by Roxie Ray
Her Healing Warrior
Lunarian Warriors: Book 4
Roxie Ray
Contents
1. Savannah
2. Coplan
3. Savannah
4. Coplan
5. Savannah
6. Coplan
7. Savannah
8. Coplan
9. Savannah
10. Coplan
11. Savannah
12. Coplan
13. Savannah
14. Coplan
15. Savannah
16. Coplan
17. Savannah
18. Coplan
19. Savannah
20. Coplan
21. Savannah
22. Coplan
23. Savannah
24. Apex
Her Secret Champion
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Her Healing Warrior
1
Savannah
There were protesters outside the venue. As soon as I saw them, I should have known the day wasn’t going to go my way.
“Happy freakin’ Separation Day,” my sister scoffed as we pulled up. Atlanta twirled a bubblegum-pink lock of hair around her finger as she flipped through her phone. Our parents had threatened to disown her if she perma-dyed it, but Atlanta hadn’t cared. She looked at rules the same way a bunch of kids at a birthday party looked at a piñata: some things were just meant to be broken.
It had all worked out for the best in the end, though. News of her new hair color had shot our subscriber count up past four million. That had shut our parents up. If anything, her bright pink hair made my naturally black waves look even more striking when we shot our dance videos together. Like in everything else we did, Atlanta’s wild child decisions only ever complemented my good-girl attitude. Together, we were the glamorous, sector-famous Tremaine Twins. Yin and yang. Spicy and sweet.
Sometimes, I wished I had Atlanta’s courage, her rebel spirit, that little voice in her head that said screw you when someone told her how to live her life.
Most of the time, though, I just wished she’d chill out and make things easier for the both of us.
“It’s an honor that the sectors are throwing us this party,” I reminded her. Or maybe, I was just trying to remind myself. As I stared out the window of our limousine, the faces of the protesters scowled and sneered. I knew they couldn’t see us through the tinted glass, but I couldn’t help but feel like they were glaring directly at me. Or, at least, at the idea of me. I could see from their badges that most of them were gray-class, which meant they probably had good reason to be protesting. In the sectors, the only thing worse than being gray-class was being hauled off to the work camps in Sector Five. Out there, no one had a class at all. “Besides, Separation Day only happens once a year. If we smile and wave and put in our time right today, maybe they’ll send us somewhere nice for vacation after it’s done.”
“Yeah, maybe they’ll let us surf our ways through the trash flotillas in the ocean—or maybe they’ll ship us up to the mountains and we can go skiing in some fake snow!” Atlanta rolled her eyes and tossed her phone at me. “At least we’ve got one piece of good news today. We just broke five million. The sectors had better give us a vacation after that.”
“That’s…great.” I glanced down at our new follower count on the phone’s screen and forced a smile, even though I didn’t know why. No one could see me but Atlanta, and she obviously didn’t care. At least, not anymore. Three years ago, when we hit our first million, we’d jumped up and down in each other’s arms for five whole minutes, then immediately started choreographing a new video to celebrate. But now…I guessed I could see why she wasn’t enthusiastic about it anymore. If I let myself think about it too hard, I didn’t care either.
The protesters outside the venue were there for a reason. For every video we posted of our perfect, lean bodies gyrating to the latest rock song and every opulent party we went to just so we could take pictures with other gold-class influencers like us, there were a hundred thousand gray-class citizens spending the night trying to figure out how to feed their kids or having to decide between paying rent or the electric bill that month.
Compared to that, getting excited over our new follower count just felt like rubbing salt in other people’s wounds.
I handed Atlanta her phone back, but nearly dropped it as something heavy and wet hit the window right next to my face.
“Milkshakes. Nice,” Atlanta said with a little laugh. She glanced at the window through the gloopy smear the milkshake had left on the glass and gave the protesters a thumbs-up that they couldn’t see. “You’ve gotta hand it to the gray-class. They might not have much, but they have great aim.”
“It’s almost like you enjoy having dairy products thrown at you.” I was just glad the window hadn’t been down. The dresses that the sectors had sent over for us to wear for the event—twin sequined gold numbers so skin-tight that our seamstress had been forced to sew us into them before we got in the limo—wouldn’t have been easy to get back out of if we’d gotten splattered. “I get that they’re angry, but they have so little money already…is it really worth spending it on milkshakes they’re not even going to drink?”
“If the sectors would let us donate our salaries like we wanted to, the gray-class would be able to buy enough milkshakes to throw and drink.” Atlanta went back to scrolling through her phone. “Guess that’s why we’re not allowed to help them out. If they weren’t so busy scraping to get by, they’d overthrow the sectors in a hot minute—and it’d serve our stupid government right, too.”
“Atlanta…” I lowered my voice to a hiss and slapped Atlanta on the knee, then gave the partition between us and the driver a wary glance. “You have to be more careful about what you say. You never know who might be listening.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ve got our phones bugged already.” Atlanta shrugged like it was no big deal at all. “Who cares? We’ve got five million followers, Savii. They can’t afford to ship us off to Sector Five. We’re the most popular influencers they have at their disposal. It’d look bad—and who’d be around to reassure the masses that the big bad government is actually their close personal friend then?”
