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I looked up into the dark eyes that stared back, breathing in his aura of sandalwood and patience. “Let’s say we assembled some scouting parties and sent them off. What about the refrigeration issue? We can’t back up my blood or store it anywhere, which means they can’t carry around vials of the cure. When they found a nymph, they’d have to come back and retrieve me.” I’d just sit around, waiting. “Sounds like a waste of time.”

“Time you could use to build your own life. Your own family.”

Flashes of Annie and Aaron, their tiny sallow bodies entwined in death, roiled my gut. My mouth went dry, and the backs of my eyes burned. I tried to pull my hand from his.

His hold tightened, his gaze a heavy sea of black. “A new family would never replace the one you had.”

“No?” My voice snapped low and harsh through the woods.

Was he trying to provoke me? Damn him, I needed detachment from those memories, and I sure as fuck didn’t want new ones. Losing my children and husband had twisted me into a killing, fucking, fighting shell of the person I’d been before the aphid plague. Soft-heartedness made me weak, and I refused to be a liability.

A few paces ahead, Roark paused and met my eyes over his shoulder. His eyebrows dug together, questioning. Could he hear the conversation?

I shook my head. Stay out of this.

Michio lowered his chin, lips inches from mine, his tone deep and unyielding. “Repopulation is the priority.”

Why was he hitting so hard on this? I was just one woman, and one was not enough to repopulate the planet with a viable genetic distribution. My focus was on reviving the female population. So they could do the reproducing. So I wouldn’t have to birth children and risk losing them.

I couldn’t go through that again.

“I’m not getting pregnant.” I twisted my wrist in his grip. “I still have the IUD and—”

“Your implant is nearing expiration.”

“It lasts five years. I’ve had it for four.”

“Its effectiveness will start to decrease soon. Not to mention infections and other complications that could happen without regular checkups.” He released my hand. “I need to remove it, Evie.”

“The hell you do.” I stepped back, stumbling over a fallen branch.

He moved to close the distance, and I slashed a hand between us, halting his approach.

I needed him to understand so we could move forward and never have this conversation again. “This is not the same world that invented candy sprinkles and merry-go-rounds.” I pointed a shaky finger at the horizon, my whisper seething with vehemence. “I’m going to go out there and cure women so they have the choice to conceive, but I will not bring a little girl into this raping, stinking hell we now live in.” I couldn’t fail another child.

His nostrils flared. “Your attitude is disappointing.”

“Fuck you, Michio.” Blood and death boiled through my veins. I’d watched Annie and Aaron grow for seven years. Watched them die for ten hours. This wasn’t attitude. It was fucking heartbreak. “You’ve never had a child, never had one ripped away. You have no right to judge me.”

“I have the right to want my own child,” he said quietly, hauntingly.

My face heated. He’d never voiced it, but I’d glimpsed the longing in his eyes when I talked about my children. I pressed a hand against my aching chest, hating myself for being so selfish, hating him for asking this of me. I couldn’t do it. “Not with me.”

Roark leaned against a tree twenty yards away, but the bounce of his Adam’s apple and his hard-staring eyes, purposefully directed away from mine, meant he’d heard the exchange. Did he want children, too? But he was celibate!

Beside him, Elaine’s doll-like face held way too much interest.

Michio loved me, but I wasn’t so arrogant to believe that was enough. That I was enough.

I turned back to him with lead in my stomach. “Will you turn to another to bear your children?”

Shifting his gaze to Elaine, he didn’t answer. Which was the answer I didn’t want. I waited for him to look away from her, silently pleading him to give me his eyes. Every second stabbed like a sword through the heart until the hurt roared into burning rage.

My elbow connected with his windpipe. He shuffled back, gasping. Elaine shrieked, and the approach of Roark’s boots landed behind me.

I lunged at Michio again. A prickly bush caught our fall, and my thighs caged his ribs. I freed a dagger from my arm sheath and angled the blade across his throat, the hilt burning in my palm. “You don’t need my permission to fuck her.”

The woman who—just that morning—announced she wanted babies and smiled gleefully when Jesse told her the Lakota would gather more men while we were gone. Men to protect her and father her children.