Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) (10 page)

But I was fairly
certain it was true. We hadn’t been intimate in weeks—not with my kidnapping,
resulting in a broken arm and many bruises, and the still-healing gash crossing
Jason’s face from hairline to jaw—and though we’d been sleeping
near
each
other in our tent, our sleeping bags remained separated. I’d been telling
myself it was because he feared hurting me while we slept. Now I suspected
that
was only part of the reason for the physical restraint.

I searched the
sapphire depths of his eyes. “Can we talk? Somewhere more private.” Another
deep breath. “I—there’s some stuff you need to know.”

The tightness
around his eyes increased, but he nodded. He held out an arm, indicating that I
should lead the way.

Taking a deep
breath, I squeezed my good hand into a fist and turned to head toward the tiny
creek. There was a sharp bend a short ways downstream, and the rocky walls of
the shallow ravine and the scrubby pines lining it would provide us at least a
semblance of privacy. I had no way to gauge how Jason would react to what I was
about to tell him, but I wanted to give him the opportunity to process away
from the others.

Silence was our
only companion as we descended one of a myriad of paths leading down to the
creek. The creek itself was only several feet wide and easy enough to cross. By
the time we were hidden from our camp, from our companions, by the ravine wall,
I was a ball of anxiety; my hand was shaking, my heart was beating a fast staccato
rhythm against the inside of my rib cage, and I didn’t feel like I could draw
in enough breath.

I wiped my
suddenly damp palm on my jeans and stopped in front of a knee-high rock.
Turning
to face Jason, I pointed to the rock.
“Sit, please.”

Jason did so
silently, his eyes never leaving me. His gaze was a tangible thing, burning
into my flesh, flaying me open, and laying out my fetid soul for the whole universe
to witness…to judge.

I pulled my braid
over my shoulder and wrapped my hand around its end, giving a gentle tug.
I
can do this. I can
do
this. I
have
to do this!
My stomach
twisted, knotted, lurched, and I started pacing. Back and forth. Back and
forth.

“Dani.” Just that
single word, my name on Jason’s lips, halted me mid-step.

I opened my
mouth, swallowed, pressed my lips together. There was so much I hadn’t told him
about my time in the Colony, so much I hadn’t told anyone, that it seemed an
impossible task to pick a place to start. But I had to tell him something. I
had to let him know that I wanted to fix
us
.

I met your
mom, she’s in the Colony, and she created the Virus.

Taking a deep
breath, I tried again. “When I was at the Colony, you—do you remember telling
me to do whatever it took to survive?” I stared at the rough rock wall behind
Jason, just over his shoulder, too chickenshit to actually look at him.

“Yes.” His voice
was carefully controlled.

Another deep
breath. “Because of the issues they’ve been having with pregnancies making it
to full term, one of the regular commands the General gives newcomers is to
actively attempt to procreate…” My voice sounded hollow, dead. “…with pretty
much anyone.”

Jason’s jaw
clenched, and it remained that way.

“The men are
encouraged to approach any woman they desire, and the women are discouraged
from denying them.” A disgusted laugh caught in my throat. “God, he’s such a
chauvinistic bastard—he doesn’t even give
that
choice to the women. It’s
just, ‘If someone wants you to spread your legs, spread ’em.’”

“Dani…did someone—”

I shook my head
once, sharply, and whatever Jason saw in my eyes silenced him. “The night I met
Mase and Camille, I was searching the warehouses, doing my first round of
scouting out their supplies. I—there was a soldier, a yellow-band, who I
may
have antagonized just a bit when I first arrived.” My hand clutched the
side of my jeans. “He propositioned me, I said no, and when he found me
wandering around the warehouses that day, no longer mind-controlled—though he
didn’t know that—he decided to take advantage of those particular commands.

“He forced me
into one of the warehouses and—” I looked down at my hand; my nails were
digging into my thigh painfully. I embraced the sensation, drawing strength
from it. “He was big and armed, and I wasn’t.” I raised my gaze to meet
Jason’s; his eyes were bottomless pools of midnight set in granite. “I stopped
fighting him, and…” I cleared my throat. “I stopped fighting him…let him
believe I wanted him…so I could steal his sidearm.” A soft laugh. A
one-shoulder shrug.
I was thinking about you the whole time,
I didn’t
say. “I managed to nab his key, too.”

“What did you do
to him?”

“Nothing.” I
refused to look away. As the words had come out, I’d started to realize that my
actions weren’t something to be ashamed of. I
had
been doing what I had
to do to stay alive…to survive. “Mase did all the heavy lifting, really. He was
going to kill the guy, but I asked him not to.”

“Why?” So very,
very
cold.

“He was a
yellow-band.” I shook my head again. “You don’t know what it’s like, to have no
control over your actions, but to believe everything you’re doing is your own
idea, that it’s what you want, your choice. The guilt once you remember…he was
only doing what the General commanded him to do.”

“So you spared
him.”

I didn’t have a
response to that, so I simply stood there. I’d spared a man who’d had every
intention of forcing me to have sex with him, but I hadn’t hesitated to
shoot—to kill—a little girl to protect Zoe.
She was a Crazy,
I told
myself.
She was going to attack Zo…

Seconds passed in
handfuls until, finally, Jason said, “Tell me what it’s like.”

I blinked several
times. “What
what’s
like?”

“Having no
control over your actions…being mind-controlled.”

“I—it—” Mouth
still open as though the words might form at any moment, I shook my head. “I
don’t know how to explain it. It doesn’t seem bad until you’re awake,
really
awake, and you realize what you’ve done. When I was under—” I pressed my lips
together and squeezed my eyes shut. Panic was a living thing inside my chest, a
trapped bird flitting around, making my heart skip beats and stealing the space
my lungs so desperately needed.

