“Tell you what. I think we’re all ready to make some plans. I have some ideas on this subject.” My father would have left it there. But I wasn’t him. I never would be. “I’d like to get some input from all of you. I mean, I know we have a problem that not one of us can build a house.” All of those Wolves with those skills were dead and we didn’t have a cloning machine available to us to bring them back. I also couldn’t quite reconcile doing so. Sometimes people had to stay dead. I supposed that was easy for me to say considering I was still walking around. Okay, enough of this. I had to sleep.
I finished. “I’m going to take a nap. Consider things. And then we’ll go from there. If anyone has any thoughts they want to share with me at that time I am amenable to listening to them.”
With a nod to the group, all of them staring at me like I was the second coming of something, I walked to my old, ratty tent. My father had supplied us with army-grade sturdy habitats to live in, but I had no idea what had happened to them in the time I’d been gone.
I really didn’t know what had happened to my father. My impression was he’d died in a fight that involved Rachel, Deacon, and some others. I supposed I should be angry and seeking revenge for my father, but he’d long since antagonized Genesis. It was hard to be surprised he’d gotten himself killed when I wasn’t around to keep him from getting in their faces. My sisters? That was another type of problem. Autumn and Luna should still be here.
Hell. I lay down on the ground and covered my eyes with my arm. I was lonely. That was all there was to it.
Sleep came fast as it always did for me when I was exhausted, even on the ground in the worst tent imaginable. If it started raining again I was going to get soaked. I didn’t even care.
The scent of distress woke me a second before the shout of human filled the air from my pack mate Josiah. Well, that couldn’t be good. I leapt to my feet, orienting myself and trying to wake up at the same time. Sleep still hung around me. I couldn’t have been out very long. I charged out of my tent, almost tangling myself up in the enclosure in the process, but I managed to right myself before I fell on my face. Graceful Werewolf I was not.
Her scent hit me the second I was outside and would have come faster if I hadn’t been so out of it. Margot. What was she doing here? And alone again?
“Stop.” I called out to my pack.
They’d surrounded her, and to her credit, she wasn’t whimpering, crying, or acting at all frightened. I smelled the bitter taste of annoyance and that was it.
She was both right and wrong to not be afraid. They weren’t dominant Werewolves but even a submissive Wolf could be dangerous to a human. They’d all learned the hard way to be afraid of any non-Werewolves around. They could hurt her and then they’d come over to me, shift, give me their belly, and hope I didn’t kill them for doing so.
Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
But at least I’d caught it in time. Everyone stopped moving and Margot’s dark eyes lit up as she saw me. “Jason.”
“You know our Alpha?” Josiah snarled. He was really finding some balls lately. Maybe I should be pushing at that, helping him along in his development. If I had any idea how to do that.
“I’ve been trying to tell you that I do. Josiah Robert Klein. See? I know you, too. I used to watch all of you from my vantage point in Icahn’s inner circle back before I found my spine and got out of there. I’m also the clone of a crazy person. You probably want to back off. Weren’t you some kind English teacher in the last life? Go spit out Shakespeare.”
I held out my hand. Margot had certainly found a backbone and then some. Maybe I should talk to her about being cautious when there were wild animals nearby. She put her hands on her hips and my lips twitched. I wanted to smile, and I had to hold off the instinct. She was hysterical.
“Let her go. I know her. She’s not a threat to you, any of you.” I walked forward, pushing through the crowd. My stomach grumbled. It had to be lunchtime or maybe just past. Yep, I’d not slept long enough. Nothing to do about that now. Margot was going to come with me to find some food. That would put some space between us and the pack who wasn’t at all happy I knew this human.
I took her hand in mine. Putting my scent on her would go a long way to chill out the rising tempers, and sure enough, the others finally disassembled. I pulled her along with me, but she caught up quickly, and walked by my side. It was a nice sensation and not one I’d noted in the woods the night before although I should have. That was the first time I hadn’t been in the front of a group since I woke up on that table.
She didn’t know she was supposed to walk behind me. Yet, I missed this feeling. That must be why I wasn’t dropping her hand. Not that it was small and I sort of liked how mine dwarfed hers when we linked our fingers.
If it bothered her she could let go. Margot made no move to do so.
We got to the small bank of the river. This was one of the few places I could touch the Hudson itself without looking down on it from a cliff above. It was also a great place to fish and I’d taken to doing so. Sometimes I got sick of game hunting. Well, not the hunting part. I liked that in my Wolf form. But the eating the same thing over and over? Blegh.
I’d set up lines and sometimes there were fish on them when I checked. With all the rain, they’d probably dislodged, but it was worth it to check. Margot made no moves to leave or ask me any questions. I dropped her hand to fiddle with the one line still intact and was pleasantly surprised to see that not only one, but two fish had hooked themselves on it. I grinned at her.
“Looks like today I’m a fisherman.” I shrugged. I was going to have to build a fire, something else I knew how to do now that I’d never imagined doing in my old life, to cook it. “Do you want some?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Thanks.”
I liked talking to her like this. She spoke again. “You’re welcome. What is that line? You give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day. You teach him to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime.”
