Genesis Lost - Books 1 - 6, page 82
He put the syringe onto the metal tray beside him and raked his fingers through his hair, pulling the ends, straining his scalp.
Yeah, right. If anybody had a reason to pull his hair, it was me. Here I stood, naked from my bellybutton down, trying to find a way to put a child in my wife’s belly. But… fuck… this guy’s nerves…
“Look.” He held up both palms in some sort of peace offering. “You asked me for help. This is how I can help. But if you’re too chicken to go through with this tell me now, because I still have a lot of work to do with that program I designed.”
I looked about the white walls, my eyes getting stuck on the corner we used for collecting sperm samples not too long ago. Back when the Districts still wanted them. A thick layer of dust had settled on the glass table. The mini-fridge had stopped humming months ago.
I wanted this for Darya, but I needed this for myself. Needed to know that I am worthy of being a husband, a chieftain, and a man of the Clans. Uncertainty clogged up my throat, turning every breath into a struggle. Shit, what good is a man if he can’t knock up his wife?
“What program?” I asked, buying myself a little more time. This was the right thing to do, but the entire idea made me curl my toes inside my socks. The thought of my brother-in-law turning a finger in my asshole didn’t help either.
“Stop confusing the subject. You’re only bringing up the program because you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared. What’s there to be scared about?” Except for a huge-ass needle lancing into my balls. I scoffed. “And I didn’t bring it up. You did.”
He let out a deep breath, walked over to his desk, and activated a holo-projector. Light-filled images popped up and changed every couple of seconds, flipping through mugshots and an endless amount of numbers.
“It’s a database for the genetic profiling of all members from this Clan,” he said proudly, the undertone of his voice leaving no doubt he had put a lot of hours into this. “The program will show you potential genetic issues if a couple has a child, along with an approximate probability.”
“Sounds like you wanna found your very own Newgenics program.”
“Nope.” He shook his head and turned off the projector. “I’m just giving people the chance to make an educated choice. That is, if they agree to use it. So far, less than forty people gave me permission to include them. I hope more will follow.”
“Not fucking likely. Many don’t see you as one of us yet. And even if they did, forming a family is difficult enough as it is. No need to bring genetic issues into it. We’ve done ok without it so far.”
His face dulled, and he stared down at his hands. “My dad said the same. We never see the need for intervention until it’s too late. There are still a lot of old studies about the healthcare system of the twenty-first century. Many died because they couldn’t afford to get better.”
“That was different,” I said. “They were too many people, and the system simply couldn’t support it anymore.”
“Who says we can’t reach that point again?” He stood there silently for a while, his mouth twisting into something grim. “The Clan is growing, Rowan, especially since you became a chieftain. Autumn and I are having twins. Now River and —”
“Ayanna is pregnant?”
A wave of hope gushed through me. Whatever Max did worked for River. Why wouldn’t it work for me? The thought of having another child with Darya made heat radiate through my chest. This time I would get it just right. I could be the man she deserved. Could give her what she wanted.
Max pointed at the white rag in front of me. “Whatever is going on in your mind is getting you too excited. That’s not helpful for the procedure. So… are we going to do this or not?”
I looked down at my half-hard cock who clearly had a mind of his own and couldn’t wait to take charge of it all.
“Alright, let’s do it. But under one condition.” I walked over to the examination table and sat back down. “I’ll rub that stuff onto my skin. And if you ever tell anyone —”
“I know, I know. You’ll choke me with my stethoscope, punch me in my cunt, or drown me and make it look like an accident.”
“Exactly.”
Satisfied with his answer, I sat back down on the sticky liner, opened my palm and gestured for the little tub.
“All over, please,” he said, handing me the gel and turning his head. Not out of decency, of course. Tight and contained as his voice now was, it had given away how much he enjoyed having me in this embarrassing situation.
I dab-dab-dabbed that cold shit all over, making an uncomfortable tingle spread across my crotch. “So… um… what exactly are we looking for?”
Max slid his fingers inside a pair of latex gloves. “Movement first. I need to check if your sperm cells are moving. Need to check the efficiency of the movement. Measure the size and all that good stuff.”
I handed him the tub back and gave a nod. “That’s what made it difficult for River?”
“Not exactly,” he said, picking the syringe back up. “His sperm cells were fine. Let’s just say that his freeway was a bit too narrow for the cells to make it through without crashing. Easily fixed with a straightforward procedure.”
“Turned it into a six-lane?”
“Uh-huh.”
He gestured me to lie down on my back, but I shook my head. “Not gonna happen, Max. I gotta see what you’re doing down there.”
“Suit yourself.”
He gave a shrug and folded the rag neatly to the side as if exposing only one testicle would somehow take the weird out of this situation.
The shiny, sharp point of the needle pushed a wrinkle into my skin. It was too late to lie down now. Everything around me went blacker than my sorrows. I heard nothing. I felt nothing. Except for the sweat pressing out of my pores, which settled as a fine mist on my forehead.
“You can open your eyes now,” Max said, one corner of his mouth lifted along with the brow above. “Do yourself a favor and don’t get up yet because —”
“Whoa!” My knees turned wobblier than a chair on one leg, and I clawed my fingers into the dry and worn-out chair foam. “Why do I feel so fucking dizzy?”
