Page 62 of Unwanted

His gaze moved over the fighting men who held spears and shields and…bows and arrows. What had Driscoll said all that time ago?

Survival is the greatest training of all.

Jak’s brain was buzzing again, and he couldn’t grab hold of his thoughts. He looked around again but didn’t see anything else. What he already had was enough though. Enough to tell him something awful was going on. Something that could turn his whole world upside down.

Again.

He left the house in the same way he’d come, closing the window behind him and walking to the road. He’d always stayed away from it because Driscoll had told him to. Driscoll told him a lot of things. Too many things. His head hurt, and his skin felt itchy all over, but he ignored the feelings, pulling his heavy coat around himself and walking on. He found the road and followed it, walking for hours, until he came to another road and then another. No cars passed him, but he was ready to hide if they did.

That third road led to a bigger road that was made of hard stuff. He left his flat shoes leaning against a tree, ducking behind it as a car zoomed by, stepping out after it was only a speck in the close faraway. He walked again, hiding when he heard a car coming and then stepping out when it was gone.

After a while, cars came by every few minutes, and Jak spotted the tops of buildings just over a hill.

He was hungry and thirsty, and he’d been walking for hours, but he moved toward those buildings, his heart beating quickly in his chest like he was walking toward death. Maybe he was. His soul felt like it was dying with each step, each car that drove by, the drivers not looking scared, even laughing.

Jak walked into the town of Helena Springs at almost night, the lights of the town blinking on and glowing bright. He wondered if maybe he was dreaming. If he’d fallen asleep by the riverbank under the warm sun and later he’d wake, Pup licking his face and telling him it was time to hunt.

Helena Springs, he repeated in his mind as he read the sign. It sounded like he’d known it a long time ago maybe, but he wasn’t sure. He’d lived in Missoula with his baka. And Missoula was in Montana. Montana was in the United States. The United States was in the…world. That’s all he knew. His baka had given him a globe once, and he knew about a few other places, knew the world was round, but mostly, he didn’t remember.

He ducked into a dark doorway, looking across the street at the place named on the little piece of paper in Driscoll’s house: Peg’s Diner. It was bright inside, and a woman in a pink dress with an apron stood behind a counter, pouring something for people sitting in front of her. Off to the side, there was a glass case filled with…pies. His eyes moved slowly, his vision blurred. Sitting at a table at the window were a woman and a little boy, the boy bringing some kind of food to his mouth. A burger. He knew what it was—remembered eating one himself—and even as his head swam, his body would not go quiet, and his stomach growled loudly. The woman smiled at whatever the boy had just said, picking up her own food and taking a bite.

Jak was hungry. Hungry and hurting and alone.

Scared. Confused.

A sound came up Jak’s throat, something he’d never made before.

A couple walked by the diner, holding hands and talking, the man throwing his head back and laughing at something the woman said.

There was no war.

No enemy.

It was a quiet town on a peace-filled night.

Jak had been lied to.

Tricked.

Why, why, why?

The world started spinning.

He fell down to the ground, holding his head as his body began shaking. It had all been a lie.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Jak was filled with a breath-stealing mix of happiness and fear. He had someone to trust, someone he might be able to open up to. Maybe not about everything, but most of it. Someone caring and kind, a woman who made his heart thump louder in his chest and made the blood rush more quickly through his veins. A woman he wanted in every way.

He didn’t want anyone to know every terrible thing about the ways he’d survived, but he could tell her most of it. Even he tried to forget some parts, shivered when a memory came to him without him reaching for it. He was afraid Harper would be…disgusted if she knew all he’d done to live, but he was also afraid she’d think he was a stupid child to be tricked the way he’d been. All his life…a lie, and he still didn’t know the reason why.

Would he ever know now that Driscoll was dead? Did it even matter? He was who he was. That was all.

Harper stood in front of the fire and rubbed her hands together, warming them. He let his eyes move down her body, wanting to pull at her pants, to kneel behind her and put his tongue between her legs from that position. Would she let him? Would her knees shake? Would she touch him again the way she had before? He wanted to make her shake and cry out his name again. Male animals made it known what they wanted and waited for the female to give a sign she wanted it too. But how did a man ask for something like that? Words had made her blush before, and he still wasn’t exactly sure why, but he didn’t think asking for it with words was the right thing to do.

Should he just…touch her? Would she like that?

Animals made it easier than people.

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