I nodded. “You know your Chinese proverbs. Impressive, considering you can’t have had the same schooling I did. Surprised they would bother to teach you that.”
“Actually who said that line is widely contested.” Her eyes seemed to sparkle. “It may or may not have been a Chinese Proverb, and I like to learn. No one taught me that. I read all the time. Everything I can get my hands on.”
She was helpful building a fire, too. Although finding kindling that wasn’t soaked proved a challenge, we did end up making a very smoky fire, together. It was after the fish was cooking that I finally had to ask her what I’d been waiting for her to volunteer. “What brings you here, and how did you know where to find me?”
Margot nodded. “Sorry. I should have led with that. I liked the quiet of today. This simple thing we just did together. I never get to just do this. Not once in my life.”
Guilt settled in my stomach. I could have waited a little bit longer before I asked. “I…”
She waved her hand. “Sorry again. Not your problem. Okay. I found you because I’m me and I know all sorts of things I shouldn’t know like the migratory habits your father had and where you used to hang out when you were in this area. I decided to give it a check. Familiarity can breed routine.”
I could listen to her talk all day. “Smart.”
“And I’m here because none of the rest of them would come and we really need your help. The council seems to feel you might be more responsive to me since you don’t already hate me and we have no negative feelings about each other.” She scrunched up her face. “Actually, they’re fifty-fifty whether or not you’ll take me prisoner.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “They need help but they think I might abduct you? All right. How can this Werewolf help you, oh captive one?”
Her smile was slow. “You’re funnier than I would have imagined.”
“You’re braver than you should be and foolish when it
comes to dealing with Wolves.”
Margot cleared her throat. “You’re right. I am. I… I have no sense of self-preservation. You killed that daywalking Vampire. We can’t. Anyone who has tried has died. Please come and help us get one so we can study it. I have a bad feeling. I think there are more, and I think they are coming.”
Well, that was very bad news.
Three
I planned to say no. Genesis and I didn’t mix. Not even in small doses. I’d probably run into Rachel. She’d wake my mating instinct right back up and then I could be crazy, miserable, or a mixture of the two at the same time and that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
She held up her hand. “Look, I’ve only known you less than twenty-four hours. In that time, you rescued me. You were bitten by a daywalking Vampire for me. You walked me home. Battled more Vampires and had to face off with two Lyons brothers and Deacon Evans. Now you’ve had to deal with me and your pack. I get that I may be a huge pain, but I am asking because I’m asking. People are dying. More will be destroyed. I’m sure of it and for the first time in my adult life, I have no idea what is happening or how I can fix this if I can’t even study these things from a distance.”
That was her truth for sure but it wasn’t the whole truth, not really. “And if you do this maybe they’ll stop thinking of you as the possibly crazy Doubleday clone and you might gain some semblance of a normal life.”
She visibly swallowed. “Probably some of that, too.”
Well, if anyone knew how it was to never quite fit in, it was me. As adults we should probably both be past this, but wanting to find and make a home where we fit in seemed pretty basic. Most people wanted some semblance of normalcy where they lived. Or at least they used to.
But I’d been screwed over by these people enough to know better. Some things improved with age, and I wasn’t a teenager anymore. I was an Alpha with a pack to run.
“I might be persuaded to help you for a little quid pro quo.”
Margot blinked. “I’d be suspicious if there wasn’t a deal to be made.”
So she lived in a world that wasn’t the uptight righteousness of the Lyons. That was a relief. Doing things just because they were morally upstanding tended to get people needlessly killed. I sighed. Or maybe that was my father in my head. Who knew anymore?
“I want to bring my pack to Genesis. I’ll vouch for them not hurting anyone, and I want the engineers there to teach my people how to build houses. That’s what I want.”
Margot blinked. “That’s all you want?”
“It’s not a small thing. I’m Alpha and I don’t have that knowledge base and neither do any of my pack members who are left. It’s really been a problem. I need to make a life for us. I don’t know how to do it. I need help. I’ll capture a Daywalker. Or take them down for you. Whatever you want. If you’ll let us stay long enough to learn.”
She nodded. “I’ll take that back. I have no power. I’m a doctor and they barely use me as that anymore.”
I got that. “Maybe this will help with that? I mean, I don’t know how you prove a negative, exactly. How to prove Margot isn’t going to turn on everyone and become an enemy? You can’t, right?”
She shrugged, and her hair slid over her shoulders. The movement fascinated me. Weak sunlight penetrated the clouds, and it hit her brown locks, highlighting a red tint to them I hadn’t seen before. Margot was pretty. I really hadn’t let myself focus on it, and I supposed it didn’t matter one way or another but there it was.
There was something… lovely about seeing real beauty in this mess. It had been a long time since anything didn’t suck.
We cooked our fish and then set about eating it. Her eyes widened. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything I like more.”
Then I felt really bad for her taste buds. Still, it made me sit up a little more. “If they aren’t nice to you in Genesis, why don’t you leave?”
