by Stasia Black
DANNY
“Is she okay?” Danny asked as Mateo came down the stairs last. Danny looked past him, wishing he could get even a glimpse of Audrey. Mateo didn’t say anything, he just stomped past him.
Nix wouldn’t let Danny or Graham up to see her. He said it would be too much for her having all five of them there when she woke up.
Danny knew Nix didn’t think much of him. If he thought of him at all. Guys like that, they were happy to use muscle like him, sure. To send guys like Danny out to the front lines. Just another dumb fuck to slow down the enemy. Or to haul shit around and do the heavy lifting while Nix stayed in his Security Squadron Headquarters thinking up more shit for guys like Danny to go and do.
Guys like Danny weren’t supposed to question orders. And usually, he didn’t.
He’d certainly heard it enough times growing up. You’re just like your father, his mamá would always say. Big, pretty, and dumb as a board.
So maybe he should just keep quiet and wait to see what the other guys said.
“You can’t just keep her locked up like an animal,” Mateo said, going right up and getting in Nix’s face. Danny had never seen the small man’s face so red.
“Like hell I can’t,” Nix said, toe to toe with Mateo. Even though Nix had a good foot on him, Mateo didn’t flinch. “She fucking shot my second in command. Do you know what hell I caught from the Commander for that? We’re lucky he was in a good mood and willing to listen to Sophia arguing for leniency. But if anything like this happens again, whatever she does, we’ll all pay for. An eye for an eye.”
“Shit,” Clark swore, running a hand through his hair.
“She was scared,” Mateo shot back. “All this is new to her. We should have expected she wouldn’t just settle in so easil—”
“She betrayed us!” The vein in Nix’s neck stood out as he yelled it. The room went silent. Nix glared them all down. “She’s had this planned the whole time. The only time she could have stolen the Commander’s gun was yesterday morning when she was supposed to be getting ready for our wedding. Think about it. She fucked us all knowing she was about to leave. Using sex to make us lower our guard. She’s nothing but a wh—”
Danny stepped forward and took a swing at Nix’s face.
Nix wasn’t quick enough to duck and Danny’s fist made contact with his jaw, snapping his head to the side. Nix stumbled and almost went down, cussing and grabbing his face.
Danny stood up taller. “Don’t talk about our wife like that.”
Danny might not be a smart man. But he knew the difference between right and wrong. And it was wrong to disrespect your wife like that.
Nix laughed, wiping his lip and spitting blood on the rug. “What, does that hit a little too close to home, Martinez? You worried your new wife is a little too much like mommy dearest?”
Son of a—
Danny swung again but this time Nix moved out of the way in time.
Bringing his mom into this was a low blow. Danny and his mom joined the township almost from the time it first started. She was one of the lucky ten percent of the female population with the natural immunity to Xterminate. Danny was just fourteen.
But she’d had the choice of whether to join a clan or not because pre-Fall, she’d had her tubes tied after having Danny. She was one of just a few women in the town who elected not to get married but instead to share her favors widely and take numerous lovers.
“Hey,” Clark shouted, getting in between them and holding his arms out to keep them separated as they circled one another. “That’s enough.
Danny looked around at the rest of the guys. “You’re just gonna let him talk about Audrey like this? She’s the best thing that’s happened to anyone here.” It was true. Because of how his mom had chosen to live, it meant Danny had never had a shot at being a part of a real family. Guys came and went—just like they had all throughout Danny’s growing up even before the Fall. Except once they got to the township, it was at a far higher volume.
“And besides,” Danny went on, “do we even know why she shot at Jeffries? Maybe she had a good r—”
Nix cut him off with a loud scoff. “Gee, I wonder why.” His voice dripped with condescension. “Maybe because she was trying to escape and he was in her way. She didn’t snoop around and steal a gun from the Commander’s personal armory just for shits and giggles. She knew she might have to shoot her way out of here. And it didn’t stop her. What if it had been one of us in her way?”
