Genesis Lost - Books 1 - 6, page 126
Be a Lily just one more time.
Maybe twice, if Rob lasted.
I forced my head into the old mindset, ignoring how everything inside me writhed, wanting me to fight him. Wanting to show him that my body belonged to me only, and I’d share it with nobody but Oriel.
He let go of my wrists and worked his hand underneath my hips, starting to rub me as if he hoped he might get me to take pleasure in this.
“It won’t take long,” he whispered once more, just as Rob grunted, which told me he had stroked himself to an orgasm. “Perhaps you want to do this virgin a favor, huh? Pretend you’re my wife. I always wanted one. Treat her well. Have children. A family. Can you moan for me, baby? Can you moan for your husband?”
Everything inside me convulsed, just as pure rage spread through my body like wildfire. This body was mine, and I refused to give it up ever again. At least not without a fight.
“No!” I shouted and picked up my elbow, letting it crash against the side of his head until a flat thump sounded into the night.
I bucked him off me and crawled away.
“Fucking bitch!”
His hand slung around my ankle and pulled me back before he grabbed for the other and turned me onto my back.
“No!” I screamed.
I kicked.
I fought.
“She’s too loud, man,” Rob’s voice came anxiety-filled somewhere from behind me. “Xavier ordered us to leave the women alone.”
Josh threw his heavy body onto mine and pinned me down, traces of moss clinging to his cheeks right underneath his glistening eyes. “Xavier is fucking his new wife tonight. And I intend to do the same.”
Twenty-Five
Oriel
“Do not let them breach through to the longhouse!” Rowan shouted, his posture as unfazed as ever, packing fire in each of his hands with fingers firm on the grip. “Protect them with your lives.”
The attack had quickly pushed us back behind the parked vehicles, fire coming steadily from the east. It was clear the Clan of the Mountains was attacking us, seizing the opportunity now that we were several good men short.
Rowan pointed at one of the guard towers. “Can you make it up there? I need a sniper, or they’ll overrun this place in the next ten.”
“I don’t have a rifle.”
Phewt.
A bullet cut through between us, making us both duck lower behind the black truck. The stench of gasoline turned my head dizzy. A necessary precaution to keep those bullets from setting the vehicles ablaze, except for those we kept filled to the rim along the outline of the village.
The shouts and screams distracted my every thought, but it had nothing on the way the gunfire made talking near impossible.
“There’s a sniper rifle up there,” Rowan shouted, pointing at the tower with the barrel of his gun and twitching his trigger finger in case I couldn’t hear. “Rifle. Tower.”
“Got it!” I shouted.
I watched how Rowan tapped the air three times with his gun and cocked his head, waiting for me to get ready.
I holstered my gun and took a deep breath, followed by a nod.
He positioned himself toward east and glanced through the broken windshield, then slowly tapped the air again. His lips shoved and mumbled as he counted. One. Two. At the third tap, he rose and opened fire into the forest with both guns.
I ran as fast as my legs could, going around vehicles and rolling myself over hoods while Rowan made sure no bullet would reach me. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, making my heart drum against my ribcage, helping me to ignore the shooting pain inside my shoulder. The shots retreated into the background the closer I came to the tower, and I glanced around before I grabbed the steel handle of the ladder.
With one shoulder useless, I had no other choice but to pull myself up with one hand, keeping my body somewhat balanced and steady as I climbed up a good thirty feet.
A body I didn’t dare turn around to identify lay face down, several wounds exiting through the back, one of which had severed his spine, which made a shredded vertebra poke out. Granted, when Rowan said there was a rifle up there, I didn’t expect it to be clutched by three cold and stiff fingers. I managed to get it out from the corpse’s hand, and mounted the rifle back onto one of the three precision tripods soldered onto the metal rail of the tower.
Ammo was aplenty in the metal crate at the center of the floor, and I stacked some beside me just in case. I turned on the night vision scope and lowered the butt against my good shoulder, scanning the area of the forest with my finger caressing the trigger.
