Page 48 of Rot In Knotty Pieces

“Jay?” he yawns and follows the alter out of the tent.

“What are we doing?”

“Gentle exercise,” the alter says with evil glee.

Pix grumbles. “You woke me up for gentle exercise?”

Jay adopts a yoga pose and starts slowly moving through the positions. Pix joins in, grumbling, but I can see him relaxing bit by bit. I make a note to go and kidnap a yoga instructor to teach me so I can play, too.

“What are you plotting?”

I bare my teeth at Sage. “How do you always know when I’m plotting?”

“Easy, you get this adorably creepy grin and this far-away look in your eyes.”

“I do not!”

“Okay, baby, you don’t. But I do love the smile that you don’t wear when you are not plotting evil things.”

We have a fire, and Roseland is sitting and cooking something that looks like meat.

“What is that?”

“That is rabbit,” Sage says proudly.

“Who caught it?”

“Rolly. He’s got this amazing arm and aim. It was impressive.”

I grunt and watch King drop a whole heap more wood near the fire.

“We need to dismantle the nest,” Sage says.

I glance at him. “Okay, but tomorrow. I want to study it.”

“Why?”

“I think there are probably some messages woven into the web, and I want to see what they are.”

It’s good everyone is doing what they need to do. This pack is a well-oiled machine. I’d thought we’d need to argue or fight over chores, but everyone pulls their own weight out here. Is it because of the omegas, the heat, or is it because we are out of the house? Vulnerable?

I go into my pack and dig out the chocolate I have stashed and wait until Jay comes close to me. I hold it out. He looks at the chocolate and then up at me.

“What’s this?”

“Chocolate, obviously.”

He looks back down at the bar and then up at me, quietly judging me until I start feeling uncomfortable. Until this blasted alter has me tongue-tied and wanting to apologise for I don’t even know what.

“Jay,” I growl in warning and thrust the bar into his chest before storming out of the clearing, following the molten maze of omega scent and woven passages through his web.

With each turn, I get further and further away from the anger and frustration that had me held hostage and fall further and further into the curiosity that is Pix’s mind.

Daega and Pix aren’t separate, not like the alters that exist within Merle Kestrel, but Daega and Pix are different sides of him, like masks he puts on and takes off.

Daega is the part of him he’s desperate to hide. The side with wounds and pain, the one who has hope and plays with Sage’s bobblehead characters when he thinks no one is watching. He’s the one who can’t walk away from Roseland, and the one who was so damn hurt over us trying to get him and Merle together. His webs are chaotic and darker. Erratic but more beautiful. It’s in Daega’s webs that most of Merle’s shiny bits of rubbish and metal have been added. I find a rose woven into the web. A crown. There’s a dagger that I attribute to Rolly, and a man in a billowing robe.

He built us into his web.