The hours dragged by. I wanted to get answers from Trey, but I didn't dare talk more than necessary. Every time I glared at him, he just met my angry gaze with his calm one, which made me want to throttle him. Eventually, I fell asleep, exhausted after my sleepless night of healing Nemo, but my dreams were full of blood and screams and the flash of Madame's knife. I jolted awake with a gasp when someone shook me and met Trey’s eyes. He held a finger up to his mouth and then slid closer to me, pressing his lips practically against my ear.
“You were starting to talk in your sleep,” he whispered.
I nodded to let him know I understood, my heart lurching. If he hadn’t been here, I could’ve easily given myself away. I started to shift away, but he slid an arm around my waist and pulled me against him. I looked up at him, startled, and he leaned forward to speak close to my ear again.
“You can go back to sleep,” he said softly. “I’ll wake you up if you start talking again.”
I lay there stiffly for a moment, knowing I should shove him away, but instead, I found myself curling into his warmth. Just ’cause it’s cold. I lied to myself. My nose pressed against his neck and he rested his chin on top of my head. Every breath I took flooded me with his scent, the lavender soap from the clinic, the oil he used to clean his gun, and something just inexplicably Trey. It melted my angry defenses and I let out a shaky breath, my eyes prickling.
“It’s ok, darlin’,” he murmured in my ear. “I got you.”
Some final hardened part of me cracked in a way I knew I’d never be able to repair, that lonely garden in my chest stretching and growing and turning toward him like he was the godsdamned sun. If he noticed the tears that slid down my face, he didn’t say anything. He just held me until I fell asleep again.
Trey woke me up several times when my dreams made me start muttering or thrashing in my sleep, but I dozed on and off until nightfall. We both lay awake and alert in the darkness when the sleigh began to slow. The loggers complained about sore asses and having to go out again. Our sleigh held the logging equipment while the other sleigh held the tents and food supplies. I'd been banking on the hope that they wouldn't need anything from this sleigh until they arrived where they planned to harvest lumber. Trey seemed to have the same idea, but both of us were tense as we listened to the loggers make camp for the night. At one point someone flipped back the tarp of our sleigh and my heart lurched in terror, but they just grabbed a couple of axes near the back and then secured the tarp back down.
I released Trey's arm that I'd grasped and he let out a slow relieved breath. We waited until the noise died down and eventually, a single pair of boots crunched in the snow, and the sleigh seat creaked as the night watch guard settled in. I squinted at Trey's face, barely able to make out his features in the darkness.
“Ten more minutes,” he breathed in my ear.
I counted in my head and before I’d even reached six minutes, we heard the low snore of the guard. Trey grinned, his teeth flashing. He grabbed something beside him I couldn’t quite make out and led the way. We slithered on our bellies to the back of the sleigh, moving agonizingly slow to avoid knocking over any tools. Trey dropped down into the snow first. I waited until he signaled and then followed.
Together we crept toward the woods, but then I paused glancing back at the obvious footprints we left in the snow. I shrugged out of my jacket and backtracked so I could sweep it behind us to at least partially erase our tracks. When I reached Trey again, he gave me an approving nod. Once we reached the woods and traveled for a few minutes I shook the snow off my jacket and slipped it back on. Both of us stood for a few breaths just listening, but no sound came from the camp. Trey grinned, but I couldn’t return it. Our successful escape should have been a relief, but it made me feel uneasy.
“Here.” Trey held out the wooden thing he carried.
I took it but stared in confusion. It had a frame of two pieces of wood shaped like long ovals and some sort of leather latticework inside. Trey dropped his on the ground and set his foot on it, crouching to tie them onto his boot with the attached leather ties.
“Snowshoes,” he whispered.
I dropped mine into the snow, copying the direction his snowshoes pointed. Before I could bend to start tying them, Trey turned and started doing it for me. He tapped my boot with a gloved hand and I lifted it so he could access the ties, resting my hands on his broad shoulders for balance.
When he straightened, he gave me a warm grin. “Like this,” he whispered, showing me how to take wide strides to avoid stepping on the sides of the snowshoes.
