by Megan Curd
Xander tossed the needle on a metal tray next to him. He worked quickly but explained as he went. “Morphine. But like I said, you may have made friends with an undercover Polatzi and never even known it. You can never trust anyone but yourself.”
“Then why would he have encouraged me to break into a government building to steal rations when he gave his away to those who needed them more?”
Xander’s left eyebrow rose. “You’re a bit of a rebel, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Well maybe,” I said, flustered. “I just don’t want people to be hungry, and I don’t have a problem taking rations from people who have more food than they know what to do with.”
He smiled as he swabbed the crook of my arm with alcohol. The smell of it burned my nose. “You might have a little bit of a modern day Robin Hood in you,” he said, then wrapped my arm with a blue rubber tourniquet. “Look away if you want.”
I turned my head away as there was a pinch and a sting. I breathed out of my nose and reminded myself it was better not to look. “I don’t make a habit of being delinquent; it was a one-time occurrence for a friend who’d helped me. It seems unfair that some live extremely wealthy while others live day to day if they’re lucky.”
“And how did your Governor respond to the break in?”
“I think he suspected me, but he didn’t do anything. He needed me for my ability too much. Wanted me to openly support his cause to get others to fall in line.”
“And you didn’t because…?” Xander trailed off. The rubber tourniquet loosened and I felt the blood pulsing from the vein in the crook of my arm.
I looked down and my vision blurred for a second before I pulled myself together. “Because I thought it was a bunch of political bull crap. I was one of the few Elementalists keeping our Dome afloat, and Elementalists are highly regarded in our Dome. The governor wanted us on his side. I don’t like being used as a government tool, so I ignored his letters.”
Xander laughed. “I like your spirit.”
I watched the once frosty clear tubing turn red as my blood raced through. “Yeah, well, that’s a first.”
“How do you mean?”
I shrugged, then remembered the needle in my arm and stilled. “I didn’t win any favors for my so-called spirit at home.”
“You were by far the youngest in your class. Makes for a difficult situation in even the best cases.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How’d you know that?”
“Riggs does his homework before he commits to a new student. He and I are close.” Xander replied. “Although I do have one question that bothers me.”
“What’s that?”
“If you were one of a few Elementalists keeping your dome afloat, why would you leave? Are you so selfish that you’d condemn your entire dome to death to avoid helping them, or did you not think that through?”
The accusation sent chills down my body and my heart pounded in my chest. My mouth went dry and it hurt to swallow. How could I respond to that? I honestly hadn’t even thought of it when it all happened—things flew at me so fast—but he was right. Had I condemned my entire dome? What would Mom and Dad think of that? I ached inside, worried now that I had caused more harm than I could ever fix.
Xander was crouched over the bloody stump, his hand rubbing the side of his face like an artist examining a blank canvas. Xander’s expression made me think he wasn’t overly confident in the condition of his patient. The heart rate monitor continued to show a steady heartbeat and while not a doctor, I knew that was a good thing. “I can cauterize and stitch the limb as best possible. Beyond that, there’s nothing more I can do except wait and hope your generous donation pulls him through.”
He’d moved on without an answer to his question, and I was grateful, even though his accusation seeped through my veins like a poison. I was a deserter. “And while we wait, will Legs be ok?”
“Most of the time we run more of a catch and release program. Jax brings them in banged up and I fix whatever I can. Sari gives them food she sneaks out of the kitchen, and we send them back wherever they came from. Mr. Legs here is a bit more of a demanding case. I’m not sure how we’re going to conceal him.”
I puckered my lips as I thought through the situation. There were so many things I didn’t know about this place. How could I help? I started throwing ideas out, hoping something would stick. “Sari mentioned cameras. She even broke one when we were trying to get back here. Are they everywhere?”
Xander frowned. “More places than we probably know. Men work hard to attain power, but work even harder to retain it. It’s an exhausting process that only ends in paranoia. I believe Riggs is getting there.”
