by Helena Maeve
It took more courage than Alana had thought she possessed to step through their ranks, but somehow she managed it. Disappointment didn’t take long to follow as she pulled clear of the mob. Where was the anger? Where were the slurs she deserved?
Tears sprang to her eyes about ten yards from her destination and she couldn’t seem to hold them back however hard she tried.
She bent at the waist, steadying herself against the wall as sobs rattled her frame. This is normal, she heard a voice whisper at the back of her mind. This is what shock feels like. Accept it and let your body find its balance.
It was, predictably, much easier said than done.
“Alana?” Jackson’s voice reached her from very far away, long before she felt the touch of his hands on her shoulders. The rest of him only materialized into being when Alana leaned into the solid wall of his chest and buried her face in the crook of his neck.
“I could’ve killed her,” she sniffled. “I could’ve— I felt her heart slow down…”
“She’s very much alive. I’ve just been to see her. Alana, you did that. You should be proud—”
“Proud?” The word caught in her throat like a wishbone. Alana shoved her way free of his embrace. “Have you lost your mind? It was my doing!”
Jackson fell backward, his expression one of obvious confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Pennyroyal and sagewort,” she hissed. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
He was as much to blame for this as Alana. Jackson had relayed her package to Leona. It might as well have been a ticking time bomb, like in stories.
At least he had the good grace to look confused. “Leona brewed the tea herself…”
“Because I gave her the tools!” Alana insisted, aware of heads turning their way but too far gone to stop for fear of shaming Jackson.
He straightened, clenching his jaw with a stiff scowl. “Because she asked for them. Would you have denied her that choice?”
Alana scoffed at the question. “Of course she asked! Can you see a scout traipsing through the wilderness with a babe in her arms? You people— You don’t think before you stick your cock in a woman’s cunt, do you? It’s all about what you want—”
“What people are you referring to, Alana?” Jackson interjected, stepping into her personal space with an unsettlingly dark frown. “Men? Drifters? It’s been a while since you told me how little you thought of my kind, so please, do remind me how we fail to measure up to your enlightened brethren.”
With the wall at her back and Jackson looming against her front, Alana found her breath fleeing her lungs in a rush. The rest of her would’ve liked to bolt too, but there was nowhere to go. She forced herself not to drop her gaze, though, aware that even that small tentative show of defiance was sure to earn her punishment.
Jackson had never struck her before, never given a sign that he might want to, but that small, treacherous voice at the back of Alana’s mind whispered that he’d likely been waiting for the right time. Perhaps this was it.
She shouldn’t have pushed him. It was too late to backtrack now.
All she could do was face his scorn and hope that an audience, silent though it was, would keep Jackson from hurting her too badly.
“The claiming will take place this evening,” he snarled, his breath stirring a lock of hair into motion. “Get cleaned up.”
His parting volley registered with some difficulty—and when it did, Alana had to steady herself with a hand against the wall. She tried very hard not to think of how gentle he’d been with her last night, or how right it had felt to be held in his arms as she had drifted off to sleep.
Staring at his retreating back, she understood that he would give her everything she’d hoped for, precisely the way she’d hoped to avoid it.
Chapter Eight
Alana stretched out her bare feet and listened to the crackle of her joints. I have an old woman’s body, she thought without mirth. Had she been able to sleep, she might have passed the time in the arms of Morpheus, letting her thoughts carry her far from Haven. The trouble was that her dreams were no safer than her new home.
Where could she wish herself, when the world she came from had burned to smithereens and the space between New Eden and her prison was peopled with walkers and mutts?
She threw her shoe across the room. There was no getting the blood out of the tight weave of the sole, not even if she scrubbed until her fingers were raw. Perhaps if she could find some bleach—but who’d let her handle toxic substances after her last exploit? She couldn’t imagine herself asking Maity.
Jackson would probably turn his back on her and have done with it.
Shouldn’t have talked back. The thought circled like a vulture as Alana stared into the damp stains on the ceiling. Shouldn’t have tested his patience. What if he changed his mind about the claiming? Alana hadn’t put much faith in her powers of seduction before, but she trusted them even less now that the whole city knew she dabbled in potions and dangerous alchemy.
The jangling of beads alerted her to the presence of visitors outside the makeshift door.
“Jackson isn’t here,” Alana called out pre-emptively.
The woman on the other side shook her head. “’Course he’s not. You’re to come with me.”
A cold shiver swept down Alana’s spine, settling into her bones like razor-sharp shards. “Why?”
“Whole town’s taking time off to attend your claiming and you’re asking why?” The woman clucked her tongue. “Come along.”
Denial rose in Alana with gale force. She thought of saying that she wasn’t Jackson’s intended, perhaps even claim that there had been a change of plans. But she was the prisoner in this equation, the would-be thrall, and she didn’t want to know what became of those who refused to toe the line.
Smothering her misgivings, Alana pushed herself up and crossed the room to retrieve her bloodied shoe.
“Leave that,” the female drifter said.
“What?”
“I said leave it. You only bring what you own. That dress you’ve got on—”
“It’s mine,” Alana said quickly, afraid the woman might ask her to strip.
