'Clair.'
His eyes narrowed when she flicked her hair back and looked around, taking in the situation. He watched her lips move, most likely mumbling a curse. She looked behind him and shared a look of confusion between Damon, Anna, and the other women.
A pin drop of silence followed.
Anna gritted her teeth in realization and she pinched her husband's shoulder, glaring at him.
'How dare you make relations with the crown prince without informing me?'
"I was going to tell you-" He tried to speak only to be shut up by her glare again.
"Aish..." Clair scratched her forehead in frustration.
"What are you doing here?" Before he knew it, James's mouth opened in a questioning tone.
"Eh?" Jazmin took a step forward, looking back from Clair and James.
Clair averted her eyes elsewhere and hummed as if pretending no one could see her and she was completely irrelevant.
James clenched his jaw in irritation. Did she think her sarcasm was going to work all the time?
Something snapped and her attitude change she reached out for a dagger in her pocket and walked towards James.
He watched her clench onto it tightly. His guards launched forward.
"What are you doing?" His eyes narrowed making sure his guard would not pounce on her.
She only grinned at him, mischief in her eyes.
A look he had not seen in a while, somehow he felt deja vu.
He stiffened when she used the tip of her dagger to lift his chin. The cold metal making contact with his skin and James felt her hands run up from his shirt to his arms.
"You need to wear this more often hubby." She whispered.
Holding back the urge to roll his eyes he held her wrist and lifted it, watching everyone's confusion turn into realization.
Clair had purposely walked over here, making the red dot on his head fall onto her back instead.
"Move."
"No." She stood her ground firmly.
"Not funny."
"If you're dying it's at my hands." She challenged.
"Do you guys got this?" She asked a little louder.
"Of course." Jazmin nodded, and Dola raised her gun towards the royal guard, who turned alert instantly.
"Now!" Clair yelled, pushing forward.
A silent understanding between them at the realization of what was happening.
Shots were fired, but not between both parties. Instead, directed to a third party.
Clair and he fell backward, getting rid of the sniper's aim and his forehead and at her back, rolling down on the ground until they landed on a bush, the shot fired hit the ground instead of them.
Damon and Anna headed in the sniper's direction. Meanwhile, a set of guards went to the left while the other two women to the right. Fighting off the fact that they were surrounded by the suspects who had arrived here probably twenty seconds ago.
James watched her lift her dagger again and shoot it straight into a man's throat, a man who was masked and dressed all black.
An enemy.
He too did not waste any time, his hold on her hip tightening he shot three bullets, 3 men falling to their deaths.
"Whoa, you have a killer aim. Literally." She raised a brow in amusement, probably trying to distract him from the fact that he caught her somewhere she wasn't supposed to be.
"We are going to have a long conversation later." He uttered, pulling her away and separating as they got busy with more incoming men. They seem to come out of nowhere and every time they fought them off more arrived as if they were endless.
"Now I feel like I was caught cheating on my husband." She rolled her eyes.
He looked unimpressed. She smirked and tossed her knife in the air, at a great speed she used a rock to jump in the air and kick the same knife to a man's throat.
She then bowed her head, at the 'genius trick. This only continued because she repeated the same trick, reversed, and redirected many times, taking advantage of all the daggers and secret weapons around her body.
'At least she's smart enough to keep those on her.' He thought to himself.
"I found amazing hot springs and was going to have an amazing swim, your highness." He heard her say, sarcasm dripping from her mouth. He noted it was her reaction to getting caught off guard by one of the men she was fighting.
"Forgive me for not being able to predict the future." He uttered a curse as men launched out of nowhere, keeping their numbers consistent.
"You're joking! What kind of role play is this?" Jazmin yelled.
"How many?" Clair asked.
"More than we thought. At this rate, maybe even a hundred." James replied his tone bone-chilling.
Clair had to let her eyes take the moment as he calmly walked through five men, snapping necks and shooting skulls. As if he was having a regular stroll in the park.
" A hundred...." She repeated.
"Wait.....what?!"
"All I have is a few daggers and knives, one of your guards is down and the girls only have a gun on them. Two already ran out of bullets. We can't fight 100!"
