by Laken Cane
But the alpha was back.
“Just ask me,” she said. “Get it over with.”
He frowned. “Ask you what?”
“About your grandfather.” Her voice broke before she got the words out and she couldn’t look at him.
“Abby.”
He waited until she finally glanced up at him. “William Dean raped two little girls. I’ll spend the rest of my life begging you to forgive me for being related to the bastard. I’m not glad you killed him because…” His jaw bulged as he clenched his teeth. “No child should have to kill another person. But if he were alive today, I swear to you I’d kill him myself for what he did to you.”
She opened her mouth but couldn’t say a word.
“How could you think I’d be angry with you over that, Abby?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured, confused. “He was your grandfather. You loved him.”
He blew out a hard breath and ran his hand over his face. “I wish he hadn’t died. I wish he were alive so I could face him. So I could beat the fuck out of him. That’s all I can say. He doesn’t belong here with us, Abby.”
She nodded, and even as relief spread through her, she heard the sound of a door closing in her mind. The past was gone. William Dean didn’t deserve another thought. “I’ll never mention him again.”
“Take me to your spell room,” he said. “I want the moon tonight.”
She shivered as his voice seemed to slink into her head. Her body.
She swallowed hard, then turned and led him into her spell room.
Once inside, he threw back his head and inhaled, his chest expanding as he drew in the pure spell room air. He stared up at the moon for the longest time.
And then, he looked at her.
She stood where she was, almost shy, a little scared.
She couldn’t move.
Eli stalked her, his limbs loose, his amber stare as wild as the wolf he was.
She was afraid to breathe. “Eli,” she whispered. “I don’t want…”
But oh God, she did want. So very badly.
He knew it.
He halted a few feet from her and not once did he look away from her face. “Come here.”
His voice, rich and deep and so very smooth, wrapped around her brain, her heart, her body.
She shivered. “Alpha. I…”
He didn’t move. “Come here, Abby.”
Her mouth was so dry it hurt her throat to swallow. “Can you see me?”
He narrowed his eyes, and a brief flare of rage lit their yellow depths. “Fuck yes, I can see you.”
She knew he couldn’t see her true face, and she knew that wasn’t what he meant anyway. Her. Her.
He saw her.
The woman, the warrior, the survivor.
But the warrior was afraid.
She’d been a child when Acadia had cursed her.
“I’ve never done this,” she said.
“I know.” His stare grew hungrier. “And I’m about to change that.”
Her legs shook when she took a step toward him.
The alpha. Her alpha.
He straightened, his face blank.
But his eyes, oh God, his eyes.
He held out a hand, palm up.
She took another step, and then another, and finally, she stood before him. Her heart beat so rapidly she was sure it would fly from her chest.
To stand there and be that vulnerable…
“No.” But she didn’t move.
Wasn’t sure she could.
“Trust me,” he murmured.
He watched her for a long, long moment, giving her time to grow accustomed to his nearness, his heat, his power.
His maleness.
He didn’t touch her face. Not then.
He pulled her into the circle of his arms, loosely, and began to sway with her.
When her incredibly tense body began to relax, just the tiniest bit, he tightened his hold a little and there under the unending night sky, she slow danced with a man for the first time in her life.
Slow danced to the music of crickets and tree frogs and bated breaths and pounding hearts.
She could have danced forever.
He carefully, slowly slid his fingers up her spine and to the back of her neck, then left them lying there, heavy, warm, and possessive.
She eased her face forward and placed her cheek against his chest. His heartbeat, strong and steady, soothed her. She closed her eyes and inhaled, and the scent of him, the strength of him, wafted into her brain and held her secure.
He was her sanctuary.
“Trust me.”
She did. She so did.
His senses must have been on high alert. Every time she climbed another step, reached a higher level, he led her toward another.
She felt his breath stir her hair, and with a touch almost too light for her to feel, he kissed her head.
He held her almost unnoticeably tighter.
If he was impatient, he did not show it.
No. He had infinite patience.
She released a breath and at last, she touched him.
She slid her hands over his sides and around his back and held him the way he held her.
As though to let go would cause him pain. Agony.
Then, she slipped her fingers under the hem of his shirt and over the bare skin of his smooth, strong back.
He shuddered, his body moving against her palms, and she felt…
Powerful.
Desirable.
For the first time in her life.
She wanted, needed, to feel his skin. “Eli,” she whispered.
He backed away just enough to pull his shirt over his head. He flung it away, then pulled her back against him.
“Fuck, Abby.” His strained, hoarse voice caressed her in places she’d never been touched.
He restrained himself, and she knew it was because he needed her to trust him.
To want him the way he wanted her.
