“Pig work. Suits you.”
Four bitchy, nasty words pull me from the ground. I stand up, covered in mud on my hands and knees and see Tyna standing before me. She has her huntresses behind her. They have just returned from a hunt, it seems. Four of them have a meat creature slung on a stick between them.
I give her a hard look, but she knows as well as I do that I don’t have the zap right now. She’s got me in a vulnerable moment. The men are out on their patrol. It is only the women now, and they defer to Tyna. Nobody has anything to say now.
“You should leave,” she says, closing the distance between us. “You’re not welcome here, pig girl. Nobody wants you.”
“Zion wants me.”
“Zion’s just one man. We are the tribe, and we don’t want you.”
She does not give up, I will give her credit for that. But I’m not leaving. If I have to fight for my place here, so be it. Zion can only do so much for me. He can make me his, but he can’t make me everybody else’s.
“I don’t care what you want. I care what he wants.”
“He doesn’t want you.”
“No, he doesn’t want you,” I remind her. “That’s what all this is about. Zion. Doesn’t. Want. You.”
Those words make her angry.
“You’re poison,” she hisses. “You’re star trash. They didn’t want you. We don’t want you either.”
I have no zap, but I have the righteous anger that comes with being bullied. I am tired of this. I have struggled against so much to be here, to find love with Zion. I have tried to fit in. I have put my pride aside and toiled in the dirt. But it’s not enough, because I’ve taken something from Tyna that was never hers to have.
“I told you to leave me alone.”
“I will never leave you alone,” she growls. “You can bow down, girl, or…
“Or you can go fuck yourself. Because Zion’s not going to fuck you.”
There is a gasp from the women who are now watching this exchange with interest. I don’t know how many of them are on Tyna’s side. I don’t know how many of them truly agree with her. All I know is that none of them dare disagree.
“Get hold of her,” Tyna says. “I’m going to have my fun with this little bitch before the boys get back.”
The huntresses put their carcass down and advance on me. There are far too many of them to fight, and I know I am about to suffer. Badly.
There’s one thing I can do. Wipe the smug smirk off Tyna’s face. Before the women grab me, I swing for her. I don’t expect to make contact, but I do, and hard enough that her head yields to my palm. I know she will make me pay for this, but it is worth it just for that small moment of triumph.
She throws herself at me, and unlike me, she does not use her open hand to attack. She starts beating me ferociously and it is all I can do to throw my hands up to my face to try to protect myself from her powerful rage.
“Stop! Enough!”
I hear not just Zion’s roar, but the sound of several men shouting at the top of their lungs. The patrol is back, and they are not happy. Tyna only has a minute to hurt me, but she makes the most of it and by the time she is pulled off me, I am sore and bruised and I taste blood.
Zion pulls me up and off to the side while Tyna struggles between several males.
He checks me over. “A few scratches,” he decides. “Not too bad for your first, and last fight,” he says. I can sense a certain tone of amusement, but not in a way he thinks is truly funny. There is something indulgent to it, as if I just got into a scrap on the playground at school.
“She shot me down,” I growl. “This is her fault. She never leaves me alone.”
“I heard you hit her first. Is that true?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you will be punished as she is. We do not tolerate aggression within the tribe and especially not between huntresses.”
Me? Punished? After what she did? I can’t believe it.
“I’m not a huntress! And…”
“No, but you’re as vicious as one.”
“She came up to me! She ganged up on me! I didn’t have a choice!”
Zion cocks his head and looks at me with that indulgent dubious look. “Oh, so you ran away and tried to find me.”
“Well, no, but…”
“So you were surrounded and there was no way out…”
“Uhm, no…”
“So she started a fight, and you joined in.”
“Well…”
“I know Tyna has made your life difficult. But I told you to stay away from her. That means staying away. Not hit her in the face when she tries to start something with you.”