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On a zap of panic, I look around the forest, unable to see anything past the small halo of light painted by the moon. “Where?”

“Few hundred feet back.”

“How … how do you see them?”

“I can’t. I can smell them. And now they smell me.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’ll know to stay away.”

Realization clicks inside my head. “That’s why the Rager stayed away from me, isn’t it? That’s why you pissed on me?”

“Would you’ve preferred to be raped, instead?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Yes. That’s why I pissed on you.”

“What is that? Some kind of Alpha power?”

“They don’t like the smell of us. They think we’re a bigger predator.”

Alphas are a bigger predator, when compared to an emaciated looking Rager.

“So … that Rager they put me in with …. He thought I was a bigger threat?”

“Probably confused the shit out of him.” The thought of that has me stifling a chuckle.

We continue to walk for what seems like hours in silence, through valleys and along mountains, and when the first rays of light peek over the horizon, I stumble forward. Absent of water, and weighted by exhaustion, every step I take feels like a chore. Like each leg weighs a hundred pounds, and the panting breaths are making my head light.

“Titus … I’m so … tired.” My knees give out on me, and the gravely ground knocks against my chin. A jolt of pain, followed by the ensuing coppery flavor, tells me I bit my tongue.

Blackness.

I feel weightless, and my stomach lurches at the sensation of movement. The hard planes pressed against me are warm and damp, and I open my eyes to find my fingers pressed against bronze skin. Double-blinking, I push up from Titus’s chest.

“How long did I sleep?”

“Half the day.”

Squirming in his arms, I urge him to set me down as I try to shake off the embarrassment that he’s carried me for hours, while taking in our surroundings, of abandoned rubble. “What is this place?”

“Used to be a hive, from the looks of it. We need to find water and something to eat.”

Glancing around shows torn tents and dilapidated, half-burned buildings. “I don’t think we’re going to find water here.”

“Where there’s a hive, there’s a nearby water source.”

“It looks abandoned.”

“Probably raided.”

“Marauders?”

He kneels down, rifles through a box of what looks to be primitive kitchen utensils--spoons and spatulas carved from now-weathered wood—before picking up a canteen from inside. “Marauders would’ve stripped all the supplies.”

I follow him into one of the buildings, where debris and grit crunch beneath my feet. “Who did this, then?”