Chapter 26
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
PHOENIX
When I woke, the first thing I noticed was that Aubrey wasn’t in bed. The sheets beside me were cool.
The second thing I noticed was the black metal collar sitting on the table beside the empty bottle of oil we’d used the night before.
Something streaked through me—something violent and a little ugly. He couldn’t have…
He didn’t…
I’d opened myself up to him and he’d what… run?
I was up and moving before I realized what I was doing, prepared to hunt his ass down and drag him back to the room. I’d close the gate behind me and chain him to the fucking bed. I’d twist that collar until it couldn’t come off, until?—
“Calm down, Phoenix. He didn’t run off.” Blythe’s voice caught me off guard, and I turned.
“What the fuck do you know?” I snapped, and instantly recoiled at the expression dropping across her face. Blythe was always soft with me, sweet. Apparently that only extended as far as my respect for her did.
“I know you’ve been head over heels for him since the second you came into camp with him in your arms. And I know, you fucking hothead, that you can’t collar every person you fuck and expect them to stand beside you as an equal.
Do you want a dog, or do you want Aubrey?
” Her eyes dropped to the collar I had clutched in my fingers, and I frowned.
Fucking Blythe.
“Where did he go?” Because it was obvious by the look on her face that she knew.
“Away from your temper, I’d assume.” When I crossed my arms, she rolled her eyes.
“I’m pretty sure he’s walking the perimeter, waiting for you to cool off.
” I turned, but she caught me by the arm.
It wasn’t as though Blythe was big—she was a foot shorter than me—but the strength in her fingers where she touched me was enough that I couldn’t resist. “Listen to me, Phoenix. I know you think the world is pain and chains and collars. If you fuck this up with him, that’s all it will ever be. Think about it.”
Her nails dug into my arm pointedly, then she walked off before I had a chance to tell her to go fuck herself.
Or to ask her what the fuck she meant.
Instead, I turned with a growl and headed away from Blythe and her absolutely infuriating wisdom.
I cut across the little area that I was pretty sure had been used as a park once upon a time and headed toward the edge of the resort. Maybe the drop-off overlooking the lot would give me a vantage point to see him.
I wanted to pretend that I didn’t know what Blythe was talking about, but something in her words echoed true.
I loved Aubrey on his knees for me—I loved him choking and gagging on his collar with my fingers in his mouth.
But I loved the way he looked above me, the way his cheeks flushed and his eyes held an endlessness I’d never known before, a religion I could bow down to and worship. It was the way he looked at me.
It was the person he was when he wasn’t hiding behind the mask that the collar and paint gave him.
It was…
Fuck.
Blythe was probably right.
But I didn’t know how to let him off his leash—not when it felt like I couldn’t hold onto him without it. Aubrey was like the rain. He spilled through my fingers and set my body on fire.
He’d fucking changed me, and he hadn’t even bothered to stay behind to pick up the pieces after.
And maybe…
Maybe I understood why. I had to think on that why as I stomped across the resort, heading toward the pit of zombies Aubrey and I had found in those first few days of sweeping the area.
Voices ahead caught my attention. Cutter was familiar, but the person he was talking to wasn’t. It drew me up short, and something in my chest prickled in irritation when I realized there was no reason for him to be talking to someone I didn’t know.
“I told them about that stupid fucking theater and you still didn’t get the job done.
You sent raiders to do it. I don’t know what else you want.
Aubrey’s going to go back to the train station.
Don’t you have men there? They probably already caught him.
Just take him and go . You can’t hurt Phoenix. He got hurt last time, he?—”
“We should have wiped all of you out. The Order doesn’t deal with raiders.”
The Order.
I came around the corner with my axe out, and it caught the man standing beside Cutter in the stomach. I flung him over the edge of the drop-off, shifting so I didn’t get his guts on my boots as I pulled my weapon free.
After I heard the loud thud of him hitting the ground, I turned on Cutter with narrowed eyes.
“What the fuck was that?”
I could tell by the guilt written all over his expression that he knew he was fucked. It didn’t matter—I had to take a breath to stop myself from swinging on him too. I needed information.
I needed to know what was going on. Aubrey wasn’t here.
And there were Order after us.
“Phoenix, wait.” I didn’t miss the broken expression on his face, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered, because Aubrey wasn’t here , and he said they probably already had him.