"I have men at every exit of the forest, we lost 3 groups. There might be more than a hundred if they can cover so much ground in this forest. Dagon and more guards are escorting civilians from Area B. Reinforcements arrive in twenty."
"Fuck! We are all going to die at this rate. Why did you bring so little men with you?"
"Lack of men is not the problem, it's the lack of weapons." He replied, watching his men skillfully fight hand in hand, fists with fists, and even using rocks and sticks as a defense. Anything that could help them fight off the enemies.
Clair took a deep breath and shot her dagger at another man, watching him fall on his knees trying to remove the dagger from his thigh.
She took the opportunity and crushed his face with her foot, breaking his neck with a crack and stealing his rifle. She tossed it at Dola's side and then she pulled out a gun for herself, along with her dagger.
James heard a shout as one of his men was shot in the head. He looked in the sniper's direction and gritted his teeth.
From the corner of his eyes he spotted one of Clair's knives and picked it up, aiming in at someone's throat but because of their quick movements, it landed in their eye instead. Still, Clair got a good look at him and brought him to his death in less than ten seconds.
"Ah, what a nice day to die."
"I'm thinking humor is your coping mechanism." He mumbled, deciding to head for the sniper next.
"Oh? How did you know?" Running out of bullets again, she tossed the gun aside, frustrated, annoyed, and angry.
Oh, she was about to lose her temper very very very soon. She was losing her patience. Especially when this was not part of her plans. Frankly, she had no plans to fight off a hundred men's and exchange bullets and knives with so many skilled men for a very long time. She only wanted to Netflix and chill, but that seemed too much to ask.
"Don't." She stopped him when she saw his attempt to head for the sniper.
"I have a plan. Anna and Damon will head to the snipper. Jazmin and Dola to the river and you and me head south to Area B. Your men keep them off mislead them, confuse them. I'm seeing they are only familiar with the Areas they were meant to attack so if we lose them in the forest it will be beneficial."
"We'd have a better chance...." She added.
"There's a trap set by illegal hunters by the river. We can also use that to our advantage." James replied.
"Really? Do you know the locations?"
"By memory, we are supposed to be removing them soon."
"Ah, shit..." Clair dodged a bullet and fell into his arms, twisting her ankle at the same time because of the sudden impact.
As she heard a shot not far from them, she guessed James had taken care of that. But with his hands on her waist, he tossed the empty gone away, reaching for another which belonged to a dead man.
"Hey...I'm good." She swallowed reminding him to let go of her waist.
"Let's head to the first trap, you are their real target after all." She suggested.
"No, explosives are planted everywhere-" His sentence was cut off when Anna and Damon's plan was interrupted by just that.
Except for Clair and James, someone separated and lost all of them in the smoke.
"F*ck! F*ck! F*ck!" Clair continued to curse as she watched everything go wrong, very wrong.
Unlike her, he maintained his composure as he thought of ways to fix this.
"Helicopters, I heard them earlier. Can they do anything?" I immediately answered her as they watched one helicopter explode in the sky and fall into the embrace of the forest.
"Great... just great." Sarcasm. And more sarcasm.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the rocks, hiding her between trees as he gave her a hard stare. "Stay here."
"Sure, I'll stay here and die."
"No, stay here and stay safe."
"I can fight." She insisted.
"We're not fighting over this right now. Stay put."
She gasped in disbelief.
Is this man serious? He must joke!
"I just killed how many men? I can fight."
"I know you can....just for once in your life listen to me." he gritted his teeth, glaring at her.
"After this..." She lifted her index finger.
"I'm going to murder you." She then snatched the gun from his hand and walked off, picking up a dagger from a dead body along the way.
She then stubbornly left his side and waltzed into the fight as if she were bulletproof. Obviously, a reaction to his provocation.
He didn't watch her fight.
He watched her kill.
His hands twitched in anxiousness as his eyes darted back to her. Trying to concentrate on drafting a plan, fighting, and making sure she's not struggling.
Sure, he did that on purpose, to get her head in the game. After all, Clair was obviously holding back and if she did there was a risk of her getting hurt and he couldn't afford that so if forcing her into full action was the solution, he would use it.
He knew she could protect herself, and yet he couldn't help but look back at her every minute.