The Unpaired (The Pairings Book 3)

by Ramona Finn

  He let me brush past him, but immediately chased after me. When I didn’t show signs of stopping, Dahn slid his stocky frame in front of mine, blocking my way. His dark hair stood out starkly against his pale skin as he stared down at me, his arms crossed over his chest. It always annoyed me in moments like this that he was so handsome.

  “All of them, Glade? All of them? Every single citizen?”

  I shrugged, acting as if I wasn’t sure what was so wrong about the choice I’d just made. “You heard Haven. He wants us to focus on mass culling.”

  “Don’t play dumb. You know he wouldn’t have meant for you to cull every single citizen.” A piece of his long dark hair fell forward across his forehead and he elegantly tied it back with the rest. “I don’t even know how you manipulated your tech to cull the citizens who didn’t require it.”

  That gave me pause. Actually, now that he mentioned it, that part hadn’t been hard at all. Even though my tech wasn’t designed for that purpose, it had been surprisingly easy to cull everyone.

  I cleared my throat and gave the only answer I could think of. “It was too many people. My sensors were completely fuzzed over. I couldn’t tell one from the other.” I tried to step past him, but he smoothly moved right along with me. After years of knowing Dahn, this behavior didn’t surprise me. He’d been smoothly putting himself in my way since pretty much the day I’d met him.

  “You’re telling me that you had trouble distinguishing between them in the simulation?” he asked, a line of worry forming between his eyebrows.

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