Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
AUbrEY
It took a week staying holed up in the theater before Phoenix was finally healed enough for us to move. It wasn’t that the medication wasn’t working—the Order had gotten it from the same kind of men and women who’d spent their time injecting me until I took on the traits of the rabids.
Rapid healing. Extreme tolerance to pain.
I was just afraid to let him move. By the end of it, he was starting to get restless, but I wanted his skin healed over enough that if we were attacked, the new scar wouldn’t split.
That he wouldn’t be vulnerable.
That he wouldn’t get hurt again.
I’d spent too much time thinking he was invincible. I had to admit to myself that I’d grown reliant on the thought, the impossibility that Phoenix was so strong nothing could hurt him.
Nothing but me, apparently .
Nothing but my recklessness, sending yet another person straight into the arms of danger to try and get me out of it.
The thought made me sick to my stomach, and I wasn’t sure I had it in me to examine exactly why .
I just knew I crawled into bed with him every night when he held his hand out for me, and I didn’t question the way I laid my head on his chest to make sure that his heart was still beating.
If I thought too hard on it, I was pretty sure I was going to hurt myself in a way I wouldn’t recover from.
As soon as we stepped into the plaza, we were swarmed—not by rabids, but by Phoenix’s pack. Blythe was checking him over, running careful fingers across the scars my stitches had left behind and questioning if I knew where we could get more of the medication I’d used to help him heal.
Phoenix was telling Zero what happened at the theater, though I noticed he conveniently left out the part where we’d fought before I charged in. He just said we’d thought we could handle it.
It meant no one looked at me like a villain for wounding their leader.
Their family.
No one but Cutter, who turned his eyes to me furiously, though it wasn’t me he was addressing when he spoke.
“You should have sent your dog for help. We could have taken care of you. These two wouldn’t even let me come look for you while you were gone, and look at what happened. ”
There were a thousand reasons why that hadn’t been possible—he’d been hurt. The location was secure, but I had no idea if something else would roam in and force Phoenix to fight while I was gone.
The thought of leaving, of not seeing his ocean eyes open and knowing he was okay made panic squeeze in my chest, and I didn’t want to admit why.
There were so many reasons, but it was Phoenix who answered before I had a chance to.
“Since when did you start questioning me so much, Cutter?” They were just words, but the thinly veiled threat was there behind the syllables. I’d never realized before that just saying someone’s name could sound so dangerous.
I think Cutter realized it too, because he looked between us like he wasn’t sure what to do. His eyes roamed over Phoenix and the fading bruises on his face.
“He got you hurt, he?—”
“Shut the fuck up, Cutter. He kept me alive.”
My jaw dropped when Phoenix threw his arm out, stepping between me and Cutter with a furious snarl that made the other two raiders step back.
I saw the woman who’d been attacked by the bear jerk her head up from where she was lounging in the sun at a distance, and the man who never left her side actually slipped his arm around her.
“Phoenix…” It was Blythe who spoke, her voice softer than it should have been. “We don’t turn on each other.”
His eyes swung to her, and I was shocked when he took a shaking breath before he finally spoke. “That’s right. We don’t. And Aubrey is mine . That means he’s a part of us.”
Her eyes flicked from the collar to my face—from my split lip to the matching patches I’d sewn into our clothes. She nodded once, slowly. “Okay. Aubrey’s pack.”
I was about to open my mouth to argue, to tell her I hadn’t agreed to join anything, but Cutter spoke again.
“He’s not one of us. He’s just Phoenix’s new fuck toy, he—” Phoenix surged forward, but I caught him by the arm, hauling him back against me with a low grunt.
Heavy motherfucker.
“It’s fine. I’m tired. Can we go lie down?” My eyes drifted past the broad shoulder I was holding to Cutter. Zero had an arm around his waist.
Fuck, they’d really been about to go at it. For some reason, I wanted to save them from that. I could tell myself it was because Phoenix had just healed his stitches and it would have been a waste of medication to let him get torn open again.
We don’t turn on each other.
I didn’t want this—whatever this was—to be ruined for Phoenix because of me.
“Yeah, fine. Blythe, Zero… take Cutter and go get the supplies from the theater. It’s cleared out now. They had a whole stash of shit from the Order.”
Blythe nodded, but I noticed all three of them threw me a look as Phoenix wrapped his arm around my waist and half dragged me to our room.
It was kind of fucked up. Even though I’d joined the Order to be a part of something, I’d never felt like a part of anything close to a family before. Starting now with a group of cannibals seemed like a bad idea.