Chapter 3
Chapter three
Laurel
The knife slices through my shirt and separates the skin on my side, just above my hip, leaving a burning sting.
Then it…stops. Another smell comes to me, dark and woodsy.
The scent of the forest after it rains. My eyes snap open, and I see Carrson next to me with his hand clamped over Jackson’s.
They struggle for a split second, with Jackson moving the blade toward me and Carrson holding him away.
Their eyes are locked in a duel that’s more ferocious than the one over the knife.
Finally, Jackson relents, lowering the knife to his side, fingers still curled tight around the handle.
I suck in a breath, astounded to still be alive.
“No,” Carrson announces, his gaze sliding to land on each man one by one. “No more killing tonight.”
“What about the girl?” Jackson gestures to me with the knife.
Woman. I want to correct him since I’m almost twenty, no longer a child, but I’m smart enough to hold my tongue.
Maybe I don’t want to die after all.
Jackson grabs my shoulder and shakes me, hard. My arms flop like a rag doll, and my head snaps from side to side, wrenching my neck. “You shouldn’t have come here.” He pushes his ugly face up close to mine, his breath putrid. “You dumb slut.”
Without thought I reach out to slap him, but he pulls away at the last minute.
My fingernails still catch him, raking across his cheek sharp enough to draw blood.
He rears back, his hand flying to cover the injury, but not before I see the three bloody train tracks I’ve left in him on his unscarred side.
Good, I think. Now he’ll have scars on both sides. After they kill me and after my dad drinks himself to death, it’ll be the only reminder that I ever lived.
That’s beyond depressing.
“Stop.” Carrson holds up a hand, and silence falls.
So absolute is the quiet that it’s like the rest of them stop breathing.
There isn’t a single shuffled foot or sigh of irritation.
He holds that outstretched hand up above his head and turns in a slow, deliberate circle.
Then he lets it drop and spins back to me.
His gaze flickers to Jackson’s cheek, where blood runs down in a slow-branching rivulet.
He tilts his head, eyes drinking me in with a flicker of curiosity, like he’s observing a rare animal that just bared its teeth. In that same, detached tone, he says, “The kitten has claws. More like a tiger.” A pause. His gaze holds mine, unwavering. “Do you want to live, Tiger?”
I freeze, for a moment wondering if he can read minds, like he’d seen the dark thoughts inside me. The fantasies of falling off cliffs, drowning in the ocean, hanging from a rope.
Silence stretches out as I consider his question. It’s the image of my dad, lying in a pool of his own vomit, that makes me nod my head yes.
Yes. I do want to live.
Carrson searches my face with his dead eyes for a long time before he turns back to the crowd.
“I will not kill her,” he tells them. “I will bond her.”
Chaos erupts.