Page 44 of The Sterling Acquisition (Manufactured Mates #1)

Chapter thirty-two

Sanctuary

Orion

Heat pulled him from sleep like rising floodwater—slow at first, then all at once.

Orion surfaced to find himself sprawled across the van’s passenger seat, his shirt soaked through with sweat and his skin feeling like it had been stretched too tight.

The engine wasn’t running. Pale dawn light filtered through the windows, painting everything in soft grays and golds.

He pushed himself upright, wincing. His mouth tasted like copper, and the persistent ache low in his belly made him want to curl up and whimper. Instead, he focused on breathing through his nose until the worst of the wave passed, leaving him shaky but temporarily functional.

“You’re awake.”

Dante’s voice came from the front seat, calm and professional as always, but there was something underneath it—a roughness that hadn’t been there before.

Orion twisted around to look at him and found Dante sideways in the driver’s seat, his shirt pulled up to expose a thin gash along his ribs.

He was pressing something small and silver against the cut with steady hands.

“What—” Orion’s voice came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again, willing his focus away from the strip of exposed skin on Dante’s abdomen. “What are you doing?”

“Medical glue.” Dante didn’t look up from his work. “Nothing serious, but infections in the Static Zones aren’t something you want to gamble with.”

“You want me inside you. You want me to ruin you.”

Orion bit down hard on the inside of his cheek and forced his mind back to the present. “Where are we?”

“About ten miles deeper into the Static Zone. Everything takes loner to navigate out here because of the lack of maintenance,” Dante looked at him, and something about his expression made Orion pause.

The operative looked tired. His usually perfect appearance was disheveled, his hair falling across his forehead, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes.

“We need gas. And I need to figure out where the hell we’re going. ”

He gestured toward the dashboard, where the hand-drawn map was spread out next to the fuel gauge hovering just above empty.

Orion leaned forward to get a better look, his body protesting the movement with another wave of heat-induced dizziness.

This one was stronger than the last, a tide of warmth rushing from his core outward until he could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips.

He gripped the edge of the seat to steady himself, waiting for it to recede.

Dante’s nostrils flared, his knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. “You’re getting worse. ”

“I’m aware,” Orion bit out, refusing to acknowledge the way his body instinctively leaned toward Dante. “It comes in waves. This one’s already passing.”

Dante’s eyes lingered on him, something unreadable in their depths, before he turned his attention back to the map. Orion could see the muscle in his jaw working as he focused on the task at hand.

The map was more detailed than he’d realized. The glitched Alpha marked not just the major routes, but smaller paths, settlements, and what looked like resource points. Gas pump symbols were scattered throughout, each accompanied by other markings—some he recognized, others completely foreign.

“See these?” Orion pointed to a cluster of symbols about twenty minutes away, according to the scale. A gas pump sat next to what looked like a pound sign, surrounded by small circles. “What do you think that means?”

Dante studied the marking for a moment. “Pound sign... that’s probably a Null community.”

“Nulls?” Orion had never heard the term before.

“Better than trying our luck with the Berserker settlements.” Dante pointed to another gas symbol marked with what looked like a stylized claw. His fingers were still trembling, and Orion noticed a thin sheen of sweat on his brow despite the cool morning air.

Orion noticed other symbols too—what looked like an ohm sign near some of the gas signs—but he pushed that worry aside. “Do you know anything about Null communities?”

“Theory, mostly.” Dante started the engine, and it turned over with a reluctant cough.

The answer was careful, measured in that way that meant he was working from briefings rather than experience.

“Gensyn describes them as post-Adjustment anarchic communities of people who never developed designations. They’re insular, suspicious of outsiders, especially corporate representatives.

They have their own governance structures, resource allocation systems.”

The recitation sounded like something straight from a corporate manual, but then Dante continued in a quieter voice: “No central authority, no standardized currency. They operate on barter systems and mutual aid principles. Theoretically stable, but completely outside corporate oversight.”

“I can’t wait to taste every inch of you.”

Orion pressed his palms against his thighs and tried to focus on the landscape rolling past the windows.

It was like nothing he’d ever seen. In SVI territory, any plant life was either carefully maintained corporate landscaping or something marked for removal.

Weeds were eradicated. Trees were trimmed into submission or cut down.

Here, everything was wild.

Vines heavy with morning dew climbed the skeletal remains of billboards. Wildflowers burst from cracks in abandoned concrete. A massive oak tree had grown straight through the roof of what might once have been a gas station, its branches creating a green canopy over the rusted pumps below.

“Incredible,” Orion breathed, watching a family of deer pick their way delicately through the ruins of a strip mall. “It’s...”

“Beautiful,” Dante said softly, and when Orion glanced at him, there was something almost wistful in his expression. “And completely impractical. No wonder the corporations wrote off the Static Zones.”

But he slowed the van anyway, letting Orion take in the sight of deer picking their way through the ruins.

