Jarek takes my hand and squeezes.
“We’ll celebrate tonight. A party to honour the alphas who saved our lives,” Bear shouts to the crowd.
They roar at him, cheering. They don’t seem to notice the way Kendric mutters or Legion turns away. Jarek stiffens and growls something that vaguely resembles breaking bones.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say under my breath. “We made it here, lets just see what’s going to happen, eat some nice food, and sleep. We can run away tomorrow.” I glance at Cadel. “Kidding,” I say quickly, but I’m not sure I am.
“Come this way, I want to hear everything,” Bear says loudly.
Legion tilts his head, gesturing for us to follow, and trails after Bear. People stare at us and reach out to touch me as we pass. It’s awful, but Ican see they don’t mean any harm, so I swallow my discomfort and stay close to Legion.
Bear’s tent is a massive, dirty, off-white thing made out of some kind of thick canvas. As I slip inside, I find he’s got a fire burning hotly, and there are several people I recognise in here already.
“You remember everyone?” Bear says offhandedly. “Kendric, Legion, Mordecai, Theo, Banks, Benji, Charlotte, Mia, and finally, Sophie.”
I recognise all of them from the school, though I had little to do with most of them, but Mia waves and Sophie bobs her head in our direction.
I sit down beside Jarek and try not to bristle when Bear takes Mordecai to sit beside him.
“Tell us what happened after we left,” he says eagerly.
Bear glances across at me, frowning as Cadel kneels behind me. So, I’m not the only one unwelcome one here, that’s interesting.
Mordecai talks them through our escape, but when he gets to us shifting, he glances at me and then changes the story.
Jarek’s fingers twitch in my hand.
I listen in shock as we apparently get a lucky break and climb the wall as humans. We get to the top and pull a pole loose, which caused the metal construction to collapse. Apparently, we only just barely made it out alive.
Bear sits there and scoffs. “Burning the city? How childish.”
I frown. That’s all he cares about? There’s a silence, and when I look up, I find their leader staring at me.
“Keres, walk with me,” Bear demands.
Jarek’s fingers tighten on mine. I pause, staring at Bear before nodding and pulling my fingers free.
“I’ll be fine,” I murmur.
Bear leads me out of the tent and deeper into the valley. He leads me up a trail until we get high enough that we can look down on everything. I glance behind me and see a cave. It goes pretty deep into the cliff, though the entrance is tiny.
“I dislike you. Not you, but what you represent,” Bear says suddenly, rocking back on his heels.
I think he expects me to be offended. I’m not. His opinion of me means nothing.
“And what is that?” I ask defensively.
He finally looks at me, fierce, intelligent eyes seeing more than I would wish.
“You are the exception, the impossible. You represent the kind of hope that I can’t afford for the last alphas and omegas to have.”
“I don’t understand,” I protest with an uneasy feeling in my chest.
“Hope makes you reckless. The kind of hope that has you believing if you get caught by the Path, you will get rescued or escape. Three times, Keres. It’s not just unheard of; it’s impossible. You have been touched by the gods.”
“The gods?” I spit. “They have deserted us, left us to rot here. Do not talk to me about being touched by the gods. If you had seen what I’ve seen and done what I’ve had to do to survive, you wouldn’t be saying touched. Cursed, maybe.”
Bear smiles. “Exactly.”
