The Price We Pay (Life After War Book 7)

by Angela White

  Angela shivered as she recalled that moment. “When I made the call, and he knew I had accepted that Marc would probably die while fighting the first troops the government sent out. He connected us and showed me everything.”

  “You’ve known he was a traitor since before Brady came back?” Jax demanded. “How could you do that?!”

  “How could I not?” Angela responded calmly. “I saw everything that’s happened. The first battle, this one, and then us leaving for the island Kendle came from. I saw us putting down roots, growing. We were happy and healthy, relearning peace, and then they came for us again.”

  Angela’s voice broke a bit. “Not even the descendants survived. They came in from four sides of the island and squeezed us into the middle, just like I did to them here. You’ve seen how effective that is,” Angela reminded everyone. “I saw us winning this war and dying two years later. I had to stop it.”

  Angela waved and Shawn quickly brought Adrian out with a hand on the cuffed man’s arm.

  The crowd muttered and stared in confused anger as he took the seat by Angela without meeting any of the eyes trying to catch his attention.

  “Adrian didn’t give us his full story yet,” Angela explained. “I had to keep Donner on his toes, so there wasn’t time then. We’ll do it now.”

  Every face focused on Adrian, many praying he could explain what he’d done, that he had a reason they could accept. After all he’d done for them in the beginning and all he’d taught them to do for themselves, few of them actually seemed to want him dead as much as they wanted him to be able to justify his actions. That was what Angela had been hoping for and she gestured to him.

  Adrian sighed and grabbed the pack of smokes on the table between them. “I wasn’t supposed to be here to face this. That’s the first thing you need to know. I told her to let me die when we brought Conner out of Little Rock.”

  Adrian lit the cigarette and then reoffended everyone by taking a long swig from Angela’s bottle of water.

  “My mother was in the same position that Angela was while she faced Donner. My father was the enemy and my mother wasn’t powerful enough to stop him from placing me in the labs. All children from descendant relationships are studied to determine their gifts and by those, their place in our society. I was chosen to hunt other descendants because I can call them together.”

  Adrian’s tones were too full of pain and anger to deny, and it was hard for him to keep going. This exposure and answering for every choice was his biggest fear.

  “You’ve done this for all of us,” Angela stated, trying not to be gentle, though the urge was strong. “Every person here has been brought down as low as a soul can go, and then clawed their way back up to being human, free of the chains that held them. You’re the only one left.”

  Adrian loved her even more for recognizing that, but he also hated her for it, just like everyone else who had briefly turned against the people who were trying to help them. It was always easier to hate the messenger than to face the message.

  “I spent my childhood learning how to lead a hunting team and being trained for battles against our kind.” He glanced at Marc. “Mental battles, where I challenged alphas, took their packs, and then handed them over. I did that for twenty years, waiting for the time my mother had promised me would come. At times, I forgot about her words, her goodness. I sank into the evil half and wallowed in it. And I was good. My name became known and the higher-ups started sending me in to clear specific groups that they thought might go rogue.”

  Adrian crushed out his cigarette. “I destroyed rebellions that might have challenged the government and forced the truth to light.”

  “Why?” Angela asked quickly, before the crowd could erupt in shouting.

  “Because when the truth came out, the world was supposed to be destroyed. Those in charge were willing to annihilate the United Stated and go below ground. It was already planned!”

  “Is that the only reason?” Angela prompted. She of course, knew better.

  “No. I didn’t want things to change,” Adrian confessed harshly. “And it wasn’t because I liked my job—I loathed it! I knew from my mother’s stories that I had a hard destiny ahead of me and I didn’t want it.” Adrian shoved out the rest like a bad bowel movement. “I didn’t want to lead! I never have!”

  The crowd gasped. That hurt more than his betrayals. It was the one thing they had been sure of—that he wanted the job they’d gifted him with.

  “When the war came and brought society down, I was on my way to my father’s side to try and stop it from happening. I went to see who he wanted killed next.”

  “That’s where I saw you,” Samantha stated from her place by the door. “I put it together before Angela did, that you had once been on the government payroll. I didn’t tell anyone because I was hiding the same secret.”

  “Except you hadn’t been hunting our kind,” Adrian pointed out to be sure she didn’t suffer any of the blame.

  “No,” Sam told them. “But I’ve been thinking about it and almost any of the sudden storms I told them about could have been one of our kind. I didn’t know anything about descendants then.”

  “They made sure of that with the special people,” Adrian responded. “Those who can control physical gifts are rare among descendants and they can draw people together. The government likes to keep them in the dark from childhood.”

  “Tell us about the future your mother saw,” Angela instructed, getting them back on track.

  “She knew the world would end. It was her nightmare. She was committed several times because of the warnings she tried to give.”

  “What was your role in that future?” Angela led. These were things Adrian had never discussed with a single soul, and here he was, baring it to hundreds of condemning survivors. It wasn’t easy and she needed him to get it all out.

