21

clementine

I DIDN'T EVEN know where I was going. I drove over the road, which was in bad shape, all cracked and falling apart. It's amazing how quickly nature starts taking back stuff like that if you don't have anyone constantly repaving and mowing and driving on the roads.

Eventually, Paladin told me to stop and he said that Noah could get out.

Noah looked at me and looked at Paladin.

I said, "You can stay with us if you don't want to go back to him."

Noah looked unsure. "You want to stay with him? " he said to me.

"Obviously," I said.

"Well, then, you know what I'm going to do," said Noah, sounding a little ashamed of himself. He jumped out of the car.

Paladin shut the door. He turned back to me. "Drive, baby," he said again.

I drove. "I don't know where I'm going," I wailed.

He climbed up into the passenger's seat and gave me instructions. He was wearing this windbreaker that was way too big, and he took it off and used it to wipe at his face, which was all bloody and broken. He'd been badly beaten.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I let them take you. I'm sorry they, um… I'm sorry for what they did. I'm sorry I didn't stop that."

"Because you could have," I whispered.

"I don't know. Maybe. I couldn't think of a way last night, no, but then I didn't show up just now with the intention to get you out, either. I was going to leave you there for even longer. That was the plan," he said. "So, maybe if I'd tried harder, I would have figured something out. Sometimes, I'm too cautious in the planning stage."

I didn't even know what to say to that.

"Sorry about that, too," he said. He slumped in his seat. "I should have kept Noah. I could have traded him back to Red for something, maybe. That was really dumb of me."

"You can't… is this what you're like?" I whispered.

He considered. He dabbed at his swollen lip where it was bleeding. "Sometimes," he said.

"But Paladin—"

"Fuck," he said. "Stop the car. I have to get him back."

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"It's obvious, Clementine, I trade Noah for the mates," he said. "Stop the car ."

"No," I said. "No, I will not." I gave him a fierce look, half expecting him to reach over and take the wheel or something.

He didn't. He just sighed. "Okay, I'll think of something else."

"Did you really do it, then? Entrails hanging over the chandelier?" I said.

He sighed again. "I mean… it went too far, is all. Kestrel and I, we got out of the other place, the first place, and something in us was still just—" There was a pause. "Something in me was still switched on. It wasn't Kestrel. That's the story he likes to tell me, because I felt so freaked out after it was over. He likes to tell me this story that it was all him, and Lazarus doesn't mind either, because Lazarus is already a big walking ball of guilt, so… But I wanted it to end. I thought that if we didn't make an example of these fuckers, that if we didn't do something to show everyone wh at happened if they messed with us, it would just keep happening. Every single time I settled anywhere after I shifted, it was the same story. It was me being forced to be some guy's bitch. I was done with it." He lifted a shoulder. "Just… done."

I still didn't know what to say. I drove.

"And with them, with both of them, Kestrel and Lazarus, they respect me now."

I glanced at him.

"I mean, maybe I didn't like that either," I said. "It's not totally respect, anyway, it's fear. They're afraid of me. You are, too, I guess. I wanted that to go away, so I just pushed that scary part of me away, I locked that whole side of me up, and I let them baby me. But I don't think it's going away again this time." He drummed his fingers against the dashboard of the car. "I really don't think it is."

"I don't think it really went away, anyhow," I said. "I could see it, sometimes."

He smiled. "Yeah, I think I knew that, too. Or I wouldn't have gone after you so hard. I wanted you to see it, to see all of me."

"Well," I said, "I guess I do now. And don't get me wrong, I don't like Red or anything, but Noah is my friend, and I was really worried that you would cross a line with him."

"No, come on, Clementine, I told you I wasn't going to hurt him."

"You didn't really. You said, ‘no permanent damage' and excuse me for not thinking that was really good enough. I mean, what does that even mean? You could hurt him a lot and claim he'll heal up or something, and if you did that, I don't know if I could forgive you."

"Okay," he said. "Noted."

