“If a little pain means you’re not being hauled off to the Cave, I think you can deal with it, right?” His eyebrow raised in question.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “But ...” I stopped short, not knowing quite how to ask the many questions I still had.
“But what?”
“But what else does it mean?” I asked, forcing my voice to sound stronger. “Does it mean ... I’m your wife?”
I had never imagined being married, at least not in a long time. I didn’t believe that sort of life was even possible anymore. My life consisted of a day-to-day struggle for survival.
At my question, Eagle looked at me sharply, his black eyes widening, his features pinching with obvious disgust.
“No,” he said flatly. “Not even close. Don’t ever fucking say that again.”
I should have been relieved. He’d said earlier that he didn’t find me attractive, that I wasn’t the sort of woman he liked, and now he was obviously repulsed at the idea of marriage. But instead of relief, I felt hurt and flustered.
“Does it mean you can do whatever you want to me?” I hurried to ask before I could lose my nerve. But as soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. Anger sparked to life in his eyes as every muscle in his body tensed.
I moved backward, away from the door frame and into the shadows of the main room. I’d only wanted to ask about food, not worsen an already precarious situation.
“Are you trying to ask me if I’m going to rape you?” His voice broke through the shadows, a low and menacing growl.
“No,” I snapped, embarrassed. “I’m just ... I meant ...” I wished I could disappear because he was right. I had meant exactly that; I just hadn’t realized how insulting it would sound.
Moments passed, seconds that turned into long, unbearable minutes, the only sounds from the lights buzzing overhead and my own labored breathing.
“I’ve never forced a woman,” he said as he approached the doorway. “I didn’t plan on starting anytime soon, either.”
“Okay,” I managed to whisper, feeling both self-conscious and relieved. “Thank you.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned his shoulder against the door frame. “Don’t thank me yet. There’s still plenty of time to die between now and whenever the fuck I can get you out of here. Or worse.”
I shivered at his words, remembering what the blond woman had said to me about becoming evening entertainment. But at the same time, I felt excitement well in my gut. He was planning to help me get free of this place. Back home. Back to my quiet life. Back to my—
“What’s your name?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts.
What little comfort Eagle had provided me with instantly vanished. My name? My name ...
I couldn’t tell him my name. It wasn’t my name anymore, I wasn’theranymore. I didn’t want to remember it, or that person. I didn’t want to think about the home I missed so much. I wasn’t her anymore, and I didn’t want to remember her.
My thoughts became hurried, violent, an earth-shattering storm swirling in my head, a flurry of random images and broken conversations, of faces of people that I had once loved—thatshehad once loved. And it was so much more than just the memory of them. It was all too real and too painful.
I thought of my parents, and their kind smiles and loving arms. I thought about my boyfriend, Mark, and the way he had held my hand as we walked back from school together, and the feel of his breath on my face as we kissed. And then I forced it all away, because it was stupid and pointless, because they were all gone.
I wasn’t her anymore. She’d died alongside her family and friends so that I could survive this world.
“Squirrel? I asked you a question. What’s your damn name?”
Swallowing back the gathering lump in my throat, I looked up at him, into his eyes, and willed myself to say it. To say the name I hadn’t said in a very long time.
“Autumn,” I croaked, tears forming in my eyes, then looked away from him as the tears slid free.
But that wasn’t my name. I wasn’t her. That girl was gone—the pretty face in the mirror, the long brown hair that I’d brushed every night until it had shone, and the big gray eyes that everyone loved, eyes that were identical to my mother’s. She was dead. Dead like everyone else.
“Autumn,” he said.
My heart thumped painfully in my chest. My name,my name, rumbled past his lips and into the air as if I were still real, as if I were still that girl. The girl who still had a home. The girl who still had a mom and a dad, and a boyfriend named Mark with floppy curls and a cute crooked smile.
“Autumn is gone,” I whispered. “She’s dead like everyone else.” Squeezing my eyes closed, I willed the images of the girl I no longer was to dissipate. But they wouldn’t relent; they just kept coming and coming ...
