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Eden

We don’t get to know who the villains are.

Not until it’s too late.

Seven Months Earlier

My breathing feels too loud for the silent side tunnel as Dom and I make our way to our clandestine midnight meeting with Alastair.

The susurrations of it echo around me until it feels like someone is breathing against my neck.

It’s grave-dark in here, and it smells like rotting leaves.

The chill raises the small hairs on my arms, even under my jacket.

“Come on, pet. Let’s make this quick.”

Dom’s rifle is slung, his pistol casual and ready in one hand, but he’s steady as he indicates for me to move. Quietly confident.

He didn’t bother with a jacket. Dom always runs to molten temperatures.

I muster a grim smile and nod, letting his confidence infect me as I pick up my pace.

This will work.

It’ll work because it has to.

As we turn through a slight bend, I see a crescent of moonlight against the rock wall, and my pulse leaps. We edge closer to it, then Dom lifts a hand for me to stop.

He rolls off the wall and takes a few steps forward, keeping his pistol raised as he checks the next small bend. Seemingly satisfied, he nods, and I hurry over to him. We do it once more before we slow, and he disappears to check outside.

A moment later, he calls grimly, “Eden.”

Here we go.

I slip out of my tunnel and join Dom under the stars. It’s cloudless and bright tonight, the moon at full wattage, but it still takes me a moment to see Alastair’s dark-clad figure between the trees. Behind him, there are at least two more.

Nothing else moves.

No rabbits scurry away from the flower blossoms and no birds twitch from the trees.

“Should we go back?” I whisper nervously, and Dom tilts his head, just slightly, in a negative.

“He has Mateo and Bentley with him. Let them come out,” Dom mutters, his gaze not shifting.

Bentley?

I squint, but all I can make out are fuzzy shadows. Maybe one of them is bigger than the other one... but why is Alastair bringing a prisoner to the meeting? And will he come to us? It’s as much of a risk for them as it is for us to make the first?—

“Eden! Dom!” Bentley booms, striding forward with his arms open. “You came!”

I flinch, my nails digging into Dom’s arm, already scrambling a half step back. Dom gives me a dry look, though he edges in front of me, his pistol loose but ready in his hand.

I examine the trees around us, where they almost seem to sprout from the cliff-face on one side all the way around to where they stop on my other side. There are shadows and hollows everywhere but... I can’t see anyone else.

Would I see anyone?

Damn it. How good is Dom’s eyesight? And how good is the Sinners’ hearing? Because Bentley sounds like a blasted train blowing its horn.

Alastair and Mateo finally appear from the trees, and as Mateo steps into the starlight, his narrowed eyes are on Bentley.

Bentley claps Dom on the shoulder and winks down at me.

It’s only then that I notice he’s entirely unbound.

“Hey there, sweetheart. Ready for a little cloak and dagger? A little subter- fuge. It’s fun, isn’t it?” He turns, breathing in deeply, his chest expanding like a hot air balloon. “The best things happen after midnight. Right, Mateo?”

He gives Mateo a look scorching enough for my brows to skyrocket, but Mateo’s return glare roils with frustration. If I didn’t know better, I’d call it sullen .

“I’m finding you a matching leash,” Mateo bites out.

Scratching his beard, Bentley gives him an amused look. “I told you how to make me behave, dollface.”

Alastair’s pale eyes track over them, his boots whispering over the grass. When he finally stops beside Mateo, his expression is unreadable. His gaze travels to us next, and with one glance, I know he has every weapon Dom has on him cataloged and assessed.

He nods to us in a polite hello.

In the moonlight, the scars from his burns are shiny on his neck, and his clean-cut face is a mix of shadows and light. He’s armed as well, and he has a heavy pack on his back, but unlike Dom, his weapons are holstered.

Whatever I was expecting tonight—more bullying, possibly, or Alastair urging us to surrender and hand ourselves over— it wasn’t this. It wasn’t Bentley. And it certainly wasn’t Bentley making sex eyes at Mateo.

Oh no, was Lucky right? Is he Stockholmed?

“What is this?”

My confused, whispered question makes Bentley turn back to me, and his expression softens. “You’re safe. We’re just here to talk.”

“They’re safe if they listen to us,” Mateo corrects in a mutter. “It’s a miracle they showed up at all, with you going on and on today about how we were handing women off to our men.”

Bentley’s suffering sigh is like the crash of an ocean wave. “But you are handing women off to your men.”

Beside me, Dom stiffens.

Seeming to give into his frustration, Mateo pivots to glower at Bentley. “Why would you say it, cabrón ? You know why . You know they’re with people we trust, so why even bring it up? Stupid! It’s so stupid ! It’s like you want us to fail!”