"Noted?" I repeated, incredulous. "So, what? If I didn't say that, then you'd be fine with just wounding Noah?"

"Clementine," he said, "this is basically war at this point."

"If you love me," I said, "you are good to the people I care about. "

"I said, ‘Noted,'" he said. "Turn here."

"Where?" I said.

"That dirt road," he said.

I barely managed the turn. The car bumped over the rocky and uneven road even worse that it had on the old paved road. My teeth slammed into each other. I gripped the steering wheel hard.

"There, see?" he said. "This is Liam's place."

A farmhouse came into view. It was bigger than ours, and it had a wraparound porch. There were chickens roaming around in the front lawn.

A man with a gun appeared in one of the top windows and fired a shot.

I shrieked, slamming on the brakes and ducking down behind the steering wheel.

Paladin reached over and jammed the car into park. He threw open the door and waved up at the guy in the window. "Hold your fire!"

The guy lowered the gun.

Paladin got out, came around, and helped me out of the driver's side.

I melted into his arms, pressing my face into his chest, and I started to sob.

He clutched me against him, hand sliding into my hair, kissing the top of my head. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry," he said, again and again.

I felt myself colliding with my own body, settling into myself again, and it hurt . Not physically, but deep inside, my chest tight with sorrow and fear and anger and helplessness.

And then the door of the farmhouse was bursting open and Kestrel and Lazarus were running for us.

I found myself pressed between the three of them, all of them holding onto me, as I cried and cried and cried.

lazarus

WE HAD HER back, and I didn't see why we needed to play this game with Liam and the others anymore .

I held Clementine, who was curled up in my lap, cheek pressed into my chest, eyes closed, dozing in and out of things, as we sat in the living room in Liam's place. Paladin was off with Liam and one of the other guys who'd managed to bring in his whole pack—Greg. Other than that, we'd only been able to get the individual men who'd lost mates, and about half of them were dead.

So, we had Liam and his guys—four men. And Greg and his guys, five men. Nine total, plus three other men who were missing their mates. That was twelve. If you put our pack in, it came to a total of fifteen guys. Even if all of us were armed, we were going up against more than double that at the compound. And if Red decided to call in the loyalty of all the packs in the surrounding area (they would probably support his claim since Griff was out of the way), it would be huge numbers.

I was whispering to Kestrel that we just needed to take her and go. We could go further into the wilderness, take what we could, but start over somewhere else, where no one knew us.

Kestrel kept rubbing his forehead and furrowing his brow and saying maybe I was right.

But if we were going to do that, we had to get Paladin out of playing war strategy with the other guys, and Paladin sure as fuck liked playing strategy.

Clementine was pretty messed up. She hadn't talked much, and I'd been afraid she wouldn't want to be near us, wouldn't want us touching her, that kind of thing. I wouldn't have taken offense, if so. It would have made sense to me. But it felt good that she thought of us as safe, even after everything.

It kind of broke me, too.

I guessed, deep down, I didn't really think of myself as anyone's safe person. But the way she was curled up against my chest right now, eyes closed, she felt safe now. Safe. With me.

It hurt and it felt good and it made me feel humbled and happy .

So, yeah, okay, I wanted to run. I didn't want to make a stand against Red and his guys. A stand meant danger. It meant that we might die. I wanted to live now. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to keep her safe and help her heal and I didn't want any more of any of this pain or death or fighting for the rest of my damned life.

I ran a hand gently over the back of her hair. "Kestrel, maybe go see if you can talk to him."

"Paladin, you mean?" he said. "He won't leave."

"He might," I said.

"No, when he gets like this—"

"Well, he doesn't stay like this," I said. "And you know how to get him to, uh, revert."

Kestrel's eyes widened. "You're wrong about that. He was like this before. You didn't know him then is all. This is the real him, and whatever he regressed into, we don't want that back."

I considered that. I remembered the Paladin I'd first met versus the Paladin I'd live with for years.

"We do not want that," said Kestrel firmly.

