“Hell no, there won’t be no rotters getting past our gates,” Adam said. “We’ve held up here against three different hordes. Just this morning Eagle and I singlehandedly got a huge group of thosebastardosoff our gates.”
She looked to Adam, her wild gaze calming as she took in the sight of him leaning forward in his chair.
“How?” she asked softly. “How’d you get them away?”
“Uh, well ...” Adam glanced at me and I shot him a look. If he told her the truth, I’d knock him out.
Leaning back in his chair, Adam shrugged lightly. “I asked them nicely,” he said, winking at her. “I’m just that good,chula.”
We all watched as her lips began to twitch. At first I thought maybe she was having some kind of seizure, or possibly getting ready to leap out of the chair and try to claw one of us to death. But then she surprised us all when her lips parted, revealing a smile.
It wasn’t a grin, it was hardly even a smile. It was shy, tentative, tight lipped and reserved, but there was no denying what the dimples meant that had appeared on either side of her mouth, deeply indenting her cheeks. They meant she was smiling. At Adam.
I’d saved her life, nursed her back to health, and was now branding her, putting myself on the line to protect her from Liv and everyone else in Purgatory. Hell, I was protecting her from Purgatory itself, and she was smiling atAdam.
I got the shit-smeared mess of a girl, who clawed at me more than she spoke, who puked on my floor and forced me to bathe her. And Adam, who’d done absolutely jack shit for her, got dimples.
“Get up,” I snarled. Jumping down from the table, I grabbed Adam’s arm and yanked him out of his chair. Shoving him toward the door, I turned back to Don. “Do this shit, now.”
Don looked from me to her, and with a shrug gripped her arm tightly and set to work. She squeezed her eyes shut and bit down on her bottom lip, every once in a while whimpering loudly.
“Almost there,” Don murmured. Dipping his needle into the ink one last time, he finished shading the tiny wings.
When Don pulled away and his tattoo machine went silent, I got up to survey his work. While she remained unmoving in her chair, her eyes still closed and her teeth clenched, I looked over her wrist. He’d done an incredible job; the miniature eagle inked onto her skin was a damn near replica of my own.
“We’re good now?” Don asked.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
Chapter Sixteen
Autumn
Eagle was silent upon returning home and spent the following several hours beating on the punching bag that hung from the rafters in his bedroom. Wary of his mood, I opted to remain on the couch, ignoring my hunger pains, my dry throat, and the throbbing pain on my wrist in favor of not upsetting him further.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was starving, my stomach sickened and burning with the need to eat. Quietly, I left the couch and tiptoed across the room, stopping just outside his bedroom. Peeking inside, I found him shirtless and covered in a sheen of sweat, his tattooed muscles flexing menacingly with each strike of the bag.
“I don’t know why,” he muttered to himself as he leveled the bag with yet another punch.
What did I do to gain his attention without angering him? Did I knock? I nearly giggled at the thought of knocking. What a foreign concept knocking was to me. I’d been alone for so long, and living in a cave. Nobody knocked on my cave. And then I remembered the last time someone had and my laugh died on my lips.
I’d been sleeping, in and out of conscious as the heat of the day wore on outside when the knocking had sounded. Atap-tap-tap, as light as the peck of a bird on a tree.
Sweaty and tired, I’d forced myself to sit up, the mud caking my skin crumbling as I moved. The sound came again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
And then another sound. A growl, a scrape, followed by another growl. A biter was at my door, clawing to find purchase and climb up inside my cave.
“What the fuck do you want?” Eagle angry and breathless voice knocked me out of my memories and back to the present. He threw another couple of punches before he let his arms fall to his sides and turned toward me.
The first thing I noted was that his hands were bleeding. Despite the scraps of cloth he’d wrapped around his knuckles, blood had seeped through, staining the once white material a dark brown. Seeing the blood, my breathing hitched, an instinctual response that I knew I’d never be rid of. The blood brought the biters. Blood would always bring the biters.
Not knowing how to broach the subject of food, I stupidly presented him with my wrist instead. “It hurts.”
“It hurts,” Eagle repeated, laughing coldly. “You were stabbed in the gut, and you’re complaining about a little tattoo?”
My nostrils flaring, I only stared at him. How could such a cruel man at the same time be so kind?
