Book of the Lost: AAV-07d25-11: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 3)

by V. E. S. Pullen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Azzie

  The next couple of days were a blur. We walked through stands of trees and fallow fields, through miles of forest primarily made up of thorny underbrush and low-hanging branches, walking until even in my sleep, my legs kept moving.

  If this were a movie, they’d montage this bitch otherwise the audience would die from boredom.

  It was late March, and the trees were thinking about maybe tossing up some leaves in a month or two, but weren’t ready yet. They were still in hibernation mode, cranky about waking up, and went out of their way to lash me with branches and put last year’s fallen bits in front of my feet whenever they could.

  It was personal, I know it, because none of the guys seemed to have the problems I did even when I followed directly behind them.

  Fucking trees.

  It also rained a lot, and when it wasn’t raining, it was congratulating itself for not being snow by forming puddles and dripping down from branches to run down the back of my neck because, yes, the rain and the trees were in cahoots to torture me.

  Also, there was still snow. Random patches where it hadn’t totally melted yet, just for the rain to be able to point out that things could be worse and I should shut my whore mouth and quit bitching, even if it was just an internal monologue. It didn’t stop me, because rain can go fuck itself.

  Tai tried to tell me that Nature wasn’t out to get me, and I told him that he could go fuck himself too, or better yet find a nice branch, use the rain as lube, and shove it up his ass. He switched off with Spider after that, because that’s what they were doing: babysitting me.

  I knew it. They knew I knew it. No one said it out loud, but it was fucking obvious when one of them was always with me, no matter what, and they were taking turns. And it made me really fucking cranky.

  It’s not like I thought they’d be moving faster and leaving me behind or anything, I was kind of the point of all this so I was setting the pace. And I wasn’t going to resent them for catering to my needs when the five of them were at peak physical condition and I was… very much not.

  Even though I continued to exercise and stay active even at my worst, sickest periods, I not only had less energy and stamina just by the nature of my chronic, incurable illness, I was also only a few days out from a long hospital stay for a viral infection that devastated my body. Normally I’d still be ditching school to sleep twelve hours at a time to help my body recover, not be pushing myself farther physically than I had for years.

  I was very realistic about what I was capable of handling, and their need to help and protect me — none of that was the issue. I didn’t resent them and I didn’t feel responsible, this shit is what it is and I’ve been living with it long enough to stop blaming myself for my body’s limits. I didn’t even really resent Nature or the situation, I was just… miserable.

  It was hard not to be a cranky bitch when every part of my body hurt so bad I could’ve easily just sat down in the muck and cried. I was constantly exhausted to the point where I couldn’t lift my arms to knock branches out of the way, which was why I kept getting hit by them. I was cold, down to my bones, except for those few hours at a time when we could stop and I could crawl into my sleeping bag and drink hot tea before going comatose. And everything felt damp, dirty, and sticky, which was uncomfortable.

  And all we could do was walk.

  We stayed among trees as much as possible, avoiding roads. We walked until I couldn’t, then we rested for a few hours — one or more of them scouting ahead or around us while I tried to sleep if I could but mostly just rested my legs and tried not to cry — then we walked until I couldn’t, rinse and repeat. The intervals were getting shorter and shorter as time went on, and I saw the worried looks between them, but none of us could make me healthy and whole and able to keep pace with them.

  I didn’t mean to take it out on them, I really didn’t. I’d worked so hard and so long to be self-sufficient in my life, cutting myself off from so many things — I even resisted having any kind of relationship with them, even friendship, because I knew I’d be nothing but a burden. And here I was, in the worst possible circumstance, putting them into more and more danger with every break and breather we took, and I hated it. I hated it so much.