"But the shit he did when we took the farm, that was next-level insanity. You're saying that's the ‘real him'?"

Kestrel dragged a hand over his chin and didn't say anything.

Paladin had gone feral in a way that had terrified me. I remembered the way he'd been, shirtless, blood smeared all over his narrow chest, laughing maniacally into the face of the guy he was perched on.

The guy's name was Kronk. Well, that was not his real name. That was just some name that everyone called him out here. Kronk was bleeding out, half alive, and Paladin was cutting strips of skin off the Kronk's forehead and chin and making Kronk watch as Paladin chewed them up. Paladin's teeth had been red-stained, and he wouldn't stop laughing .

I often thought back on it, thought that I should have pulled Paladin off of him.

It was only that Kronk fucking deserved it, and I think we were all enjoying it.

Kronk hadn't been in charge in that house or anything, but he'd easily been the most sadistic of the guys in the place. He made sure that he'd fucked every single person who lived there, for instance, made sure he'd had his chance to "break you in," as he called it, and he was a sick fuck about whatever he did. I remember he fucked me with a shovel handle and he flipped the thing around and put the blade up to my chin while he used his cock in me after that, while I was still sore and worried about wood splinters.

I don't even know what it is about men like that. I don't know why they exist or what gets turned on in them…

Maybe it's just the same thing as Paladin, though, maybe they're the same kinds of person. I don't know.

But Paladin only ever gets that way about revenge, not about… not against someone innocent. Oh, and it doesn't turn Paladin on.

Well.

I don't know about that either, because he's asked me to do things to him before, things we both liked, but it's different if you're turned on by receiving as opposed to giving and it's different if everyone's on board with whatever the scenario is. It's different than enjoying hurting someone, enjoying forcing someone.

Kronk was legit psycho, anyway.

I was never going to be sad that he was dead, and I sure as fuck wasn't sad that his last moments were watching getting his face peeled off and watching a maniac eat it. That was fine with me.

But I wished Paladin hadn't come so unhinged, I guess. I wish Paladin hadn't tipped off the edge into crazy like that.

Afterward, he'd refused to clean himself or get up. He'd laid around in filth and blood and started cutting himself and muttering weird shit to himself and the only way we got him out of it was to convince him, me and Kestrel both, though Kestrel started it, that it had never happened .

But the Paladin that came back to us after that, that Paladin was different in some way, younger somehow, almost as if we'd burned half of Paladin out, and all we were left with was this fragile thing that wanted— needed —our protection.

It was whatever after that.

I don't know.

You don't go through shit like that with two other people and not feel like they're family. You don't go through shit like that and not feel as though there's a bond. That it's love. We didn't say it out loud or anything, but we just knew it. No matter what, no matter how angry we got with each other, no matter what annoyances came and went, we were going to be together, the three of us, for all time.

I wasn't even surprised, really, that we bonded one woman together. It was exactly right, in the end.

"Look," Kestrel was saying, "I'll just go and tell him what we're thinking, how it doesn't make sense to stay. I'll just go and say that we have to weigh the consequences at this point. I'll just go and say he needs to think about Clementine."

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, okay."

Kestrel reached out and lightly stroked the back of her arm.

She stirred against me, smiling. "Someone said my name," she whispered, yawning.

"Stay asleep, pretty girl," said Kestrel.

Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at me and then Kestrel. "I could wake up."

"No, I'm on my way to go talk to Paladin," said Kestrel. He bent down and kissed her forehead.

She sighed, shutting her eyes. She yawned again. "I don't get it. It's not like I didn't sleep last night. I don't know why I'm so tired."

"Just rest if you need it," said Kestrel.

"You're probably sick of having me draped all over you, Lazarus," she murmured.

"Never," I said. "I don't ever want to let you go."

She smiled, snuggling into me. "Don't, then. Never let me go. "

I tightened my grip on her.

Kestrel and I met each other's gaze, and I knew her words had galvanized him the way they'd galvanized me. He got up and stalked off into the house.