“I don’t think anyone believes the government is their friend now.” There weren’t any more milkshakes thrown our way, thankfully, but the signs that the protesters were holding up outside the limo weren’t exactly the stuff of greeting cards. GOLD-CLASS GO DIE, one read. Another said, SEPARATION DAY? SEPARATE THIS! with a crude drawing of a man spreading his butt-cheeks beneath the words.
“Yeah. These signs are even better than last year’s.” Atlanta laughed at the drawing as she followed my gaze. “Stop worrying, Savii. The sectors will have security detail on us the second we step foot out of the limo, and you know how the party itself will go. They only give invitations to known zealots. We’ll shake a few hands, kiss a few babies, dance with some fans and flirt with some high-ranking politicians. Then we’ll go home so Sondra can cut us back out of these ugly-ass dresses. Throw on some pajamas and jump into bed…maybe we could even booty call some hunks and binge-eat some ice cream cake. You know you’d love that.”
As Atlanta waggled her eyebrows at me, it was my turn to laugh. Five years ago, our parents had kickstarted our careers in social media, and ever since, we’d been on diets to match. Sometimes, we posed with desserts for pictures, but that was just for show. Any bite I took ended up being spat in the trash after—a waste, but there was nothing we could do about it. Sometimes, we’d say “screw it” and give into our cravings, but those times were rare—and they were usually followed by enough cardio to make us sick after so we could maintain our “perfect” physiques. Mo
re likely than not, we’d be eating thrilling meals of celery sticks for the next week just to make up for the few sips of Separation Day champagne we’d have to consume during the event.
As for booty calling hunks, that was completely out of the question. Sometimes, the sectors arranged for us to go out on dates with other influencers for the publicity, but boyfriends and lovers were all but out of the question for us. I knew Atlanta had sneaked around that rule a little, but I didn’t dare try my luck. Being caught in the arms of a man I wasn’t married to would ruin my image forever, and I didn’t want to know what happened to influencers who fell out of the sectors’ favor. Most just disappeared off the face of the Earth entirely. Either to Sector Five—or somewhere even worse.
“Miss Savannah? Miss Atlanta?” The voice of our driver called back to us over the limo’s intercom. “I’m pulling up to the gold carpet now. Security has cleared the area of any ill-wishers, but I want to remind you to take care until you’re safely inside the event.”
“No class like gold-class,” Atlanta quipped with a roll of her eyes. She tucked her phone into her purse then gave me a wild, red-lipped grin as she offered me her hand. “Ready for your close-up, Savii?”
I sighed, then nodded and took her hand. My own lips shifted into a grin as well. I just hoped it was a little more genuine-looking than my sister’s was. “Let’s just get this over with and try not to screw anything up.”
The event was exhausting. Every Separation Day always was. Oh, we smiled and laughed, posed for pictures with our adoring fans, pretended to like the politicians and billionaires that we could hardly stomach and barely knew, but inside I was dying, and I knew Atlanta was too. When a cigar-smoking bigwig from Sector Four let his hand slide a little too far down our hips for comfort mid-photo op, I endured it—I had to—but she nearly broke his wrist as she pulled his hand away. Luckily, I was able to explain her attitude with an apologetic giggle and a simple explanation—“Oh, she’s just hangry.”—before our security detail guided us away. But I knew we wouldn’t be able to use that excuse twice, and Atlanta did too.
“It’s just…this is all so lonely, isn’t it?” Atlanta glared down at a blini topped with caviar like it was a cow pie slathered with snot. “We’re not even people to these people. We’re merchandise.”
“That’s Separation Day for you.” I stared up at the flags for the six sectors hanging over the stage. A platinum banner for wealthy, tech-savvy Sector One. Mountain blue for the vast expanses of Sector Two. Green for the farmlands of Sector Three and old-money bronze for quaint little Sector Four. Sector Five’s flag was the same gray as the citizenship badges of class most frequently sent to work there. Sector Six was brown, which made sense. It was mostly made up of trash, dirt and slums. “The government didn’t divide the sectors up to make us feel unified. We’re supposed to feel alone.”
“Fake, lonely people with fake, lonely smiles at this fake-ass, lonely party.” Atlanta shifted her glare to a group of pretty young up-and-coming influencers who were fawning over the Sector Four man who had just grabbed our asses. “Those idiot bimbos don’t even know how much worse it gets at the top.”
“They’ll learn,” I said.
We certainly had.
When our careers started, we’d only been wide-eyed sixteen-year-olds who didn’t know anything about how the world worked. Now, at twenty-one, even I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t jaded by it all anymore. Our fans were brainwashed. Our lives were just short of being entirely fabricated. And maybe worst of all, every birthday that passed us by now left us that much closer to the day that we’d be obsolete.
