Page 63 of The General's Captive

“You have something of mine,” I stated, noting that tick of displeasure in his jaw before he schooled his features.

“Ah, back to your bargains I see,” he mocked, making me grit my teeth.

“Is he… alive?” I forced myself to ask.

He took his time in answering as if punishing me for even asking, before finally he gave me what I was desperate for.

“Yes, the boy lives,” he sneered, clearly angered by my sigh of relief, one that nearly came out as a loud shrill. My shoulders nearly shook from how tight I had been holding them and now everything in me felt like it could finally breathe again.

“Then I do want to bargain,” I told him firmly, making him scoff.

“But of course you do.”

“A trade,” I stated, ignoring his distain.

“I expected nothing less,” he remarked as if my words were unoriginal and boring him.

“Well, that’s what you want, isn’t it?” I pushed.

He started to circle around me, his hand running across my shoulders, catching my hair, and making my ponytail sway.

“It’s what I will get, yes,” he corrected confidently.

“But I have conditions.” I turned to face him, not trusting him at my back and putting distance between us so he couldn’t touch me.

I wasn’t sure who I didn’t trust more, him or myself. Because I couldn’t seem to think whenever he touched me, and I wasn’t brave enough to question why.

“Which are?” he questioned, and I hesitated because it would mean admitting our plan and potentially putting people in danger.

Which was why I first asked, “Did you send people to attack the Train Yard?”

He narrowed his dark gaze at me.

“What do you think?”he replied in a sharp tone, making me flinch. Because although it had been my first thought when the Train Yard was attacked, I knew that, by the end, it was unlikely.

“No, I don’t think you did.”

The slightest hint of a grin teased his lips, before he used them to say, “Then you have your answer.” But he must have noted the worry in my face as I chewed on my bottom lip, still unsure whether I was making the right choice.

“If you’re concerned that information shared here will somehow end in more deaths, then your fears are unfounded. I have no interest in your people Alexandra.” The way he said ‘your people’ made it seem as though I ruled over them, or as if we were a completely different species. And perhaps we were, but he looked like a man to me. A man with great power, yes, but a man, nonetheless.

“We are headed back to the base in Jerome,” I confessed, knowing I would need to if I was to ask him for the second part of my bargain.

“I thought as much.”

I raised my brow, prompting him to explain.

“You’re a smart girl and it is the most logical choice.”

Wow, was that a compliment? I nearly said this aloud, glad when I didn’t.

“I want your word that there will be no more attacks on it when we return.”

“We?” he said, picking that part out after homing in on it.

“Yes, we, because I will be leaving after I have helped everyone return.”

He nodded at this but then shocked me.