She nods, eyes darting around warily, though whoever was standing guard at this post has clearly fled. “The rebels —”
Lou snorts belligerently from the back seat. “Rebels? Please. They’re just a wannabe MC militia cobbled together by rogues and prayers.”
Jewels falls silent.
“What?” Lou asks mockingly. “What have they ever done to help anyone? Protests that do nothing? Destruction of property? Hurting hardworking citizens more than any sort of so-called repressive government? If you thought they were reliable instead of just fucking fools with guns, ferals, and a few mages, you would have reached out to them, Jewels. Instead of fucking around with the Cataclysm’s little prized captive.”
Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever been called a prize before. I don’t much like it.
“Leave it,” Jewels hisses. “Not all of us get to pop a few pills and drift out every time reality gets a little much to bear.”
Lou stiffens, then bristles.
I can feel her energy behind me more than see her, because I’m more interested in the essence shifting on the breeze filtering through my open window, bringing the scent, the taste of power … and that antithesis of essence that I’ve only felt from one other being.
“The Cataclysm,” I murmur to myself, forgetting that the shifters will have no issue hearing me even over their own argument.
“What?” Jewels cries sharply, causing Sara Ann to burst into tears in the back seat.
“Where?” Lou grabs for Cal as if she’s poised to drag him to safety. Never mind that we’re already in a vehicle that at top speed can outrun most shifters.
Most shifters.
Bellamy seemed to think that the berserkers in the barrens could have easily run an SUV off the road. I don’t doubt that the same would hold for the Cataclysm.
Cal doesn’t protest Lou’s grip on his arm, but he does meet my gaze in the rearview mirror. His glower seems less directed at me, though, than at the situation. He pats Sara Ann’s knee, and she quickly swallows her sobs.
“He was driven away,” I say calmly, though the sound of a child stifling her own fear nearly unravels the bits of me I thought were all woven together again. Apparently, I’m only barely patched up. Just enough to keep moving, perhaps.
“By who?” Jewels says in disbelief, looking around with a frantic edge.
Pressing the accelerator lightly to pick up speed, I roll past the mangled gate, inhaling deeply and allowing the residual essence still clinging to the air itself to settle in my lungs.
I can feel an echo of all of them. Then I taste them. The bond hooked into my upper ribs tightens just enough to call my attention to it.
“My mates,” I say. Simply to say it out loud, to claim them, even if just a tiny bit. Even the one I’m almost certain I won’t be claiming at all. “The universe is playing with a full warp today.”
“What does that mean?” Cal asks.
“Your brothers have cleared the way for us.” I smile at him in the mirror. Then, knowing that the Cataclysm could still be nearby, I press my foot much more firmly to the accelerator.
Jewels twists to share a look with Lou, then says hesitantly, “Cal isn’t his, Zaya. He might look like —”
I cut her off, but mildly. “There is never any point in lying to me, Jewels.”
Cal huffs from the back seat. “It’s me they all think is stupid. Like I didn’t figure it out years ago.”
“What?” Lou asks softly. “When?”
“Does it matter?” he snaps. “I’m not an idiot. And … they aren’t my brothers. Actual brothers wouldn’t have … left me.”
Silence falls. Jewels and Lou are probably running responses in their heads, but I know this is something Cal has to work through for himself. Talking at him, cajoling him, won’t be helpful.
So I simply say, “The truth always comes to light, usually in the most inconvenient way. And some bonds transcend bloodlines.”
“Whatever,” Cal mutters, hunching down in his seat. “I need to piss.”
“On the other side,” I say, even as the road emerges from between high hills — and the massive wall built into the mountainside demarcating the eastern border of the Navajo Nation comes into view in the distance.
