His face twisted into what was more of a grimace than a smile. “Little snot.”
A somewhat hysterical bark of laughter burst from her lips before she even knew she’d felt the urge. “I never called you that!”
He chuckled. “Oh yes you did! Every time I shit my pants, you called me a little snot.”
Lexa abruptly burst into tears. “I never meant it!” she wailed. “I loved you more than anything.”
She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed and then he engulfed her in an embrace so tight she thought he would squeeze the life out of her. “You left me,” he muttered.
Lexa wailed harder. “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want to! Please, Kyley! Don’t believe that!”
His arms tightened even more before he slowly eased his grip. “I know that now. I understand now. All I could think at the time, though, was that you’d left me.”
Lexa pulled away to search his face, hoping against hope that he meant it. To her great relief, all she saw in his expression was love. Sniffing, she smiled at him. “You’ve gotten so big!” She released him long enough to tug at his scraggly beard teasingly. “You’re turning into a long beard.”
He looked offended briefly, but she saw his eyes were gleaming with suppressed laughter. He’d always been a happy, loving baby. It was of the things that had most endeared him to her—his sunny disposition. “Hell no, I ain’t! All growed up, though.”
“Grown,” Lexa corrected, smiling faintly. “I don’t think mama would’ve approved of ‘ain’t’ either.
His eyes darkened. He released a heavy sigh. Letting go of her, he stepped back. “I don’t remember her.”
It made her hurt to think he didn’t. Beyond the memories of her little sister and brothers, the only comfort she’d had for years were her memories of their mother. Thinking of Maura, unfortunately, not only dulled her pleasure but produced the fear that she was going to lose Kyle just as she had Maura—just as soon as he discovered what she’d done.
“I already know,” he said quietly. “Maura told me.” He shook his head. “She’s too grief-stricken right now to listen to reason, but I don’t let other people make my decisions for me. I wanted to hear it from you.”
A mixture of gratitude and guilt and anger flickered through Lexa. She wanted Kyle to believe she’d only told Gabriel because she’d thought it would be for the best for them. Partly it had been selfishness because she’d missed them so much, but she truly had believed Gabriel when he’d told her the udai would teach them how to make better lives for themselves.
She was certain Gabriel had believed everything he was telling her was the truth, too. She didn’t believe he’d lied to her when he’d told her he would try to find them for her or that he’d meant to harm them. There’d been no reason to lie to her then, nothing to gain.
None of that made her feel less guilty about it, though.
Kyle took her arm. “Come on. We’ll find a place without the prying eyes and talk.”
Uneasiness slithered through Lexa for the first time and she studied him doubtfully. He winced at the look on her face. “Has it been that bad for you, Lexy? You don’t even trust me anymore?”
Truthfully, she didn’t know who to trust anymore. Her life had been safer and far less complicated when she didn’t trust anyone at all.
She wanted to trust Kyle, though—desperately—and she allowed him to lead her deeper into the forest, wondering if he did mean to harm her.
She’d rather be dead, she thought abruptly, than to live with the certain knowledge that no one at all cared whether she lived or died, not even the people she loved.
She thought she might get her wish when he’d led her deeply into the woods and another man stepped out of concealment. Recognition was far easier that time. He hadn’t changed nearly as much as Kyle had—not physically anyway. She glanced from her brother Kyle to Will questioningly. Kyle settled a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it lightly—she thought to reassure her—and then stepped away, leaving her to face a hard-eyed stranger.
Will looked her up and down assessingly. “I need to know if you’re the big sister I remember, or someone I can’t trust. Are you with them? Or with us?”
Lexa lifted her chin at the tone more than the words, at the accusation in them and, quite suddenly, everything was clear to her when it hadn’t been before. “You got Maura’s man killed.”
His face darkened with anger, his lips forming a thin, tight line. “No, you got him killed when you betrayed us.”
Lexa felt her face blanch at the bald accusation but anger revived her.
“She did what she had to to survive, like we all do,” Kyle said angrily. “Isn’t that so, Lexy? Tell him.”
She looked at Kyle mournfully, realizing that they meant to force her to chose between them and Gabriel, to betray them or him. She swallowed with an effort. “In the beginning, yes.”
Kyle reddened, looked like he might cry.
Will looked like he wanted to spit on her. “That’s all I needed to know,” he said tightly.
Lexa’s heart jarred in her chest painfully when it looked as if he meant to surge toward her. Instead, he turned his back on her. “He’s a good man,” she said shakily, unwilling to give up without a fight. She didn’t want to have to choose between them! She loved them, too!
Will whipped his head around and sent her a look of disgust. “He isn’t a man.”