“Is there anywhere Legs could stay that he wouldn’t be under surveillance?”
A choked cough stole our attention. “Pike, don’t you go anywhere that doesn’t end up with someone in trouble?”
Xander was beside him instantly. “To be fair, you were the one trespassing, Sir.”
Despite just coming to, Legs was undeterred. His voice was weak but firm, and his grey eyes were as hard as stone. His words slurred slightly, but I figured it was from the medication coursing in his veins. “I came for Pike and Alice. We had reason to believe they were here, and we were right.”
Xander put a hand on Legs’s chest as he tried to push off the stretcher. “Legs, you’ve been through major trauma. You need blood, stitches, and rehabilitation. I can help you with that, then we can discuss Miss Pike and Miss Dobson.”
Legs scoffed. “A major trauma? What kind of —” He had tried to push himself upward, and realized that he only had one arm. “My… my arm… ”
His voice cracked. He jerked back and tried to rip off the buckles that strapped his waist to bed. “What the hell happened to my arm? Oh, my God!”
He kicked and lashed out. His foot connected with the metal tray containing the needles, scissors, and small knife Xander used to fix his mutilated arm. Surgical tools flew in all directions. Legs ripped the tubing from around his nose and jerked away from the monitors.
“Get away! Don’t touch me!”
“You knew you lost your arm on the way here!” I yelled back. “What’s your problem, Legs? Xander’s trying to help you!”
“He doesn’t remember what’s happened to him,” Xander called as he ducked a stethoscope that Legs threw at him, “It’s normal in trauma patients! We need to subdue him!”
Panic pervaded the room and filled my pores. I thought of Riggs and how he’d lashed out at Jaxon the night before. What would he do if he saw this scene unfolding?
Just then Jaxon flew through the door and latched it quickly behind him. “What in the devil is going on?”
His eyes locked onto the flailing Legs. Jaxon moved across the room with cat-like finesse and tackled Legs to the ground. Legs continued to wrestle and fight, but Jaxon was bigger and stronger.
A dull throbbing in the crook of my arm made me realize that the needle had been ripped out of my arm in the sudden attack. A small, pulsing stream of blood snaked its way down my forearm from the open wound. I held my bloody arm with my good hand while Xander attempted to bind Legs’s ankles together. Legs thrashed wildly, but Jaxon had him pinned.
The only problem was that Legs found the scalpel nearby.
He swung the metal blade viciously. The hum of the steel as it ripped through the air was bad, but not nearly as bad as it burying deep into Jaxon’s right forearm.
“Dammit!” Jaxon roared. “You nut job, we’re trying to help you!”
Jaxon wrapped his good arm up under Legs’s neck. He squeezed tightly and a moment later, Legs went limp.
“Well, that was completely worth missing french toast this morning,” Jaxon complained as he pulled the scalpel from his flesh. He pulled his head away when blood oozed from the wound. “Good God, Xander, help me.”
Xander finished restraining Vince and started reattaching the necessary tubes. I look
ed dismally at one of the bags of my blood. It lay on the ground, slashed. Blood pooled around it, and tears pricked my eyes. All that work to fix Legs now spilled like a red blanket across the once-pristine floor.
Jaxon spoke, this time more urgent. “Xander, I need help. I may lose the arm.”
“Poor taste in jokes, considering the situation,” Xander chastised him.
“Nothing is more disappointing than wasting perfectly good sarcasm on an unappreciative audience. Now fix me before this blood makes me pass out.”
Xander sighed and waded through the mess of his office. “Nothing’s sterile now.”
“Put a needle over a lighter,” Jaxon suggested. “I don’t care, just stitch this up. I have to take Avery to Riggs.”
My stomach clenched. “Why?”
“He wants to make sure you’re not traumatized from today,” Jaxon said, his lips curling into a smile. “Which, by the way, you’re not. You spent the morning in your room reading and enjoying the luxuries that Riggs has so graciously provided you.”
