided not to think too much about it. Instead, he focused on getting his degree in engineering, while also working toward becoming a Navy SEAL.

It wasn’t as hard to pull off as he expected it to be, simply because he had come prepared for his goal. His father had put him through SERE training since he was a little boy to sharpen his senses and he had travelled through some of the most adverse surroundings alone for training under his parents’ watchful eyes.

He felt just as much at home in the jungle as he did in the wilds of Alaska or the desert. He had trained to be able to handle all these adverse environments so they wouldn’t come as a surprise when his instructors tossed them at him in training.

Being a Sentinel could be quite the disadvantage during SERE training as all his senses could and would be used against him, but Evan had learned to handle all the bullshit someone could come up to torture a Sentinel with because his father had had this kind of training and had learned from experience too and he had shared his knowledge instead of holding it close to his chest.

So, when Hell Week came around, and later the official SERE training, Evan made it through mostly undamaged. The fact that he took all the torture they could come up with and still didn’t give them more than his name, rank, and serial number left the instructors speechless.

They even went as far as to interrogate Evan and his battle buddy, Oliver Meyrick, who had become Evan’s best friend the moment they met, about where he had learned to pull off stuff like that, but Evan just told them he had come prepared and he wasn’t about to give them his sources.

If they had been as intelligent as they always told everyone they were, they would have connected the dots between Evan Christopher Ellison, and Captain Jim Ellison, the former Green Berret, but they did not, and Evan wasn’t about to clue them in just so they could try to pull his Dad out of his well-deserved retirement.

The one thing his superiors were also always pushing was him accepting a Guide, because they felt that he couldn’t function without having one by his side but Evan always cited the rules and regulations back at them which said that he couldn’t be forced to accept a bond under any circumstances, else there’d be hell to pay and not just because he could go into a feral combat drive to rectify the situation, but also because the Sentinel and Guide Council would come down on them like a ton of bricks and then some.

——-

“Oliver and I are going to ship out in two weeks,” Evan told his parents during their weekly video call.

“Evan,” Blair said pleadingly.

“I can’t stop it from happening, Papa,” Evan told Blair calmly. “It’s part and parcel of being a SEAL, and I trained for what might come my way long before I joined the Navy.”

Blair sighed.

“I know. I still feel that this will get you hurt eventually,” the Alpha Prime Guide said.

“I know, Papa. It’s a risk I am willing to take, though,” Evan told him to the nth time.

“I’ll talk to him,” Jim said when Blair slipped away from the conversation again, because he knew his continued dislike of Evan’s profession was hurting his son.

“Thank you, Dad,” Evan replied.

“Can we come visit to say goodbye or are they keeping you all under lock and key?” Jim asked.

“If you can manage to come by either this or next weekend, I am allowed to see you. Else, the answer is no,” Evan replied.

“I’ll pull it off,” Jim told him, and he kept his word.

Before Evan shipped out, he got to hug both his fathers, his brother, and his brother’s Sentinel one last time. No one teased him about spending time with his family. And his family didn’t mind the fact that Evan brought Oliver along because his battle buddy’s family couldn’t get the time off to visit, and Evan wanted him to have the option to spend time away from the barracks before they left.

“Stay safe and keep in contact as much as they allow you to,” Jim told his son firmly. “If not for your own sake then for Blair. Your Papa is a mess.”

Evan inclined his head.

“I will write emails. I’m not sure how often they will allow them to go through, but it will at least be something,” he promised.

Jim retreated and went to talk to Oliver, extracting the same promise from his son’s battle buddy, while Evan talked to Blair, who fought very hard to stop himself from crying.

Daniel and Evan just looked at each other. They still held a nominal bond that neither of them felt inclined to let go of, even after all those years, and it was what irked Charlie a bit, but therapy had helped the other Sentinel accept it as the familial bond it was. Well, therapy and a smack around his ears from his father.

“Take care, Evan,” was all Daniel said before grabbing Charlie’s hand and leaving first. He couldn’t accept the thought that Evan would be the one who left first, and so he did it. Just the same as when he went off to college.

Charlie managed to wish him all the best and safe winds as Daniel dragged him away.

Evan and Oliver looked at each other and shook their heads as they watched Evan’s family leave before they returned to base and got ready for their first tour away from the somewhat safe United States of America and into the unknown.

Chapter 5 – In Times of War

Undisclosed Location, Afghanistan

Evan Christopher “Honey Badger” Buckley and his battle buddy, Oliver “Ghost” Meyrick, had shipped out to a forward operating base somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, the moment their training was done, because the Navy figured they could use two fully trained Sentinel SEALs on the front lines, no matter what said Sentinels were saying.

