And today might be that day.
He never takes her out to dinner. Not because he’s cheap, but because he believes in the importance of a home-cooked meal.
Her foot begins to travel up his leg.
“You’re starting early tonight,” he teases her.
“I’m just letting you know what I want for dessert.”
Their main course arrives: two lobster dishes.
“Will you be spending the night?” Maydevine wonders as he digs in.
“Depends. Will we be celebrating?”
“Celebrating what?” He seems disinterested.
Veva’s curiosity gets the better of her. “Why are we here, Gabe? What is this?”
Confused, Maydevine looks up at her. “It’s dinner.”
“Oh, come on, Gabe. In all the years we’ve known each other, I can count the number of times you’ve taken me out for dinner on the fingers of one hand. Our first date, the first time you took me to bed, and both of our previous engagements.”
“Vee …”
“The girls are almost out of the house. That’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?”
Maydevine sets down his knife and fork. “I had no idea you still wanted this.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, frustrated, and guilty for unintentionally leading her on. “We have a good thing going, don’t we? Why wreck that?”
Veva doesn’t get a chance to respond.
Maydevine’s cell phone begins to vibrate.
He checks it.
“Shit.”
“Don’t you dare ditch me here, Gabe.”
“I have to.” He tosses his napkin onto his plate. “I’m sorry.”
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Silver just got off shift. She needs me at the DDH.”
“Christ, Gabe.” Veva pushes away her plate and leans back in her chair. “When is it ever going to stop?”
Maydevine slips on his jacket and gets up. As he leaves, he kisses Veva on the top of her head. “Have them put it on my tab.”
Veva is fuming. She’s too angry even to cry. Instead, she does something irrationally impulsive. She takes her cell phone out of her purse and makes a call.
Celia Rankin.
When the line connects, she keeps the call brief and to the point.
“I have something to tell you about Ella Cross and Alexander King.”
*************************
A Hunter Division Kevlar vest is draped over the edge of a dresser in the corner of the bedroom. The name embroidered on it:
Commander
Cross, Ella
Ella ‘Silver’ Cross.
Her weapons are lying on top of the dresser: her custom HK USP, and a custom engraved hunting knife. On the bedside table, there’s a modified handheld radio that’s been rigged to disrupt the GPS locators in Omega employee platinum tags.
Another Kevlar vest is crumpled on the floor beside the bed:
Hunter
King, Alexander
On the bed, two bodies are entwined.
Alex is wrapped up in Silver’s legs, his cock buried deep inside her.
“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he whispers, without breaking rhythm. “I couldn’t possibly love you any more than I do right now.”
Kissing her, he makes her gasp as he raises her hips and pushes himself deeper.
That’s all she can take.
She digs her nails into his back and moans as tiny shivers begin to pulse throughout her body, and he can feel everything. As her body tightens around him, he erupts inside her.
But he doesn’t have much time to enjoy it.
BOOM!
Neither Alex nor Silver has time to react to the explosion before five Police Division Agents—in full combat gear, including helmets—storm into the bedroom with their weapons drawn.
Alex dives for his clothes.
Silver dives for a weapon.
Both are halted in their tracks.
One of the Agents holds Alex at gunpoint on one side of the bed, while another presses the barrel of his gun up against Silver’s head by the dresser.
“Ella Cross,” he growls.
She looks up at him, her expression fierce.
She knows what this means.
She’s violated Hunter Division law by sleeping with one of the Hunters under her command, and the punishment is automatic: discharge.
“What’re you going to do? Arrest me?”
“Not yet.” He hands her a slip of paper.
Her discharge papers.
“Commander Ella Cross, you are hereby stripped of all Hunter Division rights and privileges. Your discharge is effective immediately.”
“Just like that?”
“The Governor signed your papers half an hour ago.”
“So we’re done here?”
“Put on some clothes. I need to take you with me.”
She looks over at Alex for reassurance, but he can offer her none. She looks back at the Agent, his name embroidered on his vest.
Carter, Sterling.
Silver pays little attention to it.
“What for?” she asks him as she dresses. “You’re going to drag me through the streets and publicly humiliate me?”
She reaches for her Kevlar vest, but Carter prevents her from taking it.
“This doesn’t belong to you. Not anymore.”
She bites back her emotions. “Fine. Where are you taking me? Human Resources?”
“Not yet.” He shoulders his weapon and pulls out a pair of handcuffs. “Ella Cross, you are hereby advised that your rights to citizenship have been suspended, pending a hearing with the Banishment and Enforcement Council.”
“What?” She almost laughs. “What the hell for? Don’t waste my time. Bedding a Hunter isn’t banishable, or enforceable.”
“No, but treason is.”
The room falls silent.
“Excuse me?” Barely a whisper.
Carter hands her his Police Division PDA and lets her flick through the details of the arrest warrant.
An hour ago, someone fired an RPG at the Governor. Apparently, it was the same RPG she lost almost twelve years ago, and her fingerprints were found all over it.
Worse still, evidence has surfaced linking her to the People’s Front terrorist group: various correspondences and a few photographs, spanning almost a decade.
She’s fucked.
Less than twelve hours later, she’s convicted.
