Page 62 of Breaker

I glance over to find Striker watching me, his mouth pulled down into a frown. “I wonder all the time.”

I nod and look down at my hands. They aren’t rough or as callused as Viper’s, but they’re nearly as big. Reaper says I’m going to be a big mother-fucker but I think he is just trying to make me feel better for being so young.

“Does it matter why?” Viper asks. “We’re here and we either survive or we don’t. And survive is what we’re going to do.”

Striker nods, but I can tell he’s unsure. Maybe even more than me.

“We stick together,” Viper says. “No matter what.”

A scream breaks the night, turning my skin cold.

My gaze snaps to the dark trees looming around the clearing. “What the fuck was that?”

“Fox?” Striker says and we all hear the panic making his words catch slightly. “That could be a fox right?”

Another scream and my bones turn to ice.

“That’s no fox,” Viper says, going deadly still. His eyes meet mine. “That scream came from a woman.”

Chapter 20

Breaker

Iwas eight whenmy ghosts came to visit me. They appeared in a dream like a gauzy mist. In my dream, my fingers ached from how cold it was, and every time I breathed out, I could see the ghosts leaving my chest. I dreamed I was in a room that was entirely blue, the walls rolling like waves. It was the same color blue as the room Father rescued me from when I was just a boy.

In my dream I’d thought about how the monster in my chest breathed fire, the way bad things tend to do, but it did me no good since I was so cold. My monster was of no use to me in my dreams because he didn’t stop the ghosts from breathing their cold breaths into my lungs.

Then the mist turned to claws, gripping my throat and I screamed.

Viper woke me up with a kick to my bed. He had asked me why I was screaming and crying in my sleep. I told him that I was dreaming of the cold, blue room, where Father had rescued me.

It was strange to see how his face contorted. The moonlight streaming in through the tiny window high above my bed turned his pale face pure white and I remember thinking his eyes looked so similar to that blue room, but instead of cold, Viper’s eyes were warm, like pictures of the sea.

“He didn’t rescue you,” he’d said. “He put you there, then brought you out three days later.”

I opened my mouth to argue but Viper had never lied to me before.

“He put us all there when we came to the school.” Viper dropped to a crouch by my bed, glancing over his shoulder to the open door behind him. “But you,” he whispered, “he put you in there and then took you out and sent you somewhere else.”

Nanny was my secret. On my first day of school I learned that my brothers all came from different places, some living in large group homes, and others barely surviving on the streets. Reaper and Hunter were the only ones who refused to talk about where they came from. I wondered if maybe they had a Nanny too, and didn’t want to tell the others so they wouldn’t feel so displaced and unwanted.

My memories before the school are full of love and warmth, and hugs and kisses. There were pancakes on Sundays and a toy car I played with. When I came to the school, I held on to those memories using them to keep me sane. Keep me soft in the places Fallon tried to turn hard. Even when I earned my name, I clung to that bright past, just as I had clung to Nanny’s favorite yellow dress when we walked through the village.

Like right now, I’m clinging to my sanity because my Little Red is just yards away, and I can’t get to her. No matter how much I want to snatch her up and throw her on the back of my bike to take her home, I can’t.

Home. I want her with us so bad it hurts. To wrap my arms around her. Kiss her sweet lips. Run my fingers through her hairand smell that slightly sweet, completely her, scent. Flowers and fruit and darkness.

I want to see her eyes when she realizes we’ve not abandoned her to this fate. That every single promise we made that night was true.

I’d fucking kill before I let her go.

I’ll fucking ruin anything and everything before she is anyone’s but mine.

Ours.

Viper must be losing his shit by now. I’m not there. He can’t get to me. He can’t come after her. He’s bound by our plan, and his need for revenge.

Revenge. That’s what has led us here.

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