“I don’t like this,” Evan told his best friend, who inclined his head.

“Me neither,” Oliver said. “This honestly feels like a set-up to get us to bond. The only other SEALs out here are Guides. Not that I hate the fact that they are Guides, but as I said, it feels like a set-up and they think just because our choices are limited out here, we won’t bond with the person perfect for us.”

Evan sighed. He knew better than anyone else what could happen if someone bonded with someone they weren’t compatible with.

“What they are doing is abuse,” the younger of the two remarked. “But we can’t exactly walk away without risking facing a court-martial for going AWOL or caught by insurgents or something.”

Oliver rolled his eyes.

“I think a court-martial would be our least problem if we give in,” he said, giving Evan a speaking look.

“True,” Evan agreed. “Bonding with an incompatible Guide can lead to a metric shit ton of things no one wants, least of all irritated Spirit Guides. The mess that comes with untangling a forced bond with an incompatible Guide leads to months if not years of counselling from the Sentinel and Guide Centre in general and my parents in particular for me. I’ve been literally raised on therapy due to the circumstances surrounding my birth and trauma-bonding with my older brother, let’s say that while I’m used to it, it isn’t fun and I don’t wish for anyone having to go through this when they don’t have to.”

“You do know we will have to with the way they’ve been parading Guides in front of us, Badger,” Oliver replied.

Evan rolled his eyes.

“They can try, but they will have a feral Sentinel and Spirit Guide on their asses in response,” he said firmly. “You really won’t give in?”

“Have you ever known me to give in? Even in the face of adversity?” Evan replied, even as they walked toward their assigned bunk smack dab in the middle of dozens of Guides that seemed to long to bond with them.

Oliver remained silent for a long time before he hummed under his breath and nodded.

“No, I don’t suppose you ever gave them what they expected during training,” he replied as they settled in.

Evan smiled, though it wasn’t a happy smile but one filled with too many teeth.

“I never did, Ghost. And I don’t intend to bond out here, unless both my Spirit Guide and I agree it is in our best interest to do so,” he said calmly while making up his bunk.

————

To his own surprise, Evan ate his words only a couple of days later, when Kenneth McGregor joined them in all of his 5’9 1/2″ of bearded, battle-hardened, red-headed, blue-grey-eyed glory. And yes, he did look like Ewan McGregor, though he immediately informed everyone that they weren’t related, which smacked of a lie to Evan, but he didn’t say so out loud.

If Kenneth wanted to keep his relationship with the actor a secret, he could do so at his leisure. It was no skin off Evan’s teeth.

The quartermaster of the forward operating base shuffled the Guide into Evan’s and Oliver’s shared quarters, informing them that bunks were sparse—a big, fat lie neither Sentinel called him out on as they had been trained better—and McGregor needed to stay with them.

McGregor was the one who initiated skin on skin contact with Evan, and a surprisingly soft bond bloomed into being almost immediate.

“What the fuck?” Evan breathed out as his Spirit Guide popped into being between him and the Guide with a warning snarl.

“I’m sorry,” McGregor said, sounding quite wary in response to the irate Spirit Guide advancing on him. “They said you were looking for a Guide … and we tested as highly compatible.”

“That doesn’t mean you simply get to bond with me without as much as a by your leave,” Evan snapped, sounding pissed despite his psionic profile smoothing out properly for the first time since he left his parents’ care.

Oliver entered the tent, alerted by Evan’s blood pressure skyrocketing and the sound of a pissed of Spirit Animal echoing through the camp.

“Free will is a thing,” he said.

“I apologise,” McGregor said, sitting down heavily on the edge of Evan’s bunk, burying his face in his hands for a moment, where he simply breathed. “I was informed you were desperate to bond and …”

“So are you,” Evan said from where he had retreated to the far end of the tent. “I felt it the moment you approached the tent, but still … that didn’t give you the right to initiate a bond without asking for proper consent.”

He was still on edge and ready to tear the Guide, no matter how attractive both on the physical and metaphysical front, to pieces.

“Evan,” Oliver said firmly. “No matter what, I need you to calm down … else you’ll cause another psionic event and this time you aren’t a baby … you know it would go nuclear.”

Evan growled under his breath as his fellow Sentinel approached him, cutting off his line of sight to the Guide for a few seconds before he pulled him into a hug and guided Evan’s face against his throat.

“Just breathe, Badger. Focus on the here and now, and then we’ll figure out how we will deal with this situation,” Oliver told him.

