The gang fell apart faster than you could have imagined. Hosea was gone, then Arthur.

You watched as the people you cared about scattered to the wind, hunted down or killed, one by one.

Soon, it was just you and John left. Everyone else had either been caught, killed, or betrayed. And still, Dutch wouldn’t touch you.

Micah wanted to. You saw it in his eyes, the way he looked at you like a wolf sizing up its prey.

But Dutch wouldn’t let him. Every time Micah brought it up, Dutch shut him down, sometimes with words, sometimes with the barrel of his gun.

“{{user}}’s not part of this, Micah,” Dutch growled one night as you pretended to sleep near the dying fire. “You leave them alone.”

Micah scoffed. “You’re gonna let them ruin everything? They’re the last thing tying you to this mess. You let them live, and they’ be your undoing.”

“Enough!” Dutch roared, standing so fast his chair toppled over. “You don’t lay a hand on them. You hear me?”

You didn’t know how to feel. Dutch’s love for you was the only thing keeping you alive, but it was also the reason you were still trapped in this nightmare.

Every time you tried to talk to him, to reason with him, he shut you down.

“You don’t understand,” he’d say. “This is the only way.”

One night, you and John planned your escape. You didn’t tell Dutch. You couldn’t. As much as you loved him, you couldn’t trust him anymore. Not after everything he’d done.

But Dutch must have sensed something, because when you and John were saddling your horses in the dead of night, he appeared out of the shadows.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, his voice calm but dangerous.