“Hey, don’t be like that.” Puzzled by Ria’s sudden shift in emotion, Silver grabs her shoulders, preventing her from turning away. “It’s okay, there’s no need to get upset. I was only teasing. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Offend me?”
“I should’ve known it was a touchy subject.” Silver caresses her face, thumbing away another tumbling teardrop. “I felt the way you recoiled when I was taunting Slade.”
“Not because I was offended, or disgusted.” Ria takes a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm. “What he said is true: I am gay—I feel safe telling you that. It’s just I’ve never heard anyone talk so brazenly about sexuality the way you did back there. It was shocking, but not really in a bad way.”
“Okay, fair enough. But why are you so upset right now? I wasn’t being serious.”
Ria looks pitifully forlorn, her eyes downturned and her brow furrowed. “Do you honestly not know?”
“Know what?”
“You can’t go about making jokes like that.” She keeps her voice low, even though they’re completely alone. “It’s against the law.”
“What is?” Silver snorts. “Making sex jokes?”
“Homosexuality,” Ria says softly, as if it’s a bad word.
Silver almost laughs, the notion absurd. “You can’t outlaw homosexuality. That’s like saying all chickens have to be brown: you can’t decide that. You get what you get.”
“I wish it were that simple.” Ria seems close to shedding more tears.
Baffled by the concept of a law that prohibits people from loving one another freely, Silver’s not sure what kind of comfort she can offer. Coming from a place where sexuality is a complete non-issue, the only way she can relate to it at all is by comparing it to the Hunter Division rules governing intimate relationships between Hunters—the rules she’d spent much of her adult life breaking.
They state that no senior ranking Hunter can engage in sexual relationships with other Hunters, which became a problem for her when she was promoted to Commander, and Alex was serving beneath her. They should’ve broken off their relationship immediately. Instead, they subverted Hunter Division law and kept seeing one another—a decision which ultimately resulted in dishonorable discharge for both of them.
Fuck the Hunter Division.
Fuck British law.
Love is love, no matter what.
About to say some words to that effect, Silver is cut off by the sudden reappearance of Alex, doubling back on the path to check on them.
“Silver,” he snaps at her. “You’re trailing.”
Smiling apologetically, wishing they had more time to talk this subject out, Silver reaches for Ria’s hands and coaxes her gently onward. It doesn’t seem like much, but the simple act of slipping her hand between Ria’s and weaving their fingers together has the meek brunette swooning for her. It’s a silent demonstration that she has no fear of the law, and Ria finds that fearlessness both terrifying and exhilarating.
In any case, having her wrists bound together makes it difficult to navigate over the bumps and dips in the uneven ground, and clinging to Silver’s hand ensures that she doesn’t take a tumble into a ditch, or twist her ankle in a mole hill. At least, that’s the excuse she’s using to justify the fact that they remain in constant physical contact for a little over an hour, until they reach Stretford.
Only there, under black looks from Bold and Mason, does she finally extricate herself.
“I have to pee anyway.” Silver squeezes her shoulder, knowing full well why she withdrew. “Will you be okay on your own for a minute?”
Ria nods and forces a smile, despite feeling vulnerable in Silver’s absence. The Deltas scare her, and although Luka and Alex aren’t exactly being hostile, they’re not going out of their way to make her feel welcome, either. Alex keeps his back to her, Luka is preoccupied with Carmen, and neither of them seems approachable.
Growing uncomfortable, and well aware that Mason’s still gawking at her, she deliberately keeps her distance from all of them. She hears Bold announce to the rest of the group that they’ll take a short break to eat before moving on, then she sees him disappear inside a barn. He returns moments later—following a series of horse nickers—carrying a bundle of bread and cheese to share.
The sight of food makes her stomach growl, but she knows better than to expect him to feed her. So despite being painfully hungry, she turns her back on them and wanders up to the barn to take her mind off it and fuss over the animals.
The horses welcome her arrival by nickering and snorting, clamoring for attention as she hand feeds them bunches of hay from the manger.
“There, there.” She rubs Fitch’s nose, much to his delight. “Good boy.”
Grabbing a grooming brush from a table of tack supplies, she begins to rub him down, eliciting more contented nickers and sighs. It’s not long, though, before she feels the presence of someone else in the barn with her.
Mason.
He’s sneaking up behind her; she can smell the rank odor of sweat and cheese.
“What do you want?” she asks without turning around.
His stealthy approach rumbled, Mason sidles closer and fingers some hair that’s fallen loose from her braid, moving it back and exposing her neck.
“How much?” he hisses against her ear.
Ria’s chest feels tight, her heart beating erratically. “What?” Barely audible.
“You’re a tart.” He grips her waist with his hot, clammy hands. “Slade said so.”
“You believe everything Slade says?”
“Why else would the Arch Rogue want you?” He gropes her ass.
“Luther’s a whoremonger with no respect for women.” She elbows his hand away. “He takes any flesh, whether it’s for sale or not.”
“And what’s so special about yours?” He latches onto her again.
“Nothing.” She squirms, but can’t get free. “Why are you doing this? You hate Taints.”
