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Eden

Don’t let your fear of being alone

turn you into someone who makes it a reality.

“Traitor!”

Another man from Red Zone spits at my feet, and Lucky yanks me behind him. Shouts crash around us in furious waves. We’re encircled by armored men and women... and some of our own people.

The Sinners only left us with one weapon each, but one weapon is more than enough to tear me apart.

“How could you do that to Heather?” Jennifer demands.

I’m shoved from behind, then someone grabs my shoulder, and I whirl around to see Sloane staring at me in confusion. In hurt . “Were you working with them? Shit, Eden. .. Make it make sense.”

“I—” I stammer, and her fingers dig in hard enough to bruise.

“Remove your hand or forfeit it, Sloane.” Jasper’s voice blows in like a winter wind from behind me.

We’re on the brink of the forest and the city, where the Sinners dumped us minutes ago with a final warning to behave. The moon’s feeble blue light paints everyone in wan, miserable hues.

Sloane’s jaw flexes, but she drops her hand. Ava moves in and squeezes her arm.

“Heather trusted you.” Ava is hard-eyed and unforgiving as she adds bitterly, “We all did.”

Heather’s furious, betrayed eyes slice my memory.

My stomach churns, acidic with shame and adrenaline... and anger. This wasn’t supposed to happen. If my lies were a tangled mess, Alastair somehow twisted them into a noose. Intangible, unlike the one that silenced Sam forever—but surely enough to kill all the faith our people have in me.

The faith my brutes have in me, too.

I glance at the woods, at all the shadows that infect the trees—at the endless, endless loneliness of them. My palms turn clammy.

“It wasn’t like that,” I insist, and my pulse pounds in my throat. “We had a deal. Alastair promised they’d take it all down from the inside. That he’d free the women and children. I couldn’t leave them to Sam. It was their only chance.”

My eyes catch on Beau as he bandages a man’s bleeding arm, and he sends me a reassuring smile that doesn’t quite reach his somber eyes.

It doesn’t reassure me at all.

“He swore he’d free them,” I finish shakily.

A reedy man from Red Zone scoffs. “And you believed him?”

“Fucking idiot,” a woman mutters, and I flinch.

My stomach is sulfurous. Their anger, miasmic. It clogs the air, and all the panic and fear I’d held at bay tonight threatens to thunder through my composure.

Where is Dom? He took the lead with Red Zone before. I stood my ground with Alastair, but it’s starting to shake under my feet, and I can’t see him anywhere.

I need to make them understand. Communication, Jasper told me, and I’ve been working on it. If I can only talk to them calmly, I can fix this. Somehow, I can fix this .

“This is her fault!” someone shouts.

“What are we going to do about Bentley?”

“We have to get them back!”

The frightened, angry voices bleed together, and the jostling gets worse.

Lucky steps in close beside me, his eyes on the mob and every muscle hard, and Jasper’s cool hand slips up the back of my neck in a possessive gesture that makes me shiver.

They’re . . . not letting me go.

I bite the inside of my lip at the immediate sting in my eyes. That’s what this means, right? They won’t make me be alone again? They won’t, they won’t, they won’t.

Soaking in their strength, I turn toward Arthur, Bentley’s warm-faced second-in-command.

The scarred, scored-out city sign towers behind him in a belated warning.

CYANIDE IS SUICIDE

STAY OUT!

Arthur’s broad features are set and serious now, his armor damaged and dusty.

It doesn’t look like a costume today.

My hands tremble as I lift them, and I force them to steady. “We survived. We’re alive, and they’re not coming after our homes anymore. I understand you’re angry at me—God knows I deserve it—but Sam is dead and... and at least Alastair can be reasoned with.”

Oh, God.

Can he be reasoned with? I have never felt so outplayed. So incredibly outmatched.

In veiled promises tonight, he told me he’d keep the women and children safe—when we were at his mercy and there was no reason at all for him to do so. That’s something . And Alastair could have killed us, but instead he let us go, and ... and...

I try to slow my rapid, panicked breathing.

Sure, he let us go, but with nothing except a single ephemeral promise of taking more in the future. More we don’t have . He didn’t just defeat us, he humiliated us and crushed us beneath his boot.