The gesture felt significant somehow—the Dante he met that first day in the courtyard would have kept driving, focused on efficiency above all else.

This new Dante, with his rumpled hair and day-old stubble, watched the deer with something like wonder .

Another hot flash rolled through Orion, stronger this time, and he had to close his eyes and breathe through it.

His skin felt electric, hypersensitive to every sensation.

The rough fabric of his jeans against his thighs.

The vinyl seat was sticking to his sweaty back.

Dante’s scent filled the enclosed space of the van, more potent than it had been yesterday—like the controlled facade of expensive cologne was burning away, revealing something rawer beneath.

Orion’s mind helpfully supplied the memory of Dante’s mouth on his skin, hot and demanding and—

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Orion lied, swallowing against the sudden dryness in his throat. “Just thinking about what we’re walking into.”

Dante’s eyes stayed on him for another moment before returning to the road, and Orion caught something unguarded in his expression before the professional mask slipped back into place. “We’ll figure it out.”

We. Not ‘you’ll adapt’ or ‘the asset will be managed.’ Just we.

The road curved around a hill covered in what looked like a forest that had once been a suburban neighborhood.

Trees grew through front yards and living rooms alike, their roots cracking foundations and their branches creating a green tunnel over the crumbling street.

It should have looked post-apocalyptic, but instead it looked.

.. peaceful. Like the earth was gently reclaiming what had always been hers.

All his life, he’d been told that without corporate structure, without the maintained order of SVI territory, the world would fall into chaos and collapse. But this didn’t look like a collapse. It looked like a rebirth.

“There,” Dante said, pointing ahead.

At first, Orion didn’t see anything but more overgrown ruins until it dawned on him.

. The settlement wasn’t built—it was grown.

Houses that might once have been suburban cookie-cutters were now unique structures, modified with additions that followed no building plan Orion had ever seen.

Gardens sprawled between buildings, wild and abundant.

Solar panels glinted on rooftops covered in living green.

And it was silent.

Dante brought the van to a stop at what might once have been the town’s main intersection. The fuel gauge needle was kissing empty, and Orion watched him study the settlement with the calculating look he got when running through contingency plans.

“I don’t see anyone,” Dante said slowly, his voice dropping to just above a whisper. His hand moved toward where Orion knew he kept his weapon. “Maybe the map was wrong, or—”

Light exploded around them.

Spotlights blazed to life from at least six different directions, turning the peaceful dawn into harsh white noon. Orion threw a hand up to shield his eyes, struggling to process the sudden change.

“Well, well,” a woman’s voice boomed through a megaphone, carrying across the settlement. “What have we got here?”

As Orion’s eyes adjusted, he could make out figures positioned around them—adults and what looked like teenagers, all armed, all pointed at the van.

The voice belonged to a woman in a motorized wheelchair positioned in front of them, one hand holding the megaphone and the other holding what looked like a rifle older than the Adjustment.

“You boys lost?” she called out, and there was dark amusement in her tone. “Because if you’re corporate scouts looking to cause trouble, you better get ready to resemble cheese that got properly Swissed.”

Dante very slowly raised his hands, leaning towards the open window to respond. “We’re not corporate scouts,” he called back. “We’re refugees. We need fuel and we’re willing to trade for it. ”

The woman tilted her head, considering. Even from this distance, Orion could see she was studying them both intently, taking in details he couldn’t begin to guess at.

“Refugees, huh?” She lowered the megaphone. “From where?”

“SVI territory,” Dante replied without hesitation. “We’re trying to reach New St. Louis.”

A murmur ran through the assembled defenders, and several weapons shifted. Not lowered, but not quite as aggressively aimed.

“SVI.” The woman’s voice carried disgust even without amplification. She raised the megaphone again. “And what makes you think we’d help a couple of corporate asset runners?”

A new wave of heat rolled through Orion, and with it came Dante’s scent, sharper now—agitated. Protective. The Alpha was poised on a knife-edge between diplomacy and violence, and Orion wasn’t sure which way he’d fall.

When Dante spoke, his voice remained steady and diplomatic, but Orion could hear the dangerous edge beneath it. “Because we’re not running assets. We are the assets.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

Finally, the woman in the wheelchair made some kind of gesture, and half the weapons lowered. Not all—Orion noted they maintained a crossfire pattern that would prevent any escape attempts—but enough to suggest they might survive the next few minutes.

“Out of the vehicle,” she called. “Hands visible. Move slow and stupid, because my people have nervous trigger fingers and excellent aim.”

Dante met Orion’s eyes. “You ready for this?”

Orion managed a nod. “Let’s go meet the neighbors.”

As they climbed out of the van into the morning light, Orion caught the woman studying him with particular intensity. Her gaze lingered on his sweat-dampened shirt, his unsteady movements, the way he had to grip the van’s door for support.

When her eyes met his, they were sharp with understanding.

“Well,” she said quietly, loud enough for him to hear but not for the megaphone to pick up. “This just got a whole lot more complicated.”