Her sentence: banishment.
Since she and Alex were using a GPS scrambling device at the time of the incident, her whereabouts couldn’t be proven. On one hand, that meant they couldn’t prove she was present when the RPG was fired, and that saved her from enforcement. On the other hand, it also meant that her alibi was thrown out.
Alex’s testimony was trashed.
He was unlawfully fucking her.
Ergo, he can’t be trusted.
Trying to force a confession out of her—trying everything possible to get the banishment sentence upgraded to enforcement—the Banishment and Enforcement Council elects to hold her in a cell in the detainment corridor for a full thirty days.
That’s twenty-seven days longer than usual, and during that time, they withhold visitors. They withhold phone calls. They withhold everything except the basic rations needed to keep her alive.
Finally, on the last day, just hours before she’s due to be taken to the Fringe District, Alex convinces them to show some compassion: a five minute goodbye.
She lifts her head as he approaches her cell. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I had to see you.”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.”
He’s wearing civilian clothes. Silver glances at a packet of cigarettes in the chest pocket of his jacket and suddenly craves them. She steps up to the bars and reaches through to take them from him.
He lets her.
She ligh
ts one and hands the packet back to him.
“Where are your emblems?”
“I was discharged after I testified in your defense.”
“My defense?” Silver snorts. “You called our relationship a mistake. You hung your head in shame and kissed the toes of the Council. You betrayed the last twelve years of our lives together.”
“I was trying to mitigate the damages. I didn’t betray us, Lockie McKean did.”
Silence.
Silver wasn’t expecting that.
“How?”
“He told the Police Division about us.”
Silver’s chest feels tight.
McKean.
The same loathsome man who tossed a grenade at her, set her up to lose a fight with a Chimera, and then shot her—all when she was sixteen years old.
The same old bullshit.
The same old grudge.
Silver leans her forehead against the bars. “How the fuck did he know?”
“Someone must’ve broken our confidence.” Alex steps as close to her as he can get. “This is all my fault. If we hadn’t used the scrambler—”
“Yes, it is your fault.” Silver moves away from him. “But not because of the scrambler.”
“Silver …”
“You should’ve quit the Division weeks ago, when I was first promoted.”
Alex looks as if he’s about to respond to that, but either changes his mind, or fails to find the right words. Instead, he performs a nervous hair ruffle.
He’s out of time.
Two Omega Security Services Officers arrive to take Silver away. She pinches the cigarette between her lips and holds her wrists out through the bars to be handcuffed.
“I always thought impetuousness was my fallibility.” She steps back and waits for the Officers to open up the cell. “But it’s not.” She crushes the cigarette beneath her boot and looks up at Alex. “You are.”
They share one final moment of eye contact.
“Alexander James King, you are my greatest weakness.”
Powerless to stop it, she lets the OSS Officers lead her away. On the way out of the detainment corridor, she passes Maydevine. He tries to engage her, but she won’t meet his eyes. As she’s dragged through the lobby of the DDH, she crosses paths with Veva.
Veva reaches out for her, trying to get her attention.
“I’m so sorry, Ella.”
Silver frowns, but doesn’t have time to analyze it. Seconds later, she’s being thrown into the back of a Police Division van.
As Veva wipes tears away from her eyes, Celia pounces on her.
“I owe you my thanks.” She thrusts a copy of today’s paper at Veva’s chest. “You made all of this possible.”
Silver’s banishment is the headline story.
Celia is now the Editor in Chief.
Veva shakes her head in disbelief. “All those years ago … the fingerprints. I thought that was over with.” She begins to weep. “I thought exposing her affair with Alex would get her discharged … not this. I didn’t want this.”
“Neither did I.” Celia sighs. “I wanted her dead.”
With that, she leaves.
She exits the DDH just as the Police Division van gears up and drives away. In the back of it, Silver, a traitor to her city, is shackled to the seat. It’s humiliating. Worse still, she’s being guarded by an old friend.
Luka Kinsella.
He doesn’t say a word to her.
The van stops at breaking point on the One Way, where Silver is unceremoniously stripped. With no anesthetic, her platinum tag is removed with a scalpel and tweezers and replaced with a black tag—a prison tag.
Condemned, she’s left alone on the Fringe District side of the bridge, her wrist still gushing blood.
And so begins the steep and savage path toward redemption.
OUT NOW
About The Author
Keira Michelle Telford is an award-winning author with a love for the gruesome, the macabre, and the downright filthy. She writes dystopian science fiction, erotic lesbian romance, and other lesbian fiction.
Website: www.keiramichelle.com
Twitter: @mylostanddamned
Facebook Page for KM Telford
Goodreads Author Page
Amazon Author Page
Works by this author:
The SILVER Series
The Amaranthe Chronicles
The Outlier Trilogy
www.ellacross.com
www.facebook.com/thesilverseries
The Prisonworld Trilogy
www.carmenwild.com
Standalone titles:
Cadence of My Heart – an erotic lesbian romance
The Housemistress – an erotic lesbian romance
Hoar & Rime (A Short Story) – lesbian fiction
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ZERO
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER Ø
Inamorato Page 37