Freedom or forever? Which would you choose? – from Watch Your Six #MFRWhooks

In the third Bringer of Chaos book, Watch Your Six, survival is not the end of the problem facing Pietas and Six. The aftermath is. Without giving away the ending, I can tell you it’s satisfying, promising, and, hopefully, leaves the reader with sense of relief.

That doesn’t mean it’s all rosy.

Freedom or Forever?

Most stories treat survival as victory.
You made it through the battle. You defeated the enemy. You're alive.
But what happens afterward?

In Watch Your Six, survival has consequences.

Six has spent his life as a soldier. He understands that death is part of the bargain.
Pietas has lived for thousands of years and understands death very differently.

For one of them, mortality is part of being free. For the other, losing someone he loves is unacceptable.
Neither man walks away from that conflict unchanged.

The Cost of Surviving

Because surviving isn't simply about whether your heart keeps beating. It's about what remains after the battle: the choices you made, the people you lost, the promises you broke—and the people you discovered you cannot bear the thought of living without.

Sometimes survival gives you something you never had before.
Something to lose.

Which would you choose? Freedom or forever?

Watch Your Six
A story about what war leaves behind—and what it refuses to release.

Excerpt from Watch Your Six

NOTE: This scene is from one of the high action points in the story. There's been an unexpected attack—from below ground. Giant worms with ringed mouths full of teeth have latched onto anyone and anything living, including Pietas. When realizing he was caught, Pietas looked across the field and warned Six with the most important word he could think of: "Run!" But Six has other ideas. Pietas wants Six to live. How can Six let Pietas die? When it comes to choosing freedom or forever, neither man intends for his shield-brother to die.

Six hit the ground hard enough to jar his teeth. Already half-covered, Pietas could do no more than look up at him. Worms cinched him tight, bodies slick and throbbing, mouths working. Six didn’t have time to think. He gripped, pulled, cut. Gripped, pulled, cut.

Steel bit into pulsing flesh. Worm after worm slackened, split, fell away.

Hands joined his—not Joss, not Philippe—Cascade. She grabbed a worm, hauled it sideways, exposing its underside, her fingers slick with black blood.

Six sliced.

Cascade gripped a bigger one, held while he cut. Then another.

A smaller worm surged upward. Six reached for it and found nothing—his knife fouled, grip slipping. He yanked it free, but momentum was lost. A shadow crossed his peripheral vision.

Armand stooped, cradling Erryq against his chest, limp but breathing. One arm locked around her; the other came up, knife flashing once in the air—not thrown, not tossed. Held.

His twin, Philippe, stepped in and snatched it cleanly without breaking stride. He dropped to a knee.

Armand didn’t slow. He turned and ran for the memorial, Erryq held close, boots pounding ground.

Philippe squatted beside Cascade, met Six’s gaze.

Six nodded.

Philippe pressed his brother’s knife into Cascade’s hand.

Cascade closed her fingers around the hilt without hesitation. She nodded once—sharp, military—and went to work at Pietas’s side.

Philippe worked across from her.

Three blades now. Faster. But the worms kept coming.

Around him, he heard the wet suction of worms dying. Others killed them wholesale. At last, the final worm dropped free.

Shaking, Six tried to slip his knife back in its holster. Couldn’t find the slot. Turned it so he didn’t stab Pietas. But couldn’t get a hand under him.

Philippe leaned in, careful not to jostle, and slid one broad hand beneath Pietas’s shoulders. The other went under his knees, not lifting yet—holding, testing balance, judging weight. Making sure nothing was caught, nothing would tear.

Not hesitation. Respect.

Philippe shifted closer, bringing Pietas in against his chest before lifting him, keeping him level, supported from spine to neck. Pietas’s head lolled once, then settled against Philippe’s shoulder, like a child still learning the weight of his own body.

Something twisted hard in Six’s gut.

Philippe adjusted his grip, one arm tightening minutely around Pietas’s back, thumb braced at the base of his skull. Protective. Familiar. As if he’d done this before. As if he always would. Only then did Philippe stand.

He moved with deliberate, unshakable certainty, turning his body so Pietas was shielded from the worst of the ground below. Every step placed with care, avoiding the slickest patches, angling toward the memorial with haste born of need for caution.

Six fell in behind him, bloody knife still in hand, scanning automatically, but his attention kept dragging back to the way Philippe carried Pietas—not like a burden, not like a king, but like someone who mattered. Someone you didn’t drop.

Six swallowed hard and forced himself to look away.

There was work to do.