“Where would I go? As far as I can tell the world is made up of about twelve communities like Genesis with sporadic towns of small groupings of humans in other places. Nowhere is perfect. Believe it or not, Genesis is pretty good compared to the demagoguery going on. I mean, I’m not sure in these circumstances that anywhere is going to be ideal and if it were, why would they want me? I’m a clone of a crazy woman who once worked for Icahn. Talk about coming with baggage.”
I shook my head. “You’re Margot. You had circumstances thrusted on you and it seems like you did the best you could. I mean, I don’t know your story. But you couldn’t have gotten from there to here without making some good choices along the way.”
“All that time we watched the Rachel and Jason saga I never knew you were kind.”
My skin crawled at the thought. “How many people were watching?”
“Quite a few. When Icahn made that deal with you to save Rachel’s family—that all happened before I was born or created or whatever.” She waved her hand in the air. “But that was a huge deal. Bigger still when he lived up to the terms.”
I’d hardly let myself think about that time for months and now it was everywhere I went banging around in my head. I’d done a lot of things and all of it had been for my best interest when it came down to it.
I wanted Rachel. I didn’t want to lose her so I hadn’t. End of story. Of course I’d had no idea what was going to happen after that. I hadn’t asked myself if she would want to exist like this. I just thought she was my mate and that was that. Maybe I was as much mate material as I was Alpha material. All signs were pointing to my really being cut out for nothing. Except maybe being the villain who got to sacrifice himself in the end. I tried not to sigh but might have failed. I hadn’t gotten to stay that way. It begged the question… now what?
I guessed it didn’t matter anymore.
“I get the feeling this is not your favorite meal.” She lifted her lids.
“Taste, not company.” I realized as I said it that it was true. “This is the best time I’ve had eating with anyone that I can remember since I woke up from the Werewolf virus that stopped us from aging and made us… evil.”
She reached out to touch my hand. “Not evil. Try sick. And it’s pretty much eradicated. If you were to get sick again—and I doubt you would since it was your father infecting the pack and you have antibodies for it now—we could help you. Well, I could. I have those skills.”
Now that was good to know. I could cross that out. I wasn’t going to turn monstrous or any more so than I already was.
“What would you eat again if you could from before? Keeping in mind, I never lived there and despite your proclamation of me knowing a lot of stuff, I don’t know everything. I might not know what you liked to eat.”
That was a great question. I had to pause to think about it but the answer proved to be simple. “Look, I know people love all kinds of food. But for me, without a doubt, the answer to that is pizza. And more specifically pepperoni pizza that also had mushrooms. A soda, which was bad for me but I loved it, washed it down.” My stomach rumbled at the memory. “Yeah, that would be incredible.”
She really seemed to be listening to every word I said. “I’ve never had pizza.”
No exaggeration—that was a tragedy. “That seems ridiculous. You guys have working kitchens. A whole mess hall. Genesis below ground was one of the best-stocked places I’ve seen since waking up in this version of reality. There are tomatoes. Surely they can make sauce. Come up with some kind of cheese. Why can’t they make pizza? They have bread.”
She shook her head. “I have to say that the cooking in Genesis leaves something to be desired.”
That stirred a memory I’d long suppressed or maybe outright forgotten. I’d been a great cook. The best in my house. My mother had once said she was going to turn dinner duties over to me and then my father said no son of his was going to be in the kitchen. Wow, I’d forgotten how belligerent and awful he could be on occasion. He’d thrown pots. My mother had ducked.
I’d wanted to cry, b
ut my sisters needed me to be strong. That was the last time I’d offered to help my mother in the kitchen, ever.
“That’s a shame.” I rose. A full stomach was a luxury, and I wasn’t going to waste the energy boost it gave me. “Let’s walk you back.”
“Oh,” she got to her feet, “no need. I got myself here. I can get myself home.”
I shook my head. Was she out of her mind? “I’m glad you managed not to get killed but that doesn’t mean you won’t have an escort home. Why are they letting you just wander around out here anyway?”
“They don’t just let me do anything. There are two ways I’m treated in Genesis. I’m either locked away in a jail for some supposed crime or I’m pretty much left to my own devices. Chad suggested I reach out to you so I left to do so.”
Now that didn’t sound like Chad. Some of the others might be fine with a non-Warrior traipsing about woods that now had daywalking Vampires, but I was not. Chad surprised me. He’d always been mister upstanding. I’d hated him with a passion that had cooled when he died. I didn’t have as much fury toward him now just a sense that he was the opposite of me in every important way.
And maybe that was true still. Maybe I was missing the way it was important ethically or some shit to let Margot prove herself by gallivanting into danger unescorted. Well, whatever. They could all kiss my ass.
She didn’t argue with me and instead took my hand like we had before when I’d wanted to make a point. I stared down at them linked. We didn’t have to create a scent bond again and yet I made no moves to let go of her fingers.
“It’s been a long time since I had a friend.” I didn’t know exactly why I told her that.
“I’ve never had one.” She shrugged and then looked away but didn’t let go. “So you can be my very first friend.”
As a warmth I hadn’t expected and hadn’t felt in years moved through me I realized she would never understand what a gift like that meant to a person like me.
“I’ll endeavor to be worthy of it.”
Jason: A Dystopian Paranormal Urban Fantasy Romance (Warrior World Book 3) Page 3