“Linny,” Aiden gets his daughter’s attention. “Pass me the gauze.”
While Linx roots through a saddlebag, Alex completes the introductions.
“I’m Alex.” He holds a hand out to Aiden. “This is Silver, and that’s Luka.” He waves a dismissive hand in Luka’s general direction.
“Where are you headed?” Aiden slips Silver’s shirt off her shoulder.
“Anywhere that’ll take us.”
Happy to help, Linx rushes to her father’s side with a canteen of water, the gauze, and some medical tape. First, Aiden flushes the wound with the water, dislodging any debris. Then, he slaps the gauze against Silver’s skin and tapes it there as best he can.
“This’ll do until we get back.” He assesses his handiwork. “It’s almost a day’s ride. We’ll be there by nightfall.”
Linx bursts into a grin. “They’re coming with us?!”
“No,” Mason barks adamantly. “We’ll patch her up and send ‘em on.”
“We can’t leave a pregnant woman out here,” Aiden tries to reason with him. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Yeah.” Silver snorts. “There’s a bunch of crazy motherfuckers with bows and arrows out here.”
Aiden helps her off the ground. “How long since you’ve eaten?”
“Do berries count?”
“Not really. What about meat?”
Silver shakes her head. “Not since yesterday morning.”
Aiden is about to instruct Linx again, but she’s already one step ahead of him. From another saddlebag, she retrieves a generous amount of smoked meat that’s been cut into thick chunks and wrapped in hemp cloth.
“Do you like boar?” She unveils it in front of Alex and hands him a piece, also taking one for herself. “I love a nice big hunk of meat.”
Silver, despite being distracted by an incredible amount of pain, still recognizes an awful attempt at flirtation when she hears it. Clearly, Linx has taken an immediate fancy to Alex, and the only way she could be any more obvious about it would be to lie down naked on the ground and spread her legs. She can hardly take her eyes off him.
Silver takes the piece of meat that’s offered to her and chooses to look elsewhere. Her stomach’s always on the verge of nausea as it is—though the morning sickness seems to be finally at an end—and the sight of some young girl pawing on her husband threatens to make her breakfast reappear.
While they eat, Aiden and Mason argue in private, and Silver doesn’t need to overhear them to know what the disagreement entails.
“Honey is going to have a fit,” Mason says at the finish of it, waving the nock end of his arrow in Aiden’s face. “This’ll be on your head.”
One of the horses snorts air through its nose when Silver accidentally wanders too close to it. To her, horses are creatures from books and drawings—not real life. They’re a lot bigger than she imagined them to be, and she can feel the power in their muscular shoulders. The mane and tail are much coarser than she expected, the eyelashes thick and prominent. They’re beautiful, but slightly frightening.
“Careful,” Luka teases her. “It might eat your face off.”
“Har-de-har.” She pets the face of Aiden’s stallion with caution.
“Here.” Aiden tosses her a carrot from a saddlebag. “Fitch loves carrots. Just make sure to hold your hand flat, otherwise he might nip you.”
Standing back a little, Silver holds her hand out with the carrot on her palm, and Fitch practically inhales it, his lips leaving a trace of horse spittle on her hand. It tickles.
“I think I like him,” she concludes, wiping her hand off on Luka’s shirt.
She does so expecting Luka to quip something sarcastic, or pretend to be grossed out, but he’s too busy watching something over her shoulder.
“Have you seen what’s going on over there?”
She follows his eyeline, finding Linx showing off her mare to Alex.
“Oh, I see it.” Silver folds her arms. “What do you expect me to do? Punch her out? She’s a kid, for christ’s sake. She’s harmless.”
“She’s weird.”
“There’s no doubt about that, but was she right?” Silver can’t help wanting to know. “Were you really jerking off over me?”
Luka clenches his jaw, answering evasively. “How could she possibly know that?”
“Did you wash your hands after?”
No comment.