  “When my mother realized she would have to send me to the labs, that my father wouldn’t exempt me from the experimenting, she tried to run away. We spent time on an island and she called on the Maker to show her what to do. The vision she received told her to make me a double agent.”

  Adrian continued over the immediate protests of a lame scheme to save his skin.

  “She said if the world didn’t end, I would have committed so many sins that I would never be forgiven. She also said it was only one life and the changes we would make would be worth my sacrifice.”

  Angela identified so much with Adrian’s mother. She’d known her son would be turned evil anyway, and had found a way to give the world hope because of it.

  “She said if the war did happen, that the government would send me out to gather descendants that might be trouble. She said I would be surrounded by power that was incredibly loyal to me for helping them and their weaker members survive the holocaust. She was right.”

  No one shouted now, but they were furious that he knew of their love and had been betraying them the entire time.

  “She said when I gathered enough of you into one group, the government would start to notice and that I should make the choice as soon as they threatened my life. She knew I would need all of you to keep me alive then. The government only deals with rogue descendants in one way.”

  “She knew you would find enough of us to fight them?” Jennifer asked from her place by Samantha. All of Angela’s team was at this table, waiting for it to be over so they could have that private meeting Angela had promised them when they’d agreed to her crazy plan.

  “Yes. She said if the power was too weak, we couldn’t win and to just hand you over and keep looking for a stronger group. I was set to do that all the way through the beginning. Even as far back as Wyoming, when we started to draw the attention of the Mexicans.”

  “Was that intentional?” Marc called from the rear of the crowd. It was as close as he wanted to be to Adrian for these details.

  “Yes,” Adrian admitted and he had to raise his voice to be heard over the anger.

  “Th
e government wanted the guerillas stopped and I had a small army of Eagles that could do it without them having to send troops out. By then, I knew we had Angela’s gift being hidden here and I wasn’t concerned with losing. It also gave me more time to stall.” He looked at Angela. “She had me by then. I’d chosen to try the insane scheme I was been given by my mother and Angela was the reason why.”

  “You love me.”

  “More than I’ll ever be able to say.”

  “And you would have given everything up if I’d been willing?”

  “Yes. We would have disappeared and left Safe Haven to die.”

  “And because I wouldn’t, you fell into your mother’s plan and started making things happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell us her plan now,” Angela ordered, hating Marc’s wave of self-doubt. He hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t missed anything. Adrian’s mind was a steel trap forged through decades of fighting descendants. There was no way any of them could have gotten through enough of his doors to find the truth, unless he wanted them to.

  “She said there were two ways to make sure the government couldn’t restart the world and hold it hostage again. The first one was to send a descendant into the bunker to take over. Descendants would lead the country and eventually the world. The other was to battle the government until there were too few of them to ever recover. That choice allowed the freedom our country was built on and it had higher odds of success. The bunkers used to be heavily fortified with our kind.

  “There was also a chance that during the battles, someone could get to the bunker and end the new war with fewer casualties.”

  Angela got a fresh cigarette from the remaining three as Adrian paused. It was almost her turn again.

  “The plan was to make everyone here so dangerous that the government would come in force. If they only sent out a few hundred men each time, we would have been emerged in small battles for the next decade, which would have given them time to reclaim the topside. We had to force a huge battle that would even the numbers. The next fight would be where both sides sent in everything they had left and that’s exactly what happened.”

  “The bunker has been destroyed,” Angela told everyone. “The man running it blew his brains out, with my help.”

  “They have no men left to send after us now,” Adrian said. “Because Angela had the guts to finish my mother’s plan, we’re all free.”

  “Is that it?” Zack demanded. “That’s his excuse?”

  “His confession,” Angela stated. “The only choice we have to make is on his punishment. There’s no question of his guilt. Or mine, for that matter,” she added.

  The crowd wasn’t against her now and the shouts of not guilty for her were numerous. The shouts for Adrian’s death were loud.

  “In a few minutes, we’ll vote on it. First, we have to decide on leadership. Before we do that, I’ll take questions if anyone has any.”

  This was the hardest part for Adrian. He’d known that if he was here for this moment, it might color the crowd into condemning her as well.

  “Why did you agree to do things his way?” Seth asked from near Marc. He was still unhappy with the things she’d ordered her females to do.

  “Because it was the only thing that would work,” she answered honestly. “Men respect strength, power, and little else. I showed them who was stronger.

  “But we lost so many—”

  “More than we would have if I had lined two armies up and let them battle it out to the death?” she asked sharply. “We lost roughly forty irreplaceable Eagles and camp members. Friends and lovers.”

  Angela sighed, allowing her pain to bleed all over everyone in the room. “It would have been triple any other way and we wouldn’t have gotten this new breeding stock to join us.