She watched a smile tilt up the corners of the stranger’s lips. “Fair enough.” She didn’t threaten Alana at knifepoint. Perhaps she knew there was no need.
They were so deep underground that Alana sincerely doubted anyone could get out of Haven without permission and not be seen. She had a feeling she didn’t want to know what became of fugitives.
The labyrinthine passages proved strangely quiet as she was led from the room. There was no one in the mess hall, either, both queue and the space behind the counter silent and barren of life.
They crept down the stairs, descending deeper and deeper into the basement levels of the city where even the air was brisk and icy. Their surroundings didn’t change much, but the pungent scent of char soon caught Alana’s attention.
She slowed her steps, apprehensive, but there was no dawdling when her keeper took the opportunity to thrust a pointy knuckle between Alana’s shoulder blades. After the third nudge, Alana gave up trying to glower her into ceasing.
The scent of burning wood made perfect sense when she saw the modest fire crackling at the center of a fishbowl chamber, its flames magnifying the shadow of the audience sat on the rocky, horseshoe ledges. Jackson was there, and when he turned to meet her gaze, his scowl grew deeper.
“You have to keep going,” the woman whispered in Alana’s ear. That was when she realized she’d stopped, her legs aborting her attempts to obey.
Alana swallowed hard.
“There is nothing to fear,” a thick, male voice said from the first row. At first Alana mistook it for a busybody heckling her for his own amusement, but then she realized the withered creature had been given a place of honor on a cushioned seat, with two similarly elderly women poised on either side of him.
He had gathered Ophelyn and others of his cal
iber around him like the kings of old might have done their knights.
This is Gideon. Alana struggled to set aside her trepidation.
The wizened creature huffed out what might have been a laugh. “Let’s try this another way. What is it that makes you so uneasy? You know this man, yes?”
Two spots of color decorated Jackson’s cheeks, revealing his mortification. Alana nodded as firmly as she could.
“I am not uneasy,” she lied, pitching her voice high enough to be heard, “but fire and flesh don’t mix so well in my experience.”
“Ah,” Gideon drawled, “you think we intend to burn you for a witch?”
The assembly rumbled with a few scattered chuckles, but Jackson’s expression remained blank and stony, doing nothing to alleviate Alana’s worst fears.
“I’m a stranger in your city. I remain ignorant of your ways… Perhaps if they were to be explained to me I’d find it easier to settle into my new role.” She could learn to be humble and silent, to be seen rather than heard. She could become the woman Jackson expected her to be.
Don’t send me away, she wanted to plead, but Jackson was suddenly there, stroking his hand across her cheek. It took Alana a moment to realize that his touch was light, more caress than clout.
“After the things we said,” he breathed, “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Did I have a choice?” Alana murmured, keenly aware that she was the center of attention and not quite knowing how to handle that in a manner befitting a thrall. That familiar, self-sabotaging urge to curtsy could only deepen the hole she found herself in. She choked it back.
Jackson retreated, his brows knitting together tightly. “Of course you have a choice…”
“May we proceed?” Gideon asked, his voice thin and reedy. “Far be it from me to rush you two lovebirds, but some of us aren’t getting any younger.”
“We’re not—”
“Yes, we are,” Alana cut in, giving Jackson’s hand a harsh tug. “We’re doing this.” When he didn’t move, Alana stepped forward, her back straight and her pulse fluttering like a frightened bird in her chest. “I’m willing.”
That much at least was true.
“Very well,” Gideon said, opening his pale, withered arms wide as if to encompass the entire hall. “Jackson Idaho, do you take this woman to be your thrall from this day until the end of days, to protect, honor and provide for her as long as you both shall live?”
Alana recognized the bastardization of the wedding vows she had grown up hearing at least once a year, usually in the summer, but it was Jackson’s answer she was listening for—his soft, uncertain “Yes.”
He cleared his throat and solemnly repeated his acquiescence, stronger the second time around. No one asked Alana. It would’ve been the same back home.
“Blessed be your union,” Gideon said, waving a lackadaisical hand. “Now strip her of her outsider’s garb and bring her into the fold.”
“Wait, what?” Alana stiffened. “Jackson—”
He turned to her, lips pressed into a taut line. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes, but—”
“Trust me in this,” Jackson said, and it was so soft that Alana almost mistook it for a plea.
She couldn’t move, let alone fight him as he reached for the knot of her wraparound dress and pulled it loose. He made quick work of the fastenings, parting the folds of her dress with a careful hand.
It wasn’t until he pushed it off her shoulders and lobbed it into the fire that Alana understood that he wouldn’t be backing down. He took his orders from Gideon just like she’d taken her orders from Krall, neither of them brave enough to buck the system.
“The rest too?” Alana breathed softly, shuddering when Jackson nodded. “You might’ve said…”
“Every man or woman in this room has stood where we stand,” he told her. “You’ve no reason to be ashamed.” And with that he crouched down to lower her underwear past her knees, waiting patiently until Alana dutifully raised each leg so he could tug them off.
It was hard not to feel mortified as she was put on display, though the mob likely couldn’t see much of her around Jackson’s broad shoulders. Small mercies.