“Eugh!” Silver punches his arm and edges away from him, pretending to be repulsed. “That’s so icky.”
Luka’s not in the mood to be teased. Much to his relief, Silver’s fun is brought to an abrupt end when Aiden announces that it’s time for them to move on.
Mason rides ahead so that he can sulk alone, but everyone else is riding in pairs. Linx claims Alex as her riding partner first, before anyone else gets a say, and when he mounts the horse behind her, she rather gleefully tells him to hold on tight to her waist.
“She’s utterly shameless,” Silver mutters under her breath.
Luka is paired with Cody, and he also rides behind. That puts Silver and Aiden together, and since Silver’s shoulder is wrecked, Aiden sits her in front of him so that he can hold her more securely.
Along the way, conversation stops and starts in spurts. Linx relates to Alex how none of the men in her home community will have anything to do with her because she’s not a Delta, and hints that she’s still a virgin.
“They don’t like me.” She hangs her head pitiably. “I’m treated like a frigging leper.”
“They’re immune. What do they care?”
“They just do.” She wriggles against him, pretending merely to be adjusting her position. “Nobody wants to touch me.”
She waits for him to respond to that, but he doesn’t; he knows better.
A second later, “Are your eyes always on?” She cranks her head to look at him.
“Yeah.”
“Mine, too.”
It’s almost too much for Silver to take.
“So what’s the deal with your daughter?” she finally asks Aiden. “She’s no Delta.”
“Her mother wasn’t a Delta, either,” he explains. “She was clean, like you—quite a few of our citizens are. Their ancestors fled the cities when the virus was first released, and our peoples banded together out here. Linx was born clean, but got on the wrong side of some very bad people in Manchester.”
“Slade?”
“You met him?”
“We’ve had the pleasure. He infected her deliberately?”
Aiden nods. “With a black market strain of the Taint virus. That’s why her eyes are permanently flashed and her senses are so heightened. She can’t control it.”
“Why do you call it that? Taint.” Silver shifts awkwardly, finding it difficult to get comfortable with something so large between her legs.
“The virus isn’t natural. You let that shit inside you and it taints you.” He wraps one hand around her waist, holding onto the reins with the other. “They say it makes you more than human, but not everyone agrees.”
“So you skulk about in the woods, shooting people with arrows?”
“We protect our land.”
“By attacking indiscriminately?” Silver keeps prodding, testing to see if she can get an apology out of him. “Shoot first, determine genetic identity after.”
“We rely on her.” He looks over at his daughter. “Linny’s usually got a pretty good nose for it.”
“Well, she screwed up this time.”
“She must’ve smelled your husband on you.”
Hmm.
Silver doubts that very much, but she says nothing. The most intimate contact she and Alex have had in recent days was a juvenile boob grab, and that lasted all of thirty seconds. They haven’t even slept next to one another, or held hands.
If Linx shot her on purpose, it wasn’t because she smelled like a Taint.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Aiden promised, they reach the gates of the
Delta community before nightfall. They ride straight through, stopping only for pee breaks and to give the horses some respite, and Silver even gets to take the reins. Aiden shows her how to turn Fitch left and right, to move faster or slower, and to stop when needed.
Upon their arrival, she’s practically a pro at the basics, but Aiden takes back the reins when they ride through Llanrwst, a small, densely populated town abutting the boundary of his home.
It looks calm and peaceful, the streets paved and well-maintained. There are no cars, only horses and bicycles. A thriving market clogs the main thoroughfare, selling fruit and vegetables, handmade rugs, and other household items. Kids are playing outside unsupervised, stopping briefly to wave at Aiden and the others. At the edge of town, a stone bridge leads over the River Conwy, and the paved road carries on west. On either side, fields extend to the horizon. Ahead, tree covered hills.
“Your home is beautiful,” Silver murmurs absently.
“That’s why we protect it.” Aiden oozes pride.
