Page 24 of Sold Rejected Mate
“Okay?” I ask, hating how weak I feel.
“Yeah,” she says. “I won’t tell him. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think you should wait much longer, Val. Because if you don’t tell him before he finds out on his own, it’s probably going to feel like a lie to him.”
She’s right—I know she is. But it doesn’t change the fact that I have absolutely no intention to tell him the truth, to remind him of the girl he abandoned like trash.
Chapter 12 - Lachlan
Twelve hundred degrees is hot enough to melt aluminum. It’s hot enough to turn steel into putty, to take a building and reduce it to a jelly-boned version of what it once was. The spiking temperatures inside this forest fire explain how daemon fire manages to leave behind nothing but fine silver ash.
The pines on the east side of town fight for their lives against it. Since Xeran came back, we’ve prepped the trees, coating them with the ash and special oil that helps them resist the daemon fire for a little while—long enough for us to respond—but when we arrive today, some of the trees are already thoroughly engulfed, their trunks turned to black charcoal as that thick, choking, inky smoke from the daemon fire rises up into the sky.
“We need to establish a defensive area before it reaches the residential area,” Xeran says.
This time, instead of circling around the fire and trying to put it out from all sides, we’re letting it burn its way through the forest and trying to keep it from getting to the town, catching on the church right off 6th Street. That’s the first building it could grab.
And once it gets to the buildings, it’ll be even harder to stop.
I check my air gauge, then stare up at the blue-tinted flames rising forty feet above the tree line, the superheated air pulling wind in from town.
When I was a kid, the air around Silverville always smelled nice—crisp in the winter, warm and rich in the summer. Sometimes twinkling with the fresh scent of the Silverville Creek.
But now, the air only ever smells like wildfire.
“Fuckingshit,” Felix mutters, not cracking a single joke as we plod forward, spraying out our extinguisher at the stuff, thewhooshingsound of it like a million bottles of whipped cream spraying at once.
Felix isn’t making jokes because he’sexhausted. We all are.
As much as I was wishing for a fire that first night with Green, now that I’m here, having left my house for the first time since bringing her home, all I want is to go back. To check on her, make sure she’s safe. I trust Phina, but do I trust, one hundred percent, that she can defend Green with the same effort I would?
We lose sight of one another. Through the thick black smoke, I can only barely make Felix out to my left, the shape of him like it could be anyone. Normally, Xeran would have already called through the comms for us to communicate, to talk as much as possible. Information is safety in situations like these. We need to know where the other guys are, need to be able to rely on the team.
But we’re all tired. Maybe Xeran is too consumed with the fire.
“Positions?” I call into the comms, turning and spraying at a patch of fire on the ground, knowing Xeran might give me shit later for trying toplay supreme. It will be jokingly, though. His leadership style is less Holden or Declan, more empowering each of us to take some leadership, especially when it comes to the squad.
Xeran makes the final call, but he wants to know that each of us can hold our own and follow through with protocol when Xeran’s not the one to start it.
“Due north of you,” Soren calls back to me, his voice recognizable through the comms. “Kalen is with me.”
“I’m on your three,” Felix says. “But feeling more like a one.”
I wait for Xeran to answer, and when there’s nothing from him, I call out, “Xeran?”
Again, no answer. For the first time since getting out here, I’m not thinking about Green back home. I’m thinking about Xeran, and knowing the fact that he’s not answering is really, really not good.
“His comms must have cut off,” I say, swinging my head side to side, but now I can’t even see Felix through the blaze. “Anyone have last sights on him?”
“I’ll come with you!” Kalen shouts, and a moment later, he appears at my side like a man walking through the bog, nearly making me jump out of my fucking skin. “He was on the far north side—come on.”
I walk with Xeran’s brother—the only decent one of them—toward the last place we saw him. Kalen and I stop to throttle another burning tree with an extinguisher. When the smoke starts to clear with another burst of wind, we see Xeran.
He’s standing tall, spraying his extinguisher over a patch of grass. Then, in the next moment, there’s a tree hurtling toward him.
“Shit!” Kalen calls, running toward his brother. “Xeran—”
But it’s too late. The thing plummets down, and Xeran’s senses alert him to it, but not fast enough. He turns, trying to jump out of the way, but the tree rolls mid-air toward him, pushed by the branches of the surrounding foliage, and lands on Xeran’s legs.
“Fuck!” Kalen yells, two steps ahead of me as we reach the log. “Fuck—Xer!”