Jackson rose, hooking both hands in the thin fabric of her camisole. “Are you ready?”
Would you stop if I said I wasn’t? What else could she do? She nodded weakly as her thin shift came off, leaving her bare and shivering before the gathered assembly—if only for an instant. The woman who had brought her in was suddenly there, pressing a thick woolen blanket onto her shoulders.
Jackson did the rest by cinching it at her waist with his belt. “I have to kiss you now,” he said almost apologetically.
“Have to?” Alana drawled, blushing scarlet. “That’s very romantic…”
The dancing flames were reflected in his green crinkling eyes for only the briefest moment before he pulled Alana into his arms. Their lips met in a kiss too sweet, too earnest to have its proper place in this kind of ceremony.
Alana found herself smothering a tepid smile as Jackson released her. There must’ve been some strange, bewitching power in his kiss to drain her of her dread and fill her limbs with ardor. “This had better be the part where you take me to bed,” she murmured against his lips, reluctant to break away so soon.
“Almost,” Jackson breathed and swept a rebellious lock of hair behind her ear. It was custom, he explained, for other thralls to welcome one of their own with gifts of cloth and other apparel.
Alana’s first thought was that she would be shunned, reviled for what she had done to Leona. Yet much to her surprise, men and women rose from their seats to bring her neatly folded shirts and hand-knitted vests—even a pair of shoes not unlike the ones Leona had lent her. There were other gifts too, mostly in the form of metal tweezers, copper ornaments and even a small vial of oil, given to her by a young woman with a pixie haircut and a crooked smile.
Somewhere along the line, as Alana’s arms grew heavy with their offerings, the proceedings lost all sense of fear.
Alana was embraced, congratulated, and welcomed into Haven like a triumphant warrior. It surprised her to discover how many of the people she had mistaken for masters were in fact thralls. There were no outward distinctions. Most didn’t wear wristlets like Finn and there were no collars or brands etched into skin to speak of.
The masters and mistresses who remained seated were neither better fed nor more delicate in appearance than their thralls. Everyone looked equally careworn. There were plenty of scars to go around.
The woman who’d led Alana like a lamb to the slaughter tittered when she heard her say as much to Jackson.
“Something funny?” he asked, twisting around with a dark scowl.
“Yeah,” the woman said, “you’ve got no idea what you’re doing with this one. If I hadn’t told Dad you weren’t ready I’d be amused, but—”
“Gideon is your father?” Alana breathed, taking the calculated risk of interjecting now to stop a potential row before Jackson’s temper could flare up again. She wasn’t worried for herself, but she did feel like the night was balanced on the edge of a knife. One wrong move and disaster could strike.
The woman flashed her a smile, thin lips peeling back to reveal the gap between her two front teeth. “That he is. They call me Siggy.”
Alana made note of that. “I’m—”
“I know who you are. This one hasn’t stopped talking about you since he got back. Do us all a favor and keep him in bed from now on, yeah? He’s already crap at cards and he’s worse when he’s wishing he were with you.”
It didn’t sound like scorn, though it was hard to tell with these drifter women, and it slowly dawned on Alana that Siggy might have been sincere.
“I’ll…do my best,” she said, not entirely certain if some sort of answer was expected.
Siggy dropped them off at Jackson’s door without ceremony, hips swaying as she disappeared down the hall. The whole thing must have taken an h
our, at the most, maybe an hour and a half, but when Alana sat down on the edge of the bed in her scratchy blanket, she felt like an entirely different person. She buried her head in her hands.
“Are you…?” Jackson hovered a good three feet away, but something about the hesitant cadences of his voice told Alana he might have liked to retreat even further if the walls had allowed it.
Lucky for her, there just wasn’t enough room.
She snagged a hand and her fingers caught in his pant leg. “Whatever you do,” Alana muttered, “please, don’t ask if I’m all right.” She didn’t want to lie.
Jackson sank into a crouch before the bed and clasped her hand in both of his. “Do you want me to stay with you?” he asked after a long moment, voice soft as though he was wary of her response.
It didn’t surprise Alana to find herself nodding almost before the question had registered. She looked up, resting her chin in her palm and said, “I want you to take your clothes off.”
“Why?” Jackson asked, canting his head.
“Because I did it for you.” She could play by his rules, did as he asked and accept to be considered his thrall—but she could only do it if she wasn’t alone.
She watched as Jackson weighed the request and stood, the long, handsome lines of his body stretching as he drew himself to full height. He was reaching for the buttons on his checkered shirt a mere moment later.
“Wait,” Alana heard herself say. To his credit, Jackson did, freezing with either wariness or anticipation—perhaps both, a cocktail with which Alana was plenty familiar. She swallowed hard. “Let me?”
“Are you going to burn the pants in the brazier?”
Despite herself, Alana smiled. “The smoke would make it unbearable. Besides, there’s no one watching now.”
The thought slithered in like a weed and put down roots just as quickly, no matter how barren the soil. She had never felt more exposed, more vulnerable, yet no one was looking in on what they did in the privacy of their private quarters. Alana could undress Jackson and run her hands over his bare hips and no one would stop her.