Covering eight hundred and twenty-three square miles of idyllic mountains, forests, fields, valleys, lakes, rivers, moors, and a stretch of coastline, the site called D10—Delta compound ten, which is one of twelve scattered across the Kingdom of Great Britain—is by far the largest of its kind.
Situated in what was once Snowdonia National Park, the original Delta population—growing so vast, albeit scattered—quickly spilled out from the compound’s original boundaries, starting with nearby towns like Llanrwst. Over time, it grew so big that now the whole of Wales is unofficially considered to be Delta territory.
At the widest point, there’s about forty miles between D10 and the Mercian border. At the narrowest point, it’s under fifteen miles if you travel in a straight line. The border itself, though not marked, is guarded by three main outposts: Wrecsam in the north, Trefaldwyn in the middle, and Y Fenni in the south. Residents from D10—which is now the Delta territory capital—take turns doing one-month stints at border watch, relaying critical information back to D10 regarding Mercian gang activities.
Always on the brink of civil war, Delta and Mercian tensions run high—especially in the south. According to Aiden, the Mercian gangs raid Delta territory regularly. The land is rich with plants and animals that aren’t found in other parts of the Kingdom, and they’re willing to risk death in order to steal them rather than participate in the legitimate trade network that the Deltas rely upon. Poaching is a never ending problem.
Still, it’s a much better problem to have than dealing with repugnant Chimera wandering freely on your land, or waking up one morning to find that you’re being invaded by a foreign army. With that on her mind, and for the first time since arriving here, Silver starts to feel grateful that she’s not back in Amaranthe. Although, looking up at the D10 boundary wall as it comes into view, she finds herself having sudden flashbacks.
Amaranthe is walled for the protection of its citizens against the Chimera. The wall is fifty feet high, made from titanium, and is wired with motion detectors and CCTV—it’s impenetrable. Likewise, the wall around D10 looks sterile, uninviting, and ominous. It may only be twenty-five feet high, but it’s made from concrete blocks with a titanium core, and it has a spiral of barbed wire running around the top—it’s equally robust. It also has a similar system of motion detectors and CCTV, except that theirs is much more advanced and includes facial recognition software.
Once erected to keep Deltas in, the wall is retained now only to keep Mercians out—especially since they could decide to launch an attack on the capital at any time—and for that, the facial recognition system has proved to be an immeasurable asset.
It picks out Aiden, Linx, Cody, and Mason immediately, but draws a blank on Silver, Alex and Luka. Consequently, the enormous metal gates don’t open when the group rides up. Instead, a small door in the base of one of the gates slides back, and a Delta perimeter guard steps out.
He’s in his early thirties, with a bad complexion and dreadlocked hair. Dressed like the others, but minus the waistcoat, the only thing identifying him as a perimeter guard is a red band tied around his upper right arm. A hunting knife is holstered at his waist, a bow slung over his shoulder.
“Two clean, one Taint,” Aiden preempts the guard’s question. “Foreign, and the lady’s pregnant. She needs medical care.” He splays his hand out low over Silver’s stomach, causing her to tense and shift uneasily.
Trusting Aiden implicitly, the guard nods and slips back inside the doorway. A second later, the gate opens up for them to pass through, and Mason cuts in front.
“Get some rope,” he orders the guard, riding onward into a sprawling village beyond the wall.
To the left, there are some stables and a large paddock with horses grazing. Next to that, a farrier and blacksmith is shoeing a Shire horse: a large, gray draft horse with white feathering around its feet. Draft horses like this one are used for lugging carts, traps and ploughs on the farms, and Silver can see a handful more of them in the stables.
To the right, there’s a massive courtyard in the heart of the village. A communal fire pit—ready to be lit when the sun goes down—is at the center, surrounded by picnic benches and tables, with one long head table at the north end.
Buildings—some residential cottages and some businesses—encircle the courtyard. In one sweeping glance, Silver sees signs for a tuck shop, a children’s daycare, a barn cat breeder, a midwife, and a boyer: someone who makes bows.
