“Yeah, if I were you I’d keep my mouth shut until the next convoy goes across,” Ruben chimes in.
“’Cause you’re going to be on it. You’re not staying.” Marcus taps me on the collarbone with a gentleness that grates and makes me want to take a bite out of his hand. “You don’t get to kill one of us, my own cousin, and then park yourself here for the long haul.” His eyes fix on me with that dead evenness I’ve come to recognize among carriers. Not all of them, but enough. At least from the ones always eager to inflict pain.
“Understand?” He steps closer and lifts his arm, angling it against my throat, his forearm grinding into my windpipe. I sputter, pretty certain he doesn’t expect me to answer him. Speech is impossible. Breath is impossible.
And then he’s gone. A body rushes past me in a blur, taking him out. I gasp, suck precious air into my lungs. Caden collides into Marcus, crashing them both hard into the ground. They tumble together in the hall, all writhing limbs and smacking fists.
Ruben shouts something and makes a move to separate Marcus and Caden, but Terrence is there, bigger, more intimidating. He places a hand flat on Ruben’s chest, holding him back. “Stay out of it. This is their fight.”
And it is. Even if Marcus took exception to me for killing his cousin, this has been brewing for a long time between Caden and Marcus.
I watch, still laboring for breath, my hand holding my throat. Terrence stands beside me as the hallway grows more crowded, people attracted to the fight. Apparently the smack of bone meeting bone travels.
Caden overpowers Marcus, straddling him and punching him several times in the face until Marcus quits moving. A few voices call out encouragement, but for the most part everyone holds silent as Caden delivers a final crack to Marcus’s mouth.
Blood runs from Caden’s nose as he grabs Marcus’s shirt by both fists and pulls him up, snarling into his face, “You touch her again and I’ll kill you.”
A shiver runs through me. Marcus manages a whimpered moan that might have passed for some kind of affirmation.
Caden gives him a small, single shake and drops him back to the floor. Rising, he sweeps everyone a heated look, his gaze lingering on Marcus’s friends. “Understand? She’s under my protection.”
A cold chill skates down my spine even as heat blooms across my flesh. Everything inside me that’s strong, that’s used to fighting for myself, rebels at the idea that I need his protection. But that other part of me, the part that feels fluttery and breathless in his presence? It revels in the idea that he cares about what happens to me that much.
Caden staggers forward in an unsteady line, his boots echoing in the narrow, overcrowded hall. Suddenly I feel claustrophobic. Too many people. Not enough air. At least I tell myself it’s this. It’s this and not everything that just happened. Caden stops before me, his chest rising and falling as though he just completed a marathon. Ruben helps Marcus to his feet, but the action must have cost Marcus. He groans.
Caden tears his gaze from me and scans all the faces again. When he sees a wide-eyed Junie, he orders, “Pack up her stuff for her.” He looks back to me. “She’s moving into my room.”
He did not just say that. Stamp me as his property. In front of everyone. He’s gone too far. My face heats, burning all the way to the tips of my ears. Marcus must have damaged my larynx—I can’t quite find my voice as Caden grabs my hand and leads me down the hall. Bodies part for us and still I can’t speak. Emotions burn through me, blistering a path too hot, too savage. I might do something I regret. I take small sips of air, trying to cool my simmering emotions.
I want to hit him, lash out, and my anger frightens me a little. Usually I’m in control, but he just bulldozed through my barriers, knocked them to rubble, and now I feel exposed. Naked and vulnerable.
I dam everything up inside and try to patch up the walls as my feet trip after him. We enter the hall leading to his room. Alone in his room will be soon enough for me to unleash on him—
Alone in his room?
Suddenly that doesn’t seem like such a good idea, either. Not when I feel this raw and battered. Not when he’s acting like a caveman. Everyone has a breaking point. Maybe he’s reached his.
I yank back, but his grip only tightens. We’re almost to his door. Once inside, it will be harder to break away.
I shake my head, telling myself to stop flipping out. This is Caden of the eternal optimism and too many smiles. You’re thinking of him as a predator. The same way you’ve learned to think of all carriers.
But he is a carrier. Sometimes I forget that because he seems so good, so blessedly normal in a world that is anything but.
I bring my other hand down on his and claw him. His curse hisses out on the air. His grip loosens for a split second. Enough time for me to slip free. I spin and head back the way we came, not even bothering to think how pointless running is. Where can I go? Who can help me? I thought he was the safest thing in this giant tomb beneath the earth.
Of course nothing is safe. I thought I understood that, but then I started to think of him differently. I began to let him stand in a separate category from everyone else. I even lied—put myself at risk—to protect him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’s not the exception to the carrier rule.
A hard arm wraps around my waist.
“Nooooo!”
He lifts me off my feet like I weigh nothing and carries me, legs kicking, arms flailing, the remaining distance to his door. He turns the latch and thrusts me inside.