He would wait for exactly the right time, and then he would release himself from his self-imposed restraint. And when that happened, he was going to be fierce.
She rubbed her lips against the skin of his chest, and then, before she knew she was going to, she slid out her tongue to taste him.
He tightened his fingers on the back of her neck, a little too hard, then relaxed them at once.
“Alpha?” she murmured, her lips moving against his chest.
He must have heard the question in her voice. The plea.
“You’re the one I want.”
She nodded. It was really that simple. He knew what he wanted.
He wanted her.
“I will fight for you, Abby. For us. Believe that.”
She decided at that moment that she would deal with whatever came. But she wanted that night. And she would have it.
And finally, he touched her face.
Immediately she stiffened, but he left his fingers there, unmoving, until her body relaxed once more against him.
He slipped his fingertips over her jawline and to her cheek, and then to her lips. He moved his thumb back and forth over her bottom lip, slowly, gently.
She pressed her face against his chest as he gathered her thick hair in one hand. He gave the locks a gentle tug, urging her to look at him.
She was ready—she knew it, and he knew it.
But it was the hardest thing she had ever done or would ever do again.
“Trust me.”
It wasn’t only the alpha she had to trust. She had to trust herself.
So she let him pull her face away from his chest.
It was time.
But those first few seconds when she stood bare and vulnerable before him, she couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes.
He leaned forward and kissed her scarred lids. One, then the other.
Then he waited silently, unmoving, until she could stand it no longer and opened her eyes.
His smile, slow in coming, lit
his eyes.
It lit up her entire world.
“Good,” he said. He touched his lips to hers in a kiss as soft as the shadows around them, as sweet as the moonlight bathing the ground.
She couldn’t stop her own smile, and didn’t really try.
It burst free from her chest, that smile, burst from the darkness of her past, from the pain and the years of isolation, from the absence of hope.
That smile was born in the mirror of the alpha’s eyes, a mirror in which she finally saw herself—not her cursed, mangled face. She saw herself.
And she was beautiful.
The Series:
The Waifwater Chronicles
Book 3 in progress
We, the Forsaken
By Laken Cane
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter One
My mother was a writer before the world ended.
She always wrote each main character’s goal, motivation, and conflict on an index card and pinned it to a corkboard on the wall in front of her desk.
I think of myself like a character in one of her books. I have my goal, motivation, and conflict written on a paper and tacked to my wall. I look at it every morning when I get up and every night before I go to bed.
There’s not a lot on it, but it is everything.
Goal—to stay alive.
Motivation—I want to live.
Conflict—everything wants to kill me.
My days are challenging. Sometimes I think about ripping that paper off the wall. Sometimes I think about ending my story.
But I won’t.
I have to finish it.
I learned something about myself by reading my mother’s books.
I really, really hate cliffhangers.
And I refuse to be one.
I wasn’t scared of the great beyond, but I wasn’t ready to go there.
Really, who knew? Maybe this was the great beyond. Crowbridge might actually be my afterlife. Maybe I’d died and hadn’t realized it.
When I thought of the town like that, though, it was hard for me to breathe. The sky seemed too close, and I was sure if I tried to leave Crowbridge, I’d find an invisible wall there to keep me inside.
I told myself I was glad of the new status quo. In the world before, bad things happened every single day. It’d been a shit world. My sister had been killed in that world.
This one was better now that most of the assholes had died.
That’s what I told myself.
I rolled off my cot with more energy than I could ever remember having before the world ended—a short two years ago—then grabbed a bottle of water to drink while I peered at the goals, motivation, and conflict note.
I had always been a creature of habit.
I dressed methodically, pulling on a t-shirt, a warm button down shirt, and worn jeans. I laced up my boots before shrugging into a protective vest that would help deflect the blades or—if the attacker was completely stupid—a bullet.
No one used guns. They were too loud.
Noise brought the mutants, and if there was anything worse than an attack from a deranged human, it was the attention of a mutant.
That’s not to say I didn’t carry a loaded pistol. I did. But I would take that gun out only if I had no other choice. Only if I had to use it on myself. Because by then, noise wasn’t going to matter.
I slid blades into the pockets of my vest, buckled on a belt to which I added more knives, a flashlight, a lighter, and a small container of bear spray. The bear spray was protection against hungry, wild animals who figured a lone girl would be an easy meal.
I walked to the boarded over picture window and looked through the cracks between the plywood. Not a mutant or baddie in sight.
Still, my stomach tightened as I geared up and then walked to the back door in my kitchen. I suspected that feeling would never entirely go away.
Outside my home was danger.
But I sort of liked that feeling, because it was something. An emotion in the endless, heavy silence. Sometimes I felt like it would smother me, that silence.