“I see. And what am I supposed to say if he asks questions I don’t know the answers to?”
“Say you’re excited to start your courses and help fix our broken planet any way you can. That should placate him for now, but if not, just start sobbing and saying how you are overwhelmed by this place,” he said as he winced. Xander was stitching him up. “By the way, he’ll probably bring up your parents.”
“I don’t know anything about my parents.”
“Precisely why he wants to discuss them. He does.”
It felt like I’d been doused in ice water. I’d always wanted to know about my parents. Now that the possibility of gaining answers lay before me, I questioned if I really wanted to know. It was a double-edged sword; if I didn’t know, I could fashion myself a set of parents who loved me dearly and did everything they could for me. If it turned out that wasn’t the case, there was no way to keep that image alive in my mind. “What if they were bad people? What if it’s better off to not know?”
“Don’t sweat it,” Jaxon said, now making a fist and flexing the muscles in his forearm. They rippled under his caramel skin and pulled at the fresh stitches. Xander pursed his lips in distaste. “There’s nothing that could beat my dad in the suck-factor.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because Riggs is my dad.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Jaxon picked at the gauze that Xander had wrapped around the stitches. The edges were already frayed from his mindless tugging, and we’d only left Xander’s office five minutes before. I put a hand over his to stop him from ruining it completely. “If you don’t stop playing with it, you won’t have anything left.”
“Funny,” he said. A wicked grin worked at the edges of his lips. “I’ve always heard that if you don’t stop playing with it, you’ll go blind.”
“Pervert.”
“Sixteen. Male. That shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
His long, sinuous frame rested between two of the crenelations in the outer wall of the fountain in the atrium. Misty water danced in the sunlight and fell on his shoulders. The simple white shirt he wore was quickly becoming see-through. It rested tight against his chest and I watched it rise and fall with every breath he took.
He gripped the stone pillars until the tips of his fingers were white. His smile was easy, as though he was enjoying a joke that only he was privy to, and his eyes gleamed from the rays of the setting sun. “Oh Pike, I’ve known you for less that forty-eight hours and I already know how to get under your skin.”
“No you don’t,” I lied.
So many things about him irritated me. The haughty way he held himself, his constant sarcasm and dry humor, the way he held his lips to the side when he was winding up a new insult. Most of all, I was irritated with the fact that he was giving me a smug look while twirling a blonde dreadlock around his long finger…and I liked it. I liked him. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Why do you call me Pike? Only Legs calls me that.”
“Why do you call me Jaxon? No one calls me that.”
His question caught me off-guard. “I — well, your friends call you Jax.”
“And you’re saying you’re not my friend?”
Jaxon’s eyes were clear and inquisitive. He raised an eyebrow, obviously waiting for my response.
I cleared my throat. “Well, like you pointed out, I’ve only known you forty-eight hours. That’s hardly enough time to make friends.”
He pushed off the fountain and shook his head as he passed me, making an audible tsk noise behind his teeth. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You were at your old dome how long and didn’t have any friends?”
“That’s out of line,” I whispered, rooted to my spot, as I stared at Jaxon’s back. Was there any part of him that didn’t have muscles? It seemed ridiculous that someone would have that much definition in their back.
I shook my head. Avery, get a freaking grip. He’s a tool bag, whether you could wash your clothes on his abs or not.
Still, his words cut through me. Truth was, those very words drifted through my mind on a daily basis when I lived in Dome Four. Why I couldn’t let down my walls long enough to make a friend besides Alice?
Somehow I formed a coherent sentence. “You don’t know me.”
“Let me be your friend, and I’ll get to know you.”
“Make me think that’s a good idea.”
Jaxon dipped his head in acknowledgement and walked toward the library corridor. “Fair enough,” he waved a hand to beckon me. “Smile at Riggs when he talks. Make him feel important. He wants you to be happy here. If you play your part, he’ll give you anything you want.”
