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It fucked with me how little I understood him, the way a nightmare fucked with me—from his unreadable expressions and elusive fighting techniques, to his exotic looks and naturally-toned physique. When I met him, he was dangerous and untrustworthy, but now…now that dangerous distrust was all wrapped up in messy feelings.
“What about sex? What if you transferred your infection when we—?”
“It’s not an infection!” His eyes flicked between Jesse and Roark. “Sheath your weapons.”
That wasn’t going to happen. And his reluctance to answer my questions only infuriated me. Just because he was stronger and faster and smarter, didn’t mean I was a pushover.
I couldn’t outfight him, but I could affect him with words. “You know why Jesse hasn’t slept with me?”
The arrow beside me wobbled as Jesse said in a growly tone, “Now is not the time.”
Roark rubbed his bare chest. “Nah, I think ye should keep going. Though I might need a garden full of Bushmills for this conversation.”
I had no idea how they would react to Annie’s warning. And maybe this wasn’t the right moment to disclose it, but I sensed something mounting in Michio. Not the same kind of sensation that connects me to aphids, but rather something dark and bitter slithering through the air around him, threatening to steal away the man I loved, the man who desperately wanted a child.
My chest felt like it was wrapped in rubber bands. “The night Jesse and I met, Annie told him how I would die.”
A noise rumbled in Roark’s throat, and Michio’s complexion paled in the ray of the flashlight. I kept talking, explaining each near-death encounter over the past two years, and how Jesse foresaw the order of events and where to intervene.
“That’s why you’ve been throwing her off a cliff?” Roark aimed a pointed look at Jesse.
Jesse nodded, stiffly. “The cliff is next.”
In a fluidity of swift movements, he swung the bow over his back, snatched the handgun from my thigh holster, and trained it on Michio. His arm must’ve grown tired from holding the stretched bow, but neither a bullet nor an arrow would stop Michio if it came to that.
Unless it hit his head? I shoved that painful image past my subconscious.
“Wha’ ye haven’t explained,” Roark said, his glare still locked on Jesse, “is why you’re pricking around, your pissflaps clearly itching with desire, when ye could be throwing it into her.”
I rubbed my forehead, exasperated. “Thank you, Roark, for phrasing that so gently.”
“We’re a bloody apocalypse past gentle, love.” He pressed a kiss on my temple and resumed glaring at Jesse.
“If she survives the cliff…” Jesse glanced at my stomach, his eyes shutting briefly and flicking back to Roark. “She’ll die from a pregnancy.”
Roark laughed, but it was strained and cut short. “Then we’ll glue our dicks to our fecking legs.”
This, coming from the celibate one. Guess that made him an expert on glued dicks.
“There’s more.” A muscle jerked in Jesse’s jaw, the gun in his hand resolutely aimed on Michio. “The aphids are evolving. Isn’t that right, Dr. Nealy?”
We were back to proper names? Not that Jesse and Michio had become best buds, but this was Jesse drawing a clear line of separation.
Michio cocked his head. His blank expression gave me nothing to go on, but his stance was tenser than I’d ever seen. If I had to guess, I’d say he was as scared as I was about his status in our group.
He cleared his throat. “The older mutations are adapting. I’ve been monitoring their progress since day one. Based on empirical evidence, the aphids are evolving in intelligence, physiology, and behavior.” He nodded over his shoulder at the dead bug. “When you were taking Evie’s blood, Amos told me he hadn’t fed this aphid since he trapped it on the island.”
My breath caught. “When did he trap it?”
“Two years ago.”
Two years without eating.
“Wha’ a fucking fuckhole.” Roark swung his bulky body into a furious pace along the moat. “An actual national fucking fuckhole. Bet they’d survive a nuclear blast, and do ye know why?” He pivoted back toward me, his eyes ten shades of frustrated. “Because they’re cockroaches. Clatty, freckly, sloppy-cunt cockroaches. It’s not even funny.”
Were there even enough bullets left in the world to wipe them all out?
I looked at Michio. “But nymphs can starve? Amos said he had to feed Shea to keep her from getting worse.”
Michio nodded.
“Evolving creatures,” Jesse said, “are why this prophesied pregnancy is troublesome.” In a monotone voice, he explained the final prediction, the child that could save the human race, his child, and the price of bringing her into the world. “This pregnancy would destroy the very reason we fight day after day, the only reason we continue to live.”
I closed my eyes against the severity of their gazes pressing against me. “I’m not the only reason—”