Villagers stare.
Women are mostly dressed in long skirts and bodices—items that can be easily manufactured by hand, like they’d seen in Manchester. At one of the picnic benches, a young woman is showing off a brand new pair of stockings to her friends, her skirt pulled up over her thigh. She’s bragging that they were made in London, and her father brought them back from his last trip away. She shakes her skirt back into place when she notices Silver’s eyes upon her.
Silver is forced to look away anyhow. Aiden brings Fitch to a standstill—the others following suit—and they all dismount. The horses are swiftly claimed by some stable hands, while Silver, Alex and Luka are disarmed, have their wrists tied together with hemp rope, and are steered over to the picnic tables.
By the time they’re seated—Silver in the middle, with Alex to her left and Luka to her right—quite a crowd of all ages has started to gather in the courtyard to ogle them.
Aged three and up, children congregate in small cliques, talking and whispering amongst themselves. While one of the groups appears to be comprised of young adults similar in age to Linx, they don’t invite the purple-haired outcast into their circle. In fact, when Linx passes by them on her way to the tuck shop, one of the older boys goes out of his way to ‘accidentally’ bump into her, knocking her against two other kids.
While Linx flicks the older boy a vee and keeps walking, the two kids she collided with brush off their clothes and wipe their hands on their friends, laughing and sneering “Taint hands, Taint hands”, followed by more laughter.
Silver watches Alex clench and unclench his jaw, dying to intervene, and wonders how long it’s been since he’s felt that protective of her. She used to see that look in him all the time when they were younger. Another Hunter would make a sleazy remark to her, and he’d get all fired up about it. Or a classmate would make some snide reference to her provenance—insinuating that she only got good grades because her father was the Hunter General—and he’d put them in their place.
She’d soon realized that was one of the benefits of carrying on an illicit sexual relationship with her class instructor: he was always on her side. She was seventeen, he was twenty-three, and they’d been sleeping together since shortly after her sixteenth birthday. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
He was so desperate to possess her that he’d occasionally summon her to his office during lesson time. While the students on the other side of the wall were making jokes about how she was always in trouble, he’d be drop
ping his pants and screwing her on his desk. He’d send her back into the classroom with her cheeks flushed, her undies drenched with cum, and her insides throbbing.
But it’s not like that anymore.
At this moment, he’ll barely look at her.
Happy to be distracted from that dismal reality, Silver holds her roped wrists up to Mason as he walks by. “This isn’t necessary.”
“We’ll determine what’s necessary.” He dumps their belongings down on top of another picnic bench, then turns to Aiden. “I’ll fetch Honey.”
Silver imagines a spoonful of thick, golden honey trickling down the back of her throat and her stomach gurgles impatiently. Unfortunately, she doubts they’re about to make her a sandwich.
“Why do I get the impression he’s not talking about food?”
“Honey runs the compound,” Aiden informs them casually, pausing to usher a group of younger children away. “She’s the one who gets to decide whether or not you can stay. I mean, you’re clean and pregnant, so you’re a shoo-in. The same goes for your clean friend, but your husband …”
“You can’t separate me from my wife,” Alex butts in. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You’re the father of her child, which makes things complicated,” Aiden concedes. “We don’t normally accept Taints into our territory. Mixed-status couplings are frowned upon, and having them here only leads to trouble where that’s concerned.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Silver would gesticulate wildly to impress her point, but her wrists are bound too tightly. “What possible threat is a Taint to a Delta?”
“None directly. It’s the offspring that pose a problem.”
“How so?”
“No baby conceived from a mixed-status union results in a Delta child—not with our government’s enhanced version of the virus anyway—and every Taint child born within this territory depletes our gene pool.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me?” Silver stares incredulously at him. “There’s a word for that, you know: eugenics. You guys are basically a bunch of racist assholes.”
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