Jaxon’s stride was long, and I was doing double time to keep up. He seemed so sure of himself, so in control of his destiny even in this place, where he claimed we were imprisoned. I didn’t have a shred of doubt that what Jaxon wanted, Jaxon got. He owned his life.
I so desperately wanted to own mine as well.
Could he help me take control of it, or would he cause it to crash around my feet?
For some reason, it felt like either option would be exhilarating if Jaxon were involved.
Exhilarating and dangerous.
The back of Jaxon’s shirt was soaked. The small “v” of muscles at the base of his spine flexed as he craned his neck to make sure I was still behind him. Why did that give me butterflies?
Jaxon turned and smiled. “Are you even listening to me? You’re way past your ogling allotment.”
“I’m not ogling you.”
“Trust me, I’ve experienced enough ogling to know it when I see it. If you’d prefer to ogle in peace, I’ll turn around again. There have been contests where my ass took first place in squeezability.”
“You must have been the only person in the running.”
He grinned mischievously. “And the only one to vote, but a win is still a win, right?” His smile faded as the cherry doors came into view. He swallowed and clenched his jaw, his face losing the joviality that moments before sent thrills through my body. “Do what I told you, okay?”
“What if you’re feeding me to the wolves? You are Riggs’s son.”
A split second passed before Jaxon towered over me with an intense gaze. He slowly lifted his hand and almost touched my face, but then acted like he thought better of it and lowered it to his side. His voice was barely above a whisper when he leaned into me.
“If I wanted to feed you to the wolves, I would have left you in Dome Four to suffocate to death.”
“So you’d rather bring me somewhere that I’m forced to stay against my will?”
“Pike…” he said, trailing off, his steel blue eyes boring into mine.
People said you could see a person’s soul through their eyes. While I didn’t believe it, Jaxon’s expression made me feel something. There was an intensity I’d never seen before. Those blue eyes that didn’t match his caram
el skin, yet seemed so perfectly in place. I closed my eyes before I started to cry. I felt so alone. I needed a friend. I needed Alice, not Jaxon.
But for some reason, I felt at home there beside Jaxon.
“Pike,” he said again as he lifted my head to his. “Look, I’m not saying what I did was right, but I had to. And…and I wanted to see you after hearing Riggs talk about you for so long. I’m selfish to a fault. You’re better off to not get attached to me, or anyone else here, for that matter.”
All the same, he leaned in cautiously, as though daring me to argue with him. I stood stock-still, afraid that moving would shatter the moment into a thousand pieces. My heart thrummed in my ears, and I prayed that Jaxon couldn’t hear it. He was too close, too personal, too intense.
He was too much.
I took a step back. “And yet you leave me completely in the dark about everything. I have no clue how you know what you do, or why you’re supposedly against your father. You say this place is bad, that your father is bad, but he’s been kind to me.”
“Wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
I stared at him intently. “Are you a wolf as well?”
He said nothing as he closed the gap and his lips grazed my ear. I closed my eyes. Precious seconds ticked by and neither of us moved. I waited, breathless, warring with myself against kissing him. No, I couldn’t.
Well…I could…and it would probably be magnificent.
Just once. Just to see what it was like.
Before I could make a decision, his warm exhalation tickled the side of my face as he pulled away. I opened my eyes to see him looking at me curiously, mouth slightly agape on the left as it curled into a smile.
“When you’re done here, go back to your room. I’ll come over after lights out and explain what I know, then you can decide who the wolves are.”
Before I could respond, he sauntered into the library as though he held the world on a string.
“Mr. Riggs,” he said with a small bow, “Miss Pike, as you requested.”
Riggs sat at the oak desk situated in front of the massive fireplace, reading old papers that looked water-stained and burnt at the edges. The flames danced and crackled merrily in the fireplace. I gazed at the desk, impressed by its ornate fleur-de-lis carvings around the edges and swirls on the legs. It looked as though it was one piece of wood; the tree it came from must have been gigantic.
