All I could focus on was picking off the dried blood from my skin. Where were all these corrupted coming from? I needed to gather bear traps, possibly purchase another gun. I could leave my tools at the farmhouse for the girls. What if Phoebe and I hadn’t stepped in? What if it had been the middle of the night? What if they had gotten inside?
Hands firmly gripped my shoulders, interrupting my pacing.
“Deep breath, Alina.” Phoebe stood before me, squeezing my shoulders tightly to pull me from my manic state.
“We need more traps, more guns, more defenses,” I rambled. “We can all stay in the house for a while. No one needs to leave. Tell Edith to come home. She shouldn’t be out... Wait... what if she is h-hurt, too?” I stumbled over my words as my throat strained, refraining from working myself up.
“Breathe, please, calm down for me, all right?” Phoebe gulped, glancing at something over my shoulder.
When I craned my neck, the girls were huddled at the entrance of the kitchen, Mary at the forefront.
“We need to go get Edith—” I began.
“We telephoned the hospital already, it is taken care of,” Mary said.
“That’s good,” I exhaled. “We need to get the knives from the lab and see if John can spare a gun... maybe we buy more. I think we need one for every?—”
“Alina,” Mary spoke, a sorrowful expression on her face. She looked as if what she was about to say was going to hurt both of us. “As a Nest, we have all been talking.” She took a deep breath and glanced at some of the other girls. She picked at her nail beds and took a minute to build up the courage to look me in the eye again.
I furrowed my brows and glanced at Phoebe, who refused to look at me as well, seemingly aware of what would happen next.
“What is it?” My voice cracked as I stared at Mary.
“We think it is best you take the deal,” Mary said firmly.
“I cannot?—”
“While autonomy is one of the three tenets of the Nest,” she spoke over me, standing taller, “we cannot ignore how rejecting this deal would be a great disservice to what we’ve built, our cause, and our survival.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I could not think of a single word that I wanted to say. All I wanted to do was scream. After all I had done for the Nest, they would throw me to the ground like this?
“I’m not ready.” The pain in my chest was unbearable. “Phoebe, tell them.”
Phoebe said nothing.
“We did not decide this lightly, or out of malice.” Mary adopted an almost pleading tone. “He is promising stability, funding, and safety. Imagine how much good we could do with those kinds of resources. It would put us thousands of miles ahead of where we thought we could ever reach alone?—”
“You do notknowhim.”
“Consider this a sacrifice for the betterment of the Nest.”
I had nothing to argue. Every word that came to my mind was unhelpful.
All I had left was rage.
“Before you accept his deal,” Mary continued, “we want to add our own terms.”
“What would that be?” My eyes narrowed, my nails digging into my palms.
“We want the men on the property moved in for our own protection.”
That was the end of my wick.
I shoved past the crowd and went upstairs, Phoebe chasing after me.
How could they do this? How was it that I was the only one suggesting solutions while everyone looked to me as a last resort?
When we got in the room, I slammed the door so hard into its frame that it shook the house.
