by Keri Lake
Alone, I was willing to go anywhere, no matter the danger. Now that I’ve tasted real fear, the agony of losing her, I’m not willing to risk it.
I remember those dark places into which I fell, after Remus hurt her. The hellish depths inside my head that had me feeling more animal than man. Grim and gruesome thoughts that she would’ve damned me for, maybe even made her fear me a little, if she’d been privy to them.
Brows lowered, she tips her head, undoubtedly picking up on my sudden unease. “What is it?”
I’d be inclined to share my uncertainty with her, if not for that wild glint shimmering beneath her concern. One I’m all too familiar with—a spark of adventure that can’t be dulled by fear. “If it’s the world you want to see, I’ll follow you wherever you go.”
Her eyes soften, and she leans forward for a kiss that I gladly indulge. “Doesn’t have to be tonight. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
Staring up at her, I silently try to absorb that thought: an entire lifetime with this woman. How fucking incredible, yet at the same time, not enough. Never enough. Only a selfish prick would long for more in a world that’d sooner see a man starve to death, or worse, and I’ve not forgotten it wasn’t that long ago that having a female all to myself was physically impossible. Yet, here I lie beneath my own flesh and blood fantasy, like a king whose stolen all the riches of the land.
Hell, maybe Heaven does exist, after all.
Pressure hits my chest as she pushes off me, and I reach out to snatch her arm. “Where do you think you’re going, woman?”
“To get my shoes. Unless you changed your mind about meeting in the woods?”
Unhanding her, I can’t jump to my feet fast enough. “I’d sooner tie myself to a tree and let the lions have a go at me.”
She slips into her shoes and glances over her shoulder, wearing that perfect signature smile that’s made its appearance more often these days. “That’s an option, then? I mean, tying you to a tree?”
I snort a laugh, swiping up the blanket from the floor. “If it means the chance to get between those pretty thighs, you can do whatever you want with me.”
A disturbing fascination swirls in her eyes, and when I stride up next to her, she rises up to her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Then, you might want to grab some rope,” she whispers.
The foreboding visuals of being at her mercy for the next couple of hours casts a shiver down my spine. “I’m on it.”
“Good. And grab a bottle of elderberry wine while you’re at it. It’s going to be a long night, Alpha.”
White swirls of early morning fog blanket the valley below the overhanging rock of the mountain, where I sit perched. The cabin rests quietly, cloaked in darkness by the surrounding trees, while Thalia and Asher sleep.
Rubbing my hands together fails to calm my nerves, as I work through a maelstrom of thoughts. “Figured I’d come up here while Thalia’s sleeping, so she can’t hear me talking to you. Otherwise, she’d probably have my head checked by Doc Levins.”
Smiling to myself, I hike up one knee, letting the other dangle over the few hundred feet of open air below. “’Sides … your hearing was always shit. Better to be closer to the sky, where you don’t have to strain so much. Assuming that’s where you are.”
Smile fading, I frown down at the shadowy land beneath me that seems to darken with my somber thoughts. “I keep having these dreams. Where the nightshade didn’t work, and you didn’t die, when they took you. That you’re trapped down in that place. With those things. No sunlight. Nothing but darkness and pain.”
Thoughts seem to come to life, as the trees of the forest ripple with a passing breeze, the way it moves when prey scampers through the brush.
“I remember when we were young boys at Calico … you never backed down from anything. Not the guards. The mutations. The docs. Valdys. You and me, we didn’t always see eye to eye with things, but I always knew where you stood. Even the times I wanted to knock your teeth out for it.” With a snort, I thumb at my nose and sniff. “Up until the end, you always stood your ground. ‘S’how I always think of you. A fighter.”
A long pause gives me time to gather my thoughts, all the things I need to say to my lost friend. My brother. “Thalia tells me I need to let go. She says none of it was my fault. But …” Gaze fixed on my fidgeting hands, I shake my head in dismissal. “She wasn’t there. She doesn’t know that I could’ve held that gate open as easily as you. That I could’ve …”
The brief hitch of my words doesn’t erase the memory, or stop the guilt brimming to the surface. Vivid recollections of how urgently I needed to get the hell out of that place.
Clearing my throat, I scowl at the echoing remorse pummeling my conscience. “I could’ve stayed on the other side. And you wouldn’t have had to face those things alone.”
Raking my hands over my head, I stare off at the wide expanse of land and forest, where Thalia and I have made a home. “This life with Thalia. Doesn’t seem real, sometimes. Feels like I don’t deserve her. Any of this.” I screw my unpatched eye shut, the impossible words that I’ve been too fearful to say aloud now falling from my lips like an incriminating confession. “Maybe it should’ve been you here, instead.”
Opening my good eye, I can just make out the small dot in the thick of the forest, where the cabin remains still and undisturbed.
Peaceful.
