Page 22 of Princess For All

“I’m getting a clearer picture of what you’ve been through and why those around you are so worried,” she muttered. “It’s too much.” She gave me a kind smile. “I’m willing to work with you no matter the outcome of this meeting. You clearly care, and you’re smart enough to understand this is important.”

Branko choked on his food. “Wow, if that isn’t manipulating, then I don’t know what is.”

Fear filled me. Was she doing that? Had I been so wrong about her and I had let a snake near us?

No, that didn’t sound like me… Right?

6

I was impressed when Vanessa didn’t immediately jump on him, simply studying him.

“It could absolutely be taken that way, and given the apocalypse hasn’t brought out the best in people, I can understand your thinking. However, it is a completely normal and healthy way to say I havefaithin this meeting and I’m not worried.”

“Meaning you have a plan,” I surmised.

“Not really, but I know the process and how the steps should work, but I can’t begin to understand the logistics of making it happen with your power or the apocalypse.”

Fair enough.

“Where would you start?” I asked.

“Getting the medical personnel out of the general accommodations,” she said firmly. She chuckled at whatever our reactions were. “Not to somewhere nicer. I’m not being pompous. I’m being practical.”

“I saw someone grieving kill a doctor because they blamed their science for corrupted eating their family,” Darius muttered. “You’re talking like that?”

“Yes, it’s why we were mostly separated everywhere,” she confirmed. “More than that, if I have one more person ask me to look at a mole or spot on their body, I’m going to lose my mind. I’m not that type of doctor. I have no idea the answers and would go to a dermatologist as well. We’re all being bogged down by this. Constantly.”

“The problem is that if we say we’re pulling out medical personnel, others will lie again thinking it’s for better accommodations,” I muttered. “And we’re a bit busy to have the guys who can spot lies focus on keeping everyone in line.”

“Plus, it’s quickly going to become that we’re too overbearing and stomping on everyone’s freedoms,” Kristof said with a sigh. “What’s after that even? What is the goal you have?”

She seemed shocked by his abrupt and thorny tone. She did a double take at whatever was on my face.

Whatever emotion said to clearly leave it alone. She had no idea what my husband had been through. I saw in her eyes that she had questions but would leave it alone.

“Boston,” she answered him. “We heard you were setting up another settlement or outpost in Boston.”

“And there’s something there you think the humans need specifically,” Kristof muttered, nodding that he accepted it and for her to go ahead.

Surprise filled her eyes. “You weren’t annoyed with me for bothering you or taking up time, but that it would upset her. That if this didn’t have a tangible way to be fixed now, it would be added to her stress and shoulders. That’s why you started to get annoyed and short with me.”

“Yes,” he answered before I could interject. “She is my everything, and peopleconstantlybug her for everything. Things will be so much better if we do this. We can bear the apocalypse if you do this and kill yourself constantly for us. It’s maddening as the man who loves her.”

“You need to join me the next bum day,” I said gently, reaching over and rubbing his arm.

“For a morning or afternoon,” he accepted, chuckling when I pouted. “I need your baby steps too sometimes. Taking the nights has been a big step for me, and I appreciate them more than you know. I appreciateyoufor pushing me to experience that and self-care. I wish the same for you and we can spread around the time off.”

“That’s a very healthy attitude and way to look at it,” Vanessa praised, smiling when she surprised Kristof. “One of the US’s largest—or I think the largest actually—pharmaceutical companies is outside of Boston. Their manufacturing and development labs. All of everything we should need to make a huge impact on the wound that will start gushing soon.”

“The problem with allowing chemists access to chemicals is they can use them for evil if they want, and there are too many who don’t like us in charge,” Kristof worried, immediately focused on me.

“I don’t think it’s the same chemicals for bombs, and we’ve not been letting in the nutjobs. Most are happy with the improvements in their lives,” I reminded him. “That might change, but they could do this on their own once we kill all of the corrupted and the world is open to them again.”

“You’re right. Pessimistic, but you’re right,” Vanessa said. “It’s better you take control of the facility even if I hadn’t meant it like that. I just think it might be the best option of one that wasn’t bombed. And you’re taking back Boston, so it all fits.

“We’d still need the personnel to supervise and control it,” Jaxon worried. “We blink and some idiot is going to make it into a meth lab.”

Vanessa winced. “Yes, that’s a fairly realistic worry. I understand your worry that oversight is quickly perceived as overreaching, but that facility had strict system implementation. People are used to that for this sort of thing. There would need to be guards—even human ones to watch monitors. It’s not something to be left alone.”

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