He took everything from us.

From me .

Alastair wants an empire.

And I think I just gave him one.

Arthur glances around at the mob with a grave shake of his head. “We didn’t secure any food, any medicine. Our people are injured... and we lost Bentley. We have children, teenagers, to protect. His nephew... You don’t understand how much Bentley does for us. We need him.”

Soren. My heart slices open a little more when I think of his haunted eyes and the worship in them when he talked about his uncle.

Alastair’s promises for safety apply to Heather and Bentley too, surely. If they’re collateral, he won’t hurt them. He can’t. Right? Even after Heather tortured him?

Oh, God. Heather . Whatever her reasons, she put herself at risk instead of me again.

And I let her.

I swallow my nauseous guilt, steeling myself as I cast around for a solution. Any solution. “You could all come back with us to Bristlebrook. We could.. . you could consolidate there.”

“And sleep where?” Ava breaks in. When I look at her, her eyes are dark with distress. “And eat what food? We didn’t secure any of the resources we needed either, Eden. Or did you forget our people are starving back home?”

Sloane curses. “Should we go back in? How the fuck are we supposed to go back like this?”

“Getting our asses kicked once wasn’t enough for you?” Beau mutters as he secures the man’s bandage. “We go back to the Den, we die.”

“If we go back home with no food, we die, asshole,” Ava shouts, her voice breaking.

I open my mouth. Thankfully, nothing comes out. I feel like I could throw up. Jasper squeezes the back of my neck, and I press back into the touch like it might hold me up.

We’re all in ruins, and I can’t see a way out.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to Arthur, and the words feel dredged up from my soul. “I’m so sorry.”

“We can’t feed ourselves with sorry.”

I nod, taking the hit, and Arthur meets my eyes. “You need to make this right. We expected a fight, not an ambush. I need to get things settled back home, but... expect us. We need a plan, and you owe it to us to help.”

“Maybe . . . we can come back with?—”

Arthur shakes his head. “Your people aren’t welcome inside our walls again.”

The acid crawls through my veins, and I bow my head in acceptance.

The same man who spat at me shoves the visor up on his helmet. “That’s it? She’s a traitor. She should get the same as Aaron.”

Lucky’s head snaps in his direction. “ Try it .”

The promise is a lethal growl, and my heart trips over itself. I’ve caught glimpses of Lucky’s dark side, but right now, it’s unsheathed. His hand moves to his holster, but the Sinners took his pistol. It doesn’t matter.

When he’s like this, Lucky is the weapon.

Beau stands up, casually tucking the roll of bandages away in his medical bag. Moonlight glints off his scalpel when he pulls his hand back out, and new fear prickles down my spine as the chorus of angry shouts takes on a fevered pitch.

The Red Zone man’s lips twist. “She shouldn’t get special treatment just because you like the way she?—”

Lucky grabs him, dragging him close.

The man’s sudden, sour fear clogs the air.

“That’s enough,” Jasper cuts in.

He releases my neck, and chilly goosebumps flicker over my skin at the loss. He walks over to lay a steadying hand on Lucky’s back, but Lucky ignores him, still glaring into the man’s helmet. The thin man’s shaky breaths rattle around in the metal.

“ Enough ,” Jasper repeats, pitched lower this time.

It takes a long moment, but Lucky’s grip loosens, and the man stumbles back into the crowd with a panicked rasp.

Jasper eyes the dirty, agitated faces around us with cool disdain. “You all should pause to exercise some logic. The only thing you should be saying to Eden right now is thank you .”

Arthur frowns, and his troubled voice lifts over the mob. “How do you figure that?”

Jasper turns to him, raising one brow. “Eden freed Alastair, yes, but if she hadn’t, we still would have attacked the Den.

Aaron still would have betrayed us. Our plan still would have been compromised.

Only it wouldn’t have been Alastair who discovered us, it would have been Sam.

.. and we would all be dead right now.”

Only the waiting trees creak in the night wind, and there’s a sudden hesitation in the crowd. For the first time since the Sinners left us outside their city, everything is still. Struck silent by Jasper and his biting rationality.