  “You should just go,” I said to Spider, my current designated babysitter. We’d been walking for almost two full days and were so far behind schedule that I knew I was putting them at a terrible risk. And not just them: Sasha had confided in me early on that if we didn’t show up by a certain point, he was worried their dad would start driving around looking for them. Since it was pretty much guaranteed there would be roadblocks on the roads surrounding Salem, if not patrols out looking for any traces of us, having the Hellspawn MC out looking for us… if he got stopped, if they realized who he was? It would be really fucking bad.

  “Go where?” he asked, distracted by yet even more uneven ground tripping me up.

  “Away. Someplace I’m not.” I was remarkably calm and reasonable despite all the emotional turmoil that was roiling around inside me with this conversation. Selfishly, I didn’t want them to go, but I also couldn’t stand the idea of them being in danger because of me. And it didn’t matter whether I suddenly acquired a magic carpet that could fly us all there in twenty minutes, because these last few days had shown me exactly what the future would bring: they would always be at risk because of me.

  I wasn’t just a burden, I was a constant threat.

  He stopped, dropping the duffel bag he was carrying to the damp ground, and caught hold of my arm. “Stop walking and talk to me.”

  I shrugged off his grip — not to reject him or anything, but it hurt. All my joints were sore and my skin hurt — I think because it had been a few days since my last phlebotomy, or maybe for a hundred other reasons, but I tried not to wince. He noticed anyway.

  “What’s going on? Are you hurt?” His concern was touching. And loud. Sev looked back at us, stopped walking, and called to the others to hold up.

  “I— no. Not specifically,” I said, making a face. “Just— sore all over. Sorry, I tried not to— it’s nothing.”

  “Tried not to react?” His eyebrow went up. “What hurts? Your joints? Your muscles?”

  I shrugged. “Yes?”

  “And? I know there’s fucking more, Azzie, so spit it out.”

  “My skin. Why are you getting mad at me?” I asked before thinking about it, because of course he’d be mad. I was dragging them down with me, a drain on—

  “Because you should’ve said something!” He threw up his hands in the air and shook his head. “We’ve been pushing you way too hard — I knew it’s been too much, but you didn’t say anything so we just kept going! You need to speak up!”

  “What am I supposed to say? We have to keep going! It’s too dangerous—”

  “No.” He shut me down with one word, one look of frustration and disgust, and it was like my nightmares coming real, watching him realize what a hardship I was, would always be, and finally deciding— “Guys, we need to find an empty house. We’re stopping for the night,” he called out to the others, and like that, they’d dropped their excess cargo and scattered in a couple directions while Spider looked around then led me over to a clump of pine trees that provided a break from the wind. He dug his tarp out of his bag one-handed, without even looking, and spread it out. He helped me take my pack off, stacking it up with his, Mouse’s, and the duffel bag he’d been carrying, setting his rifle to the side. He pointed at the nest between the bags. “Sit.”

  I sat.

  “I’m going to see a man about a horse,” which I learned early on was Spai-speak for taking a piss, “and then we’re going to have a chat while we wait for the others.”

  “That sounds ominous,” I said, frowning and feeling sorry for myself. It was going to be the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ talk, I just knew it.

  He started to say something then cut himself off, shaking his head. “J
ust… stay put,” he warned me, and then disappeared into the trees.

  I was so close to succumbing to a full-on pity-party, just fucking wallowing in my misery, that it took real effort to fight it off. So much for not blaming myself for things I couldn’t help, or trying to be unselfish and releasing them from any obligation to me, I was fucking full-on woe-is-me-ing beneath those stupid pine trees in the stupid weather in the stupid world.

  Fucking Nature.

  Spider crouched down in front of me, carefully taking the stupid stick from my hand that I was using to hit at stupid rocks — none of which even noticed, stupid fucking rocks! — and he pushed back the hood of my poncho until he could see my face.

  “Azzie, my precious, delicate flower, what the fuck is going on with you?”

