AllFreeNovel
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“Just a few—young, too,” I say. “There’s a sort of…”
I trail off. I don’t know if I should share what some people around her call the ‘mating imperative.’ She doesn’t need any other reason to think we’re monsters.
“A sort of what?” she asks.
“I’m just saying that we have married couples here, just like anywhere else,” I say. “And they wanted families, so they started them.”
“Lycan?” she asks.
I wince. “Human,” I say. “Andlycan. We’re not so different.”
Tilda bites her lip, but directs her gaze down to her plate. “So…what was this about blackberry rations?”
I take one of thetetalasfrom in front of her, biting into it. It’s seasoned beautifully, but the beans are obviously canned—and we’re starting to run short onthosesupplies, too. “We just don’t have much fresh food around here,” I say. “A couple people are worried about vitamin C deficiency if we don’t figure it out soon.”
“Not good for kids,” she murmurs.
“Not good for any of us,” I agree. “But we’re going to solve the problem—I’m sure of it.”
“You can’t just get rations from the Austin encampment? The old Heavenly Host base, I mean.”
Nowshe’s collecting information. “I can’t just go around sharing intelligence about the state of our rations.”
She shrugs. “You already have.”
I could order her not to say anything—after receiving my bite, she seems susceptible to the suggestive powers of my status as Alpha Prime. But I don’t want to do that to her, even if she seems to be much better at playing this game than I am. “What do you think of the food?” I ask, changing the subject.
She nods, her mouth full. Now that she’s started to eat, I can tell she was famished. Healing a gunshot wound in one night will do that to you. “It’s good,” she says. “You have a solid chef around here.”
“My brother,” I grin. “And sometimes a few helpers. We’ve had a newcomer in the kitchens with him lately.”
I hear the two of them, then—Mateo and a recent addition to our pack, Peaches. They’re chatting in the kitchen, Peaches with her loud laugh and Mateo with soft words.
“This would all taste a lot better with salsa made from fresh tomatoes,” Tilda says.
“We’re all well aware,” I nod. “Why don’t you just throw salt in the wound?”
Tilda keeps eating, finally swallowing and resting her hands on the table. We’re in the visitor’s center; it would be an ideal time to make a run for it. She doesn’t realize that I could just order her to stay put, especially with my mark on her…and I’d prefer if she didn’t find out.
“I don’t like the idea of children starving,” she says quietly.
“They’re not starving.”
“But they aren’t getting what they need.” She turns her green eyes on me, a furrow forming between her brows. I can sense her hesitation—her reticence to share whatever’s in her mind.
I try not to use the mark I put on her to pry too deeply. She doesn’t even know it’s there yet.
She’s going to besoangry when she finds out…
But I can never use it against her if I want to be able to live with myself.
“I can help you,” she finally says. “I’ve been growing crops for my people for years. I know all about what to plant where, how to till the soil, make things grow…you need food, I can get it for you.”
I raise my brows. “And what do you want in return?”
Tilda swallows, then looks me in the eye. “I want you to help me procure something from the Heavenly Host.”
“That being?”