He continues, each point a silken anvil hammering against my ribs. “ Eden didn’t decide to attack the Den. Eden didn’t bring Aaron in on strategy discussions. The only thing Eden changed about how tonight was executed is who was executed—and you’ll note, it wasn’t us.”

The wind picks up as Jasper’s words catch somewhere deep in my chest. He doesn’t think this was my fault.

I stare at the lean, bladed planes of his jaw, utterly confused.

It is my fault. I’ve made such terrible mistakes. I’ve lied and hid and disobeyed orders. I betrayed them all so horribly the guilt could crush me.

Still, my mind works its way around his words, looking for dents and weak spots. It’s too reductive. Too simplistic. It ignores too many facts. And yet...

Is there truth in it anyway?

On the edge of the crowd, Sloane nods to herself, and her gaze lifts to mine. Her regard doesn’t have any of the warmth it had yesterday... but it doesn’t hold contempt, either.

Some of the mob’s edgy tension bleeds into discomfort, but Jasper’s anger isn’t as easily contained. He stares coldly down the hushed people all around us. “Thank her for your lives. Her judgment you’re so quick to condemn is all that saved you.”

I release a long breath, staring at the sharp, clever man as he defends me. He’s showing nothing of his usual elegance. He’s mussed and filthy, and pale cement dust has settled into the furious lines of his face... and he’s never looked more beautiful.

Jasper believes me. He trusts me. I don’t know how he cut through tonight’s mess so cleanly, but his brilliant mind somehow found the best of me, deserved or not.

It’s something family might do.

I duck my head so I can swallow down my tears... because it’s my family I’ve hurt.

Alastair is cold and ruthlessly devious. Maybe Jasper’s right that Sam would have killed us. Maybe Alastair is better than a rapist and a thug, because I truly don’t believe that he’s either.

But that doesn’t make him good .

I freed a monster to destroy another monster, and it’s only now, after he’s swallowed Sam whole, that I truly consider what that means.

Alastair just absorbed Sam’s people. His weapons. His power.

His strength .

The more dangerous monster won tonight.

And now it’s my family who will be left to deal with him.

Heated fingers twine between mine, and I look up at Lucky. He squeezes my hand hard, and I grip back just as fiercely, my throat closing over.

I love him. I love them both.

God, how are we going to survive without the Sinners’ resources?

Tonight was supposed to solve all our problems. Somehow, it’s only created more.

“That might be true,” Arthur concedes, “but it doesn’t change anything. Aaron was one of yours, and we’re still without a leader or any of the medicine we came for. We still have Sinners on our doorstep, threatening every single person inside.”

He wipes the sweat from the back of his neck. Despite his words, the fight seems to have left him. It seems to have left all of them.

Weary worry slumps their armored shoulders, and their angered attention is no longer on me. There’s so much fear and confusion in the way they turn to one another for comfort that my horror grows for a different reason.

These people aren’t aggressors. They aren’t evil.

They’re terrified.

My eyes find Beau, and he gives me another one of those quick, reassuring smiles that still doesn’t warm his eyes.

Arthur picks up his pack, moving like he’s wounded deeper than flesh. God, they have teenagers to protect— dozens of them.

“We need to get back to Red Zone. They need us there. But we’ll... we’ll talk.” He looks around at his people, waving for them to move, and adds softly into the stale air, “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

“We’ll figure something out. For all of us,” Jasper insists in a low voice.

My stomach roils.

The people of Red Zone begin to bleed away until ours are the only ones left standing on the cracked road out of the city.

Finally, I see Dom.

He stands just outside the group, on the brink of the shadowy trees, and he’s far enough back that he seems... other. His skin is waxen and pale under the moon’s sallow light.

I follow his gaze and realize he’s staring at Jasper, seeming lost in dark, awful thoughts.

I replay Jasper’s words in my head.

Eden didn’t decide to attack the Den.

Eden didn’t bring Aaron in on strategy discussions.

That acid eats right through my stomach this time, and I can taste my own guilt. Again and again, I see Dom’s shoulders collapsing in defeat as he knelt beside me.

“Dom,” I breathe, choked. “Please. He didn’t mean...”

His eyes flick over to me. Their usual gold is dulled, rusted and oxidized. He shakes his head, then turns back into the forest.

And the darkness swallows him whole.