Page 148 of Scavenger's Oath

Exhaling hard, I drag a hand down my face before turning back to face him. “If something happens to her, Zane… there won’t be anything left of me. I knew she was trouble, but I didn’t know I’dfeellike this. She’s blindsided me. What kind of person stays as innocent as she is, in a hellhole like this? If I let my guard down again—if I lose someone like Ivy—”

Zane lays a hand on my shoulder, and I flinch before the tension in my spine eases.

“We won’t,” he promises.

The air out here smells like rust and diesel, a cold wind whipping around the side of the building.

But some part of me is still kneeling in that apartment—stillbeing dragged away by Myles with blood soaked through my shirt, staring down at the one thing I was supposed to protect.

“I can’t let it happen again,” I say, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Not with Ivy.”

Those same kinds of men are still out there in droves. And she’s already fallen into their hands once.

Zane’s expression hardens, voice even but edged with something darker. “It won’t. I’ve seen you hunt guys like that plenty of times. Guys like… the one Ivy escaped.”

His choice of words catches me off guard. My brow furrows as I study his expression. “You know something, don’t you? What has she said?” I question.

He meets my gaze with a deadly look in his eyes.“His name is Bennett,” he says, voice rumbling like thunder on the wind.

A beat passes and the world narrows as a squealing tone deafens me.

Bennett.

Bennett.

Zane’s voice shatters through my murderous thoughts. “She told me his name this morning while we were gardening. The fucker was trying… to knock her up. He killed other girls because they weren’t getting pregnant.” His jaw clenches, eyes glazing over as a vein in his forehead bulges. “He’s using them like breeding stock.”

My hands curl into fists at my sides. But I don’t say another word. Because I’ve made promises before… and I still see the blood when I close my eyes.

The silence feels heavier than gunfire. It hangs in the air, making it hard to breathe. A crow lands on the fence, caws once, then takes off again. My eyes track it without meaning to while the name echoes in my skull.

Grit grinds under Zane’s boots as he shifts beside me. “I want to kill him as much as you, Phoenix. But how can we leave Ivy? What if something happens while we’re gone? We need to get her out of this area. I know you care about her, I do too. But leaving her alone could break her. She’s clung to us since the day we found her.”

The fuckers name still claws at my insides, makes my teeth ache with the need to rip him apart.

But Zane’s right. If we hunt them now, Ivy’s the one left exposed. That thought makes my pulse race.

I see Ivy’s small hands tracing the table again, freckled cheeks kissed by sun, voice soft. I wish I could’ve seen the moment she first felt the sun on her face. That innocence feels like something fragile enough to crumble in my fist—or in Bennett’s

Gripping the dock railing, I refocus on the cold rusted metal before answering. “I might know aplace.”

Zane glances sideways. “Yeah?”

“It’s a ranch,” I say, running my thumb over a dent in the railing. “Belonged to my sister and her husband. They were the off-grid type even before all this. The whole damn survivalist package. When the world went to hell, they barely even blinked.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You think they’re still there?”

“I don’t know,” I admit with a sigh. “Haven’t seen them in four years. We were supposed to take Gemma. Get her out of the city. But, well… you know the story. We went without her.”

He knows what we found instead.

I had been planning to break up with Gemma. She wanted something monogamous and the guilt of my explorations with Myles was weighing on me. But I wasn’t going to kick her out of my place when civil unrest was building—her parents lived hours away.

She wasmyresponsibility.

When Myles and I deserted our post, we didn’t know that the military had already lost control of the city. We stole one of the military trucks—a huge six-wheel vehicle. Drove for miles to reach her but… we were already too late.

Civilians had broken into groups, looting, killing. Raping.