  “I’m a fucking menace, Spider. I can’t handle this, any of it, and I’m going to get you guys killed because I can’t keep up! And I’m so fucking tired that I don’t even want to! Just go on without me, leave me here. I’m not worth it. I’ll just curl up under these trees and wait for the soldiers—”

  “You know that’s not happening, right? Be as dramatic as you want, God knows you’ve earned it, but no fucking way in hell any of us would agree to leave you. Here or anywhere else.”

  He was so calm, so matter-of-fact, and while that might have aggravated me, I was stuck on a specific part of what he said. I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean I’ve earned it?”

  “Except for occasionally snapping at Tai when he’s been particularly overbearing and helicopter-y, you haven’t said a fucking word about anything since we left the barn. You haven’t complained, you haven’t whined, not one fucking word except ‘I need to stop soon.’ And a few ‘I need to pee’s.”

  “Neither have any of you! Why would I be special—?”

  “Because you are. Because you just left the only home you’ve had for years, as fucked up as it was, losing everything. Again. You’ve been betrayed by people you trusted time and time again. You’ve had to say goodbye to people you care about, not knowing if they’ll survive — not just the Callises, the people in Salem too. You’ve been horribly sick, near death, barely a week ago, have been put through enough emotional trauma to incapacitate any other person on this planet, and you haven’t. Said. A. Fucking. Word. We’ve forced you to your physical limits over the last couple days, pushing you way too hard and we knew it, and nothing. You just keep on keeping on. If I’m frustrated about anything, Azzie, it’s that you haven’t been whining and complaining and crying. Frankly, it’s fucking intimidating.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met in my life. You’ve got more backbone and fortitude than veteran soldiers decades older than you. You’ve got this unwavering, selfless personal code that’s not only admirable, it’s fucking inspiring. And you have these elevated expectations but only for yourself, everyone else you just accept as they are— you’ve set this super high bar for yourself but don’t seem to care if we reach it, you’re going to love us anyway. It’s a little fucking intimidating to be around you, let alone be loved by you. So yeah, if anyone’s earned an emotional breakdown or two, it’s you. And if you think any one of us is going to walk away and lose our chance to be with someone so fucking amazing, someone who is going to change the fucking world, you’re bat-shit crazy. And even if you are bat-shit crazy, I’d have to be dead before I’ll let you slip away. Got it?”

  “You know, Spider… you tend to be the quiet one, hanging around in the back, watching everyone else. But when you finally open your mouth and start talking, it’s— it’s never fucking boring, that’s for sure.” My voice broke as I began to cry — and as much as I’ve wanted to cry for days or maybe even weeks, this was the first time I actually was, in earnest.

  I shoved up off the ground and crashed into him — only overbalancing him a little but he caught himself before he tipped over. I flung myself into his arms in a violent embrace, sobbing, and he cradled me against his chest. He held me in a kung-fu grip that made me feel safer than I have in forever. Since… since Mouse disappeared.

  Eventually he moved to sit down on the tarp, keeping me in his lap, and he let me cry uninterrupted until I’d exhausted all the feels and was miraculously calm, bordering on emotionally numb in the best possible way. And when I finally reached that state of exhausted zen, I realized the others were back and sitting not far off, waiting for us.

  “We found a house,” Sev called out in a low voice. “It’s empty, there’s no neighbors, it’s got a fireplace, and a well with a hand pump by the barn. How do you feel about sleeping indoors tonight, after a nice hot bath?”

  “I feel like I might start crying again.”

  “In a good way?”

  “In the best way.”

  I wish I could say that I got a repeat of nap-time with Luka and Spider — with any of my guys — in the abandoned farmhouse that Sev had found. I wish I could talk about sexy times and orgasms, heated kisses and heavy petting in front of the fireplace, or at the very least just spending time with all of them and basking in our love.

  The sad truth was that I didn’t even get a bath.

  We got inside the house with minimal damage, they got a fire going, and I fell asleep on the couch before I even got my boots off. Someone got my armory off me — someone got all my clothes off me — and I woke up ten hours later in leggings and a long-sleeve t-shirt, under a stack of blankets with an actual pillow under my head.