“What did you do, Cutter? ”
“He changed you!” The burst of emotion that tore across his face was almost shocking.
Cutter took three steps forward and grabbed my wrist, tilting his head up and fixing me with hazel eyes half full of tears.
“You aren’t the same anymore. You’re always with him.
You’re ignoring your pack, your family, and…
fuck. I got caught by the Order when we first got here and I was walking the perimeter checking the fence.
They told me they were looking for a deserter.
They said some guy with burn scars wanted to hurt Aubrey.
Said he paid a group of raiders to fuck him and fuck him up.
That’s why I told you about the theater.
We were supposed to go together. You weren’t supposed to get hurt, you?—”
I caught him by the throat before he could finish. I didn’t need to hear anymore.
The raiders in the theater had been well armed.
Cutter had found them scouting.
Fuck .
“You sold us out to the Order.” It wasn’t just that, though. Some guy with burn scars?
Aubrey had told me about a building burning down. The thought of who it might be—the fact that Aubrey was running around somewhere alone—it was too much.
“No, just him! I ran into Aubrey at the old hotel. He didn’t even have his collar on, Phoenix. I was only going to tell them where he was going, not…”
“Them?”
His face went pale, and he pulled out of my grip, backing up a few feet before he realized he was in a shit position to run.
The drop-off was behind us, and I could hear the infected snarling in the pit below, agitated by the body I’d thrown down to them.
There was nowhere to run, nothing for him to do but tell me the truth.
“There was another one here just a few minutes ago.”
Cutter’s eyes were wide and desperate, the fear obvious across his features. I think it was worse because I’d trusted him.
Worse, because he’d been a part of something that was mine, something he was supposed to protect .
And he’d betrayed it all.
“Phoenix, wait. Wait, I didn’t—” He cut off in a scream when I slammed my booted foot against his ankle and heard the sharp sound of it cracking.
The pain on his face was secondary to the look of shock as I used my free hand to yank the chain off his neck, leaving behind a gash deep enough that his blood sluiced across my wrist.
“You don’t deserve this.”
“Phoenix—”
“You aren’t one of us.”
He stared at me in wide-eyed horror as I dragged him to the edge of the drop-off. I could hear the infected below us, snarling like they could sense fresh meat dangling just above their heads. There were at least a dozen of them down there, roaming around, waiting.
There were at least a dozen more in the distance, and I turned my eyes back to Cutter to see that he hadn’t even bothered to look at them.
He was still staring at me like he thought somehow he could save himself.
He didn’t know me at all.
“Goodbye, Cutter.” I flung him back, and the feel of his nails digging into my arms as he tried to stop himself from falling was a secondary sensation to the clench in my gut when I watched him hit the ground.
He tried to get to his feet, but the impact and broken ankle weren’t doing him any favors.
He turned his head up to look at me one more time, but all I could see was the smirk on his face when he was talking to the Order asshole.
All I could think of was the way Aubrey had looked while he told me about what they’d done to him when he’d been held in captivity.
I turned from Cutter without looking back, and the sound of his screams chased me as I walked away. They could haunt me later. For now, I had to get to Aubrey.
At least Cutter had done something useful before I’d left him to die. He told me where Aubrey was going.
The hotel, or the train station. I’d start at the hotel.
I was halfway there when the sound of crackling branches caught me off guard, and the flash of metal made me freeze.
It wasn’t Aubrey’s gun—it was something bigger. Something that looked like it could probably blow a hole through my chest. I might have tested the theory if there wasn’t another… and another.
Three men in Order-issued jackets stepped forward, then a fourth spilled from the bushes behind me and pressed a gun to the back of my head.
“Look at this, boys. We caught ourselves a little firebird to go along with the carrier freak.”
Carrier freak . Did they have him already ?
My eyes narrowed, but I dropped my hands to my side.
If they had Aubrey… fuck, if they had Aubrey, I needed to know where they’d taken him.
He didn’t get to run off and get captured before I had a chance to figure out what the fuck he meant leaving behind his collar.
He didn’t get to get captured before I had a chance to tell him that I didn’t know how the fuck I felt, but he was going to figure it out with me.
He didn’t get to get captured .
If they had Aubrey, I was going to kill them all.