“I do, but my cock can’t seem to tell the difference.” He presses his erection against her back. “Flesh is flesh, and I’m gonna stuff you like a Christmas turkey.”
“Please stop.” She battles tears.
With her hands bound in front of her, she has no hope of defending herself. She wrestles with her binds, trying to get loose, but all that does is burn her skin.
“Now, now.” He stops her. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
He drags her away from Fitch and throws her up against the barn wall. Lifting her bound wrists above her head, he catches the rope on a hook meant for horse tack and renders her completely helpless.
“I’ll scream,” she threatens.
“Don’t be ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful?! What for? You think I should be flattered that you want to shove your dick inside me?”
“We busted you out of Slade’s warren, love. I think that deserves a freebie.”
“You didn’t help me—Silver did.” She kicks at him, but misses. “You wanted to leave me there.”
“Yeah, well”—he looks around the barn, has an idea, then lifts her off the hook and throws her down onto a pile of hay instead—“now I’m glad we didn’t.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ria makes as much noise as she can, but Mason stuffs a rag in her mouth and continues his assault. Looming over her on the hay pile, he kneels between her legs, pins her bound arms above her head, and starts to unfasten her kicksies.
“You really are something to look at.” He ogles her, struggling with the buttons while she writhes beneath him.
“And that’s all you’re ever gonna get to do.” Silver aims her gun at the back of his head. “You can look, but you sure as fuck don’t get to touch.”
Mason stops moving.
“Raise your hands and back away from her,” Silver demands. “Quietly and slowly, else I’ll really, really hurt you.”
“Calm down.” Mason laughs, relaxing against the hay. “I’m
having a bit of fun with her. I thought she could make herself useful.”
Keeping her gun on Mason, Silver helps Ria up off the hay, sets her on her feet, and removes the rag from her mouth.
“Did he hurt you?”
Utterly overwhelmed, Ria stars to sob.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Mason grumbles.
“I think you did enough,” Silver growls back at him.
The tears tumbling free, Ria runs from the barn. Silver tries to snag her, but fails. Momentarily torn between punishing Mason and going after her, she hesitates for a split second, then holsters her gun.
“I’m watching you, you pathetic little shit.”
Her hot temper flared, she exits the barn after Ria and tries to catch up, her progress impeded almost immediately by Bold.
“Peckish?”
He steps in front of her and offers her a portion of bread and cheese, behaving perfectly normally, Ria’s distress simply not worthy of his attention.
Silver snatches the food. “Do you know what your friend just did to her?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer. “Jesus, I was only gone for two minutes and that bastard tried to rape her. What the hell’s wrong with you people?”
Bold remains unfazed, clearly of the belief that Mason’s cruel treatment of Ria is nothing whatsoever to apologize for.
“You assholes.” Silver backs away.
Spinning on her heels, she storms across the farm to find Ria and crosses paths with Alex, almost running headlong into him.
“Where are you going?” He tries to capture her. “Come sit with me.”
“Screw off,” she barks, refusing to stop, unfairly taking her anger out on him. “I’m not in the mood for this bullshit.”
Unbeknownst to her, Linx is primed and ready to swoop in and claim her unwanted goods.
“I’ll sit with you,” she beams. “You can finish telling me about how you once killed three Chimera with your bare hands.”
So be it.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the farm, Silver finds Ria sitting on an old metal bench behind a tumbledown cottage that backs out onto the River Mersey.
“I was afraid you’d bolted.”
Ria puts her fingers to her lips. She silences Silver, then points to the other side of the river where an adult doe is grazing in a field of daisies with her two young fawns.
It’s so tranquil out here. The River Mersey gurgles and trickles in the background, birds sing to one another in the treetops, frogs ribbit on the riverbank, and grasshoppers chirp in the long grass. If it weren’t for the small matter of an attempted sexual assault marring the ambiance, this place would be quite relaxing.
“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Ria whispers, watching the deer. “I’ve spent so much of my life in the city, it’s easy to forget how beautiful other parts of the country can be.”
Glad to see that Ria’s stopped crying—though her eyes are puffy and red, her cheeks still damp—Silver sits down beside her, setting the food to one side.
“I’ve spent my whole life in just one city.” She stretches her legs out and leans back, making herself comfortable. “It was all we knew.”
Curious, Ria studies Silver’s clothes. She runs a finger over her thigh, feeling the texture of her jeans, then she scrutinizes the Omega emblem on her belt buckle.
“You dress differently. Where are you from?”
Silver shrugs. “I don’t know what you’d call it. It’s not even a real country anymore.”
“Somewhere in the Americas?” Ria wipes her damp cheeks with her sleeve. “What’s it like over there?” She dabs at her eyes.
“Well, booze is pretty much illegal, and you can be banished for stealing a paperclip from the stationery cupboard, but at least I can make love to a woman without getting thrown in prison.”
“Who said anything about prison?” Ria starts to look forlorn again. “The penalty for same sex love is death.”
“Are you fucking serious?!” Silver stares at her openmouthed. “Christ, I wouldn’t have made it past fourteen.”