The moment my eyes found Rowan crouched behind a truck with one hand pressed against the side of his stomach, I adjusted the rifle and scanned the area behind him. Flashes of light flickered from the thicket of the forest, and a faint pop or phewt always followed soon after.
I zoomed in until my pupils could trace the outline of a body, firing as soon as I knew I’d hit. Anything. Precision wasn’t of concern here. We needed them down fast. Dead was best, but hell, I’d take injured as well as long as it would buy us time.
One shot after another, I made bodies hit the ground, giving our clansmen the much-needed time to reload and assess the changed situation. Gunfire was replaced by silence for a long moment.
A sudden blast put a ringing in my ear.
The tower shook underneath my feet, throwing me off balance. My forehead hit the metal rail first, which sent a sting into my brain and a warm trickle down my nose and chin, seasoning my lips with the taste of iron. But that wasn’t the worst part.
Dazed and lightheaded, I crashed shoulder-first into a metal post, the pain flaming inside my joint and robbing me of any ability to even scream out in pain. A wall of yellow and orange formed at the edge of the forest toward the east, where flames climbed from the exploded vehicle up the trees. The crackle of burning needles resonated through the night, yet had nothing comforting to it.
I pulled myself up, battling the sway in my upper body by clasping the tripod as I peeked through the scope once more. What felt like an eternity later, I found Rowan once more, still holding the side of his stomach while he fired desperately at the tanked up vehicles. He missed each time.
The flames had turned the night vision scope useless, the only thing visible bright green flares, spreading from tree to tree. I detached it and dropped it onto the ground, searching for those vehicles marked with a red dot on top of the roof.
Sounds of gunfire emanated once more, and the clack… clack… phwet left no doubt someone had spotted me on the tower. I took shallow breaths as not to move the rifle, forcing the shake out of my trigger finger before I fired at the tank of a vehicle.
Perhaps I wasn’t the best sniper, but hell, I was a damn good mechanic, knowing exactly where the tanks were and which way the injector lines went. The truck lit up in yet another massive explosion, but this time I was prepared and held on to the rail.
Whatever bullets had been flying at me stopped temporarily. By the time they clanked against the metal platform again, I had pulled the trigger once more and sent our village into a near-permanent shake. Without knowing which vehicles were tanked up and which ones weren’t, a lot of their men retreated, but even more lay on the ground either in flames or charred to the depth of their flesh.
While our clansmen grouped up again to go after them, I picked up the scope and let my gaze trail back to the longhouse. Nobody had breached the doors, and chances were slim they’d make it now with their forces scattered and burnt. But when the scope scratched the edges of the clinic, my heart stopped for a moment. One of our men lay dead in the dirt, while two of theirs had somehow managed to sneak up from the northern side. At first, I thought the big one wrestled down another one of our clansmen. I realized it was a woman. Then, at the sight of the way she punched and kicked him, struggling for control, it became clear that woman was my wife.
I dropped everything and hurried toward the ladder, my shoulder threatening to separate from the rest of my body as I lifted my arm to lower myself quickly down the ladder. My lungs burned. My heart ached. Smears of blood lost themselves in the corner of my eye, turning my vision blurry.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here, Josh,” the one standing beside the turmoil said, constantly sidestepping as if he didn’t know which way to run away to.
It didn’t matter.
I pulled my gun from my holster and shot him in the back of the head, his body first falling onto his knees before the rest tipped over and jerked, the dry leaves of last fall rustling underneath him.
“Fucking shit,” Josh immediately lowered his head, his body going tense between Kim’s legs. He pulled out a gun, and for a fraction of a moment, I hoped he’d point it at me. But Josh wasn’t a rookie. He pressed the barrel right against Kim’s temple. “Back the fuck up, or she’ll die.”
Kim struggled, unaware of the gun pointed at her head, and she must have done so for a while, given the bloody scratches across the guy’s cheeks and down the length of his neck. With her small body tossing underneath him, I couldn’t get a clean shot without risking Kim.
