Page 125 of Juniper Unraveling

“I know that.” He cups my cheek, running his thumb along my temple. “I’ll never hurt you, Wren.”

“I know you won’t.” I straddle his body and bend forward to kiss his scar. Brushing my lips down his stubbled cheek, I kiss the one at his jaw. Then his throat. Collarbone. And back to his lips. “I’ll kiss every one of them.” My jaw shifts with the hint of jealousy humming below my skin. “Unless I’m expected to share you with the others.” The tone of my voice is cold and flat, and unfitting for this moment, as if my mind went kamikaze for a second. Remorse leaches into my heart, and like everything, I ruin the moment. Annihilate it. Light it up with flames and watch it burn to ash, because that’s what I’ve become in his absence.

A destroyer of my own happiness.

None of the others have even come close enough to touch him, certainly not close enough for me to feel any sort of jealousy.

A slight smile steals away some of the darkness in his eyes. “No. And I won’t share you, either.”

“Good.” I don’t know what it is about Six. What it’s always been. He is fire in a rainstorm. A sweet poison that intoxicates me. A force of nature that defies everything I know—both dangerous and extraordinary at the same time. There are probably a million reasons to stay away from him, to leave this place and never look back, but I can’t. Not now. “So, what about the others? They want me to get you inside Szolen, right? To take it over?”

He groans, shifting his gaze away from me. “I’m not offering that at your expense. This isn’t going to be some Trojan Horse tragedy.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. But I already lost you once, and come war, or the fires of hell, I’m not losing you twice.”

Chapter 34

Arm stretched across Rhys’s chest, I lie beside him in his bed, taking in the slow and steady rise and fall of his chest, while he sleeps. The cool air of the cavern mingles with the sweat on my skin, adding just enough chill for me to appreciate his warmth. For the first time in a long time, everything feels right. As if I’m where I’m supposed to be, for once in my life.

A twitch against my chest breaks my thoughts, and Rhys’s hands fist the sheets beside him. The hard clench of his jaw, and the rapid shift of his eyes beneath his lids, tell me he’s locked in another nightmare.

Dragging my knuckles gently across his stubbled cheek, I lean forward to kiss his lips, and his eyes flip open.

Snatching my wrist mid-stroke, he stares back at me with a disoriented expression on his face. He clamps his eyes shut and opens them again, as if to blink away whatever images are churning inside his head. Large dark pupils swallow the blue, and the fear claiming his face confesses his nightmares.

“You’re still trapped in that place, aren’t you? Every night when you close your eyes, you see it, don’t you?”

Swallowing a gulp, he nods and exhales an easy breath, releasing my arm. “I see Brenin sometimes. Strapped to a chair, just like they had me. Cutting him open, just to test his tolerance to pain. Abusing him in unspeakable ways.”

“What ways?”

He shakes his head. “What happened won’t change anything.”

He’s right. Just as I don’t want to tell him what happened to me there, I couldn’t bear to hear his stories, either. The scars tell me enough.

“Your pain is my pain.”

Casting his gaze from mine, he clenches his jaw. “I can’t think about that. Someone hurting you that way. I’d kill anyone who laid a hand on you again.”

“They’re still doing this. They view you as savages out here. Tainted and expendable. A poisonous race that could make them inferior. They think the second generation exposed to the organism is weaker. That we are weaker. It’s why they wanted to kill me. It’s why they kill all the women. To keep them from having more abominations. The people inside the walls have no idea this goes on. They don’t want to know. Ignoring it means they survive.” Propped up on my elbow beside him, I trace a finger down his hairline, gathering sweat from his skin. “There’s a sickness in this world, and it’s not the Dredge. We need to build our own community. Out here.”

“There aren’t enough resources. Whatever isn’t fire-gutted from the bombs has been destroyed by looters. And if we did, Legion would mount an army to attack us and take everything.”

“Then, we’ll leave this place. Go somewhere else.”

He shakes his head. “We’re all that stands between people out here and the Legion. If we leave, they’ll continue to raid and murder until all that’s left is their own perfect utopia. They’ll use us as guinea pigs and weapons.”

“Szolen isn’t going to just give up his empire. And the manpower he has is bigger than any army out there, including yours. You don’t have enough people. And I don’t think you want to sacrifice the ones you have.”

“What do you suggest I do? Stay holed up in some underground tunnel, collecting the remains of their raids?” There’s no aggression in his voice, no accusation. He’s genuinely asking. His hand cups my face, blue eyes smoldering with conflict, like turbulent waves. “What do you want?”

As if the decision to wage war is up to me.

In truth, I want to steal away with him. The selfish side of me wants to repeat the same words Papa said to me days ago, that survival means being alone, and the two of us surviving alone, together, would be so much easier. But I don’t tell him any of that. “I want to survive. With you. And the others. We don’t need Szolen to do that.”

“I’ve searched this desert for eight years, Wren. There’s nowhere else. Nothing can offer the safety and security these people are looking for.”