No one cared.
No one cared if I sometimes went a little crazy and huddled in a corner with a blanket over my head.
No one.
Literally.
There was no one left to care.
This wasn’t the house I’d lived in when everyone started dying, but I’d chosen it later because of its cellar—the door was in the back porch floor and easily hidden by a heavy rug—and because it was closer to town.
And because none of my family had lived or died inside it.
It was mine now.
I took a deep breath, gave my pockets and sheaths a habitual pat, picked up the machete leaning against the wall, then opened the door.
I locked the door, then turned to grab my bicycle.
Every day I did this.
Every day.
What else was there to do?
I’d have gone crazy long ago if I’d been too afraid to leave the house. I had to be out in the world.
Yes, I was afraid.
But the fear let me know I was alive.
Going to town gave me a purpose, and I needed that. I needed that badly.
I had a few goals when I made my runs.
One, get more water. I took cases and gallon jugs of water every time I went to town, then stored most of them in the cellar. I also had two fifty-gallon drums out back in which I collected rain water for bathing and bathroom purposes.
The water in town was nearly gone. I’d broken into houses to get water before I’d started in on the water in the mall, which was the only reason there was still a few cases left in the stores.
I also kept an eye out for a dog—preferably one that wasn’t rabid or wild. I would have killed for a pet. A companion. I adored dogs. One time, I’d seen a cat, but it wouldn’t come to me when I’d called. A dog, though. A dog would come.
Too bad the pets hadn’t been able to last long. They’d been killed, eaten, or had starved to death, poor things. Some of them roamed the streets in packs, wild and dangerous. They were why I carried the bear spray, mostly.
I lifted my face to the sun, breathing deeply of the fresh, cool air. Sometimes I had nightmares that I was trapped in the cellar and couldn’t reach the sun.
That almost scared me more than the thought of encountering a mutant.
I peddled out of the yard and into the street, tuned to the sounds—or non-sounds—of the area.
In my world, silence mattered.
It didn’t just matter. It was essential.
My legs enjoyed the workout the bike gave them as I peddled up a short hill. The world was quiet, still, lonely.
The same as it always was.
No baddies, wild dogs, or mutants in sight.
Perfection.
I coasted down the small incline, grimly vigilant. I wouldn’t relax until I made it back home. That was okay. Relaxing was for safe people. And dead people.
The road to town was as familiar to me as my own face. It wasn’t blocked or bloated with stalled cars from the before—no one had been trying to escape Crowbridge when they’d died. They’d gathered supplies—the town had, unfortunately for me, lost a lot of its supplies long before the worl
d ended—and boarded up their homes, then locked themselves in their basements and cellars and panic rooms—as though that would protect them from the sickness. The killing flu.
And they’d died there.
Oh, there was the occasional car, of course, but no piles of stalled or wrecked vehicles with the dead hanging out open doors.
Then after the disease had started wiping out all the people, the mutants had come.
Who knew how any of it had started?
I sure didn’t.
I’m sure someone knew—maybe the US government, though they’d denied it completely—but for most of us, it was like death. No one really knew what came after death, and no one really knew what had brought the disease and the mutants.
Maybe the mutants had unleashed the sickness, but who’d unleashed the mutants?
It took me sixteen minutes to reach the mall. Not that Crowbridge had much of a mall.
I pedaled slowly down Main Street, my head swiveling, the whirr of tires on asphalt the only sound in the crisp, early fall air.
There wasn’t a lot left, but the mall still contained a few supplies. It made me happy. Once I’d emptied the stores of their remaining supplies, what would I do every day?
There was a grocery store, a pharmacy, a Dollar Store, a small electronics store, a Taco Bell—I never went in there anymore—and a farm and feed store.
Someday, I’d have to find another town to get more supplies. Someday, when the mall had given me everything she had to offer, when she gave a last, gasping breath and fell over and died, dried up and depleted…
I smiled as the memory of my mother’s voice echoed inside my mind.
“Teagan, you are so melodramatic.”
“I guess I got that from you.”
I would have been a writer. I’d have been just like her.
And she was gone.
The world became blurry suddenly, like a vicious gust of rain was blowing against a window. But the rain was in my eyes.
Miss you, Ma.
When the time came to find another town, I’d have to start completely over. Leave my home with its boarded up windows and closed off rooms, my cellar, my familiar streets.
I was young—sixteen. If I didn’t die, I would eventually run through my stock.
But that was a worry for another day.
I parked the bicycle in front of the grocery store—where it would stay. I’d have to walk back home, and let me tell you; pushing a heavy, full cart up even a small incline was not easy. But it had helped me develop some muscle over the last two years.
