Disappointment. Betrayal.
Wren looked to the Second. Kieran wouldn’t even turn his head her direction.
She’d been dismissed.
As if these men had a right to do so.
They’d made an agreement, she’d held up her bargain… and it began to dawn on Wren that all the while, all those days, Alec had been right here. He’d probably marched right back to the pipeworks once she’d dragged him home and demanded a place.
And to get that mark, Caspian himself had accepted him into the fold.
Stolen him. LIED.
Caspian, Kieran, Toby… all of them had lied to her. Used her.
Churning behind her breast, swishing anger began to wash away sticky shame. It pushed it out her fingertips and into the air to coat the males who should be cursed to suffer it.
Teeth on edge, she cut a glare back to the eyes of her betrayer.
She could feel the veins pulsating behind her eyes, knew her nostrils flared and an intense look of hate shaped her face.
There had been times in Wren’s life when she had felt anger. This was so much more.
Rage flowed through her spirit, and sent her dashing away. Rage moved her feet on a path not one of them might impede until she’d jumped off rotting planks, ran over crumbling cement, and swung her way down rickety ladders all the way below where the child laborers were whipped and abused.
Where her boy looked to now be in charge. Of innocent slaves. Of fellow people.
One look at his Jax, and Alec’s enthusiasm became the sullen frown of a culpable accomplice.
The kid thought to placate. “I know what you’re going to say…”
Wren struck him. And it was not the open-palmed slap of a mother correcting her young. It was the backhand of a pissed off Warrens’ rat ready to harm.
Alec hit the floor with a yelp, pushing himself to scream, “You don’t have a say in my life!”
Hands flying, Wren had her fucking say. “Do you have any idea the things I’ve done so you wouldn’t have to be here? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DID TO ME?”
“You’ve been put up special in the big room! Get anything you want.” Sullen but loud in the way of embarrassed adolescent boys, Alec shoved her back and shouted, “Besides, the girls in the pen are taken care of!”
“HOW THE FUCK WOULD YOU KNOW?”
Dusting himself off and raising his chin, Alec boasted, “I’m a full member of the gang now. I’ve been there. It’s nice. They have lots of food and water. Everyone smiles when they touch you.”
She was going to be sick. He was a fucking boy already corrupted by this horrid place and the filth that gathered amidst so much clean water.
Seeing her pant, taking in the horrified whites of her eyes, Alec lost the smirk and cleared his throat. “Caspian is a great man—”
Never had she been so tempted to wrap her hands around Alec’s throat and end him. “He is not a great man. He’s a criminal who enslaves the most vulnerable so he might climb higher on their corpses. And you want to be just like him?”
Stubborn, obstinate and angry, her boy, her sweet Alec spat. “Yes.”
Wren hit him again, harder, knowing it would leave his ears ringing and linger in a bruise.
And while she reached for her kid’s shirt, while she hoisted Alec up with unusual strength and shook him, Wren had heard the cause of all this pain rush forward.
It was their fault! She’d face down the males who had stolen her child and ruined him. Who’d ruined her!
Seething, glad her lungs could take on so much damp air, Wren dropped the kid they thought they might steal and turned her back on him to face down the enemy.
Ready to burst from her flesh, she snarled, hissed, and flexed her fingers. Water rained down upon them, soaking her white hair, her borrowed white clothes, and left them all filthy in its decadence.
Caspian, massive in his hideous coat of human flesh breathed fast and angry. He dared to glower at her as if she had broken their contract. As if she has threatened his family.
A year of water he’d promised her. Pockets full of credits. Two boys.
Bastard!
Behind him, Kieran held up his hand in caution. And Toby, that psychopath crooked his finger at her, calling out. “Come to me, darling girl. Step this way.”
Never again.
Cracking his neck, Caspian crossed his arms over his broad chest, announcing, “Think of the other boy. It would be a shame if something—”
Color leached out of her vision, leaving greys and shadows, and a deep, abiding hate.
Wren didn’t hear the rest of Caspian’s speech or threats. How could she when a perfect piece of corroded rebar stuck out from the ancient cement, close enough that she might brace her foot against the ground and tear it out. Roaring, she hefted half the slab upward until it cracked. Watching the dust flake off her weapon, smiling to see a quantity of hardened rock still clung to the end of her perfect cudgel, she hoisted it high.