Chapter 3
I knew I was still alive because I felt awful.
My entire body shivered. I pried my eyes open to see I’d washed up against a giant fallen tree in the river.
My upper body was on the tree trunk, my hands clinging to the icy branches, but the rest of me was still submerged in the freezing water.
My teeth were chattering so hard I was half afraid they would break.
Pulling myself onto the tree took many tries, my skin scraping across the slippery bark, but I managed to drag most of my body out of the water.
I knew I needed to get up and move, find shelter, and start a fire, or I would die of hypothermia, but I couldn’t seem to find the strength, mentally or physically.
I was just so fucking tired. I didn’t want to fight to survive anymore.
I wanted Trey. I wanted to fall asleep and wake up in his arms.
The frothy whitewater continued to roar past, dragging other large branches and logs along with it.
The tree I clung to rocked with the force of the water, threatening to pull it downriver.
Chunks of floating ice bumped against my lower body, and a constant freezing mist sprayed my face.
My legs were still in the water, and I couldn’t feel them at all.
You’re a river, Bones.
My lips twitched. I doubted anyone else would find that as funny as I did.
I drifted in and out of consciousness, and the sky lightened. My wet clothing and hair had frozen stiff. I wasn’t shivering anymore, and I was pretty sure that was a sign death was coming. That knowledge didn’t bring any fear, though—just relief that soon quiet darkness would embrace me.
Wait for me, Trey. Please take me with you.
The sun had risen when a strange noise cut through the fog. I moved my eyes just enough to see Lee running down the bank toward me. His lips were moving, but the sound was all garbled. He didn’t hesitate before charging into the water and swimming out to me.
“No,” I croaked in a hoarse whisper. “No!"
He ignored me, climbing onto the tree and easily balancing on the slippery bark. He stood over my body and began to pry my fingers from the tree branch. I tried to cling to it, but my body was a numb, frozen prison.
“Ember, let go!” I realized he was shouting at me.
“N-n-no,” I choked out through chattering teeth, but the branch slid through my fingers, and both of us tumbled off the slippery log and into the water.
I tensed in anticipation of the painful cold, but I couldn’t feel anything .
I tried to kick my legs to get back to the surface, but my body barely moved, and I just kept sinking until a hand snagged my arm and jerked me up.
I broke the surface, gasping. Lee grabbed my face, trying to keep it above water. His eyes bored into me.
“Ember! Are you?—"
He let out a pained grunt as the rapids slammed him into a rock, and we both went under again. Despite the water trying to rip us apart, he didn’t let go of my arm. He dragged me to the surface again, and I blinked water from my eyes, my teeth chattering uncontrollably.
“I got you,” he promised as he wrapped an arm under my chin and began to swim with the other.
I stared at the cloudy sky as he towed me along on my back, feeling like I was floating out of my numb body.
I could hear him taking deep, controlled breaths as he moved through the water.
As soon as he could touch the bottom, he stood and hauled me into his arms, cradling me against his chest. Water streamed from both of us as he took careful steps toward the shore.
“Ember, can you hear me?” he asked, his voice steady but laced with urgency.
I stared up at him, shivering hard. Strands of his black hair clung to his face, water dripping from his chin. He met my eyes, and his jaw clenched.
“Stay awake,” he ordered.
He stumbled onto a gravel bar along the side of the river and dropped to his knees with a groan. He laid me down, his fingers pressing against my neck for a pulse. I still couldn’t feel my body, and exhaustion crashed over me, my eyelids fluttering shut.
“Ember!” He might have gripped my chin. “Stay awake!"
I couldn’t get my eyes back open, and he swore, gathering me into his arms again.
“Don’t you dare fuckin’ die on me,” he growled, and then he started running.
Despite my head bouncing against his chest, I drifted away.
I woke up to darkness. I was lying on a cold rock floor, still shivering, but I couldn’t see anything.
For a terrified moment, I wondered if I was still in that awful cell under the watchtower, but then light flared, blinding me.
I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust, and focused on Lee’s face as he coaxed a small fire to life.
I scanned our surroundings, but all I could see was rock. Were we in a fucking cave?
Lee stood and grabbed a pack from the cave floor. As the fire illuminated the cave more, I saw several packs and supplies. This wasn’t just a random cave; it was a hideout or?—
My thoughts cut off as Lee started stripping off his wet clothes.