“It’s the adrenaline. Too much in a short period of time does that to you. Happens to the best of us.”
I wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up. However, the risk I’d barf all over the room as soon as I opened my mouth made me reconsider. I sat back down instead.
“You can get yourself dressed if you want,” Max said and walked the probe over to a work station. “It’ll take some time for me to look over this sample. Depending on what I see, we will decide if a procedure is needed.”
“The highway?” came muffled from behind my hand.
“Or the prostate exam.”
I gave a little grunt. “I prefer the highway.”
“You sure?” he asked, turning the microscope on and squirting some of my probe between two thin sheets of glass. “Because that means I’d have to work a scope into your urethral opening and work myself through your ejaculatory duct.”
“I have no fucking idea what that opening is you just mentioned,” I said. “But I think I underestimated you. Perhaps I underestimated the entire Districts. You’re fucking savages.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take it as a compliment.”
I jumped back into my jeans and pushed my junk to the side before I zipped it up and leaned against the wall. From the corner of my eyes, I observed Max pressing his face onto the lens, turning knobs and adjusting the base.
My palms turned sweaty, and I let out a hurry-up kind of sigh. “So? How’s it looking?”
His face turned slowly toward me, the hint of a shake bouncing off his chin. “I only just started, and I told you it will take me some time. Especially with this ancient equipment you’re expecting me to work with.”
“If you don’t like your microscope,” I said and jutted my chin toward it, “how ’bout we toss it, and you go back to the ancient practice of swishing samples through your mouth?”
His body neither stiffened nor did his shoulders shrug. Instead, he turned a few other, smaller knobs and pressed his lips tightly together.
“How quickly after that procedure would I be able to, you know… put him to use again?” I asked, waving my hand about casually as if the sample beneath his eyes wasn’t holding the future of my life with Darya. Or the future of the Clan.
“Mmh…” came from behind his watertight lips, the vibration of his vocal cords pounding against my heart. What did Mmh mean? Mmh… a few weeks? Mmh… I don’t know yet? Mmh… there’s no saving this? A cramp started somewhere close to my main artery and spread across my chest.
“For fuck’s sake, Max,” I snarled. “Tell me already what’s going on there! Can you fix me or not?”
“You’re making yourself sound as if you’re broken.”
“Shit… I am fucking broken!” I pushed myself away from the wall and began pacing around the examination table, stealing a glimpse of the microscope every other step.
I wanted to crush that damn thing. It was my enemy. But that it had neither bones to break nor blood to spill made me feel fucking powerless.
“You understand how the Clans work,” I continued, my voice shakier than I cared for. “Things around here are already strained, and if I can’t produce an heir… soon… people will turn on me. You heard they tried to come for Darya.”
My own words made a cold shiver run down my spine. No matter how much safety and peace I brought our Clan, the next ambitious motherfucker just waited around the next corner. Waited to cut my throat. Rape my wife. Kill my family.
“Autumn told me you never wanted to be a chieftain,” Max said without looking up, his fingers inching the glass sheets a bit further to the left. “Why not resign and give the chieftain to someone else?”
“Oh, I will resign, alright. I will resign the moment my head gets severed from my neck.” I stopped my pacing for a moment and stared down at the cheap vinyl floor we tore up from a lumber yard three years ago. “That’s how you give the chieftain away here. By dying. It’s not like I can pin a blue ribbon on someone and be done with this fucking shit.”
“Said who?”
“What?”
Max finally looked up from his microscope. “Who said you can’t resign and appoint someone else? I asked your sister, and she said no law would prevent you from it.”
“Appoint another chieftain?” I asked, the surrounding walls blurring and closing in on me. What he said screamed crazy, so why did the corners of my mouth twitch as if someone pulled on a thread? As if something inside me actually considered it?
“That’s never been done before. Besides, whom would I appoint? Most men I know would still come back for me in the middle of the night and execute my family, fearing I might challenge my decision at a later point.”
He pressed his eye once more onto the lens and squeezed the other one shut. “I still don’t see why you would consider yourself broken if you couldn’t produce an heir. You’re a good chieftain, Rowan, and I dare say you might even be a good husband.”
I scoffed. “If I was such a good husband, why would my wife have left me?”
“You wanna hear what I think?”
“Nope.”
He looked up at me, cocked his head and drew in a long breath. “I think you don’t give a shit about the clansmen. Or an heir. Or someone challenging you. You and I both know you’re not that easy to kill, and you have some of the best fighters behind you.”
Max flipped the light switch on the microscope, but he could just as well have turned off the sun. Everything inside of me went dark, leaving my soul lost and disoriented.
“I think there’s only one thing you truly fear,” he said, the little bit of pity in his voice scratching across my heart. Ripping it out. Leaving it behind in the darkness. “You worry that she’ll leave you again, don’t you? Worry she might think you’re broken.”
“So it’s true then. I am broken…”
He placed his hand onto my shoulder. “You are perfectly fine the way you are, and I bet Darya would say the same. But, Rowan, there won’t ever be an heir.”