  Everyone’s clothes had been rinsed out and hung before the fire to dry — I fucking missed a night of the guys lounging around in their briefs! There is no fucking justice in this world! — and I redressed myself and repacked my things while Luka made me tea. They’d boiled enough water to replenish our supply, we all had power bars and handfuls of trail mix for breakfast with an ibuprofen chaser for me, and then we got back to the walking.

  But it wasn’t so bad anymore after a full night’s sleep someplace warm and comfortable. Everything was a bit easier, the sun was shining, and Nature wasn’t the brutal whore I’d been cursing for so many days. She was actually quite pleasant.

  And we even made up the time we lost because I was able to walk a full six hours without stopping, and then only need a two hour break before we could get going again.

  In fact, everything was going really well, right up until we accidentally walked into the middle of a political protest about to be broken up by a platoon of soldiers.

  “You know, our family isn’t like other families,” Luka informed me as he helped me over a fallen tree. It was his turn to babysit, and I was way less resentful of it after getting some sleep and feeling like I could hold my own for once.

  The weather had also turned, and even though I couldn’t really see it through the canopy, it was obvious the sun was shining. The air tasted like spring, like things were waking up and deciding to start budding, which usually meant we’d have a blizzard soon.

  “I think I understand, but why don’t you explain what you mean?” I encouraged, super excited to learn more about their culture, like I was an anthropologist studying a remote tribe.

  “You already know we’re part of a motorcycle club, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And our dad is president of that club…”

  I couldn’t remember if I knew this or not, but I sure did now! “Okay, wow. Cool. So that makes you kinda important in the club? Being the sons of the prez?”

  His head shot around and he narrowed his eyes at me. “What did you— Azzie, what do you know about motorcycle clubs?”

  I blushed. This was a little embarrassing. “Not a whole lot,” I hedged, pretending to be fascinated by the rocky slope we were beginning to climb. The trees thinned a little and I felt the sun on my face for a hot second before clouds skittered across the sky and blocked it.

  “Explain,” he sounded so much like Sasha, and his Voice of Authority (trademark pending), that I got goosebumps.r />
  “I wasn’t exactly participating in extreme sports, you know,” I shrugged, not looking at him. “I read a lot. A lot.”

  “Okay…” he said cautiously, waiting for the punchline.

  “I read anything I could get my hands on,” I looked over at him, hoping he’d figure it out and I wouldn’t have to say it out loud. He tugged me closer, keeping me from running into a small tree that came out of nowhere. He still looked confused. I sighed. “Romance novels, Luka. Specifically biker romances. Tons of them. Love that subgenre, almost as much as fuckin’ famous-guy-regular-girl stories.”

  He stopped dead. “There’s biker romance novels?”

  I stopped too, staring at him in shock. “Have you been living under a rock? Umm, yeah. There’s a lot of them.”

  “Like— like what are they about?” He looked beyond me, probably trying to see where his brothers were to get them in on this but I shook my head at him.

  “I’ll answer any questions you want about this topic, but this is between us, okay? And you have to tell me if the information is correct or not. Those are my terms or I’ll deny everything and— and— find some way to get you back. Agreed?” I had a hold of his arms now, giving him a shake to punctuate every demand, and he smiled down at me in amused affection.

  “Mmhmm,” he purred, and I had a sudden flashback to us in my bed and— “But you better get that look off your face, or I’ll be forced to drag you off into the bushes and have my way with you.”

  I seriously contemplated that for a few seconds then realized how much trouble we’d get into if we just disappeared. And it would be just my luck that the people inevitably searching for us would catch up while we were nekkid and fooling around. I made a face and focused back on the topic at hand.

  “Do you agree to my terms or not?” I grumped, feeling some lady blue-balls developing — Tiffany blue, of course, which made me think about Adriana’s bedazzled Glock and the mood was totally gone.