Renegades: Badlands Next Generation

by Natalie Bennett

  I was looking the second I got out of the car. I could see for miles ahead of us. Sand strewn rock, pinkish, ribbon-like fissures. Pure white plains in the radiating sunlight. There were empty roads with trees and saplings lining the sides. Chunks of green and small ponds.

  “This is the Badlands,” he mused. “One side of it, anyway.”

  I countered, leaning back into his embrace. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It can be. It can be vicious and cruel too, but it’s ours.”

  “I like that.”

  He slid a hand down to my hip, tracing the outline of where my tattoo had been placed. “You know what this means?”

  “I do.”

  “It’s not me collaring you. I don’t need a mark to tell me you’re mine.”

  “I know that, and I know what it means. I’ve fully accepted my role, you know that.”

  “I wasn’t going to give you any other choice.”

  He wasn’t joking.

  “This wasn’t my surprise, by the way.”

  I looked back at him. “Then what is it?”

  “I’ll show you later. I want to stay like this a little longer. This is as calm a place to tell you I love you as I’ll ever get.”

  I slightly turned. “Did you just say you loved me?”

  He smirked. “You were too much of a chicken-shit to say it if I didn’t say it first.”

  “That’s—” I laughed. “That’s actually true. You didn’t have to bring me up here to tell me that.”

  “I don’t do anything I don’t want to, and if you can’t say it back, I might have to toss your ass over the canyon.”

  “But you already know I love you,” I sassed.

  “Little smartass. I needed to hear it from your mouth.”

  I settled back into his arms, happily taking in this view. There was a whole world I’d been cut off from, and he was right, this was only one side of it. As cruel and vicious as it was, the Badlands had an unmatched beauty.

  I glanced down and smiled, watching him stroke my Savage insignia. He was right about this too.

  This wasn’t a symbol of ownership. It was a permanent sign that I belonged somewhere.

  He didn’t need to brand my body when he’d already made his mark on my soul.

  I hadn’t run away looking for any kind of salvation, but I found it anyway. Who knew it would come in the form of a devil? That it could be anything like this? Salvation was immoral and hauntingly beautiful.

  EPILOGUE

  For the time being, things had worked out pretty well.

  For the time being.

  That would last maybe a week in my world.

  I leaned back in my chair, watching my Star and the surprise I’d been keeping from her interact with my family.

  Mom fucking adored my dove, which wasn’t surprising because I loved her.

  Blue was there too, smiling like her whole world wasn’t still burning and she hadn’t just found out her husband had a psychotic bitch as a daughter. As if that psycho wasn’t helping keep Lilith with Samael.

  “Have you told her yet?” My dad spoke from beside me, watching the same scene I was.

  Tell Star the man who fathered her was the one responsible for her scars and her pain?

  That he hid behind his own father, an old man, because he couldn’t face her?

  No.

  She’d stopped asking me about who was behind A.R.C only days ago.

  I don’t know who it was that raised her, but he’d done his best.

  Correction.

  He’d done his best up until he allowed himself to be lured to the one place he’d been told not to go. Dumb motherfucker.

  I’d just gotten her to focus on something else. It would come up again eventually, and I’d deal with it then. Right now, at least she had Claire back. Asmodeus had their father. He’d taken him that very night, and whatever he did to him wasn’t my concern.

  “No. I haven’t decided if I want to.”

  “He really is your son,” Uncle Grimm joked, passing a drink to Ice.

  “He’s turned out exactly as he should’ve,” Dad replied proudly. “And you got the girl you were meant to get.”

  “That sounds like you knew this would happen,” Cam remarked.

  Cobra chuckled at Dad’s ensuing silence.

  Sometimes I wondered if he sat around with little figurines and decided exactly how the fuck our lives would go.

  Dad knew that peace and pain went hand in hand. He knew that we’d never survive without the OG Savages unless we got through shit most people could never come back from and relied on each other when the time was right. For those of us that didn’t make it, we wouldn’t have stood a chance in the long run.

  I glanced over at Cam, following his stare to the girl sitting on the other side of his mom.

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “She’s the one who brought in Claire,” Grimm answered.

  I caught a smirk on my dad’s face and shook my head. I knew exactly where this was going.

  “Has Claire said anything?” Ice questioned.

  “Oh, she’s said a lot. That’s why she’s alive. Pixie made it clear to keep her fuckin mouth shut about what she told us.”

  Of course, he used my mother to make the girl talk. Fuck, I would talk too if left alone in a room with her. Getting in trouble when we were kids fucking sucked. More so for Addy.

  “Are you going to tell us, or are you going to make us guess?” Cam asked.

  “I’ll tell you everything eventually. Not tonight. Tonight, they’re happy.” He nodded to where everyone sat around the fire. “I will tell you this much: you’ve won one small battle, but there’s about to be a war.”

  I strummed my fingers on my knee, already working out what that meant in my head.

  Star turned her head and caught my eye, offering a smile before Claire pulled her attention away.

  With Dad’s very recent revelation, I was more grateful to Satanas than ever for placing her at that shitty farmhouse.

