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The tension left Luca’s shoulders with each introduction, and he glanced at Nox with embarrassment.
“I’m going to go help Cassie.” Nox tipped his head in her direction.
Luca looked like he might follow until three young men and a woman, who were almost carbon copies, pushed through the crowd to introduce themselves.
“Okay, just…”
“I’ll be okay,” Nox said.
Luca opened his mouth, but a girl took his hand.
A gentle touch drew Nox’s attention. Cassie tipped her head and led him to the back of the RV. “We’re going to need more wood for the fire. Would you be willing to help me carry some?” A pile of chopped wood sat next to a flatbed trailer.
“I can get it. I don’t mind at all.”
“We can both get it. I’m stronger than I look.”
Nox pulled the pin from each side of the trailer gate and lowered it to the ground. Cassie met him at the top.
She picked up a piece of wood.
Nox offered his forearms for her to lay them across. “I feel like I’m supposed to make small talk with you or something.”
“If I’ve learned one thing in all my time on this earth, some things are better said with silence.” She set another chunk into his arms. “But I’m sure you know that.”
Some mornings when the Anubis had its fill the night before, Nox would lie there with Luca in his arms, and he’d trace the scars marking Nox’s flesh with his fingers. Pausing, following, pausing again, finally reaching the deepest one over his heart. A pit in the front, a mass of rumpled tissue in the back. The entrance and exit wound of the sniper shot that killed Nox.
There Luca’s touch would linger. An unspoken question waiting for an answer.
And Nox would hold Luca tighter.
“Is that enough, or can you carry more?” Cassie held up a piece of wood.
“One more.”
She laid it with the others.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you traveled with Isaiah?”
Cassie picked up several pieces of wood. “I’m not sure. It’s hard to keep track of time. But Woodrow Wilson had just been elected, so that would be… nineteen eleven?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
Cassie nodded. “Oh, no wait, nineteen-twelve.”
“Over a century, then.”
“If you say so.” She headed down the trailer.
“Were you with a different group before him?”
Cassie came to a stop. “Pack. We’re a pack.”
Of course they were.
“There were about ten of us. I was the only egg-bearing female. And before you ask, most of them are gone.”
“Did something happen?”
