Page 27 of After the Burn

Maybe even a protector.

I saw something else.

Mace never seemed fully present in a conversation. His eyes were always moving, always watching. Like part of his mind was constantly evaluating every person around him and deciding whether they were useful, dangerous, or disposable.

But what really bothered me was his fucked-up sense of humor: a man being beaten nearly to death in a fight, or an infected getting burned outside the fence.

Nothing noticeable to most people, just a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Enough to make my skin crawl.

I’d met plenty of violent men in my life.

Hell, I was one.

But Mace was different, and every instinct I had warned me to keep an eye on him.

New world.

New hierarchy.

Only the strong were going to survive.

We hadn’t been here long, but we’d begun to figure out how this place ticked.

We weren’t prisoners.

Not exactly.

Gideon was smarter than that.

Men, like Adrian and me, didn’t get chained up if they could still be useful. Instead, we got food, beds, and beer.

They sent women to our rooms after dark.

The first night, a brunette with nervous eyes knocked softly on my door, carrying a tray of food. Clearly, the food wasn’t all that she was offering.

I told her to leave. I had zero interest in anyone but my Fox.

She looked terrified when I said it. Not offended, but absolutely terrified. As if my refusal were going to land her in the shit.

That was when I started to understand how this settlement worked.

The women here weren’t exactly prisoners. But they sure as hell weren’t free.

Some belonged to husbands or families trying to survive the end of the world together. I’d seen fathers carrying sleeping daughters through the streets and women sitting beside men who looked genuinely protective rather than possessive.

But others — others looked, watched, and measured. A prize for enhanced men who won in the ring. No option to refuse, as far as I could tell.

So far, Gideon had let the men who came here seeking sanctuary with females keep them. But I suspected it was only a matter of time before that changed.

I missed Taryn terribly, but I didn’t want her anywhere near this place. I hadn’t seen more than two enhanced women since we’d arrived here, and each had been claimed by the strongest family groups.

I’d heard that one of those women had come in with a husband who met with an unfortunate accident a few days later.

That seemed a little too convenient for my liking.

All of the family groups were made up of enhanced men like Adrian and me. Most of them already had females in their care, with a small number still waiting.