Twenty-Two
Darya
“Don’t think I take it for granted that you came here,” Hazel said, crisscrossing her legs on the giant purple and red-striped floor pillow. “I know we’re not friends, but I figured you could share a few more details. You know, between us women.”
No, we weren’t friends. But my embarrassment over believing she had something with Rowan still hung over me like a dark cloud and wouldn’t quit pouring. The least I could do was answer her invitation. For tea and goodies, she said. Yeah, right — interrogation was more like it.
Adair cleared his throat and leaned back against the wall of windows, trays with wheatgrass sprouting behind them. “I might not be a woman, but I’d still like to know what kind of man that guy is. He’s marrying my sister after all.”
“There isn’t much more to tell about chieftain Xavier.” I shrugged for what felt like the tenth time and grabbed another brittle lingonberry muffin from the plate in front of us.
Ruth pulled her knees together and curled her feet up. “Sorry, they’re so dry. Adair showed me how to use the solar oven, but I’m still not getting it right.”
“I like them.” Adair took one and held it up for all of us to see. “You make pretty good muffins. And you put something in there this time. Like… a spice or something.”
A smile lit up her face, making her flushed cheeks even more prominent. “Rosemary. I put rosemary in it. And some of those dried orange peels you gave me. Just a bit.”
She picked up the tray and reached it out to me. “Another one?”
For a moment I could have sworn that, just beneath the tray, her knee inched toward Adair until it bumped against his.
He jumped up, his forehead in wrinkles and his gestures hurried. “I forgot I have to open the radiator lines before the house cools down too much.”
Even in the depth of winter, the sunroom felt too hot, and I thought I saw the broccoli sprouts hanging their heads inside their black growing trays. Adair jumped up and shuffled over the floor pillows and wicker stools.
“Want me to come, too?” Ruth asked.
Adair swung up his palm. “Absolutely not.”
Hazel rested her hand on mine. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you can tell me about chieftain Xavier?”
“I already told you I didn’t exactly spend much time with him,” I said, thankful that it was the truth. “He’s not a bad guy. At least I don’t think he is. Just a bit… complicated. Maybe?”
Her fingers dug into my skin. “You believe he has a bad temper?”
“Bad temper?” I couldn’t help but let out a scoff. “He seems to have the emotional range of a doorknob.”
The sunroom turned quiet for a moment, making the room feel even more like the sweaty, smothering and glorified greenhouse it was.
“You’ll be fine,” Ruth said in a calming voice, brushing Hazel’s ashen hair from her clammy cheeks. “From what Darya said it sounds like he’s a nice-enough guy. And you can always come back if he’s not. I mean, they have laws to protect women from abuse, right? Just like here?”
“If he’s a real jerk, he can make my life a living hell without ever rough-handling me,” Hazel said and scrunched up her nose. “Divorce isn’t really a thing here unless someone fucked up big, big time. No guy who scored a wife would be so stupid to let a woman get away from him.” She flicked her eyes toward me and reached out for an awkward pat against my arm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to —”
“No, you’re right. I fucked up,” I said. “Instead of running away from it all, I should have sat down with Rowan and talk. I messed up big time, and I’m done making excuses for it. All I can hope for now is his forgiveness at some point, and that we can make it work.”
“Make what work?” Hazel asked, her wide eyes locking with Ruth’s. “Like… the co-parenting thing?”
The night in the tent pushed back into my mind, prickling my eyes and slowing my breath. Who gave a shit about politics? There was hope now. Hope, and a real chance at making this work, no matter what others thought.
“The thing is,” I said, a heavy sob clinging to my vocal cords. “I don’t think Rowan still wants to go through with the divorce. And neither do I.”
Fast and relentless, my head began spinning at my own words. Even now that I had shared them with others, they still sounded fake.
Hazel’s posture stiffened. She turned her head away from me, giving me a good look at her ponytail, which swayed from left to right and back again.
“I’m very happy for you,” Ruth said in a sweet voice, but she eyed Hazel’s reaction in what seemed like a mix of confusion and seeking guidance.
Hazel jumped up from her pillow, which made it skitter against the muffin tray. She walked over to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, pulling frantically on a pair of white strings.
“You won’t be happy for them anymore once you have to hide inside the house all day,” she said, lowering one of the wooden blinds down along the smudged glass. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m marrying Xavier. Leaving this place never sounded better than right now.”
Ruth grabbed the floor pillow and pressed it against her chest, glancing around for an explanation. Not that she would understand. How could she? She didn’t realize how things were before Rowan. How things might be again if…
“What’s going on in here?” Adair had pushed the sliding door open, leaning half his body into the room. “Five minutes without me and a cat-fight breaks out?”
Hazel pointed her finger at me like a knife. “Rowan won’t divorce her.”
Adair stepped into the room and gave a clicking sound with his tongue, slowly sliding the door shut behind him. “I see.”
“Um, I don’t… I don’t understand,” Ruth stammered, her innocence placing needles underneath my tongue. Reassurances or explanations, it didn’t matter — whatever I said would leave a bloody taste on my lips.