But Danny kept shaking his head. “That’s not fair. We don’t even know what she was thinking.”
“I agree with the kid,” Mateo said.
Danny tried not to wince at the kid comment. He really needed to work harder at growing his beard instead of shaving it every day just because he got annoyed with the sandpaper texture when he didn’t.
“She was thinking that she could make idiots out of us,” Nix growled. “It was all a lie. The marriage was a lie. Last night was a lie.”
“Last night was a lie?” Graham asked, rocking back and forth and repetitively flicking a rubber band on his wrist.
He had all kinds of weird little habits like that, but he was a good guy. So fuckin’ smart Danny felt even dumber than usual around him. But a good guy.
“Last night wasn’t a lie,” Danny said. He’d never spoken up this much with the guys, but now that he had, he couldn’t stop.
“Last night was real. We married Audrey and she married us and it was real. I think we should ask her what happened and why she shot that guy.”
Nix’s face twisted up in that way it did when he thought Danny had said something stupid. Danny’s ears felt hot and his toes curled up in his boots.
“You think we can believe anything that comes out of her mouth?” Nix said. He shook his head. “I know the grey matter between your ears isn’t officially a muscle, but maybe you could try exercising it from time to time anyway.”
“Hey,” Clark said sharply. “Don’t be an ass.”
“It’s his natural state,” Mateo muttered, pacing back and forth across the living room. “All I know is I’m going to go get her out of those cuffs right now.” He grabbed the key that had been tossed on the mantle and headed for the stairs. Nix hurried to get in his way.
Danny didn’t say anything else. He just walked up to stand beside Mateo. Danny crossed his massive arms over his chest and looked down his nose at Nix. He was one of the few people in town who could manage this since Nix was six foot two.
Nix looked at Clark but he didn’t find any sympathy there. Clark put his hands up. “I agree with them. You can’t keep her locked up like a prisoner.”
“Graham?” Nix asked, obviously exasperated.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s three to two,” Danny said. Even he could do that math.
But Graham spoke up anyway. “Trust, love, and respect. You must trust, love, and respect one another. That was what we promised in the church yesterday. Chaining her up isn’t any of those things.”
Danny smiled at Nix. “Four to one.”
So Nix couldn’t do anything but fume as Mateo pushed past him and ran up the stairs.
Chapter 25
AUDREY
The guys were arguing downstairs. Audrey could hear them. She knew they were arguing over her. About what to do with her.
She closed her eyes and thumped her head back against the pillow. Lifted it and thumped it again.
Shit. She’d really stepped in it this time.
Why was she being so stubborn? No matter what was going on with Camila’s clan, her men weren’t like that. She should go down there and tell them what had really happened.
Nix had just pissed her off so badly, refusing to listen to her when she’d tried to explain and she’d reacted.
You’re as stubborn as a donkey, her dad used to tell her when she was a kid. After she kept sassing him—and this after her infamous green beans dinner table standoff—he took her out to a farm so she could spend an afternoon w
ith a real, live donkey. He said they could leave as soon as she got the donkey to perform a list of tasks, like taking him on a walk through one pasture to another. No matter how she dug her feet in and yanked on his lead, that donkey just would not move.
She got the picture. And yeah, it wasn’t her most attractive quality, she got that.
Nix had just made her so mad.
She took a deep breath.
But Mateo would listen. And Graham. Probably Danny too. Eventually Nix would have to hear her. And Clark. They were well-respected members of the community. They could help Camila and—
A sudden noise had her lifting her head. And freezing.
Because climbing in her bedroom window were the two men who’d ran at her alongside Jeffries this morning. Two of Camila’s other husbands.
Audrey opened her mouth to scream but the one on the left, a pale man with blond hair, lifted a black handgun and pointed it at her. “Squeal and I’ll shoot you dead, bitch.”