Evan slumped against his best friend and did as he asked, though he looked over his shoulder and kept an eye on the Guide, who looked more enticing by the minute despite not being perfect for him.

The Psionic Plane whispered into Evan’s ear that Kenneth McGregor, while not perfect for him, was who and what he needed right now because while having a fellow Sentinel support him was great, the Guide would be a real treasure.

The soft whispers asked him to give in, and even though Evan, the human, wasn’t sold on the situation just yet, his Spirit Guide calmed down and carefully approached the feline Spirit Guide hiding behind McGregor’s legs, and their bond deepened until it was a fully fledged, platonic bond that sat smack-dab in the middle of Evan’s mind.

The Sentinel growled under his breath because this meant he and McGregor would need to figure out how their bond would work now as they couldn’t very well break it in the middle of a war zone.

—————

Despite their not so fabulous first meeting, Evan accepted Kenneth as his Guide and as they got to know each other their relationship grew from sort of enemies to friends to lovers, though that last part wasn’t something the higher-ups wanted to happen there was nothing they could do.

It was their own fault for forcing the bond in the first place.

Kenneth had apologised to both Evan and Oliver properly for invading their space and initiating a bond without even thinking about obtaining proper consent because he was so used to obeying orders it didn’t even occur to him.

As time went on, the three of them became one of the most effective field teams the Navy had, and Evan was on the front lines more often than not, despite the promise he made his parents. He used his incredible skill set to work his missions, protect both himself and his field team, and continued his education in his downtime.

—————

“I got an alert on your file,” Blair Sandburg said leadingly one day during one of their rare video calls.

Evan rolled his eyes.

“Papa,” Evan moaned and rolled his eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell us that you found your Guide?” Blair prodded his youngest child.

Evan looked toward the side where Kenneth was sitting and reading a book. He wanted to pull the smaller man into his lap and introduce him, but he knew his father would immediately realise what had happened, because Evan had told him he knew his perfect match was taller than him and a police detective, not a SEAL like him.

“You know why, Papa,” he replied calmly and held out his hand in silent invitation to Kenneth, allowing the other man the choice if he wanted to meet the Alpha Prime Guide and Sentinel of North America or not.

Kenneth McGregor released a slow breath before he put his book aside and slid his hand into Evan’s. Their hold on each other tightened, and Kenneth slipped into Evan’s lap. He smiled at the camera for a moment before paling when he realised that Evan hadn’t been lying about his parents being the Alpha Prime Guide and Sentinel of North America. Up until now he had thought it was a joke and that the few pictures Evan and Oliver both had with them were from meeting them at some kind of gathering at a Sentinel and Guide Centre.

“Hello, good to meet you, Sir,” Kenneth managed to say, unsure of what to do now that he was faced with the truth.

Blair just inclined his head in greeting, his gaze already focusing on Evan with a silent accusation in his eyes.

“You promised,” Blair said, leaning forward and getting ready to lecture his son, but Jim’s hand settled on his shoulder and pulled him back.

“You made Evan a promise, too, Blair,” the Alpha Prime Sentinel said. “You promised him not to lecture him about his choices the way you did when he was a kid, once he turned eighteen. He’s already in his twenties.”

Blair released a huffy breath, and Evan was the one to say something next.

“I know what I promised, Papa, but plans rarely survive the first encounter … I’m good … Kenneth and I are good together … not perfect, mind you … but we agree that he is Mister Right-Now, not forever … the higher-ups tricked us both into this bond and we made our peace with it. Until either one of us dies in combat or we fulfil our contract and muster out, we will stay together. Our bond isn’t harming us and we are reasonably compatible … if I had to guess somewhere in the high eighty percentile,” Evan rambled, his cheeks a bit flushed the way they always got when he was agitated.

Kenneth watched the interaction and gave Evan’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

“They used my training and my instincts against me, Alpha Prime … I instinctively bonded your son because I had been informed he was open to it and desperately wanted it … I believed them because I’ve been without a match all my life. I’ve been online since I was nine and … yeah,” he trailed off. “This isn’t me trying to shift blame for what happened, and I apologised to both Evan and Oliver and have made amends. I … we are working well together and as Evan said … once we return stateside, we will break the bond,” he explained. “I’m not going to keep someone unwilling inside a bond, and we actually work well with each other … Actually, I would have broken the bond if we had proper support structures out here. But we don’t and I didn’t want to risk his health.”

Evan could see the shift in his parents.

“So, you are making the best out of a shitty situation, aren’t you?” Jim asked calmly.

Kenneth and Evan both nodded.

“We are and we are going to deal with the whole situation,” they said in unison.