“I just need to know that these dreams aren’t some fucked-up premonition. If you could just let me know, somehow, that you’re not somewhere suffering. That all this shit in my head is just guilt, or something. I can deal with the dreams and regret. But I cannot sit here and play happy, if you’re somewhere praying for a quick death, Brother.” Thoughts lost to the memory of my last dream, of being trapped in those tunnels again, the impossibility of escape and the cold breath of death on my neck, I stare off, frowning. “We went through some shit in that place. Still have blackouts, when I’ll be chopping wood or something and all of a sudden, I’m strapped to one of those beds again. Grinding my teeth over the bit in my mouth. Wishing everything would end. My hands shake sometimes.” A phantom tingling in my wrist takes me back to the most recent episode, when I spilled an entire pot of boiling water after the shakes set in. “I need to let go of it. The memories. The guilt. Everything. Just let me know that’s okay. Give me a sign, or something.”
Here, I thought unloading all this shit would make it easier, but hell if the weight on my shoulders doesn’t somehow feel heavier than before. Saying it aloud just doesn’t feel right, either. Feels like abandoning Cadmus all over again, and leaving him to carry the burden alone.
Beams of warm light hit my face, and I lift my gaze toward the horizon, where the orange and red arms of early dawn stretch over the valley, yawning with a new day.
A brilliant circle of light rises up from the darkness below, cresting over the silhouette of trees. I’ve watched a handful of sunrises in my lifetime, but none so majestic, the way the golden light dances across the shadows and shimmers off the early frost. Doesn’t seem real. It shines over the gathering mist in my eye, and I snort a laugh at the unearthly beauty of it all.
Shuttering it out of sight, I tip my head back, letting the heat warm my skin, and smile back at my old friend. “Showy bastard.”
Epilogue 2
Titus
Fourteen years later …
“You’re sure we weren’t supposed to turn off a few miles back?” Thalia stares down at the folded map that must be fifty years old—a relic we swapped for a bundle of jerky and a jug of elderberry wine, back at the trading station. Sitting in the passenger seat, with her bare feet kicked up on the dash, she holds the accordion pages up to her face, seeming to study the route.
“This is the right road.” A quick glance gifts me the view of her toned thighs peeking through the slit of her long white skirt.
“Hello?”
At the wave of her hand, I reluctantly drag my attention away from her legs,
and back to the road.
“You’re not even paying attention to the road. How would you know it’s right?”
Paper crinkles and crunches as she leans into me, her breasts pressed against my arm, stoking the frustration of not having gotten laid in more than a week, since we left for the small community. If not for Asher sleeping in the backseat, I’d have stopped alongside the road a few times already.
“Looks like the battery is low,” she says. “I saw a sign a mile back, for a charging station up ahead.”
“Yeah. We can stop. Stretch.” In a bid to torture myself, I steal a glimpse of her cleavage sticking up from the neck of her too-tight tank top. Fucking hell, the woman is a walking bite of temptation. “Find a wall to pin you against for five minutes.”
“Titus!” she whisper-yells, glancing over her shoulder toward Asher and back. “He probably heard that.”
“What?”
“You know what. Doing … the thing.”
“The boy is nineteen years old. He’s known about the thing for a while now.”
Brow furrowing, she leans back in her seat. “So … is that what you two talk about when you’re out in the woods for days at a time? Women and sex?” She mouths the last question, as if the kid isn’t out cold in the backseat, and even if he isn’t asleep, she’s likely already clued him in, anyway. “Has he … been with a girl yet?”
Stretching my arm over the rear of the seat, I toy with a strand of her silky blonde hair, trying not to think of those long tresses dragging across my stomach. “What’s spoken in the woods, stays in the woods.”
With a roll of her eyes, she crosses her arms and turns toward the window beside her. “I’m his mother. I should at least know if we left behind any grandchildren back at Freya’s camp.”
“None that I’m aware. And, Christ, don’t say that. We’re not old enough to be grandparents yet.”
“He’s lucky the old woman didn’t string him up and burn him at the stake.”
A quick look at the kid in the rearview mirror shows his head kicked back, mouth catching flies as he snoozes away. “After what he’s told me, I’m surprised they didn’t put a statue of him in the middle of the camp.”
Lips crimped in repulsion, Thalia shakes her head, waving her hand in dismissal. “I don’t need any details.”
“Good. Because I don’t need a recap of what he told me.”
Cleansing my brain of the stories Asher relayed, I turn off the dirt highway, toward a small building that looks like it was dropped from the sky and plopped in the middle of nowhere. Miles of open land at either side of it boast more greenery than the vast desert we traveled to get here. An object off in the distance snags my attention on the way in, and I squint to see what appears to be bodies propped like a crucifix on three posts, sticking up about thirty feet in the air.
A warning.
Place could be run by hostiles, a reminder that I can’t afford to be distracted here.
Two dome-shaped solar panels stand empty, side by side, where I steer the truck into one of the two bays beneath them. Though some still drive the outdated vehicles, gone are the days of siphoning gas and stealing abandoned clunkers. The new cars run on solar power, and if one has something worthy of trade, a few places in the city are willing to barter. The carpentry I’ve taken up over the years earned me the nicest vehicle on the lot, when I traded a beautifully carved four-post bed and some kitchen chairs for it.
An old timer wearing a khaki fishing hat hobbles out of the small building, carrying a sack of something that I hawk as he approaches.