Audrey’s breath caught and she looked to the door. Shit. Why had she driven the guys out? She was so stupid. Why’d she think she was safe just because the door was shut? She knew Nix had been lurking outside the night before the wedding, watching in case she ran. The ladder he’d used was probably still out there.
Before she could make up her mind about what was best to do—not that she had many options being handcuffed to the damn bed like she was—the blond and the other man, a big guy with a long, gnarled beard, were leaning over her on the bed. The blond guy slammed a dirty hand over her mouth.
Right as he did it, she realized she should have screamed anyway. Screamed her head off. They wouldn’t have shot her—the noise would have brought her husbands running just like her screaming would have.
The man with the hand on her mouth leaned over her and crushed her down into the bed with his weight. His hand squeezing her face so hard tears burned at the edges of her eyes.
“Jeffries wanted me and Julio here to send you a message. You talk and you’re dead. It won’t be an easy death either. Jeffries likes playin’ with bad girls like you. He’ll take it out on you long and slow.”
Audrey struggled underneath him while he squeezed her breast, yelling into the hand at her mouth.
The blond laughed and pulled back. “But you be a good girl and we’ll forget this little incident ever happened. No one would believe you anyway. It’s your word against ours. You be a good little wife to them boys now, ya hear? That’s all you gotta do.”
“If you scream when I take my hand off your mouth, Julio will slit your throat, ear to ear.” Julio slid a giant hunting knife out of a sheath at his waist and Audrey’s eyes went wide.
“That’s right. Julio just loves sharpenin’ that thing.” The blond leaned over again, his foul breath hot on her face. “There’s no where you can go that we can’t get you. Now, you gonna be a good girl?”
Audrey nodded, swallowing down her fury. The guys were downstairs. She just had to get these fuckers out of the room. That was all. She could think again once she was safe.
The pressure on her mouth finally let up and the blond lifted off the bed. Julio was already at the window.
That was when Audrey heard footsteps on the stairs. Her head swung toward the bedroom door. Then back to the blond who’d apparently heard it too.
“Get the fuck outta here,” he said, all but shoving Julio out the window. He’d just hitched his leg over and disappeared over the ledge when the bedroom door was shoved open by a heaving Mateo.
“I’m so sorry, Audrey,” Mateo said. “We’ll never treat you this way again. You’re not our prisoner. We never want you to feel like that.”
Audrey’s eyes shot to the window. She wanted to blurt out what had just happened. Mateo was being sweet. He was always sweet.
Danny, Clark, and Graham followed Mateo into the room, and together they helped him free her from the cuffs and chains. She sat up in bed, rubbing her wrists where the cuffs had chafed.
She glanced at the door and saw Nix out in the hallway, arms over his chest, a disapproving frown on his face.
She looked at the guys helplessly and then back at the window. It’ll just be your word against ours.
Shit. After what they thought she’d done this morning—well, what she’d planned to do before changing her mind at the last moment—there was no way they’d trust anything she said.
And they said they’d kill her.
If she told her husbands, they could stop them… unless they couldn’t. Who knew how deep the corruption in this town really went?
So even though it made her nauseous to do it, she ignored all of them, climbed under the sheets and comforter, and pulled them up tight.
And she didn’t say a word.
Chapter 26
NIX
“I can’t thank you enough for how decent you’ve been about all this,” Nix said to Jeffries as he looked over the duty roster Jeffries had drawn up for the next two weeks. “Especially considering the circumstances.”
Nix looked down at Jeffries’s leg. He was wearing shorts and his thigh was still wrapped in thick bandages where Audrey had nicked him with the bullet.
Jeffries waved a hand. “You forget, I’ve got my own little woman at home. I know how difficult they can be. Especially in the beginning. It just takes time, patience, and commitment to making it work.”
Jeffries was the last man in the world Nix ever thought he’d be getting romantic advice from. But it turned out Jeffries was a surprisingly good guy. Maybe Nix had misjudged him these past few years. He’d always thought of Jeffries as ruthless and efficient, but maybe marriage had mellowed him.
