Page 14 of Dark Company

Unable to push them away, I’m helpless as Jakrob’s firm hands tear through my skirt, revealing to him what no one other than fellow women have seen. Shame floods my body as both the Clan Mother and Bedrel take a knee and pull back, exposing every inch of me to his gaze.

I hold my breath, waiting for the moment he defiles me with his touch, but it never comes. I feel his breath as it washes over my skin, but nothing else. After several agonizing moments, they put my legs down, and my breath comes out in a whoosh.

“She is still intact, and everything looks normal. Though she is small in stature, she does not look like she needs to be stretched. I’ll have the handmaidens report back to me when they start to prepare her.”

“Will she last long enough to make it through the ceremony?” The Clan Mother’s voice is soft and tainted with fear.

“She will be fine. I will get these remaining pills in her system so I can stabilize her, then after that, she will be put under until the poison is cleared from her body. Her dynamic is strong, peeking through the supplements. Though she still tests positive for being a beta, the markers are fuzzy around the edges, with a few spikes leading towards omega. She’ll pull through just fine.”

A lie.

My entire life is a lie.

Chapter 4

Altris

The scent of burnt flesh tickles my nose, somehow making its way past the respirators. Looking over at Leon, I wait for his machine to finish the scan. After a few more moments, he looks back at me, his eyes downcast as he shakes his head. Dead. Just like the other location.

So far, every place we’ve come across has been burnt to a crisp. The dwellers in these outlier cities lie in haphazard piles, their charred bones being feasted upon by the wildlife that surrounds us. Unless we tested every dead body, there would be no way of knowing if Karis was even here. But I don’t want to go home empty-handed.

I don’t want to look at Annora’s puffy face and tell her that her sister is dead without turning over every dune, just to be sure. Shaking my head, I hold up two fingers in the air and swivel them around, indicating to the others to head back to the camp.

As they shuffle past us, Leon and I hang back and look over the smoldering carnage. Pausing for a moment, I pick up a rock and toss it with some others. “I take it you’re going to test them?”

Leon purses his lips as he once more consults with his machine. “Do I have any other choice?” With a sigh, he punches his fingers against the screen a few more times before looking back out at the buildings. “It’s the same as last time. There’s only a handful of people here. For an outcropping of this size, there should be far more. And cattle. Where is their livestock?”

“I wish I knew. None of this makes any sense. Did the people that lived here get swept up in some kind of mass exodus and burnt everything so no one else could take up residence?”

“It makes just as much sense as the fact that in both places there’s only been five or fewer people, and at least one of them has been an omega. Someone is trying to leave a message.”

“That,” I interject. “Or they’re trying to mislead us. I wouldn’t put it past Caulder to throw off the trail with a few dead bodies, thinking we wouldn’t look any further than that.”

Leon looks over at me, his brows drawn in thought. “But that doesn’t make sense either. Unless he knew we were working for the resistance. I mean, you and I would be the obvious choice to investigate a disappearance, and we wouldn’t leave any stone unturned.”

“True.” A shuffle of movement catches my eyes, and I reach down for my blaster out of instinct.

Through the haze of the lingering smoke, the intruder becomes clear, and my muscles start to relax as Basq shuffles up next to me. He, too, looks out over the ruins, his eyes clouded, as if the sight personally injures him. He seems soft and harmless. As a newer member of the resistance, I know little about him, but he’s quiet and keeps to himself. I like that about him.

His dark brown eyes rove about, as if he’s seeking something. The haunted look of loss is something I recognize all too well. Many Alphas carry that look with them into battle. There are losses on both sides, not just the side that loses. The stench of anger wafts off of him, carried about by the mid-day breeze. This is personal to him.

“Do you have family outside of Stanlion?”

Basq turns his head, his eyes flashing with just a hint of barely restrained malice. “No. Not anymore. My sister fled the oppressive rule, and is reportedly out here somewhere, but everywhere we’ve stopped has had nothing but death and destruction.”

Concern niggles its way into the muscle where my heart is supposed to reside, but I slough it off. If he wanted us to check for his sister, he would have said something when Leon was determining if any of the bodies were Karis. With a shake of his head, he walks back towards the camp to commiserate with the other males that traveled here with us.

Apparently, he’s seen all that he needs to, but what’s good enough for him is not good enough for us. We have to bring back definitive proof of Karis being either dead or alive. We don’t have the luxury of looking out over the ruins and deciding that her body is not amongst the few that are dead.

Ignoring Leon as he sifts through the charred bones, I make my way into the heart of the commune. Tent-like structures stand hollowed out with just their wooden supports still standing in jagged relief against the sky. They lived a simple life. Nowhere is any evidence of something passing for technology. It’s like they embraced their nomadic life.

It was something I could never do. Running my fingers along the sooty feeding troughs, my mind wanders to where the animals could be. It’s odd that not one place we stopped at still had any livestock. Hell, there weren’t any bones either. They were all human remains.

Walking back towards Leon, I pull out my datacom and switch over to the map. The problem is, there are only a few settlements we actually know about. There could be hundreds more that aren’t on any maps. That’s the biggest issue with these nomadic people. Few like to actually stay put. They travel about, going where their supplies are far more bountiful.

Leon looks up at me and nods before standing. He’s done all he needs to do, and the new princess of Stanlion is not among the dead. There’s nothing else we can do for these bodies now—they’ve already been burnt, their ashes carried up to the council of the dead.

Shaking my head, I clap Leon on the shoulder and walk back into the makeshift camp. Tomorrow, we will be back at it, but for now, I will eat and drink with these men and do my best to act normal. Their ribald jokes fly over my head, but Leon gets them. He understands so much that I cannot even fathom.