Climbing out of the driver’s seat, I offer a nod, breathing in the humid Florida air, while studying the bulges popping through the man’s armload of burlap.
“Got some fresh-picked oranges, if you and your wife wants some for the road.” The aging rasp of his voice carries an edge of irritation as he shoves the proffering into my chest, passing me for the charge controller. Most stations are self-serve, but a few of the owners like to do the hookups themselves, with the sweeping complaints of missing equipment. He pops the cover on the truck for the battery, and connects the cord to it, initiating the charge.
One more glance around the place ensures we’re not being watched, before I ease muscles primed to strike out at anything that threatens my family, and peering into the sack, I’m greeted by the sweet citrus scent that waters my mouth. Been a while since I’ve eaten a ripe orange. “I got some smoked venison I can trade.”
Hand propped at his hip, the old man gives a sharp nod of approval. “Well, hot damn, you got yourself a deal.”
“You out here by yourself?” Reaching through the truck window, I hand off the oranges to Thalia and, with Asher now awake, flick my fingers for the boy to pass my offerings from the back of the truck, where the meat is stored.
“For the most part. Don’t get too many travelers these days.” The old man accepts the trade, taking a moment to sniff the cloth wrapped around it. “Mighty kind of you,” he says, unfolding it for the strips of dried backstraps inside. “Where you all headed?”
“A community we heard about. Bunch of gated land with solar homes. Know of it?”
“’Course I do.” Teeth tearing away a bite, the old man fills his mouth with a chunk of meat, pausing his response just long enough to leave me hanging on his words. “I know just about every hive and home within a hundred miles. Place you’re talking about is Harmony Hills.”
“Yeah. That’s it.” In asking around over the last couple of years, I’ve managed to gather small bits of information, but all hearsay, as no one I’ve personally spoken to had ever actually seen the community. “Where can we find it?”
“You can’t. Folks there don’t take kindly to strangers. ‘Specially those who don’t look like they’re from these parts.”
“You live there?”
“Used to. Left the place about four years ago and never looked back.” He pops the last bite of a jerky strip into his mouth and wraps up the rest.
“They kick you out?”
“Nah. They’re good people. Protective, but good. The community is beautiful, but it just wasn’t for me, after my wife passed.” The old timer’s face crinkles with a frown, as he performs the sign of the cross. “God rest her soul.”
“I have friends there.”
“Everyone does.”
“You know Valdys and Cali?”
Rubbing his chin, he stares back, contemplative for a moment. “Suppose I know them, yeah.”
“Valdys and I grew up together. He’s like a brother to me.”
His wrinkled, rheumy eyes appraise me for a moment. “You’re one of them Alphas, then?”
“You’re familiar with Alphas?”
“Everyone in Harmony Hills is familiar with the Alphas. They’re like the old superheroes I used to read about in comic books. Damn near gods, isn’t that right?”
I glance back at Thalia standing at the opposite side of the car, where she raises her arms for a stretch, the grin on her face hinting at the smartass comments I bet are swimming in her head right now. The old moniker that she likes to tease me about on occasion. Always hated that name. “Then, this community … they welcomed my friends?”
“Practically worship ‘em.”
“What can I do to get you to tell me where to find this place?” Perhaps it’s age making me soft, because a decade ago, I’d have pinned the guy by the throat, threatening to choke him to death, until he spilled the location.
“You’re Alpha?”
“I’m Alpha.”
“Might be one thing you can do for me.” The older man jerks his head for me to follow. “Got another couple minutes for a full charge. C’mon.”
Used to take hours to fully charge a vehicle, but these days, it’s only slightly longer than filling a tank with gasoline.
Looking back at Thalia and Asher, who finally decided to get out of the vehicle, I give a knowing look, to which Thalia nods—a signal, if anything goes down while I’ve stepp
ed away, to grab the gun in the back of the cab and take off. A game plan we went over a number of times, in the event we ran into marauders on the road. The world may have made a number of advancements in technology over the last few decades since the Dredge, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the opportunists, the predators who take without asking. Even if women aren’t nearly as scarce these days, men still outnumber them, and kidnappings are just as common as they’ve always been.
To this day, the nightmares about someone swiping up Thalia still plague my sleep, and leaving her alone for so much as a second on these roads has my stomach twisting.
As if sensing my unease, the old man says, “You ain’t gotta worry about your wife out here. Don’t get many marauders on this road. Word travels quickly.” He points toward the three objects I noticed on our arrival—the crucified bodies that set my alarms blaring earlier. “Last marauders who came through here met your Alpha friends.”
The comment makes me smile. “Seems I’m headed in the right direction, then.”
A female Rager snaps her teeth, growling at me, as she barrels forward then skids to a halt, cowering at my feet. A chain connected to her throat stretches from the wall, where she’s been tethered at the back of the building. Useless, when she backs herself away from me, hissing in defense.
Hard to tell how old Ragers are, given the mottling of their skin, but the few strands of gray sticking up off her head are a good indication that she’s at least in her sixties.
“I thought you said your wife passed away,” I say to the old man standing beside me.
“She did. This surely isn’t my Vera anymore. She was a beauty. Prettiest girl in the whole state of Florida.”