AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And even if they got past Gang Mountain scouts and past the damn trolls and their stupid fuckin’ bridges, they still wouldn’t trade with Dark City. I’m a walled city, not like Shadowlands down south. Gettin’ in and out ain’t easy.
“Weapons manufacture is also somethin’ I keep an eye on personally. I know exactly how many guns go missin’ every year and I track down the ones responsible. Not into anarchy. Not into mutiny. And the numbers a’ guns that do go missin’ aren’t anywhere near enough to supply what Trash City was armed with. They didn’t just have a couple’a missin’ guns, Echo. They were anarmedfuckin’ militia. What I wanna know is what they’ve got that’s valuable enough for someone to wanna stock ‘em. You got any ideas on that?”
“I do,” I say quietly, turning his words over and recognizing the likelihood that he isn’t talking shit. “I don’t think you’re gonna like them.”
“Tell me.”
“The bodies,” I blurt.
“What?”
I take one last lick of my already polished bone before tossing it into the fire. Embers and ash spiral up into the air. “I’m stuck on the bodies. I feel like they’re doing something with the bodies.”
“Sellin’ ‘em? For guns?” I don’t answer and he balks, “The fuck good would that do anybody?”
I shake my head roughly and scratch my scalp, which feels…gross. I make a face at the grit and dirt and head oil that’s come off under my fingernails and quickly wipe them off on my pants, which are…just as filthy. “I don’t know, but back in the beginning, when I first met Merlin, she was pissed at me because she thought I’d try to scavenge the Alpha bodies. But I don’t think she meant the stuff. I think she meant the corpses themselves.”
“Pshh,” he grunts and even though it sounds like he’s dismissing me, the crease between his bunched eyebrows hasn’t dissolved. He’s also rubbing his gnarly beard again and I’m distracted by it.I want to see what he looks like underneath that matted beard.
I wonder…does he want to see me? I touch my hair again and regret it. Feels like straw and the color…the color was once one of my favorite things about myself, but now the red is hidden underneath layers of mud. Looks like dirt. There’s dirt all over my hands. No wonder he didn’t want…
“Echo. Talkin’ to ya.”
“What?” I swallow when I catch his expression. His head is tilted to the side and his right hand is absently touching the X scarred into his skin. I can see it clearly now in the light of the fire. It refracts light, catching and bending it. “I was just…”
“Would give my left nut to know what you’re thinkin’ right now. Got this crazy fuckin’ look on your face. Like you don’t even mind sittin’ with me.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I swallow audibly and am embarrassed by the sound all over again. “Do youmindsitting with me?” I squeak.
His hand tightens around the deer leg he’s holding and all at once, he starts to move. He makes it halfway to his knees, his eyes glazed and unfocused, his chest making this terrible, hypnotic rumbling sound before he jerks, rubs his hand down his face roughly and plops back onto his ass.
“Fuck. Change the subject, Echo.” He tosses the bone into the fire and doesn’t look at me again. He flexes his hands and takes a few deep breaths, doing that counting thing again. “Don’t buy your theory about the bodies, but I can’t come up with one better. Also, don’t think whatever gang was here coulda been taken out by Trash City, even with their guns. This was twelve…” He inhales deeply. “…fourteen Alphas, ten male, four female. No kids, no Omegas, no weaknesses with ‘em. They’da been able to take Trash City, guns or not.”
My lips purse. “Weaknesses? Are you saying thatI’mthe reason you couldn’t take Trash City before?”
“Nah, but you were part of it.”
“I’m not a weakness.” I wrinkle my nose.
He smiles at me and it’s a condescending, impish thing. “Baby, you’ve got no fuckin’ clue. Now, go to sleep before I do real bad things to you.”
“But you…”
“Sleep, Echo.”
I open my mouth to ask what kinds of bad things he means until I realize that that sounds every bit like an invitation and I don’t want a repeat of last night. I don’t. Really. I clamp my mouth shut and start to slide under the blanket.
I watch him start to lie down, too, but he doesn’t even bother with the blanket pile he’s sitting on and simply stretches out by the fire. He props one arm under his head and crosses his feet at the ankles.
I hate him I hate him I hate him.
But I’m also confused. I feel like a weepy teenager. Maybe he put something in the tea. Yeah, that must be it, because all I really want to do right now is offer him to come sleep in the dry sleeping bag with me and envelop me in his heat. Maybe, it’s because of the sex. Maybe, it’s because until last night, I’d only done it with one other Beta guy before and it had been so quick it hardly counts. Adam would probably be horrified if he knew.
Alphas, from what I’ve heard, have sex for sport starting at ten. But for Betas, no one wants to get attached to someone who might get taken to a City one day… We don’t start —theydon’t start — having sex ‘til they’re older and are sure they won’t ascend.
“Omega, sleep,” he orders and I wonder how he knows I’m awake when his eyes are still closed.
Embarrassed, I wipe my hand off on my pants and lie down on my side only to wince when my injured arm gets in the way of my getting comfortable. I try a few positions before the Berserker’s voice cuts across the quietly crackling fire. “How’s your arm?”