“He is!” Lexa said angrily. “He’s honorable and decent and … he’s been good to me, better than any man ever was! They may be different from us in some ways, but they’re still people.”
“Good!” Will spat with venom. “Should make him easier than I thought to kill.”
Cold terror went through her at that. “Will! You wouldn’t! Please tell me you wouldn’t do that!”
“I will make you one promise, big sister, and one only. I mean to kill as many of them as I can. I mean to drive them off our world if I can. They don’t belong here. This is our world! They call us savages and scavengers? What the fuck are they but a bunch of vultures … picking over our corpses and taking the best of what’s left for themselves?”
Lexa stared at him. “Why do you hate them so much? They haven’t done us any harm! I don’t know what happened any more than you do, but I know it happened a long time before they came here. So we either did it to ourselves like Sir said, or it was something that fell from the sky like the udai think.”
“They could’ve stayed the hell out of our business!” Will snarled.
Anger made Lexa incautious. “Left us to our own business? You mean left us to the monsters that were running things? It’s easy for you to say! You aren’t a woman! You don’t know what it’s like to have no one to protect you, to have any man that looks at you and decides he wants you beat you half to death and take what he wants!”
Kyle looked like he wanted to throw up. Will only glared at her. “Don’t I? Well what do you think those men wanted with me and Kyle?”
Horror washed over her. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen such things with her own eyes, but she’d deliberately blocked that possibility where it concerned her sweet little brothers. She mastered the urge to be violently ill. “The lawgivers are trying to stop that! Someone had to!”
“We needed to!” Will said furiously.
“But no one could or did!”
“I did,” Will growled. He moved toward her, stopping only when he was towering over her. “And I will.”
He’d as much as admitted that he was the one who’d led the attack Gabriel had told her about. She knew that was what he was saying. She didn’t doubt for a moment that he was completely capable. He was nothing like the little brother she’d known.
In a distant part of her mind, she was proud of him, proud of his strength and his determination to stop the strong from preying upon those weaker than them, but she couldn’t agree with his hatred of the udai. She didn’t like them. They were arrogant assholes, but they weren’t evil. Mi
sguided, maybe, but not willfully malicious. “They mean well,” she said a little weakly. “I truly believe that.”
“Then you’re a damned fool, Lexa! The only reason they brought us here was to make it easier to exterminate us. That’s what the round up is all about—finding all of us so they can make sure!”
Lexa blinked at him. “Why do you think that? It doesn’t even make any sense, Will! If that was what they wanted to do, they could’ve at any time! They don’t need to round us up!”
Something flickered in his eyes. Doubt?
“They couldn’t be sure they got all of us any other way. I have … friends. I know what the plan is.”
Lexa studied him, going over what he’d said. “Udai? One of them told you this?”
His lips tightened. “Breathe a word about any of this and sister or no sister ….” He left the threat hanging between them.
Lexa gaped at him in disbelief and dawning anger as he turned and strode away.
“You coming, Kyle?” he called back from the shadows.
Kyle looked at her miserably. “Lexy ….”
“Kyle!”
Lexa flinched when Will bellowed again. She swallowed with an effort. “You’d better go.”
Will’s face darkened with anger. “Comin’!” he called. He looked at her again, hesitated, and then grabbed her, hugging her tightly. “I love you, Lexy.”
* * * *
Gah-re-al knew it would’ve been far better not to linger in the ‘new city’ as the social workers referred to the sprawling encampment they’d assembled, but he also knew that there was no telling how long he might be on the trail when he left and he was reluctant to leave without trying to smooth things over with Lexa if possible.
Truthfully, he’d become uneasy about leaving her at all. Given the hostility her own sister had exhibited toward her, he wasn’t convinced that the social workers and guards together were watchful enough to prevent her from being harmed. Up until that incident even though he had no longer been able to ignore the fact that the group he’d brought with Lexa were antagonistic toward her because of her liaison with him, he’d still believed she was safe enough. There might not be anyone looking out for her specifically, but they were all well aware of the propensity of the humans toward violence and the guards were alert for any signs of an eruption.
Those thoughts occupied his mind as he stood on the rise to the south of the field, watching Lexa whenever she came into view and waiting for an opportunity to speak to her alone.
He debated the advisability of mentioning his concerns to Phil-a-shee given their recent history, but she was in charge of the field operation and if he spoke to anyone at all it would have to be her. He certainly didn’t want to go to Maya about it and, in any case, although Maya was technically in charge of the entire operation, she disliked sullying her hands. As far as he knew she hadn’t been within sniffing distance of her pet project since she’d approved the chosen site. She wouldn’t do anything beyond relay the message to Phil-a-shee … if she felt like it.
Lawgiver Raphael joined him after a while.