Sometime in the next few years, our parents would arrange for Atlanta and me to marry men exactly like that ass-grabbing Sector Four scoundrel the up-and-comers were flirting with. We’d have loveless marriages to wealthy husbands and nothing to show for our lives except for our dwindling social media presences and a few children who, more likely than not, would be subjected to the same fate we had.
It wasn’t exactly a bright and shiny future. But then again, in the sectors, who could really say they had one of those?
Even as gold-classes, we weren’t privileged enough to be guaranteed happiness— no one was guaranteed that.
The event wrapped up with fireworks. We watched them from the veranda and raised our glasses to toast the continued so-called prosperity of the sectors after a plastic-faced politician made his big speech. My dress was starting to hurt my ribs by then, so I was relieved when I saw people were finally leaving.
The quicker everyone else went home, the quicker Atlanta and I could finally get out of this place to do the same.
Unfortunately, thanks to a few unexpected last-minute bombardments by our fans, Atlanta and I were the last influencers allowed to leave. When we blew our final kisses and said our final goodbyes, seeing our security detail show up to take us back out to the limo was the most beautiful thing I’d laid eyes on all day.
But then, the brick hit the window. I guess, in the grand scheme of things, that was when everything really hit the fan.
This was no smoothie situation. There was no washing it away. The brick slammed against the floor-to-ceiling glass of the building’s entryway hard enough to make me jump. It created a spiderweb of cracks where it made contact. Through the cracks, I could see a masked protester in all black pump their fist into the air. Through the t-shirt they’d tied to cover their face, they shouted, “Down with the sectors! Down with the gold-class!”
Then, they stooped down to pick up another brick. Somehow, I knew this one was going to make the glass fall apart completely as soon as it hit.
Our security guys were hulking, thick-necked, red-class giants. With Atlanta and I both being five-foot-one, we looked almost like little kids when the paparazzi snapped pictures of us with them. The guards were there for our protection. Oftentimes, we needed it, too. When the protester picked up the second brick, the guards took one look at each other and headed for the door immediately.
“Stay put,” Mitch, the hunkier of the two, barked over his shoulder.
“Yes, sir,” Atlanta purred back at him. She’d been trying to flirt with him ever since he’d been assigned to us, not that it had gotten her anywhere.
As the guards left, Atlanta and I slowly turned to each other. Each of us took a deep breath.
We’d been lonely all day, but for the first time since we’d woken up…
It finally felt like we were actually alone.
“I’m starving,” Atlanta admitted. She let her breath out in a heavy sigh. Her makeup was still perfect, but I could tell from her eyes she was as tired as I felt. “Nibbling on appetizers like that…I feel like I might as well have been eating air.”
“Maybe we could bargain for some of that ice cream you were talking about when we get home,” I teased. We both knew what a joke that was. “Or cake…or pie. Remember pie?”
“Funny you should mention!” a warm female voice chirped from behind us. “I think I might have just the thing for you two.”
Atlanta and I turned to see a pleasantly plump older woman standing behind us. Her hairstyle was vintage, a beehive that had been in style for about a month a few years back before it had gone out of fashion again, and her dress would have been more in place in a retro diner than it was here at this fancy event…
But our eyes weren’t really on what the woman was wearing.
It was what she was holding that really grabbed our attention.
“I thought I’d heard that you two liked pie.” The woman grinned proudly as she held out a slice of golden-crusted apple pie a la mode to each of us. “I baked this special, just for you. Go on, dig in!”
Atlanta and I shared a look, then glanced around nervously. Aside from a few staff members cleaning up from the event, there was no one around. The politicians and billionaires had all gone home to their spoiled children and unhappy wives. The other influencers were out taking selfies somewhere else, and our other fans had returned t
o their unglamorous lives. Even our guards were gone. Outside, they were still struggling to apprehend the rogue protester.
Eating this pie was a big, big no-no.
But for once, there was no one around to see us misbehave.
“Mom always said nothing good came out of eating dessert,” I said tentatively, even though my mouth was already watering.
“You did just say you wanted some,” Atlanta pointed out. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of her slice.
“And it’s homemade, too!” the woman added. “Just have a smell.”
I only hesitated for a moment. When I finally dipped my nose down just over my slice, though…the Sectionist church didn’t allow us to believe in heaven, but if there was one, I imagined it smelled like that. The crust was buttery and somehow still warm. The apples smelled tart and sweet, slathered with more butter and brown sugar. Cinnamon swirled all around me, with just a dash of something even more exciting— nutmeg, maybe.
The point was, it smelled too good not to eat. By the time I finally accepted my plate, Atlanta had already scarfed down half of her slice.
“Thank you,” I told the woman. “This is a really rare treat for us. We really appreciate it.”
The woman chuckled and waved my thanks away. “The pleasure is mine, dear. Trust me.”
“So good,” Atlanta said through an unladylike mouthful.
I giggled, then took a tiny bite of my own. I’d pay for it with double cardio tomorrow. Today…
One little treat surely couldn’t hurt.