The Winter Tyrant

Chapter 101: Fulfillment of Obligations

Brooke, Yuki, Katherine, and the two nurses were gathered in the infirmary below. Yuki was relaxing, reading a book, while Brooke was pacing about worried.

The gunfire had ceased, but that could mean a great many things. Her mind raced as she nibbled on her fingernails. Muttering gibberish beneath her breath.

Katherine was as relaxed as ever. Watching the security feed on her phone, which was connected to Dean’s intranet network. She saw on the cameras Dean coldly and effortlessly fire his shots from the balcony.

As a trauma surgeon, she would be lying if she respected the tradecraft of men like Dean, which served the opposite purpose of her career path. But she could at the very least enjoy the degree of professionalism in which Dean acted.

Not a single wasted motion, his body acting faster than his mind as he fired his shots. And then there was nothing. The round was ejected, the gunfire ceased, and Katherine knew then and there that Elysium had won before the enemy could even get close to breaching their gates.

She sighed heavily in relief upon seeing Dean eject the spent magazine and clear his rifle. An action that did not go unnoticed by Yuki, who raised a brow and asked a single question.

"It’s over already?"

Katherine didn’t say anything, she simply looked up from her phone at Yuki and Brooke then reverted her attention back to her device.

To Yuki this was all the confirmation she needed, but for Brooke, who was enduring her first true siege, at least at Elysium’s gates where she had lived away from the cold, the hunger, and the fear of death for so long.

She couldn’t help but scoff and bark at Yuki.

"Are you kidding me? This is a battle! There are so many of them! The gunfire lasted for less than two minutes! There’s no way that it’s over so soon!"

Once more Katherine stayed silent, she only glanced up towards the staircase where Dean stood as he entered the room.

Brooke didn’t notice him until he began to speak, and even then she shivered at the sudden and unexpected intrusion.

"I hate to break it to you sweetheart, but firefights don’t typically last as long as they do in the movies. If they did, we would be in serious trouble right now."

Brooke, Yuki and the maids looked over at Dean, with Yuki rushing up to him and cupping his face, while visually inspecting every corner of his body ,as well as giving him a slight sniff test, almost as if she were a dog that had just watched its owner come home after a frightening absence.

"Dean! You’re back, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? Come, let me take a look!"

Katherine looked up from phone and furrowed her brow. Taking the slightest look at the man, before looking back at her device.

"He’s fine... Besides it’s my job to look after his health. If he needed treatment, I would already have him stripped down and on the table."

Though her words were cold, if one looked closely enough, they could tell the reflection in eyes was focused on scanning Dean’s figure, looking for the slightest sign of injury.

Brooke scoffed and rolled her eyes at Katherine’s comment. Trying her best to conceal her trembling hands.

"You would be so lucky if I allowed you to inspect my fiancée in such a manner!"

Katherine didn’t dignify the girl’s petty jealousy with a remark. Seeing how a tumult was bout to break out, Dean quickly intervened between the three women.

"All right, that’s enough, Brooke come with me I need to speak to you about something in private."

He grabbed Brooke’s hand and led her out the door. All while giving a silent nod to Yuki and Katherine.

While Brooke didn’t resist being dragged off by Dean, she most certainly protested. Making her thoughts known all along the way.

"Where are you taking me? I didn’t say anything wrong! Why do you always single me out like this!"

Dean had dragged the woman up to his room and shut the door behind them. Once inside, she became oddly compliant rather quickly. Stifling her voice and averting her gaze, Brooke began to blush. That is until Dean began to speak.

"Within the next 12 hours, your factory should be liberated... I will have lived up to my end of the bargain. Which means you will now have to live up to yours. You, your employees, your factory, and the two of us will actually have to get married. Which means no more bickering with Yuki. No more picking fights with Katherine. You knew what you were getting into when you signed up for this. So, this is your last chance to back out. But I promise you, one way or another, that factory will belong to me."

Brooke stood there in utter silence for the longest time. She hadn’t expected this time to come so soon. In fact, she wondered if it actually would in the end. There were a million things that could have gone wrong over the last month or two.

And during this time she had tried her best to maintain control over every little thing she could. But Dean was right... Now that the bandits were dealt with ,the factory would fall into his hands, and there was nothing stopping him from disregarding their previous agreement.

Nothing other than his word... and their foolish "marriage arrangement." She took a deep breath, and sighed heavily. Nodding not once, but twice to her self before finally looking Dean in the eyes.

"Alright... I’ll do it. Fuck it, we’ve come this far right? And if I’m being honest my odds of finding a guy better than you now that the world has come to an end are basically non-existent. I’ll become your second wife, not just in name, but in every way you desire. I’ll stop feuding with Yuki, and whatever the hell it is you have going on with Katherine. Or whatever it evolves into. However, I would like to reaffirm our original agreement. You get me, and everything that comes with me, and in return you look after me and my people as if we were your own. Got it?"

Dean didn’t respond with words, he grabbed hold of Brook’s chin, and leaned her up against the wall behind her, kissing her lips as her eyes grew wide in shock. She was surprised, but she didn’t fight it.

At least not until Dean’s lips began to move down her neck, and potentially even further down. It was only then that she said something while gently trying to shove him back.

"Not yet! Not yet... you still haven’t delivered fully on your promise!"

Dean scoffed as he pulled back and shook his head.

"Really? Are you really going to give me blue balls like this, right now? The factory is already as good as in our hands. I say I’ve fulfilled enough, wouldn’t you?"

Brooke’s cheeks were flushed, but she remained completely composed, shaking her head as she maintained the distance between herself and Dean.

"A million things could go wrong between now and when we retake the foundry! You will just have to wait another day, that won’t kill you, will it?"

Dean wanted to say something, but knew better than to do so, he sighed and shook his head. Walking off silently in disbelief, all the while Brooke collapsed alone on his bed.

She touched her finger to her lips, thinking about Dean. She whispered aimlessly beneath her breath.

"What would my parents think if they knew I was about to give my first time to such a brute..."

She leaned back on the bed and sighed. What would her parents think? A better question to ask was whether or not they were still even alive to care?

Brooke hadn’t had any contact with her family since the long winter began, and it was impossible to know if they had survived this long.

Sure, her family was well off, wealthy by any standard. But wealth did not buy security, not when money was better off used as fuel for fire than any transactional value. She had managed to survive this long because she was snowed into the foundry with enough of her employees to keep things going.

And the rest was pure chance. But her parents? Her siblings? Thery were in a different part of the company, running the main corporate office, or different branches elsewhere. Who knew if they were as lucky as she had been.

In fact, if she were being honest, the odds were completely in the other direction. If her father and brothers were gone. Then wasn’t she the last of her family line?

She sighed heavily while curling up under the covers. She didn’t want to think about what that meant. But she was beginning to feel like meeting Dean and marrying him wasn’t such a bad thing after all.