“Get the fuck off my wife,” I snarled, “or I swear I’ll blow your brains all over her.”
At the sound of my voice, Kim’s struggle stalled, but I wasn’t able to find her eyes because Josh grabbed her and tossed her exhausted body onto his lap. He choked her neck and rose, holding my wife in front of him like a shield. A small one, but too precious to risk even the most precisely placed bullet.
Our eyes immediately locked, the fear sitting deep behind her dark eyes. But there was something else, too. Pride. Probably because she had fought back, not willing to give him what others had taken from her over the last few years.
“How about you drop your gun,” Josh said, tightening the grip around Kim’s neck until she dug her nails deep into his arm. “And then, well, I don’t know. How about you watch me walk away with your wife and don’t do shit about it?”
“Not gonna happen, man. I had to take a bullet to win her heart. There’s no way I’ll give her up so easily after that.”
Josh sniffed her hair, observing my reaction from the corners of his eyes. “Figured she was feisty.”
“Not feisty.” Rage devoured me from the inside, making me want to drive a single bullet between his eyes. But I swallowed it. “But she’s strong. Eating guys like you and me for breakfast.”
“Oriel,” Kim struggled in little more than a breath across her lips.
“Shut your fucking mouth, damn whore.”
He had made a mistake.
I lifted my gun higher, cocking my head to figure just where Kim’s neck ended, and his head started. There was no fear in my wife’s eyes now — only resolve because she knew I’d come for her. If only one more time because, shit, I knew this standoff wouldn’t end well for me. But that was okay as long as she lived.
That guy had nothing to lose but his life. But I had a wife who loved me, and that made me fucking dangerous, no matter how banged up my body was. I would always come for her, bring her back to me. She was mine, and he wouldn’t have her.
The moment my finger put the slightest pressure onto the trigger, Josh’s eyes opened wide. His mouth turned into a snarl, and he took his gun away from Kim’s temple, his finger immediately initiating a shot.
And just as my brain told me I had seen all of this before, and Kim screamed a heart-wrenching “no!” into the night, the shot went right past me.
Then another.
Before I managed to turn around, the way a bullet hit the artery along Josh’s neck kept my eyes on him. Blood sprayed from his neck, then stopped, then sprayed again, turning less and less frequent as his heart went into panic mode.
He dropped his gun and pressed both palms onto his neck. Maybe suffocating, perhaps getting dizzy. In the end, he collapsed onto the ground, and the world around us turned still.
Kim stood rooted to the ground, staring at whoever was behind me. And when I finally convinced my body to turn, I found Rowan with one hand still pressing against his side. With the other, he now traced the two fresh bullet wounds. One just below his chest. The other almost centered at his stomach. Both of them equally lacking in blood, telling me he had lost most of it already from the wound he held clutched.
“Darya’s gonna kill me,” he said with an unexpected smile on his face, a small amount of blood oozing from his right nostril as he let out a raspy laugh. “This was my best shirt, and look what a mess I made of it.”
Kim and I exchanged a quick glance, then we both ran up to the chieftain.
“We need to b-bring him to Max,” Kim stammered, her body as shaken by the cold as by what had happened.
“At least that motherfucker didn’t get me in the shoulder like your wife got you,” Rowan snarled as Kim and I positioned his massive body between us.
A decent part of his weight slumped onto my good shoulder, and I threw him a sideways glance. “Who told you?”
“Nobody told me.” He heaved in a deep breath, a wet rattle resonating from his chest. “People think I don’t notice shit, but I’m watching all of you.”
Kim wiped a tear from her roughed cheek, momentarily making Rowan lean even heavier against me, sending my lungs into hard work. “I’m sorry.”
Rowan gave a dismissive growl. “It’s not real love if you don’t wanna kill each other every once in a while.”
He said nothing else after that, and I thought it best not to initiate more talking with the way he increasingly dragged his feet behind him instead of taking actual steps.
