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“Where are we going?” I call out over the pounding fear echoing through my body as Wyatt walks straight up to the fence. He pushes aside an overgrown bush surrounded by tall, shooting weeds, peeking through them before glancing back at me.
“You want to see Hetty, right?” he asks gruffly, motioning me forward. “She’s out here.”
28
The Lake
Hetty
I still get overwhelmed by the sheer size of it … and its color. The water looks so blue from a distance, but when I stand with my skirt up around my knees, my feet sinking into the cool silt, it’s impossibly clear.
The day Elizabeth first brought me here, I couldn’t stop staring at it—an endless, majestic body of water, surrounded by towering trees and giant rocks, under the faraway watch of colossal mountains.
“It’s a pond,” I breathed out that first day. Goldenrod only has Arrowhead Pond, and it’s so small and murky. Nothing like this.
I didn’t want to take my eyes off it. But when Elizabeth didn’t say anything, I glanced back at her.
She stared forward calmly, her eyes as blue as the water. “No,” she finally said. “It’s not a pond. It’s a lake.”
“Oh…” My brain was jumbled, trying to make sense of it. “Has Noah seen it?”
“No.” She looked at me like I’d said something strange. “He will soon, though.”
After we left Cypress House that day, we met Rill at the fence. Elizabeth explained to me where we were going while almost constantly reassuring me there was nothing to worry about. Rill would make sure no harm came to me outside the fence, she said in the face of my obvious unease.
My fear faded quickly, even though it took three hours for us to walk here. Longer and further than I’ve ever walked in my life.
Then, after we admired the lake for a while, Elizabeth spent another hour showing me what she referred to as the south shore—a sandy, tree-lined area scattered with hitched tents on the edge of the lake and ancient cabins further into the tree line.
Evidently, once he arrived in Goldenrod, Rill never stopped leaving. He and his alphas used the gap in the fence to go on scouting missions, searching for the perfect place to escape from Goldenrod’s eventual downfall.
The blackout was apparently the right time. After that, they started relocating everyone here—all the new alphas and their omegas, whom I’d watched slowly trickle away from Cypress House.
“After I was released and almost forced to mate with Jason, I don’t trust Goldenrod or the Order to protect us anymore,” Elizabeth told me as we walked through the trees that day, the lake glittering beside us.
“I guess I can’t blame you for that.”
“And Rill never trusted it.” She shrugged, a smile teasing her lips. “My hope is that the lake can be for everyone who … wants to leave.” She paused, her smile fading. “Because the blackout was only the first step, Hetty. Staying in Goldenrod is dangerous. They’re coming.”
Her face was ashen when she said that, her brow furrowed deep. She was scared, I realized.
But I didn’t question her about what was coming exactly because I didn’t feel scared. Standing next to that huge body of water, unsure what lurked around the corner, I felt safer than I’d ever felt in Goldenrod.
“Do you really think you can convince anyone from Goldenrod to come here?” I asked. It was one thing for the Goldenrod omegas who’d mated with the new alphas, but it would be a tough sell to convince the others.
“Probably not,” she said with a brittle smile. “But I can try…”
She stopped walking, her smile fading as her eyes flicked up and down my body.
Before we left Cypress House, she’d lent me one of her blue dresses to wear—it was the same color as the sky. I couldn’t stop touching it, my fingers fiddling with the soft folds, rubbing the light fabric.
“Actually, that’s why you’re here, Hetty,” she finally said. “I need your help.”
“With what?”
Her eyes focused on me gravely—apparently, what she was about to say was very serious. “You’ve always been special. The other betas look up to you.”
I pulled a face. “I don’t think that’s true—”