I took several
steps and knelt on the rock-strewn ground before Jason. Resting my chin on his
knee, I met his eyes. His face softened minutely, and he brought his right hand
to my head, smoothing back the flyaway curls that had escaped from my French
braid and running the backs of his fingers over my unbruised jawline. His body,
however, was humming with tension.

Turning my head,
I rested my cheek on his knee. “The General made me forget everything that
happened once I got sick,” I said softly. “I thought I had amnesia, and since I
was told I’d been found alone—other than the Crazies who’d supposedly been
attacking me—I assumed that everyone I knew was dead. I didn’t remember the
journey from Seattle to Bodega Bay, or the one from there to Colorado, and I
didn’t remember us ever being…
us.
”

The soft brush of
Jason’s knuckles against my skin stilled, but I couldn’t bring myself to look
up at him. I didn’t think I would be able to continue if I saw his expression,
and I
had
to keep going. Things wouldn’t be right with us until I’d shed
at least
some
of my secrets.

I took a deep
breath. “Gabe”—Jason’s tense body stiffened further—“was the only person I
knew. He was the only familiar thing in a terrifying world, and I was so,
so
lonely.”

“Did you—did he…”

I shut my eyes.
“No. I—we kissed, that’s all. He stopped things before it could go any further
than that.” Trembling, I pulled away so I could look up at Jason.

He was staring at
the opposite side of the ravine, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring.

“Jason, I swear
that whatever I felt for him when my mind was twisted to hell and back, it
pales in comparison to what I feel for you. It means
nothing
.”

“It means
something to me,” he said quietly. “Is there anything else?”

I met your
mom, she’s in the Colony, and she created the Virus.

“No,” I
whispered.

With a gentleness
born of great strength and intensive training, Jason pushed me away from him
and rose, not even looking down at me before walking away.

I wanted to call
after
him so badly
, to stand
and chase him down and beg him to stay and talk to me, to help me fix things
between us. But I couldn’t. I watched him go, grief silencing my voice,
paralyzing my limbs. I watched him walk further downstream, my heart crushed in
his fist, and I couldn’t even fight for us, for what we could be.

This is what I
deserve…to be alone. Jason, Zoe, Camille, even Gabe…I only hurt whoever gets
close to me. I was wrong; my secrets aren’t poison.
I
am poison.

But there was one
thing I could do that wouldn’t hurt anyone, one place I could go where I
wouldn’t feel the waves of desperation caused by having my heart torn out, and
where neither Ky nor Zoe would have to feel the reverberations, either. There
was only one way I could escape.

“Jack,”
I said in my dog’s mind. He was on the
other side of camp, frolicking over the barren land with Cooper. I crawled
one-handed closer to the ravine wall and, leaning my back against the rocky
surface, pulled my knees up to my chest.
“Please, Sweet Boy, let me in. Let
me run with you.”

“Yes, Mother.
Run. Chase. Hunt.”

With a sigh, I
slipped out of my shivering body.

~~~~~

I was Jack.

The moon was
high and bright, and the night was filled with promise. My prey ran ahead, its
heartbeat rapid. I could taste its terror on my tongue.

Abruptly, it
changed direction, heading upward. It was climbing a tree. No!

I lunged at
the tree’s trunk, standing on my back legs and scratching at the rough bark
with my front claws. I opened my mouth and barked, begging my prey to come back
down and play some more.

“Dani!”

“What?” I
blurted, sitting bolt upright and jostling my broken arm. “Ow!” I curled in on
myself, clutching my sling with my good hand. My eyes were shut tightly as
though that act alone could block the pain.

“Dani—Red…”

That voice. My
eyes snapped open. “Jason?”
He came back?

His hand was
clasping my shoulder, and his face, which I could barely see in the darkness,
was mere inches from mine. “You’re shivering.”

“I’m cold,” I
said, with an extra big shiver that made my teeth chatter. “What time is it?”

“Late…everyone’s
asleep back at camp.” His hand moved up my neck, and the pad of his thumb
brushed across my lips. “We missed dinner.”

My pulse was
suddenly racing, and I shivered for another reason entirely. It took me a
moment to speak. When I did, it wasn’t much. “We?”

“Yeah.”

So he’s been gone
all this time?
I took a
shaky breath, a byproduct of the nighttime chill and my anxiety. At first, I
couldn’t believe that nobody had come looking for us, but then I realized they
probably thought we’d snuck off for some amorous alone time. Boy, were they
wrong.

I cleared my
throat. “Where’d you go after I, um—earlier?”

Ever so
carefully, Jason nudged me forward, wedging himself between my back and the rock
wall, and my God did he feel good—so warm and firm and
there.
He
cocooned me with his body, his chest to my back and his legs propped up on
either side of me. His left arm slid around my middle, just under my sling, and
he raised his right arm, tracing a slow line along my collarbone, up my neck,
and along my jawline with his fingertips.

“Walking,” he
said. “I just walked around. I couldn’t be here.”

“Why?” I
whispered.

Jason held me, kindling
a gentle, sizzling promise I hadn’t felt in weeks. Warmth blossomed in my lower
abdomen, his touch arousing my desire with embarrassing ease.

“Needed a
breather.” His fingers clasped my jaw tenderly, and he turned my head so the
side of my face was pressed against the worn brown leather of his coat. He
lowered his head and nuzzled my neck, and when he next spoke, his breath
tickled skin made overly sensitive by weeks of neglect. “I need to know one
thing. Why didn’t you tell me earlier…and why now?”

“That’s two
things,” I managed to say, though the words were breathy.

He chuckled, the
sound fanning the flames of desire. He was doing a really good job of warming
me up, inside and out. “Tell me,” he said against my neck.