Page 93 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Yourpretty boy.” He bowed mockingly, earning a snort from Ava.

My stomach flipped. No one had ever declared themselves as mine.

“We need to hurry.” Gedeon ignored our theatrics, scanning the open space we had to cross to reach the wall, his brain surely whirring in calculations of the probability of success. “His shift ends in an hour.”

“I haven’t heard the explanation yet.” Ava yawned exaggeratedly, a demonstration of having all the time in the world.

I side-eyed Gedeon. “He thinks I can’t defend myself.” Energy buzzed beneath my skin, and I rocked on my heels, unable to contain my eagerness to get moving.

“You can’t,” he stated.

“That’s why I have Zion and Ava. You didn’t have to come.”

Wordlessly, Gedeon crossed the few steps between us, grabbed my waist, twisted me around, and slammed my back into his front. Air ceased its circulation in my lungs.

With his forearm locked around my neck, he put me in a chokehold without actually strangling me, and his left arm wrapped under my breasts, trapping me pressed against him. “Get out.” His breath tickled my temple.

Instinctively, I gripped his elbow, forcing my head upward. “What?” For only the gods-knew-why reason, his actions stirred no fear and no sense of danger or menace in my gut. A precarious position this was to be in, yes, but…safe.

He tightened his hold on me. “Escape me.”

Wriggling, I pushed and kicked, channeling all my frustration into my moves. My foot flew toward his balls but collided with his thigh, blocking my hit instead. I twisted my elbow out of his grip and sent it to strike his side, right as he moved us to the left and I lost my footing, choking myself on his arm that clasped my neck.

“Fine. I’m not asadvanced”—I imbued the word with as much displeasure and mockery as I could muster—“as you in a fight.”

I had to start training.

I just hated exercising so freaking much. Going through one position to another, and to a third, and the twentieth, all while your muscles burned and you sweated your ass off—a session after a session of personal torture with no end in sight.

“Exactly.” He released me, but his fingers lingered on my hip. “Ava and Zion can take care of themselves and each other, but someone has to watch your back. And your front.”

“So you’re here because you don’t trust us to keep her safe? Seriously?” Ava moved away from the oak and flinched as a few strands of her hair stuck to cracked tree bark. She tucked the sun-kissed brown strands in the crooks of the braid framing her head like a crown. She’d said this way no one could use her hair against her in a fight. That was why I had my hair tied up too. Only in a messy high bun, because my patience had lasted a totalof two minutes before I admitted defeat in trying to wrangle my hair into the braid she’d shown me.

Gedeon pulled down the right sleeve of his black shirt to conceal his tattoo. “I’m here because Zion will not pay attention to himself while Kali is here. Both your job and mine is to protect these two. I do not need anyone getting captured or shot.”

“It’s still a stupid reason, but I’ll take it. You should have simply given the packages to me, and this would already be over.” Ava took out a pair of binoculars from her tiny bag, unpeeled the rubber lens protectors, and peeked from the tree line to inspect the field and the guards patrolling the top of the wall.

“Not happening without me. The three boxes were my idea, so I’m coming whether he wants me to or not.” I approached her side and scanned the fifty-foot concrete wall with electrical wiring on top—the demarcation line between oppression for the survival of the human species and freedom to live as you wished.

“Nice. You’ve got guts.” Ava nodded approvingly. “Now, let’s go. The access point is not far from here and the guards are moving away.” She stuffed the binoculars back into her pink cross-body bag.

Inconspicuousness is important, she’d said.

And that bright pink bag embellished with even brighter pink beads totally reflected her advice. I glanced at my wrist as the weight of a green band recalled my past. Ava might’ve been right. Rich people wore weird things, including pink bags. Colors were dedicated to the green-banded, as the rest, the commoners, the rubble, blended together dressed in gray, black, and the shades of in-between.

The sunset provided us with the camouflage of heavy shadows falling from the solid concrete wall as we bolted across the field of high grasses, our group half-invisible to the guards marching along the top of the wall.

Ava knocked once, a pause, then twice, a pause, once again, and a screech grated at my ears as the narrow metal door creaked open. A lanky man in a guard’s uniform appeared in the doorway. He seethed, a wrinkle between his fuzzy eyebrows deepening. “I said I could take two people. There are four of you. This will raise alarms.”

Ava placed a hand on the door, as if he was about to slam it in her face. “The passage is wide enough for a crew of soldiers, so don’t give me shit. If you can guide two through the wall, you can do it with four.”

“If I get caught?—”

“Then don’t,” Ava interrupted him. “The minutes you spend here arguing with me and not returning to your post, now those will definitely ring the alarm bells.”

“I don’t remember you being so bossy,” he groused, studying the field behind us.

“Is that your way of saying you missed me?” Ava grinned at his sigh, and explained to me, “He used to help us get through the gates before the security update.”