  Like the nickname I’d given her, she brought me peace. She helped soothe the demons in Cam’s mind. With what was coming, we’d need her.

  I hadn’t searched for this. I wasn’t prepared for whatever this was, but who the fuck could be ready for someone like her?

  I knew from the day she looked at me from behind that fence, there was something about her.

  She was different.

  She was Savage.

  The girl had a heart of gold and a pitch-black soul that aligned perfectly with mine.

  MISCREANTS

  Twisted love, blood, and mayhem.

  Get ready for Samael and Lilith.

  Miscreants is coming May 2020!

  *This book contains extreme triggers, including explicit scenes of torture and total power control.*

  PRE-ORDER

  TBR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Whether you read this to the end, or said, “fuck this,” and skimmed, maybe even flashed to here with a DNF, thank you for giving this book a chance! More importantly, thank you for sticking with me and the Badlands.

  Renegades was a long time in the making. I flipped and shredded this story so many times trying to get it right. In the end, I had to majorly deviate from what I had thought it was going to be and give the characters what they wanted

  If it let you down, I’m sorry it wasn’t what you’d have liked. I hope Miscreants can make it up to you. For those wondering if Cam will have a HEA, he will.

  It won’t be fluffy and sweet as none of these books are, but I promise it will be perfect for him.

  Small spoiler: you’ve already met the kickass heroine that’s going to flip his entire world around. ??

  Miscreants is up next! If you missed the grittier more deranged aspects of the Badlands and want a gruesome enemy to lovers tale featuring one of my most ruthlessly Savage anti-heroes to date, get ready….

  PERICULUM

  Tragic & Twisted fell in love…
<
br />   Check out a sneak peek. 

  AMAZON

  TBR

  Periculum Excerpt

  They say that some of the best memories can come from a bad idea.

  Truth.

  But why does no one ever mention the consequences that will be waiting to remind you of those not so wise choices? Today, I was bountifully reaping all I’d sown.

  Painfully.

  Too many shots of Tequila combined with too little hours of recovery were a nasty combination. I knew better than to drink the way I had the night before, even if I did have a laundry list of valid excuses to do so. Nothing was productive or cute about looking like a dying fish searching for water.

  I could drown my sorrows at the bottom of a bottle, but there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to remedy my problems. All liquor did was make me numb, and I couldn’t mentally afford the repercussions that would come when that feeling wore off.

  Plus, I wasn’t that strong of a drinker. Even now, the thought of consuming a single shot made me nauseated. I blamed my impromptu trip down one specific memory lane for the state I was in. It led to a destination in my mind that I’d barred access to almost four years ago, and for good reason. It wasn’t an area of my life I wanted to stop by and revisit.

  “Hangovers are so underrated,” Melantha muttered from beside me.

  “I haven’t felt this shitty since that party we attended the day of senior graduation,” Gracelyn agreed.

  I felt both of those statements, deeply. My head felt like an axe had been planted in the back of it.

  I didn’t want to get out of bed unless it was for stuffing my face with a fry up and chugging gallons of Powerade. That sounded like pure heaven right about now, but we had a flight to catch.

  Feeling a soft vibration against my thigh, I pulled my cell from my pocket and swiped down to see the text I’d just received. I’d expected it to be my one of my parents, but there was no number displayed. That was weird, but not weirder than the text itself.

  Unknown: Something wicked this way comes.

  I came to a gradual stop, brows furrowing as I read the message two more times.

  I typed out a reply and hit send.

  L: Who is this?

  Almost immediately a box popped up saying: Sender Unknown.

  Message cannot be sent.

  “You okay?” Mel called back to me.

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I fixed my face into a smile and started walking again, slipping my cell back into my pocket.

  Weaving around a couple walking through the lobby of the resort, I readjusted my shades and tightened my grip on my suitcase.

  “Back to reality we go,” Mel sighed, shouldering open one of the doors that led outside.

  “Is that depression in your tone because of your hangover or?” I asked, dragging out the ‘r’.

  “Come on, Lana. You know exactly how things are going to be when we get back.”

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Gracelyn refuted.

  “I know we’ll be dragged into the corporate office so our parents can explain how they’ve mapped out our entire futures.”

  That sounded extremely overdramatic, but sadly, she was right. It was the way things worked in our world. However, I couldn’t openly agree. That would open the door to a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. I was going to immerse myself in denial until we were back home.

  “Hey, it might not come to that. Wait and see what they have to say, and then we can go from there.”

  She ignored me. “Do you think they’ll use a full-blown PowerPoint to really get their message across?”

  My lips twitched as I fought a smile, trying to be serious.

  “There’s a deadly disease that causes people to only see the bad side of things. My abuelo likes to refer to this as pessimism.”

  “Your grandfather is the ringleader of this whole conspiracy, and I’m not a pessimist.”

  “She’s a realist,” Gracelyn joked, forcing her voice to be deep and masculine.

  I started to laugh, the sound coming from my throat akin to an angry toad’s battle cry. “Shut up.” I playfully swatted her arm.

  “Ow.” She poked out her lip and feigned being hurt, making her hazel eyes go big and round.

