Page 20 of Brood (After the End #5)

My hair is better contained in a braid this time, so he doesn’t have to hold it back. When I’m done, he flushes the toilet for me and leans over to help me to my feet.

I collapse on the cold floor, too exhausted and devastated to even cry.

“Come on, love,” he murmurs thickly. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“I…can’t.”

He’s strong enough to pick me up if he wanted, but if I don’t cooperate, it’s awkward and difficult. He hesitates for a moment. Then goes to wet another washcloth and sinks to the floor beside me.

He pulls me over so my head is in his lap and starts wiping my face again.

I sniff. Shiver. Try to summon the energy to get up so I’m not sprawled out like this on him, but there’s nothing inside me that’s strong enough to do it.

The truth is that his hands and his body feel better—safer—than anything has in months.

“I wish you would trust me again,” he says softly, that gravel in his voice that proves he’s feeling something.

I whimper. Try to tighten myself into a ball, but he won’t let me. He strokes down my neck with the washcloth.

“I keep thinking about that day,” he says. “I think…I don’t know. They must have done it on purpose.”

I jerk. “What? Who? Done what?”

“I can’t stop rehashing that terrible day in my mind. Over and over again. And I can’t help but… They must have. They did it on purpose.”

“Did what?”

“If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone. Not Danny. Not Bella. No one.”

“Okay. I promise.” My stomach is still roiling, but I’m too distracted to be conscious of it. I reach up to grip the soft fabric of his shirt.

“Brody sequestered the council meeting that morning. For no reason at all.”

I know what it means to have a meeting sequestered. No one is allowed to enter or leave until it’s over. Guards get posted at the doors to make sure of it.

“The meeting was sequestered, and then it ran hours longer than it should have. There was nothing covered that required that kind of time or security. But it stopped me from getting to the appointment.”

“I don’t…understand. Why would they…?” I can’t get all the words out of my raw throat.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. I insisted I radio over to the doctor’s clinic to explain to you why I wasn’t there. But you never got that message. Did you?”

“No! No, I didn’t know anything about that!” Tears are slipping out of my eyes now. No way to stop them. “You’re saying you…you tried to tell me?”

“Yes. Of course I did. I promised I’d be there, and I would have been if there were any possibility at all.

I made an attempt to leave, but the guards at the door were armed.

If I’d pushed it, Brody would have claimed I was going feral, and everything would have gotten worse.

I’m starting to think that’s what he wanted.

To goad me into an action that would give him an excuse to get rid of me.

I’m so sorry, Cadence, that you had to go through it alone. ”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I sob, too weak to control myself.

“I was going to. I was starting to. But then Brody radioed. Right when I…” He makes a helpless sound in his throat. “It can’t be coincidence. I think they might have more cameras in this place than they’ve ever admitted to. He somehow knew to call me right then.”

“What did he say?”

“That the events of that day weren’t to be discussed. With anyone. At risk of penalty.”

“Penalty? Like being arrested in quarters?”

“Or worse. They’ve done far worse before.”

“They have? Who has? Not the council? You’re on the council!”

“I know. Not the council. But someone else is acting behind the scenes. Making things happen. I’ve figured out that much in my eighteen months as a chief.”

“Brody?”

He nods.

“And…and Rosamund?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. It’s all done in secret.”

I gulp. “Dr. Cameron?”

“Possibly. The heart attacks started twenty years ago when Brody joined the council, and he would need someone with medical knowledge.”

He sounds so bitter, I sit up with a gasp. “Will?” I choke. “Heart attacks? You mean they’re…? Vanessa?”

He nods very slowly. “I don’t know for sure. But something always felt off about it, and lately… I’m not wrong about this. The heart attacks are a way of getting rid of people who are inconvenient to them.”

“Why was she—”

“That’s what I can’t figure out. She always followed the rules.

Just like me. Just like you. But she couldn’t have a baby, so she was wasting a healthy man.

” His face contorts as he says the words.

“You were coming of age, and Danny wasn’t as good a genetic match as they wanted.

It was discussed multiple times in the weeks before Vanessa died.

For a while, it felt like Brody was grooming me—maybe to join his secret network.

I think he thought it was some sort of bribe. A young, fertile, beautiful spouse.”

I gag at the thought, and the gags almost immediately turn into heaves. I throw up again. I wouldn’t have even made it back to the toilet if Will didn’t lift me into position.