I followed a bit awkwardly, but it wasn't hard to fall into a rhythm and the snowshoes kept us on top of the snow instead of sinking to our knees. It would have been hard, slow work to wade through the snow, especially with my sore back. Gods, why did he have to be so thoughtful? It made it a lot harder to stay mad. As we walked, I glanced back in the direction we'd come. I wanted to get a little farther away from the logger's camp before I lit into him. I wanted to—
I got a glimpse of movement to my left and managed to half turn, my heart leaping into my throat before a hand grabbed my arm and jerked me against a massive body.
“Well, what have we here?” growled Zip.
My heart thundered in my throat, and I didn’t answer. He held me so my back pressed against his chest, and I couldn’t see his face. His arms pinned my arms to my sides like bands of steel. My snowshoes tangled on top of each other and one had been ripped partially off my boot. Trey had stopped a few steps away. He stood casually, but I could see his body coiled like a spring. He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes fixed on Zip.
“Whatcha doing here, Bones?” Zip asked, his low voice rumbling through me.
“Lookin’ for you,” I lied, trying to keep my voice steady.
He huffed a dark laugh. “I don’t think so, baby. You tryin’ to run?”
My mind raced trying to come up with a way out of this situation. If he yelled, he’d wake the whole camp and we’d never escape all two dozen of them.
“See I’m thinkin’ it looks like you’re tryin’ to run. And I’m also thinkin’ Madame would reward me handsomely if I brought you back.”
“Don’t hurt yourself now,” my stupid mouth said before I could think better of it.
His arms tightened around me, making my back twinge in pain. “You always did think you were smarter than me, didn’t you?” he growled. “You know, Bones, we got some unfinished business, you and me.”
Fear settled like ice in my stomach. Trey’s face stayed expressionless, but his eyes dipped to mine for a brief second.
“You know, the boys get awful lonesome on these long trips. Having a pretty girl along would be a real treat.” One of his hands started moving, drifting across my body, and my stomach turned. “Or, I could make sure no one else touches you, Bones.”
My hands trembled, but Wolf started snarling.
Survive. Do what you have to do to survive.
My mind seemed to hollow out, locking away everything except for the determination to get through this one moment. I knew I’d survived for years by thinking this way, but it felt even more horrible than I remembered.
“You swear it?” I asked, trying to put as much steel into my voice as possible. “I let you have me and you won’t let anyone else touch me or Trey.”
“Bones.” Trey’s voice came out soft but full of fury.
“I swear it, baby,” Zip said, “on my mother’s grave.”
“Bones,” Trey said again, but I couldn’t look at him.
“Ok,” I said hollowly.
Zip spun me around in his arms, fully ripping off one snowshoe and forcing me to balance precariously. The victorious grin on his face made me retreat farther into myself.
“Good girl,” he said in a low, cruel voice.
He pushed my jacket and pack off my shoulders, letting them fall to the snowy ground. His freezing hands slid under my shirt, slowly pulling it up. I raised my arms, desperately trying to push my mind somewhere far, far away. He pulled my shirt off and then stopped, eyes narrowing at the brand on my chest.
“What the fuck is—”
A strange pffft noise sounded and his entire body jerked. I leapt backward and stumbled over my jacket and pack and single snowshoe, landing on my ass in the snow. I caught a glimpse of the blood spurting from the hole that'd opened up in his forehead before he fell over backward with a dull thud and Trey hauled me up and wrapped his arms around me.
“You ok?” He sounded frantic, so at odds with how expressionless he’d been a second ago. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I had to wait until he was distracted.”
“I’m ok,” I said, dazed as I stared down at Zip’s motionless body. “You shot him.”
“I told him I would if he touched you again,” he said darkly, releasing me to grab my discarded shirt from the ground and shake the snow out of it. He handed it to me and turned his back, giving me some privacy to pull my shirt back on.
“How was it so quiet?” I whispered as I dressed, my brain still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
“Silencer.” He turned, holding up the gun to show me the strange long barrel. “Madame had a few of these locked away. I helped myself to one before I left.”
I’d never seen something like that before. “He knew you were armed; he just thought you wouldn’t shoot him ’cause of the noise.” I realized.
“I was banking on him being a cocky asshole. Wasn’t too much to hope for.” He snagged my fallen jacket and pack and handed them to me, then bent to retrieve my snowshoe. “Come on, we better move fast before someone comes looking for him.”