  “Did you see that nearly a quarter of the soldiers have already hooked up with a Safe Haven woman or one from the Indian camps? We’re about to repopulate our country with patriots and that’s the only distinction that’ll label them. We’ve started to conquer the race problem.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Angela hated to say it so bluntly, but she was too tired to be tactful. “Adrian’s mother understood that if there were no separate races, there wouldn’t be a race problem. It was mistake to divide us this way. Intentional or not, that era in human history is nearing an end. We won’t see it in our lifetime, but we’ll know it’s going to happen.”

  “What about the—”

  “They won’t matter in the end,” Angela interrupted, growing weary of obvious questions. “When the mixed outnumber the pure, the pure will fall silent and then out of sight and then out of existence.”

  “Is that a good thing?” Neil asked quietly. “To interfere with the natural design?”

  “Don’t you understand yet?” she queried in concern. “That’s our job as we begin the new world. We’re fixing the mistakes and to do that, we have to go the roots of each problem. Why do people hate each other so much and why are they so prone to killing each other? Because we’re so different. Take away some of the differences, you take away part of the atrocities.

  “And that will—”

  “No. Even if we’d all been one people from the beginning, it wouldn’t have solved the issues,” Angela answered. “We have a lot of work to do to make this happen.”

  She looked around the room. “Unless you vote me out of here, because I have to tell you, I’m tired already, and we either do it my way, the way that will give us a future of peace, or I need to be banished. I can’t walk that line anymore.”

  “How about greed and theft, and other violent crimes?” someone called out in the uneasy pause. “Do you have plans for those as well?”

  Angela met Adrian’s eye, ignoring the waves of anger coming from Marc. “Yes, we do. And I won’t promise they’ll work, but my record is good so far. If that changes, I’ll resign and someone else can take over our great plan.”

  “Are you saying Safe Haven’s goal should be world peace?”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Why not?” Angela shot back. “Every other group we’ve met only wants to survive. They aren’t working on fixing a damn thing, and while we’re waiting for a new government to draft new laws, the old ways are settling right back into us. You know what I mean. The pettiness, the politics, the violence. We have to stop it.”

  “Why us?”

  “Because there is no one else for the next fifty to a hundred years who could do what we have already begun,” she coaxed. “Wouldn’t you like your name next to: helped give a peaceful future to the world?”

  After the bloodshed they’d all just been a part of, Angela’s vision was hard to resist.

  “Any other questions for me before we vote on leadership?”

  Most of those gathered understood she wanted the vote on herself first so she could save Adrian if she kept leadership.

  “What about your threat to send smallpox across the country?” the doctor asked. It was one of the things that had bothered him the most.

  Angela pointed at the crate under her table that had been with the camp whole time, under Tommy’s watchful eye. “I would never do that to our country. I knew the bunker was going to make contact. If Jeff had hit the button, the rest of the charges would have gone off, trapping the remaining soldiers next to us, where we could wipe them out with our gifts. It was a bluff.”

  It was a relief to hear it and Angela asked again, “More questions?”

  Marc slowly moved to the center of the crowd. “I have one.”

  Angela stiffened. This was the moment when Marc could wreck her final scene, and though she knew he’d made peace with the witch, Angela didn’t know what choice he’d made.

  “What will happen if we hang that traitor?”

  “I’ll die,” she answered simply. “And so will you. So will Charlie. There are things coming that we still need him for.”

  “You’d save him anyway,” Marc pointed
out angrily.

  “Yes, I would.”

  “And you’d lie to save him.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Then why should we believe you that he’s still needed? How can we be sure you’re not just making it all up to save him?”

  “I don’t need to do that!” Angela shouted, surprising them all. She shoved back to her feet, letting her anger be felt. “If I want him alive, there’s not a person here who can take him from me!”

  Angela moved toward the crowd and they flinched back in fear, some of them getting up to run.

  “I’ll honor all the votes.” Angela spun around and went back to the table and then by it. She headed for the rear door, calling, “If he dies, I’ll still keep fighting for Safe Haven until the same happens to me. Hold your vote.”

  Angela stormed from the hall and ran into a small crowd of Eagles who quickly surrounded her with their bodies as she headed for her room.

  The crowd’s panic left with her and Marc was able to get the ballots passed out, aware of the hateful glowers nearly all of them were giving the man who’d been left to face their anger.

  Marc resignedly motioned a few Eagles that way and continued working the crowd. Like it or not, he had to accept that she wasn’t lying. If she wanted Adrian, all she had to do was let her witch out.

  “Pass those up and we’ll start counting,” Marc ordered, roaming the mob that was whispering and muttering as they made their choices. He had little doubt they would chose to keep Angela in charge. It was the vote over Adrian that he couldn’t get an estimate on. Most people he moved by still wanted death by hanging, but Angela’s warning about more danger coming was hard to ignore. She’d never been wrong.

  2

  Angela was only in her room for a couple of minutes before her team began arriving. The women were somber and Angela understood they weren’t going to wait until after the vote. They wanted to know now.

  “Be patient,” Angela stated, glancing toward the door.

  An instant later, Peggy and Hilda joined them, followed by Dari, the leader of the new descendants.