The conversation didn’t last much longer as Evan’s time slot came to an end. They said their goodbyes and bid each other to stay safe.

—————

Three tours in Afghanistan later, Evan and Kenneth were still going strong, and Oliver and the rest of their team were still having the bonded pairs back.

Yet there came the day when having each other’s back wasn’t enough.

Evan and Oliver both were focused on taking out advancing enemy combatants. Bullets were already flying like angry mosquitoes, and the two Sentinels were slipping in and out of the shadows of the small town in the Afghani desert, taking out insurgents with their combat knives, preferring the up and close kills over using their guns.

Chaos reigned as it was wont to do during situations like these, and then it happened.

Evan heard the sniper’s bullet, but before he could shout a warning, the smell of Kenneth’s blood filled the air as a bright red third eye bloomed between the Guide’s eyes, which were already losing their excited twinkle while his body collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The abrupt loss of his bond with Kenneth dropped Evan like a ton of bricks. A guttural scream escaped him, and he grabbed his backup combat knife, stared at Kenneth’s already cooling body, and before anyone could stop him, he eradicated the rest of the group of insurgents who had caused the death of his Guide.

He was moving like possessed and slit throats left, right, and centre before he reached the sniper’s nest. The man scrambled to his feet and tried to escape him, but Evan blocked the only exit aside from the window the man had used.

“Please, please …,” the man begged in broken English, but Evan didn’t care for his words. His Spirit Guide was between the window and the sniper now.

Without hesitation, Evan approached with movements quick as a striking cobra, burying one of his knives to the hilt between the sniper’s eyes. His whole world was narrowing down on the spread of that asshole’s blood, and he was zoning hard.

He barely heard familiar footsteps approaching him, and he growled in response.

“It’s just me, Badger,” Oliver said, his voice sounding tight with forced calm. “You know the protocol for what comes next.”

Evan was surrendering to his feral side, as the broken bond was hurting and he didn’t have it in him to do something about it.

When Oliver tried to come closer, Evan lifted his knife in a defensive motion.

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, and despite knowing what Evan had done with his knives just minutes before, the carnage his best friend had wrought out in this village, he whipped forward just as quickly as Evan had done when it came to the sniper and jabbed the emergency, Sentinel-safe tranquilliser pen against the side of Evan’s throat.

He saw the moment Evan realised what was happening, and caught Evan’s body as he dropped, holding his battle buddy and best friend close for a long moment while calming his friend’s irate Spirit Guide before lifting Evan up into his arms.

When their medic entered the room, he shook his head.

“You can’t touch him. It’s not safe. Pick up his knives, have them cleaned and ensure that he gets them back,” Oliver instructed. Then he started walking back toward the Humvees they had used to come here and tucked Evan into the one that didn’t hold the body bag holding Kenny’s body. He did it so Evan wouldn’t have to see what the sniper’s bullet had done to his Guide.

It took about half an hour for the team to gather the things they had come to retrieve and document the situation before they returned to the forward operating base to report the loss and Evan’s feral combat drive.

On the way through the desert, Oliver jabbed Evan with a second tranquilliser pen when he realised, he was fighting his way up from the heavy sedation. Having an Alpha Prime come up swinging from a feral combat drive inside a moving vehicle was a bad idea.

He really hoped that Evan could be kept under until he was in his parents’ care because there was no way that the Navy had the resources to take care of Evan, and he was going to insist that he stayed at his battle buddy’s side. They held a battle bond, and the loss of Kenneth was hurting him, too. Not as badly as Evan, but bad enough that Oliver knew he would be too unstable to be in the field without a Guide of his own.

The bad intel they had been provided would cost the Navy not one, but three of their assets. They just didn’t know it yet.

—————

The commanding officer of the forward operating base was seriously pissed when one of the SEALs got in his face and informed him that he and his fellow Sentinel needed an immediate, emergency transport back stateside to get them proper care.

“You aren’t physically hurt,” he snapped. “Neither one of you will be leaving this base.”

Oliver Meyrick growled, his eyes alight with psionic energy and his Spirit Guide making an appearance.

“Evan lost his Guide in a violent fashion. If you wake him up here, he will come back up swinging. He’s surrendered to a rather violent feral combat drive, and he will slaughter everyone between himself and those that make him feel safe,” he said firmly.

“We don’t coddle our SEALs,” the commander insisted, his hands balled into fists.

“Alright,” Oliver said, turning on his heel. “If that’s how you want to play the game, be my guest. But don’t come crying when he slits your throat.”

He walked away, knowing that no matter what his CO said, the medical team was already setting up their travel back to the United States.