When it’s finally over, I slump over into his lap again. “I don’t understand,” I whisper. “So our marriage is nothing but…but…”

“No! That was their intention, but that’s not how it turned out.

That’s not all our marriage is. It isn’t what they wanted it to be.

But you understand, don’t you? If they would be willing to kill Vanessa for no reason other than that, then anything you know about their covert activities could put you in danger.

That day, I didn’t know you were pregnant, so I thought they might actually kill you.

Now they won’t, of course. But they could kill me. ”

I gurgle at the sheer terror that possibility provokes in me.

“Brody knows now I’ll never be on his side, and if he sees me as a threat, he’ll take care of the problem. And then what would happen to you? You’d be immediately married off to one of them.”

“Brody? He must be too old to get a new spouse. Surely not…not Dr. Cam—” I gag again at the very idea.

When I’ve stopped, he eases me back down and gently strokes my face with the washcloth. “I’m so sorry, Cadence. I didn’t know what to do. I thought you’d be safer if you didn’t know any of this. But I can’t stand it. I can’t stand for you not to trust me the way you used to.”

It’s too much to process. Too much to begin to sort out. So I’m crying and choking and desperately trying to breathe as I manage to say, “I’m glad…I’m glad you told me. It’s terrible. Terrible. But I’m still glad it wasn’t…it wasn’t what I thought.”

* * *

Two months later, they send me back to our quarters a couple of hours into my morning shift because the kitchen ventilation system stops working.

Everyone else has to stay and work without adequate airflow, but I’m pregnant, so they’re not taking any chances on a bad reaction with me.

Last month, most of the morning sickness finally cleared, so I’ve been working at least four hours in the morning and the full two-hour afternoon shift. It’s unnerving to be walking through the mostly empty halls at nine o’clock instead of working busily like everyone else.

I feel exposed. Aware of every camera in a way I never was before.

Ever since that conversation with Will where he told me the truth, it’s felt like threatening eyes are constantly on me. Even in our private rooms.

Will claims he’s searched and can’t find a camera there, but nothing feels safe anymore.

Our quarters are dark when I arrive, making it clear that Will hasn’t arrived yet for his shower. At least, that’s what I assume as I walk through the living area and toward the archway.

The door to the bathroom slides open as it always does, but the bathroom isn’t dark and empty.

The lights are on but halfway dimmed. The water is running. The shower door is partly fogged—but not enough to disguise what’s happening inside.

Will. Naked in the shower. Bracing himself with one hand against the wall. His other arm jerking weirdly.

I’m not completely oblivious, but I’m disoriented and stunned. It takes me a minute to figure out what he’s doing in there.

Masturbating.

I stand motionless, staring as my blood and the air around me pulse at the rhythm of his hand on his cock.

We still haven’t had sex since I got pregnant. It’s not necessary for breeding right now, and neither one of us has suggested it. But I’ve been thinking about it more and more as I’ve been gradually feeling better, and my body is suddenly a lit fuse. Hot. Throbbing. Expectant.

The shower pulses twice and then turns off. Will must have been in there for his full ten minutes, but he doesn’t stop.

He has no idea I’ve walked in. His muscles are rippling, tensing, like he’s pushing against the shower wall. His hips jerk against his hand. His butt cheeks are clenching.

Arousal has hit me so intensely and so fast that I ache between my legs.

He’s been breathing fast, but he suddenly lets out a long, raspy groan. At the very end, it becomes a word.

One word.

“Cadence.”

My name.

I should back away as he works through the final jerks of his release. Hurry out of our quarters as silently as possible. Never let him know what I’ve just witnessed.

But I can’t move. Even the air in my lungs is trapped in this heated daze. I suck in a loud inhale to clear my airways.

He hears it.

His body has visibly relaxed, although he’s still holding himself up against the wall. But now he stiffens dramatically and whirls around to face me.

His body is naked. Familiar. Strong and natural and deeply attractive. Dripping with water.

My eyes don’t behave themselves. They rake over him from his soaked hair and beard to his bare feet. Then up again, lingering on the thickness of his thighs, the breadth of his chest, the hair at his groin.

His cock.

Which should be flaccid, since he just brought himself to climax. Instead, it twitches as I stare. Starts hardening again.

“Will?”