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“Ma’am?” With a gutturalargh, Della slammed her creaky old door in his stupid, serious face. She’d been in her room for hours, long enough that her first set of guards had been replaced by this idiot, whom she didn’t recognize but who clearly was a leftover from before TheEnd. No one said ma’am in the AfterEnd. She whirled to face Rue and pointed at the door. “Who the fuck is that?”
Sitting calmly on her bed, Rue scratched at her stubbled head. “Jake. He’s new.”
“Yeah, no shit, he’s new.” Della marched across the floor, resuming her pacing circuit around the small cabin. Periodically, she threw open the door to see if whoever was charged with keeping her inside might be persuaded to let her go. Thus far, every Alpha responded with the same aggravating answer asJake. Minus the ma’am.
She’d been at it a long time, maybe hours, but what was time when her entire life was blowing apart at the seams—again? The golden orb inside her crackled and arced like a shorting-out circuit. Emotions skittered through the bond—deep, lancing pain and clenching frustration, fragments of anxiety and strife. The only consolation Della could take from it was that it meant Cal was still alive and at least somewhat awake. Somewhere. But where was he? What would they do with him? What hadthey done with him? No one would tell her shit.
She’d fought with Logan and Mick like a feral animal as they’d bundled her into the cabin. Eventually, Logan took her face in his hands and commanded her to calm the fuck down. His exact words,“Your Alpha won’t be happy if you hurt yourself,” cut through her rampaging hysteria. No, Cal wouldn’t be happy if she hurt herself, and disregarding her own safety felt too much like a betrayal of his concern. Sequestered in her cabin, guarded like an inmate, she felt more imprisoned than she ever did back in the dank cave. Longing for the cave—for the simplicity of the two of them, sleeping, eating, living, and screwing—took on a life of its own. Yeah, it was unsophisticated and dirty and raw. But, after several lifetimes of inescapable numbness, it was also everything she needed. She’d woken up in that cave to both her Omega nature and her isolation. Having been put slightly back together, her chinks filled in and her wounds tended, she remembered how good it felt to be whole.
The tears came then, gushing and ugly, smearing the dirt and grit that coated her face. Logan hugged her shoulders and fetched her food and hot water sufficient for a rudimentary bath. Moving in a terrified daze, she sluiced the sweat, dirt, and sex fluids from her body, awkwardly rinsed her dingy locks, donned some clean clothes, forced down some dinner, and then was left with nothing to do but wait and strain her ears for any sounds of disturbance from the camp.
Yet only silence answered.
The dinner congealed in her stomach like a mud pie. Her head was stuffed with cotton, her eyes encased in sandpaper, and her chest—good lord, her chest—throbbed a proclamation of disaster. She’d calmed enough to attend to the bond, seeking that connection to him with almost obsessive regularity, desperate for any kind of reassurance. But that brilliant dot of light, the one birthed inside her with Cal’s searing bite, only vibrated with despair.
Even worse, she couldn’t tell: was it her despair, or was it his?
Her own pummeled her mind like crashing surf; every swell a reminder of her naivete at believing the Morris Hill Alphas would listen and do the right thing. Why had she believed that? Her, of all people? Had it been the passage of time? Had all these decades blunted the hard lesson of TheEnd: that people and structures in power always, always fail in a crisis? Or had she been so wrapped up in the ecstasy of the last few days with Cal she forgot how stubborn and prideful Alphas could be?
Della wrung her hands, cracking her knuckles even though she’d cracked them three times already. She knew better than to trust them to do the right thing. She knew it, but she’d done it anyway. Hell, she’dbeggedCal toclaim herto ensure they wouldn’t be parted. And look what it got her? Trapped in her cabin, shut out of any preparation or decision-making, and tied to an Alpha with an uncertain future. So much for the sanctity of Alpha-Omega bonds.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floorboards if you keep that up.” Rue’s wry voice cut across the cabin. “Come sit.” Rue patted her bed. “I’ll braid your hair.”
Shaken from her ruminations, Della faced the young Omega, who lounged on her bed, doodling idly with a stubby pencil and a notebook that looked worse for the wear. Since the Omega had come to live with her, Della’d kept a polite but careful distance, telling herself it was as much for Rue’s benefit as her own. But that was before. Before Della’s skin remembered the touch of another’s, before her body awakened a craving to be touched and caressed and held, before her soul remembered to ache for comfort when she was hurting inside.
Rue wanted to brush out and braid her hair? Della almost cried at the offer.
“I never said thank you,” Della said hesitantly, lowering herself to Rue’s mattress, “for coming to look for me. It was very brave.”
Rue’s shoulder lifted, so thin it looked like a knife cutting through her T-shirt. “The Alphas searched for a few days, but they thought you were long gone. But then, two days ago, Livvy wandered into camp, and I knew they’d missed something.”
Della snorted. “It took that horse a week to make it back?”
A smile played on Rue’s lips. “She took her sweet ass time, that’s for sure. Here”—Rue nudged Della’s leg—“face that way.”
Della did as she was told, turning toward the fire as Rue produced a brush and began working through the half-dried tangles. They sat in peaceful silence for a long time. The only sounds were the crack of the fire and the gentle scuff of the brush. A long, shuddering breath whisked out of Della, her mind slowing for the first time all day.
Rue began tugging the lengths into strands for braiding. “I can’t wait till my hair grows back. Grandmére would brush and then braid it like this,” Rue murmured, her throat hinting at the swallowedrof a French pronunciation. “She liked things to be neat and tidy,une Madame Blancheville.”
“Was that her name?”
Rue giggled. “No, it’s just a saying. It means a... woman who likes things spic and span.”
Della’s mind flashed back to Amma and her spotless kitchen and the salt-and-peppered braids coiled around her head. “My husband’s grandmother was the same.” A small smile stole onto her face. “I miss her.”
“I miss Grandmére, too.” Hesitation rolled off the young Omega. “You... you had a husband?”
Della half turned to look over her shoulder, noting Rue’s open and curious face, and then turned back to the fire. “A long time ago.”
Rue’s hands made short work of the task, efficiently organizing Della’s hair and then tying it off on the end. “What was he like?”
“He was...” Thankful for the distraction from her worries, Della let the old memories infiltrate the present. “He was a good man. Handsome. Brilliant. We met when he was lobbying my father for something or other and invited us to a party on his yacht.”
“What’s a yacht?”
Della shifted on the bed, bracing her back against the wall so she could look Rue in the face. They’d never spoken this much in all the weeks they’d been living together. Regret filled her at how much Rue longed to connect and guilt for how little she knew about her. “A very, very large boat. So big there are rooms on it for sleeping, eating, cooking…”
Rue pulled her legs up, folding them under and tucking herself into a little, avidly-listening ball. “And he lived on it? Your husband?”
