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FOURTEEN
Asha
Why does healing always feellike getting hurt again? I’m happy to have shared a moment with Braxton, but fuck, all the old wounds ache with new stings. Not only do I remember all my old mistakes and betrayals, but I was an asshole to Braxton after all he’d been through.
My thoughts rotate between the guilt I’d admitted for the first time and Braxton himself. The fact that my pack was killed because I wanted to go to fucking college as a twenty-something-year-old. I thought I was so fucking clever. I hadn’t given our exact address, instead I got a P.O. Box at the closest town and had all my college stuff go through it. From there, the Blood Mages managed to find the half-breeds they so desperately wanted to test on.
At least, that’s what one of the Blood Mages told me while he tested on me. He’d speak over my screaming, grinning down at me. Laughing about my application and how, without me, none of what they were doing would be possible.
And then there were the times I was tortured. When I broke and begged to be let go. They asked for the name of another member to take my place, and I gave in so easily.
No, not easily, but regardless, I gave it. I just wanted the pain to end, and at that moment, I didn’t care who took my place. Now, outside of that hall of nightmares, I’m ashamed of what I did. Knowing what happened to me, happened to them.Watchingit happen to them and knowing I caused their pain. I should have been stronger.
“You okay?” Braxton asks.
I can’t tell if he’s worried about me, or if he’s worried about what he told me, but I answer by pulling him into a tight hug. He holds himself stiffly for a moment before he relaxes in my arms. And, as silly as it is, it’s perfect. I feel so damn warm and safe in his arms that it helps to push away the scent of burning and death.
If only by a little.
Then, Trouble is shoving between us, and I laugh, drying the rest of my face and petting the ridiculous beast. Braxton kneels down and pets him too, pushing his face against the dog, and grinning like a madman.
These two really are perfect for each other.
“I’m not good with timing.”
We turn to see Orson standing awkwardly. “Did you want me to check out things now or later?”
Max’s mouth lifts into a half-smile. “Now, would be good. We can continue this later.” But he also casts Braxton and me a reassuring look, and some big part of me is grateful that I don’t see revulsion in his gaze.
When Orson pulls out his computer, I’m glad to have the distraction. He sets it on the roof of a charred sedan and we all crowd around it. A swath of forest appears on the screen, surrounding a town, and in the middle of it, I spy four tiny dots in a semicircle beside the burned remains of a car.
Instinctively, I cast my gaze to the sky as if I’m going to see the camera staring back at me. Nothing but blue above.Creepy. As though reading my thoughts, Orson says, “Anytime, anywhere, someone could be watching. Wild, right?”
Max pulls his attention back to the task at hand. “I don’t suppose you have a way of scanning the area for—”
“Movement? Yeah, one sec, I’ll check the current feed and the data logs.” Orson’s fingers dance as nimbly across the keyboard as a master pianist. A green line sweeps across the screen, leaving behind four red boxes that encase each of us. “Just us,” Orson confirms.
“As far as your eye in the sky is concerned,” says Max, his gaze leaping from home to home, “but still plenty of places a person could hide from a satellite.”
“I don’t care if anyone is out there. I’m going in,” I tell them.
If there’s any chance anyone from my pack is still here, still alive, I’ll find them. I don’t care what the others do because this ismymission. To save my people.
Max raises his weapon, and his brown eyes are protective as they land on me. “If you don’t want to wait for backup, Asha, then we all go together. It’s the only way this works.”
For some reason, it’s weird that I’m not surprised by his response. A strange feeling blossoms in my stomach, and that sense that we’re moving further and further from prisoner and Enforcer, to a couple, comes over me. It’s strange that I don’t know how to feel about it.
But also not my focus right now.There will be time for that later.
I pluck the pistol from the back of my pants and rack one into the chamber. “Fine.”
He nods. “We do this by the book. Stay close. Be alert.”
We move as a unit down the road, systematically clearing the block. For each home, Max instructs me to wait with Orson at the porch while he enters through the front and Braxton through the backdoor with Trouble at his side. I listen to the repetition of “Living room, clear!” “Kitchen, clear!” “Bedroom, clear!” while succumbing to reverie.
Who could have survived and been brought to this town as a slave? Cordelia June, the older woman who made the best pies in town? Franklin Bo, the head of the Bo household, who was responsible for building nearly every building in town? Zen, the little girl whose mom taught yoga classes every morning? There were so many people who colored every day of my life before the attack. Seeing any one of them would be… a balm for my soul.
Fuck. It would be.