“Are we just gonna leave him here?” I asked, shrugging my jacket and pack back on and lifting my foot so he could tie the snowshoe back on.
“Not much else we can do,” he said, getting back to his feet. “C’mon.”
We set off at a quick pace, trying to step in spots of frozen snow to avoid leaving tracks. The snowshoes kept us from leaving obvious human-shaped footprints, but they still left tracks. The nearly full moon shone in the cloudless sky, giving us dim light to see by. Wolves howled somewhere in the distance, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"They're not close enough that we need to worry, yet," Trey said when I glanced at him, wide-eyed.
Soon the ground began to slope up. Trey showed me how to kick the front of the snowshoe into the snow and use it like a step. I stumbled more than once as I struggled to get the movement down. It wasn't long before my legs started to burn, and my breathing grew heavier. We had moved far enough away that I could yell at him now, but for some reason, I didn't. We hiked in silence for what must have been a couple of hours before Trey spoke.
“He’d never seen the brand before?” His voice sounded cautiously curious.
My face heated. “Not while sober.”
“Ah,” he said quietly, then, “Can I ask somethin’ of you?”
I turned to see him staring at me, his face grave.
"Don't ever let someone hurt you ’cause you're trying to protect me, ok?"
I looked away, shame curdling in my stomach. “I didn’t have a whole lot of options, Trey.”
“Bones,” he said gently, and my eyes burned, “you gotta start trying to save yourself too.”
“I’m a healer, Trey. Saving other people is what I do,” I snapped.
“I know,” he said, still in that gentle voice, “but the way you throw yourself into the line of fire, Bones, it’s like you think your life isn’t worth as much as other people’s lives.”
“It’s not,” I spit out without thinking.
“It is,” he countered. “People love you, Bones. If you can’t try to save yourself for you, do it for them. Next time you think about throwing yourself in harm’s way, think about Apple.”
I flinched, but he wasn’t done.
“She watches you. Everything you do. You’re teaching her what to think about herself by how you think about you. Why do you think she tried to take on Zip all by herself? Fighting for what's right, that's a great thing, but do you want her to throw herself on top of a live grenade when she didn't have to? When there were other options if she worked with people who were trying to help?”
“Sometimes there aren’t people, Trey.” I couldn’t look at him, anger and guilt shimmering in my veins. “You know how many bikers Juck had? Over a hundred. That many people and not a single damn one ever—” I broke off, my voice shaking.
He snagged my arm, jerking me to a halt. “You went through hell, Bones, and gods I’m just grateful you made it out of there, but we’re not the Reapers. We’ve been tryin’ to show you that for the past, what, six months? I know you didn’t have people then, but you do now.”
Don’t trust ’em. Wolf snarled, but he sounded quieter.
We’re not the Reapers. He talked about the crew like they were here and a part of this. Clearly, they'd been making their own plans.
"So what, they sent you along so you could try to convince me to go back? Is that it?" I finally looked at him, trying to hold onto my anger to avoid giving in to the tears that threatened in my eyes.
"Gods, no," he exclaimed. "Bones, we knew you were planning on running. We knew you had a secret stash of supplies in your mattress. We knew you were gonna try to leave with the loggers. And darlin', all any of us wanted was to help you.”
I stared at him. How? I wanted to ask, but I feared what the answer might be.
“So Mac sent you to keep an eye on me.” My voice came out ragged. “You’re here to make sure I don’t disappear. So I can’t—”
"Godsdamnit, Bones, I'm here ’cause I love you," he interrupted in a burst of emotion that shocked me into silence. "Have loved you practically since you saved my life on that rooftop. And I'm not expecting anything of you, but I'm here 'cause I want to be here with you.”
His voice grew hoarse and one of the tears I tried to hold back slid down my cheek.
He took a step closer to me and wiped it away, his hands cold on my heated face. "I'm here ’cause those couple times you let me in before you got scared and pushed me away, I saw how much you cared. Then I watched you build those walls back up because you were afraid. And I don't know if you're afraid that I'll hurt you or if you're afraid that you'll hurt me, but I will give it my all showin' you that you can trust me." His hand lingered on my cheek, thumb brushing across my cheekbone. "If you don't want me, I'll find a way to live with that, but I'm willin' to risk my heart just in case the only thing holdin' you back is that fear."
