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Golden-flecked eyes shone brightly in the overcast light of the cabin, like the first two stars visible in the rising twilight. Zorah studied him like she wanted to glean every detail from his every feature. What could she possibly see in him?
"Were you a virgin?" The question leaked out of him, a concern geysered up from the depths of who knows where.
How had he not even bothered to ask before riding her hard in her precious little nest?
"No, I'm not." A deep sigh wobbled her breasts, and he considered trying to rearrange the bedding to cover her nakedness. But she didn't seem to be overly concerned about it, and the warmth radiated off her skin. "There was a Beta boy living in my village. We'd known each other since we were twelve, and eventually, we got a little curious." Her eyes lit up with the memory, thankfully a happy one, and her lips quirked to the side. "I told you before I had practice sneaking. Well, we carried on for the better part of a summer."
"Did you get caught?"
The joy drained from her eyes. "More or less. My mother figured it out, and she went to his parents. I begged her not to, but she wouldn't listen. Told them they had to pack up and leave or she would tell the Alpha. He would've killed the boy, maybe his whole family, and they knew it. So, they made up some flimsy excuse about distant family who needed them and left. It was the middle of winter, and I'm not sure they had anywhere to go. I tried to talk to him, to apologize, to tell him I kept our secret, but he hated me. Said me and 'my stupid bitch mother' ruined his life." She swallowed. "He's not wrong."
Jake stroked his thumb along her jawline. "I'm sorry."
"It was all my fault. I knew my parents were 'saving' me for my future Alpha, but I didn't care. Thought I knew better, thought I had everything under control. I was wrong, and they paid the price."
The pain in her voice brought him low. Made him hate that he'd asked her, hate that she'd dredged this memory up because of him. But more than that, he hated that this happened to her andhatedher Pack. Hated her parents and the Alpha and their backward, ignorant beliefs. Hated that something as innocuous as teenage experimentation got twisted into a life-or-death mistake. Yeah, she wasn't a virgin (as he'd momentarily feared), but he felt far from relieved. Maybe he shouldn't have asked the question in the first place, but on some perverse level, he was thankful for the trust she'd offered with the painful story.
"That wasn't your fault, sweetheart," he said softly but firmly. "Teenagers sneak around so they can screw, that's a story as old as time. Your Pack is wrong."
"I knew it was risky. I knew we might get caught, but I didn't think..." She faced away from him and whisked out a sigh. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. Are you disgusted, then? That I'm not pure?"
The question teemed with bitterness, a wholly un-Zorah-like sentiment. Jake shifted uncomfortably against the rough boards at his back. "Nothing you do could disgust me. And purity is just some made-up, puritanical bullshit, so no, I don't give one flying fuck about that. I only asked because I was afraid I'd hurt you or that you didn't know what to expect."
Her fingertip strayed along the length of his arm, as soft as a flower petal. "I've never been with an Alpha, though. And never during my Heat."
Any Alpha in the village could've serviced her; many would be happy to, but she'd come to him. It hadn't been an accident, had it? That she'd come to the lake, that he'd found her, that she'd presented to him in that way, so deep in her desperation and need. He couldn't help it. As regressive as it was, primal satisfaction roared in his veins.
My mate. Mine.God, he wanted it to be true.
But it couldn't be. It couldneverbe, for so many reasons that if he were to consider them, they would make his head spin. No, he had only one job here: to help her through this Heat and then get her back to camp. No one would have to know.
Butyouknow.
"Is that why you pulled out?" She angled her face toward his again, uncertainty in her expression. "Why you didn't... with the knot?"
"No." He shook his head, surprised by the question. "I'm afraid I'll knock you up." Her nose scrunched in confusion; apparently, the phrase "getting knocked up" hadn't survived into this century. He rephrased. "I don't want you to get pregnant. That's why I pulled out."
"Oh." Her fingers toyed with the hair on his arms. "Okay."
Silence fell, Zorah so still and quiet he kept checking to see if she'd drifted off to placid sleep. Jake's thoughts wandered the ragged terrain of his broken mind. Roamed all the pathways and detours of poor decisions and bad luck, all of them leading to the conclusion he arrived at again and again:she deserves much better than you.
"Is it weird?" Zorah's small voice jarred him from his maudlin musings. "Having lived through TheEnd and remembering what life was like before?"
Jake's back protested with a sudden ache like it also wanted to remind him of his unnaturally advanced age. With a grimace, he shifted their positions to lie on his side, Zorah facing him with her palm resting flat on the bed between them.
"Truth be told," he said, stroking lightly over her knuckles with his index finger, "most days, I forget how old I really am."
Her brows twitched in contemplation. "You never told me: how did you get free? From the bad people?"
Jake flashed a wry grin. "An accident, if you believe it. They had a stockpile of some explosives along with ammunition. This was before all that ran out, y'know? Anyway, I always hated going by the barn where they kept their hoard. I knew they were too stupid to store them properly. It was an accident waiting to happen, and eventually, the whole thing exploded. Caused a bunch of damage, lots of shrapnel, injuries everywhere. In the chaos, I escaped. It's funny... I didn't expect to make it very far. I was sure they'd run me down and beat me within an inch of my life again. But they never did, and I just kept going. One foot in front of the other."
That night burned in his memory so clearly that he could still feel the heat of the blast, feel the desert grit that abraded his face as he tried to comprehend the nightmare unfolding around him. None of the flying scraps of the blown-apart building hit him, but his minder hadn't been so lucky. Shrapnel embedded in his guts; the man's screams lived in his head like it happened yesterday. His clammy palms pathetically pawed at Jake's shirtfront for help, as if Jake would help one of those assholes. He'd not looked the man in the face. It seemed important, somehow, that he not know which one he left to die, like he wouldn't even give them that. Instead, he dug into the man's clothes. Blood and entrails coated everything, the sticky, fetid mess soiling his skin up to his elbows when his fingers finally extracted the keys from the blood-soaked pocket.
Then he was free. Scrambling and stumbling and scrabbling through the parched California desert, one thought echoed in his mind: he was going to die, but at least he'd die a free man.
Two days later, when the withdrawal rode him hard, he prayed to die. But he hadn't.
Eventually, a traveling caravan picked him up and dropped him off at a larger settlement, not disguising their relief to be rid of him and his vomiting, diarrhea-racked body. Because he wasn't yet free, only imprisoned in another way. After that, he'd roamed around the West Coast in search of any drug he could find, eventually settling in OT. It had been near the last place he'd called home, the last place he'd had the semblance of a normal life, but mostly he stayed because the scratch supply fed the beast inside him.
