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I closed my eyes and just held her against me, telling her over and over again t
hat I had her – she was safe. I moved her so she was on her side, but I was still over the top of her, keeping her warm and surrounding her body with my own. I wrapped my arms and even one of my legs over her, cocooning her in my embrace and holding her as tightly as I dared. Outside the shelter, I could still hear the crackling and see the flickering light of the macabre bonfire on the beach.
“Why did you build a fire?” Raine asked softly, her eyes still hidden in my neck.
“Just a little cleanup,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more of her usual questions but knowing she would anyway.
“You burned the bodies?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Yeah.” I sighed heavily and waited for the next barrage of questions.
She was quiet for all of about thirty seconds.
“What about the bones?”
Of all the ridiculous things to harp on, she decides to wonder which body parts are going to burn best.
“I’ll get rid of them when the fire’s out.”
Again, another thirty seconds of blissful silence.
“Who were they?” she asked, her fingers digging even deeper into the skin of my shoulders. I shook my head, not really wanting to give her my assumption on the matter. Even though I had told her about all the shit I did, and she now knew some of the sordid details of life outside the law, I didn’t want her to know everything. I didn’t want to tell her about the stuff that was, in my opinion, much worse, the kind of shit I wouldn’t touch no matter what the stakes or the payoff, but I knew plenty of people who did.
“Hard to say,” I shrugged. I tried to brush it off, but she wasn’t buying it. Apparently, I was a fucking shitty liar when it came to her.
“Who were they, Bastian?” she repeated. Her hand went to the side of my face and tilted my head towards hers. “Tell me.”
“You really don’t want to know.” I took a deep breath and blew it out my nose, not wanting to go there. Knowing what they could have had planned for her in my own head was bad enough. I didn’t want those thoughts going through hers as well. She glared at me, and I knew any more fight on my part was pointless. I sighed heavily and closed my eyes. “Slavers, I think.”
“Slavers?”
“Yeah.”
“As in people who…sell people?”
“Yeah.”
“What would they have done with me?” she asked quietly.
“Raine, for fuck’s sakes,” I growled. I had a limit, and I had reached it. “You don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about it. Don’t make me fucking say it!”
This time she lasted a whole minute.
“I was so glad when I first saw them,” Raine said, and I felt her grip on me tighten a little. “I had no idea…”
“What do you mean?”
“When I first heard the boat,” she clarified. “I ran down to the beach, and when I got their attention and I saw the boat turn, I was jumping up and down because I was so happy to see them. I couldn’t wait for you to get back so I could tell you we were rescued.”
“Oh.” It was my only response. The more I thought about it, the more I found the whole idea unsettling for multiple reasons. My focus had been on ripping the motherfuckers apart, not how they got here or why they chose to land here. They probably would have gone right by if she had been asleep and not heard them.
“I thought they were going to help us. I’m so stupid.”
“It’s okay, baby,” I told her, holding her head back down to my shoulder and kissing her softly on her forehead. “You couldn’t have known what they were. It doesn’t fucking matter now because they aren’t going to fuck around with anyone else.”
Two minutes.
“You scared me.”