  “I can’t take you two anywhere,” Mel reprimanded with a laugh. “There’s our shuttle.” She pointed to a sleek white bus idling nearby.

  We approached and waited patiently for the passenger in front of us to climb on board. I glanced back at the resort and withheld a dejected sigh. This would be our last trip for god knows how long, and that reminder made it hard to ignore what was on the horizon.

  Melantha got onto the shuttle first. I followed behind her, and Gracelyn shadowed the rear.

  “Sit anywhere you’d like,” the driver instructed in an upbeat tone, his bushy mustache lifting with his smile.

  I thanked him with a small one of my own and then skimmed the interior. The seating was set for two per row with already a few people up front.

  Ignoring the stares aimed at her silver and lavender hair, Mel breezed by all of them, stopping at the halfway point to the back.

  Directly to the right of where she’d chosen to sit was a cluster of four guys that with a passing glance, appeared to be around our age.

  I wasn’t a fan of confined spaces, so I placed my suitcase in the baggage cubby above us and then claimed the seat nearest to the aisle. Gracelyn sat by the window, leaving Mel no choice but to sit behind us.

  “How long does it take to get to the airport?” Gracelyn asked.

  “I think thirty minutes,” I replied, pushing my sunglasses up to rest atop my head.

  “I was going to ask if you needed help, but you looked like you had it.”

  “Huh?” I glanced over at the guys sitting on the other side of the aisle, nearly doing a double take as I got my first actual look at them.

  If this were a cartoon my jaw would have dropped through the floor.

  “Your bag,” the one closest to me said, nodding his head towards the luggage cubby.

  “Oh, well. Thanks for considering,” I quipped, immediately cringing inside. Thanks for considering? Way to be super awkward Lana.

  “Anytime,” he replied smoothly, brandishing an amused grin. His teeth were so white I wondered if they were real. I didn’t want to ogle him, but then again, yes, I did. I mean, damn. Where the hell had he been hiding at these past two weeks?

  One of his most notable features were his eyes. They were gorgeous. I would call them blue, but that was like saying the sun was yellow, such an average adjective that was hardly accurate. This was more a myriad.

  His eyes reminded me of the sea, vibrant and serene, deep within them something churning that I couldn’t identify.

  Our staring contest was short lived as two more girls got on the shuttle and passed between us, both looking as hungover as I was, only way more put together. I shifted my attention off the eye candy across the aisle and did my best to get comfortable, toying with the necklace my abuelo had gifted me after the ‘incident’ I chose not to discuss.

  Once the last passengers were on board, the driver turned his radio on low and we began to move.

  Me and Gracelyn watched out the window until we could no longer see any part of the massive building.

  And that was that.

  We’d be on a plane heading home soon. Vacation was officially over.

  My self-righteous act of denial wasn’t far behind it. I was going to miss staying up all night without needing to wake at the ass crack of dawn and pretend I knew what the hell I was doing with my life. Maybe it would be better for someone else to map the whole thing out, give me a much-needed shove in the right direction.

  My parents would rejoice if I simply let them do as they wished without argument. Not that arguing would matter much anyway.

  In my world, smarmy blue bloods spent their lives making people believe they were good and doing whatever was necessary to further their own agenda
s. Following a predestined path came with the lineage that swam through our veins. I loved my family, but that didn’t make me blind to their sordid truths.

  Gracelyn nudged me with her elbow, interrupting my inner monologue. Meeting her eye, she did some weird brow movement that had me quirking one of mine.

  “What?”

  “Look,” she mouthed silently, giving a subtle nod of her head.

  I glanced over at the group of guys. None of them were paying us any attention. Looking back at Gracelyn, she shrugged and waved her hand as if to say, “Never mind.”

  As she and Mel began a debate about one of the newer movies coming out, I adjusted how I was sitting once again.

  The new position gave me a better view of my visual delight. He was intently focused on the cellphone in his hand, head angled down.

  I used his distraction as an opportunity to really drink him in, committing the smaller details to memory.

  His toned arms had sleeves running all the way down to his fingers, each tattoo a well-placed piece of artwork on his sun-kissed skin, every one of them adding to how damn fine he was. He looked like someone you’d find within the pages of a more sophisticated edition of Inked Magazine.

  The angle his head was at allowed me to peep the tat on the nape of his neck--some variation of a cross with wide spanning wings. I dropped my gaze back down to his right arm, studying all the different pieces that were visible beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt. There was a cluster of roses similar to the sole tattoo I had on my upper shoulder.

  His petals were black while mine were both purple and magenta. Gracelyn and Melantha had the same one, but their colors were different. Each hue held a different meaning to who we were as people.

  A devilish depiction of the crying Virgin Mary was on his inner forearm, beneath that was another rose, this one by itself. On his hand was the face of a woman with skull-like features. Beside her, a word I couldn’t read unless I leaned way too close for either of our comfort.

  Not wanting to get caught in my thorough perusal, I looked around the shuttle bus, counting how many people were on board and taking in their appearances. Had I not gotten enamored with the guy beside me, I would have already done this.