I had no idea what to say. My heart pounded in my throat. The feelings in my chest grew, putting out new leaves and tiny flower buds, but at the same time, guilt drowned me. He didn't know the danger he was in. He was willing to risk everything, but he had no idea how big the risk was.
“There’s something you don’t know,” I whispered before I lost my nerve, more tears sliding down my face.
“Ok,” he murmured, dropping his hand from my face, “I’m listening.”
My entire body trembled. “I’m not the only powered person.”
Surprise filled his eyes.
“I don’t know who he is, but he can get in my head. Not all the time, but whenever—” I swallowed hard. “Whenever I’m drugged.”
A horrified understanding dawned on his face.
"He gets in and he can see all my memories. He knows what I can do, and he's been trying to find me since I was thirteen. I don't understand what his power is exactly, but I think he…he somehow was behind everything that happened with the Reapers turning on each other. Like he was in their heads too."
Trey remained steady and silent.
“Juck d-drugged me after…after—” I made a helpless gesture to my chest. “He saw what happened. I let him see what happened because I didn’t care anymore. And he was angry. He said I b-belonged to him and that he was gonna kill them all.”
I’d turned that day over and over in my head hundreds of times, but it still didn’t make any sense. Forty-five of the Reapers had died from the fever a month earlier. I hadn’t been able to save a single one without my powers. Tensions were high, and Vulture was stirring shit up, trying to get the gang on his side.
“Vulture acted so…so weird. Like he wasn’t himself. He called a gathering and just…just told them about my powers and that Juck had kept me all to himself, but he sounded so…he sounded like he was pretending to be someone else. And then…they turned on each other. Everyone was shooting, but it didn’t make any sense why they were attacking each other. Everything just went to shit so fast and I—”
I had to stop for a second, trying to breathe. Trey took one of my hands, squeezing it.
“Juck was gonna take me and run, but Vulture caught up to us. Juck shot him and tried to leave with me…and I…I stabbed Juck and ran.” I gulped in a shaky breath. “I don’t know how, but I think he did it. He killed them…and he did it without even being there.”
“You killed Juck?”
I nodded, trying to read his expression.
“I’m glad he’s dead, but I’m sorry you had to resort to that.”
I wasn’t even surprised that he immediately knew I hated doing it, even after everything Juck had done to me.
“So this person, he saw you again when we gave you the narc after you got whipped.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded again anyway.
“He saw where you were.”
“He’s angry. He thinks I used him to get away from the Reapers. And maybe…maybe I did. I didn’t mean to but…” My voice trailed off for a second. “I thought if I could draw him away—”
“You’re using yourself as bait?” A hint of anger entered his voice.
“He could kill everyone, Trey—”
“What will he do to you if he catches you?”
I wanted to shake him. Was he not listening? “I don’t know, but I don’t think he wants to kill me.”
“No, he probably wants to do something worse.” Trey’s eyes darkened.
“Trey!” I needed him to understand. “He’s after you. He wants to kill you.”
He stared down at me for a few breaths. Then he did the last thing I expected, and his face broke into a giant fucking grin. I gaped at him.
“Did you not hear me?” I demanded. “Trey—”
"He wants to kill me ’cause you care about me,” he said, his tone gleeful.
I sputtered furiously for a second. “That’s what you’re latchin’ on to? You can’t come with me! He’s gonna kill you, dumbass!”
“He can try.”
I was gonna kill him. “Trey—”
“Look, Mac and I knew there was somebody else trying to find you. Somebody who scared you. We thought it was maybe a warlord or something, but it doesn’t matter who it is. I’m not gonna just bail on you and make you face whoever it is all by yourself.”
“He has powers! And I have no idea what he can do!”
“Ok, so we’ll be careful.”
I threw my arms up, frustrated. “Trey!”
“I’m not leaving, Bones.” He stepped closer, into my space, and his voice softened. “You hear me? This is my decision and I’m not leaving.”
I stared up at him helplessly, my heart in my throat, but he smiled that sweet, gentle smile.
“C’mon, we better keep moving.”