Extreme Honor by Piper J. Drake

of therapeutic venting in Atlas’s direction. Dogs were excellent listeners. “I lived and breathed to please my stepfather when I was a kid. He was never home. The few times he came back, I wanted to show him everything I’d done while he was gone. How good I’d been. And somehow I got it into my head that if I could just do well enough in school, win enough awards, excel at sports, then he’d come home to stay. Every time he left again, it broke my heart.” Her eyes grew hot and she blinked against dryness. The tears had long since burned away when it came to this set of memories. “When he finally sat me down and informed me how very little I mattered in the bigger picture of his career and his life with my mother, my heart was in pieces on the floor. I was extra baggage. Someone else’s genetic contribution to the continuation of the human race. And out of honor, he’d see to it I had the basics to grow up and contribute to society. That was it.”
    She huffed out a soft laugh. Atlas gave her one of those doggy raised eyebrow looks.
    “By the time I realized I had nothing to do with his decisions, I thought I hated him. Really. It took a long time to realize no matter how mad I was at him, how much I said I didn’t care, I was waiting for the one time he’d say I’d proved him wrong or made him proud.” She chewed on her lip. It’d been a bitter taste, admitting it to herself. “He’s not a bad man. His priorities are different from…basically the rest of the warm-blooded, caring portion of this world.”
    Atlas settled back down on his belly, his head raised as he continued to listen to her.
    She stepped toward him and crouched down to sit back on her heels within arm’s reach of him. “We’re all assets to him. We each go in one of two buckets: useful or useless. And to be honest, even if I built my career on my own and in spite of his doubts, I still want to prove to him I’m not useless.”
    She sighed. And Atlas sighed too.
    “I want to say it’s not a primary driver.” Studying the beautiful contrast of black in the tan of Atlas’s face, calm settled over her. “And it’s not. I came here for you and your story. Just reading what happened, I wanted to get to know you. And now that I’ve met you, I want to see you happy again.”
    Because broken hearts could heal. It wasn’t a whimsical child’s refuge, it was her very real belief and she wanted it for Atlas.

Chapter Five
    C ruz hesitated at the door to his cabin, now guest quarters. Atlas hadn’t sounded any kind of alarm at his approach, but then the dog knew his step. If there was a window open somewhere, the dog might have caught his scent, too. Also familiar. It would’ve been confirmation: someone who belonged was on his way and not a stranger.
    He shouldn’t be disappointed Atlas hadn’t given a warning bark on the approach of a known human.
    But Atlas was waking up from the pining he’d been doing. Engaging with the world and people again. Maybe it was unfair to expect leaving him with Lyn Jones for an hour or two would trigger a full transformation in the dog, but Cruz had kinda hoped it’d be that easy—for Atlas’s sake, and so they could make more progress in tracking down the mystery of his old friend’s cryptic message.
    Atlas’s handler, Calhoun, had sent a random text to Cruz in the middle of the night a while back. It hadn’t made any sense. Cruz had assumed it’d been a drunk text, honestly. Then Calhoun died. As far as Cruz was concerned, the message and the tragedy were connected in a bad way, no matter what the official report said. Cruz needed Atlas to puzzle out Calhoun’s message and his old friend deserved having his last request fulfilled.
    One step at a time. He’d see how things had progressed with Lyn and Atlas first, then figure out his next actions. Considering how he’d left Lyn, there was a spark he needed to follow up on there, too.
    Juggling the packages he carried into his left hand, he