“You want me to lie ?” Bentley booms.

“For the last time, yes !”

Bentley towers over Mateo as they continue bickering over what he should and shouldn’t have said today, and the moon is bright enough that his shadow casts an eclipsing wall of black over the grass.

I wince at their volume, but if no one has come bursting through the trees by now, I can only assume we’re out of earshot. It takes me a clammy moment before I register what they’re really saying.

There’s a we . There’s an us .

I’m not sure what to make of the rest of it, but... they’re with people we trust , Mateo says. The captives Alastair “gave away as prizes” are with people Bentley trusts.

So . . . they are safe.

I’m starting to feel tipped. Dizzy. It’s like someone has taken me by the shoulders and spun and spun me and now they’re asking me to know which way is right.

I have no idea what’s right anymore.

“I don’t know why we trust you with anything!” Mateo hisses at Bentley, and he might be shorter, more lithely muscled than the other man, but he moves forward with a dangerous confidence.

Which Bentley seems to ignore.

Bentley grins down at him. “Because you’re a bitter little thing and you have no friends.”

Alastair’s eyes find mine across the grass, pale as grave markers.

What game are you playing? I silently ask back.

Ever so slightly, he smiles.

“I’m waging a war against the Reapers—and I want your help to do it.”

Alastair’s cobwebbed voice is soft, but Mateo’s mouth snaps shut mid-sentence.

A thousand pricks of ice shiver over my skin. There’s a gravitas to Alastair. A certainty that isn’t sneering or spiteful. He’s made a decision, one as careful as any I’ve ever seen him make. A decision to... to fight... to kill ... innocents ?

My pulse stutters unevenly, clattering over the audacity and the questions and the sudden dread that swamps me... because Alastair’s words start shaking things free.

“You have some nerve,” Dom says, cool and firm, but I press a staying hand to his arm.

So I can think .

I can’t help the disbelieving breath that escapes me, and I back up, needing to get some air. The trees are towering, and they go on in waves, farther than I can see, and I stare out at them as my chest constricts.

Why? All this for . . . for food ?

It’s the Reapers . Sweet, terrified Reapers.

Our ally. Jennifer’s people now, too. They’ve fought so hard to prove that they’re trustworthy. Sympathetic. God, they’re the victims here.

And they’re so, so anxious for us to join them.

The Sinners have given us a lot of trouble. We thought it was better to steer clear of any friends of theirs , Arthur said.

A mistake, Arthur wasn’t sure. It was explainable. The Reapers weren’t friends with the Sinners . . . except Sullivan . . .

Sawyer. Yes. We’ve . . . encountered one another.

Alastair’s amusement when Sawyer spluttered his sweaty, panicked defense.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Nausea crawls up my throat as the pieces start to fall together, and I look at Bentley, needing him to tell me I’m wrong. My pulse is battering frantically at my throat.

He smiles at me sadly.

“People aren’t always what they seem to be,” he echoes his earlier self. “I wanted to tell you then, but... well. There’s a bit to it.”

Bentley wasn’t talking about Alastair earlier today. He was warning me about Sawyer .

Sawyer, who was so desperate for us not to talk to the Sinners.

“Eden?” Dom prompts, tense and watchful.

Mateo shifts back beside Alastair until the five of us stand in a small, clandestine circle under the stars.

Cloak and dagger indeed.

Finally, I turn back to Alastair, and my lips are numb.

“What did they do?” I whisper.

I don’t want to know. We were careful with them. We were cautious. We’re not stupid , we looked for signs.

We’re supposed to see it when they’re preying on us.

Alastair doesn’t mince words. “The Reapers supplied Sam with a quarterly dividend of food—a generous one, in exchange for their safety from the Sinners and, occasionally, outside threats.” Alastair only pauses briefly, scanning my face before he adds, “Sometimes the Reapers fell short of Sam’s requirements, and toappease him, the Reapers would supply Sam with women.

In some quarters, they provided only a few—in others, Sawyer would hand over more than a dozen. ”

My pulse pounds at my temple. In my ears.

His voice sounds far away.

Alastair meets my eyes. “More than half the captives at the Den are there because of the men currently inside your home.”

I press a hand to my mouth, and it’s shaking.

Oh, God.

“Breathe, pet,” Dom mutters under his breath, and I suck in a breath, nodding.

Dom’s throat is corded, tight, and his grip is white around his pistol. The thoughts are racing in him too.

I nod again, seeing it. His fears. I start shaking all over, and I think I’m still nodding.

I need to breathe.

Dom’s right. I need . . . I have to . . .