Intrigued by that, but hiding it well, Ria looks down into her lap, fidgeting with her fingers. “Must be nice to love so freely.”
Her sadness palpable, tears on the brink of returning again, Silver rubs her back.
“Laws can change.” She reaches for the bread and cheese. “Here, I brought you something to eat.” She unveils the cheddar and wholegrain. “Share with me, please. You must be half starved.”
“You don’t have to give me your food.” Ria stops her from ripping the bread in half. “Just … let me go.” She holds her bound wrists out expectantly. “I promise I won’t follow you.”
“You want me to let you go? In the woods? On your own?” Silver shakes her head, taking a bite of cheddar. “I don’t think so.”
“But I’ll only cause you trouble.”
“I like trouble.”
“I’m being serious.” Ria suppresses another wave of tears. “You can’t keep defending me. I can’t keep letting you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I … and they might think that you …” She closes her eyes, squeezing out a teardrop. “You’re being too kind to me.”
“No, I’m behaving normally.” Silver thumbs the tear away. “The others are behaving like twats.”
“They have their reasons.”
“Why? Because you’re a Taint?” Silver divides the bread and passes her half. “That’s not a reason, it’s an excuse.”
Ria accepts the bread, too ravenous to refuse it a second time. “Do you know what happened to them? The Deltas.” She pauses to munch a chunk of crust. “A few generations ago, when our government first found a way to catalogue the population—”
“By using the virus?” Silver butts in for clarification.
Ria nods, taking another bite. “They called it the human betterment package. They harnessed the virus to nanites, and now they use the nanites to control it: what effects it produces, and what effects it doesn’t. Basically switching different elements of the virus on and off as they please.”
“I guess they weren’t too happy when they found out some people were immune.” Silver breaks off a piece of cheese.
“Quite a few people in actual fact.” Ria takes the cheese, their fingertips touching lightly. “How good is your fourteenth century European history?”
Silver feigns confusion. “Time goes back that far?”
“Yes.” Ria laughs. “There was a plague. Did you know that? It wiped out over a hundred million people in Europe.”
“That’s a bummer.”
Smirking, Ria continues. “It was called the Black Death.”
“Sounds appropriate.”
“This is relevant, trust me.” She nibbles on the cheese. “The Black Death was a retrovirus, and it used a gene called CCR5 to infect host cells—the same gene targeted by the human betterment package, and the original Chimera virus.”
“Which means … ?”
“Most Europeans carrying a normal copy of that gene died in the fourteenth century. Those who didn’t—those who were immune—survived.”
Silver catches on. “Resulting in a population of humans who were mostly immune to the Chimera virus when it was first unleashed. Which explains why your continent wasn’t so badly affected when the shit hit the fan.”
“Delta-32 was the name given to the mutated CCR5 gene—hence Deltas—and the government’s solution to the problem of having a large number of people they couldn’t catalogue—”
“You mean control,” Silver interjects cynically.
Ria doesn’t argue with that. “They ordered a purge, and it went on for decades. Anyone found to have the Delta-32 gene was culled.”
“That’s mass murder.”
“It was genocide. When it was finally over—when the Delta population had been reduced by almost ninety percent—the purge stopped. Deltas were branded, and forced to live in designated compounds away from the general population.”
/> “To prevent them from corrupting the superior gene pool?”
Ria nods again. “Needless to say, there’s some residual animosity between the Deltas and the rest of us; the people they call Taints.”
In silence, sobered by the history lesson, Silver finishes her share of the bread. When she’s done, she watches Ria pick delicately at her portion, nibbling at it like a mouse, finding it awkward to eat properly with her wrists roped together.
“I can’t bear to watch this anymore.” She pulls Ria’s hands onto her lap. “I want to untie you, but you have to promise me you won’t do anything silly.”
“I won’t run from you,” Ria pledges. “Not if you’re sure you want me—”
“Yes.” Silver doesn’t wait for her to finish. “I’m sure.”
She makes quick work of the knot and discards the rope, keeping hold of Ria’s right hand. The back of her wrist looks sore, the skin irritated and pink: evidence of her encounter with Mason.
“He hurt you.” She strokes her fingers over the bruised skin.
“I hurt myself,” Ria corrects her. “Trying to get away from him.”
That doesn’t make it any less awful.
Silver kisses it better. “I’m sorry.”
Willing her cheeks not to flush with color, Ria flounders to form words.
Eventually, “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s certainly not yours.” Silver gives Ria’s hand a brief squeeze, then reaches for the last piece of cheese. “Here, eat this.”
“No, it’s yours.” Ria stubbornly refuses to accept it, going so far as to turn her head to avoid looking at it.
“Come on,” Silver whines. “You’ve hardly eaten anything. Don’t make me hold you down and force feed you.”
Ria keeps her head turned.
“Oh, I get it.” Silver tries a different tactic instead. “That’s what you want. You want me to get on top of you, pin you down, and—”
Floored again by Silver’s unrestrained words, Ria swings around to face her, her mouth wide open … and in goes the cheese before she realizes it’s coming.
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