He’d turned his back to me, but I stared at his lean, muscled body that emerged.
He was more slender than Wolf and less rugged, more like the people in a troupe of performers who had traveled with the Reapers once.
Black tattoos covered his back and arms—jagged black strokes that wrapped around his arms and twisted across his back in a fluid, unpredictable design.
It looked more like someone had splashed ink across his back than any tattoo I’d ever seen.
A wet slap echoed as his dripping clothes fell heavily to the floor, reminding me how ice-cold and soaked my own clothing was.
I might have been scared of his intentions as he stripped naked, but he dressed as quickly as he undressed, moving at a speed that was difficult to follow.
As he buttoned up his shirt, he turned around and caught me staring at him, and a corner of his mouth twitched up; I couldn’t find the energy to care.
The parts of my body I could feel burned with cold, while the rest felt like heavy weights attached to me. I tried to curl my stiff fingers, but they simply twitched.
Lee grabbed something from the pack and moved around the fire to kneel beside me.
“Alright, here’s the deal,” he said. “We gotta get you out of those wet clothes so you don’t freeze to death.”
A stab of panic went through me.
“I’m gonna help you,” he continued, “’cause there’s no way you can do it yourself.”
“No,” I croaked.
“If it makes you feel any better, Wolf is gonna beat the shit out of me for all of this.”
“No.” My voice sounded so weak.
“What the fuck did you think was gonna happen when you went charging into a half-frozen river?” His voice grew sharper.
I attempted to move away, fear making my head swim, but all of me was numb and exhausted, and I shivered so hard it felt like I was seizing.
He took my arm and pulled me upright, which made the room tilt and spin as pain stabbed through my head.
When I could focus again, he was undoing the buttons at the bottom of Scar’s shirt, and panic swallowed me whole.
“No!"
It felt like waking up after being drugged with a narc, and that realization did not help. I tried to smack his hands away from me, but my body moved sluggishly. Still, I managed to make it just difficult enough that he couldn’t hold onto the buttons.
“Ember, stop. I’m trying to help you.”
I didn’t answer, putting all my energy into forcing my numb limbs to move. He suddenly released my shirt and grabbed my face with both hands, forcing me to meet his gaze. He was grimacing like he was in physical pain.
“I am not going to hurt you!"
“Stop!"
“You are gonna die of hypothermia if you stay in these wet clothes.”
I didn’t fucking care. My brain was trying to drag me back to Juck’s tent in the desert. He released my face, and I almost fell over trying to get away.
“Look,” he held up a man’s flannel shirt. “I got you some of my clothes. I’m gonna help you get dressed, that’s it, I swear.”
I managed to shift backward a little, but he caught my arm. I tried to jerk free, my head swimming as I gasped in frantic breaths.
“Gods, Ember, please help me out here,” he said in a low voice.
“Don’t touch me,” I choked out.
“If it wasn’t a matter of literal life and death, I wouldn’t.” Pain flashed through his eyes, but I saw the resolve harden over his face. “But I’m not gonna let you die.”
“No!"
“I’m sorry,” he said, and then he yanked me toward him.
I tried to fight, but my weak attempts were laughable. Juck’s face swam in my vision. He worked Scar’s pants off my hips, and I started crying—furious and helpless tears tumbling down my face.
“Please stop!” I begged, fighting him every inch of the way. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!"
He didn’t respond, his jaw tight as he got my pants off and threw them to the side.
The cold rock burned against my bare skin, and for a moment, I thought I’d be sick from the panic, but he quickly slid a pair of men’s undergarments onto my body.
The panic receded slightly, but I renewed my efforts to escape when he reached for the shirt buttons again.
“Ember!” he snapped. “Stop it. I am not going to hurt you.”
“Please don’t… don’t do this!” I gasped out, trying to shove him away.
“Gods-fuckin-damnit,” he growled.
He grabbed my arm and hauled me into his lap, my back against his chest. One arm wrapped around my torso, pinning my arms to my sides, and his free hand started unbuttoning the shirt.
I tried to thrash against his grip, but he was far stronger than me.
He got the shirt unbuttoned and began pulling it off my shoulders.
“No!” I sobbed.
“Ember, just let me—” his voice cut off, and his body went still behind me.