And if it could do that for a guy like Jeffries, maybe there was still hope for Nix’s clan.
“Still,” Nix said. “Camila offering to take Audrey on at the candle and shop after everything… well, your clan is being more than generous with us.”
After a week, the Commander had let Audrey out from under house arrest, but only if one of her husbands was with her at all times. Which was fine by Nix. If he had his way, he’d never let her out of his sight.
But he still had a job to do, so he had to switch out shifts with the other guys. He was always nervous when he wasn’t personally watching her, though. Which was why it was doubly generous of Jeffries to offer to take over more responsibility at the Security Squadron while Nix took time off to look after Audrey.
Jeffries just offered a good-natured smile. “It’s a brave new world, right? We’re only gonna make it if we all work together. Isn’t that what the Commander’s always telling us?”
Nix nodded and slapped Jeffries on the back. “I’m gonna go do a perimeter check in, then I’m off to pick up Audrey for the night.”
Jeffries chuckled, clapping his shoulder in return. “Good luck, brother.”
Nix huffed. “Don’t I know it.”
The perimeter check only took an hour and a half on horseback. Everything looked good. Guards were awake and alert and the perimeter scouts who regularly rode twenty miles outside town in all directions had all come in on time, no problems reported.
It was just the kind of quiet day Nix liked.
Now, he’d just go pick up Audrey and head home for a nice meal. This morning Clark said he hoped to trade for some extra deer meat, so they might even have real meat in the stew Mateo was heading home early to cook. That’d be a damn treat.
He was smiling as he dropped off Champ at the stables and then made his way over to the candle and soap shop to pick up Audrey.
The door was open but he knocked anyway. “Hello?”
He stepped inside. The front of the shop space was full of displays of all kinds of different candles and soaps. He knew they made everything in the rear of the shop or out in the back parking lot, which was probably where the girls were. And Graham, who was on guard duty this afternoon.
“Audrey? Camila?” he called, heading further into the shop.
But before he’d taken more than
a few steps inside, Audrey came running out from the back. She ripped the apron she was wearing off over her head and threw it, knocking a whole display of candles and soaps over.
“Audrey?” Nix asked. “What’s going on? What are you—”
But she just pushed past him and hurried out into main street. She didn’t stop there either. He followed her, feeling his hackles rise. He felt like a goddamned schoolboy chasing after a girl like this.
It didn’t take long for his long strides to outpace her and when he did, he grabbed her elbow. “Stop. What the hell’s going on? Did something happen?”
She jerked her arm out of his grasp. Her eyes were bright with fury. “What happened is that I’m tired of being a fucking slave! I knew you were full of bullshit. We honor and protect our women in this town,” she said in a mocking tone. “Fucking liar. You mean you make them slaves for all your menial labor and then you chain them to the bed. Because we’re sex slaves too, aren’t we? Just supposed to be available to fuck whenever you get a goddamned hard-on.” She spat the words and then spun and continued stomping down the street.
Nix’s whole body went hot. Everyone was staring. How dare she make such a fucking scene after all he’d done to overlook her attempted escape?
He’d spent hours—fucking hours—begging the Commander to let her out from house arrest. He’d tried to give her the most freedom possible. So she wouldn’t feel like she was in prison back at the house. Her words.
And after all that, she threw it back in his fucking face?
“Phoenix?” Graham asked, hurrying across main street toward him, looking after Audrey. “Why is she walking away like that? What is she mad about?”
Nix turned on him. “Where the fuck were you? You weren’t supposed to let her out of your fucking sight.”
Graham’s eyes slid away and he pushed his glasses up his nose, then started flicking the rubber band around his wrist. “I— Um, there was— I had to— That is, the—”
“Just fucking get out with it,” Nix demanded. He didn’t have time for Graham’s bullshit right now.