By the time we reached the side door of the longhouse, the village had gone quiet, and Kim gave a knock on the door.
River opened the door reluctantly, his eyes falling onto Rowan first, then they grew wide and darted inside in search of Darya.
“No!” Darya shouted and pushed the door open wide. “Max! Max, Rowan got injured.”
Rowan held on to the wall and lowered himself onto one of the empty cots not made for a man his size. “A scratch.”
Max hurried over to Rowan, his hands up to his elbows in blood and dark smears. His eyes scanned the entry wounds. “Someone pull back his lips so I can check his gums.”
Darya knelled down beside her husband and fumbled Rowan’s mouth open, who complied with little protest. When Max kneeled down and lifted the chieftains shirt, Rowan coughed up a well of blood, making Max’s eyes search for Darya’s. He shook his head.
“No, Max,” she pleaded. “We have blood transfusions at the clinic. Can we… River…”
River pushed himself through the crowd, making Kim back away from the turmoil. “I can get them. They retreated, and we’re good for now.”
Max took a deep breath, and just before his lips parted, he shook his head once more. “He has several internal injuries. His lungs are filling with blood. I don’t have the skill or equipment —”
Darya jumped up and began wailing, drumming her fists against Max’s chest. “Do something. Don’t just stand there… fucking do something!”
“He is suffocating, Darya!” Max shouted, then grabbed her wrists. But before he could say another word, Rowan’s baritone came from below.
“He’s right, baby, and it’s not his fault.” He reached his hand out for Darya and pulled her down beside him. “We’re all born to die. And this is a good death, so I’ll get to do it happily knowing everyone’s safe.”
Just as Darya opened her mouth, soft grunts came from the corner across, where Autumn lay asleep with two infants resting on her chest.
“I’ll be damned,” Rowan whispered. “Did you pussy-face make me an uncle?”
Max couldn’t help that pained smile, which forced itself onto his mouth, and he walked over to pick up his twins and carry them over to Rowan.
“She’s exhausted and asleep,” Max said, kneeled down and presented his children, one in each arm. “May I introduce, Nathalie and, well, the boy doesn’t have a name yet.”
Rowan reached out for the two newborns, both of them swaddled tightly in thick cotton blankets. Before his bloody fingertips would stain their newborn skins, he retreated and laughed instead. “They’re pretty ugly, Max. Must have gotten that from your side of the family.”
“Not everyone can have your beauty, Rowan,” Max said.
“And my sister?”
“She’ll be fine.”
Kim poked her head into the group. “I’m sorry for not bringing the medicine.”
“It worked without, but she lost a lot of blood and needs to rest.”
Darya grabbed Rowan’s hand, watching how Silas brought Rose and placed her onto the cot next to Rowan.
“I watched her, sir,” Silas said, the boy’s face earnest. “Kept her safe.”
“Did you now? Well, I trust you’ll continue to keep my daughter safe. Protect her with your life?”
Silas dropped his head as if he wanted to make it easier on himself to receive such an honor, such a responsibility. “Yes, chieftain, sir.”
The chieftain smiled, leaning over to place a kiss onto Rose’s head until a swell of blood tinted his shirt some more. “Is the door to the main hall closed?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s closed.”
“River,” Rowan said, jutting his chin and gesturing him to kneel down beside the cot, which he did promptly. “You have a claim by blood to be the chieftain of the Clan of the Mountains. Not many know Olaf’s child survived. But once they know, they will want you to claim your rightful position.”
River’s brows lifted, and he gazed around in confusion. “I have no interest in being a chieftain.”
“Neither did I. That job sucks balls, which is why I’m going to quit, and you’ll fucking take my place because I’m done with this shit.” And before our communal mumbling could grow any louder, Rowan gave Max a severe stare and jutted his chin. “Can you fix me up enough to make me fight for another five minutes?”
Darya placed her hand into Rowan’s large palm, shaking her head frantically. “What are you talking about? Please, let Max try to save you. Please. For me. For us.”