Irritation flickered through Gah-re-al. They’d grown up together in the orphanage and had become more like brothers than just close friends over those hard years, forming a bond that had weathered the years since then when they’d been separated by the circumstances of their careers. Despite that, they’d both changed a good deal, and he wasn’t as certain as he once had been that they still saw things eye to eye—not everything anyway.
More specifically, he doubted Raphael would approve of his interest in Lexa any more than any of the others—if as much. It had been Raphael more than anyone who’d influenced his views on the humans to start with, he realized abruptly. A few years older than him, he’d been in the habit of looking up to Raphael as a child and youth and, since Raphael had arrived at the colony before him and had been appointed as a lawgiver a full year before he was, he hadn’t questioned Raphael’s views on the natives. He’d considered that Raphael must know what he was talking about.
“You could always just march boldly down there, arrest her, and haul her off for a few hours of intensive ‘questioning’,” Raphael drawled suggestively, amusement threading his voice.
Gabriel sent him a sharp look, trying to assess from his expression whether the comment had been threaded with sarcasm, and certain knowledge, or if Raphael was simply fishing. “I could,” he responded after a moment, “but then my objective isn’t to make her more of a target for the malice of the others.”
Raphael drew his gaze from the field and met Gabriel’s gaze assessingly. “In that case I’d suggest that you wait until everyone is sleeping tonight, drag her scrawny ass out of the tent, and haul her off—regardless of her objections—to a safer place. This one isn’t … safe.”
Gah-re-al didn’t especially like Raphael’s reference to Lexa’s scrawny ass. In fact, it pissed him off, but he was distracted by the sense that Raphael was referring to more than the fact that the natives were opposed to one of their own fraternizing with the udai. “Skinny or not, she has a damned fine ass and I’ll thank you not to cast aspersions,” he said evenly.
Raphael’s expression lightened. He chuckled. “There’s a lesson. Never make judgments before you know the facts. My apologies. I simply assumed she was scrawny since most of them are half starved.”
Gah-re-al frowned. “You haven’t actually seen her then.”
“No, but I’ve heard an earful.”
“And?”
The humor vanished from Raphael’s features. “She isn’t safe … here. Honestly, I don’t know if she would be safe anywhere, but she damned sure isn’t safe here.”
“Sooo … you’re suggesting I haul her off … To where?”
Raphael studied him assessingly for several moments. Apparently, he decided he still trusted him. “I have a place.”
Surprise flickered through Gah-re-al. Actually, it would’ve been more accurate to say that he was stunned. “You have a place?”
Raphael chuckled again, but Gah-re-al wasn’t sure if it was because of his surprise or if something else had prompted it. “Yes. Me.” He shrugged. “As it happens I’ve been considering what it might be like to live like everyone else for a while.” He lifted his head and looked around. “I’m thinking this isn’t a bad place to give it a try. Reminds me of my home world.”
“So you carved out a place for a homestead? I’m guessing it isn’t close to any of the colonies?”
“Nope.”
“And you’re offering to let me take Lexa there?”
“Yes … until you can build your own place—assuming you’ve got that in mind.”
Gah-re-al frowned. He hadn’t gotten that far in his thinking, but he realized as soon as Raphael suggested it that that was the source of a good bit of his restlessness of late. He was weary of soldiering, tired of wandering endlessly. The orphanage hadn’t been much of a place to encourage anyone to settle down, but it had been a home of sorts and he was tired of not having one. “You’ve got a woman,” Gah-re-al guessed.
Raphael grinned abruptly. “Pretty little thing. Mean as a snake, mind you, but things are never dull,” he said with a wry chuckle.
Gah-re-al frowned thoughtfully. “What makes you think she’d welcome Lexa?”
Raphael shrugged. “I think they can rub along well enough, keep each other company.” He paused for a significant moment. “Claire’s human. And she’s pregnant.”
Gah-re-al suddenly felt as if the ground had dropped out from under him.
Chapter Seventeen
Despite his fear that that was a very real possibility, Gah-re-al had managed to convince himself that it wasn’t likely, whatever the justices thought. They hadn’t actually done any studies to see if the humans were close enough to the udai to breed, but they were worlds apart. What were the odds?
“Yours?” he croaked.
Raphael glared at him furiously. “What the fuck do you mean by that?” he growled
.
Gah-re-al was dimly aware that he’d angered Raphael with the question, but his mind was too focused on his own concerns to warn him of the danger. “You’re saying it’s possible? I mean, Lexa could be pregnant?”
Abruptly amused at the look on Gah-re-al’s face when he realized Gah-re-al hadn’t intentionally insulted Claire, Raphael relaxed. “That depends,” he drawled.
“On what?”
“If you’ve been poking her.”
The Lawgivers: Gabriel Page 24
