Page 18 of Venomous Heart
“Come on, Uril, let’s get back. I want to go outside for a bit before going to sleep,” she said.
Ava wrapped her arm around the boy’s shoulder and they left. Blazing sunlight greeted them as they stepped outside into the small clearing. But Uril didn’t rush around, catching bugs and smelling flowers. Instead, he stood by her side, his golden eyes looking far away and yet seeing nothing.
“Why do they do that?”
Ava looked as his face settled in harsh lines. A stab of pain shot through her at the sight of it. Uril was good, generous and funny. She didn’t want other people’s ignorance to rob him of that.
“It’s because they’re scared, that’s all.”
“No, I don’t mean that.” Uril shook his head then, when he looked back at her, he wore an expression that he was starting to have more and more. Like there was nothing bad that could happen that would surprise him. Like he was ready for the worst. Her stabbing pain came back with a vengeance. “I mean, why have a baby? Giving birth to someone, not even knowing what her life will be like. It just seems so cruel to me.”
Ava stared, taken completely aback by the turn of Uril’s thoughts. As she watched him, taking in the serious, closed-off expression, so uncharacteristic in his usually carefree face, she saw the shadow of the man he would become. A man with sharp wits and a depth that came from knowledge of both the worst and the best in people. A man Ava would give everything for him to have the chance to become.
“Maybe it was because they needed something to love more than anything.”
Her answer made Uril frown and a shadow flickered across his eyes.
“Do you suppose our mothers felt like that when we were born?” There was a depth of pain, a gaping wound in his voice as he spoke, and Ava realized just how much she had strayed from him in the last month. How alone he had been. “I don’t think they did. I think they looked at us the same way Declan did. Like we were monsters.” His golden eyes met hers, brimming with tears. “Maybe he was right. Maybe we are monsters.”
Abominations.
Ava’s voice was as silent as her mind as she looked at the boy who had been her only family for most of her life. When had he started thinking like that?
She opened her mouth to answer, but what was there to say? The women Knut had selected to carry the embryos had had no choice. They had probably been horrified to give birth to hybrid babies. That thought summoned a pain so deep, so acute, she almost doubled over like she’d been hit in the chest.
Because there, too, Uril was right. She closed her hand around his frail shoulder and they looked at each other. Two hybrids, two people whose very existence was forbidden. They were family, but not quite so. Nothing was quite so in their lives. Except their love for each other. Because, brother or not, Uril was all she had.
“What are we going to do now?” Uril sounded sad, but also hopeful. He looked up to her; always had. He needed her to tell him everything was going to be all right.
And she was going to. Again, Ava opened her mouth to speak, but she was cut short by the two silhouettes walking out of the deep cover of the forest. She didn’t recognize them but she recognized the looks on their faces. Hatred. Hatred… and something else.
“Uril, get back inside.”
She grabbed the boy’s hand and pushed him behind her body. She turned to the door back into the building, only to see another figure emerge from it. This one, she recognized. It was Will Harl, and the look on his face was taken straight from her worst nightmares. Her face grew numb as Uril’s hold on her hand turned painful.
This wasn’t a coincidence, it was an ambush.
“Well, well, well.” Will Harl sneered at her as he limped on the leg Ava had recently repaired in a surgery that had lasted five hours. “If it isn’t abominations one and two. Just in time for a little chat.”
Ava’s jaw clenched hard, and the metallic tang of blood registered on her tongue. A quick glance over her shoulder told her exactly what she already knew. The two other men were already halfway across the clearing, walking in a leisurely, confident pace.
Because they already had their prey. Neither Ava nor Uril stood a chance against three of them.
“We never did anything to you.” Uril spoke loudly, trying to be strong, to sound like a man, but his voice broke and he sounded young, so heartbreakingly young. “Just leave us alone.”
“Listen to that. Little freak can speak.” One of the unnamed men from the forest spoke, a cruel grin on his lips. He was young, maybe twenty years old, and his eyes glittered with a hatred so deep, Ava knew there was no talking their way out of this. This was going to go down ugly and violent.
“I’m not a freak, and I’m not a monster,” Uril answered, and this time, his voice was deeper and stronger, more like a man’s than a boy’s. “You are. Threatening a woman and a child like that.”
“Oh, boy, we are not threatening.” Will Harl took control of the conversation, limping forward with a triumphant grin. “Threatening you would be saying we’ll beat the both of you until you’re nothing but a pile of broken bones, then leave you for all to see. Or that we’ll use this one until she bleeds out of that sweet, monstrous little hole she’s got. It’s only a threat if you offer an alternative to it.”
Uril’s face seemed to melt, wretched fear spreading across his features in an instant.
Ava moved, ruled by pure instinct. Her fist went up and connected squarely with Will Harl’s hard jaw. At the same time, she kicked, viciously, at the breaking point in his injured leg. The effect was instantaneous. Will Harl howled in pain as he crumpled to the ground.
Ava lost no time. She turned to Uril, grabbing his arm with both hands. “Run!”
She pulled, but Uril resisted her hold. His golden eyes, so young, yet so old, stared at her with what she could only describe as a sad kind of fondness.
