Night of the Alphas

Chapter 20

She does love me.

Adrian was nothing more than a speck on the horizon when she said those four words. The words that made my stomach twist up and caused emotions I'd never before felt to course through my veins. I love you too.

Then, just as suddenly as my delicate, fresh love appeared, it was replaced with something else. Fear. I was afraid that in time, she would come to be afraid of me. Or even worse, I was afraid that she didn't mean it. Maybe she's just sorry for me. I mean, I kinda just dumped everything on her. She probably--

"Well, well, well." Joshua slung an arm around my shoulders. "Looks like someone's got a crush."

I couldn't stop myself from grinning. "I guess you could call it that."

"I must admit, I'm impressed. I've known Adrian her whole life. She's never had feelings for anyone before."

"Really?"

He nodded. "I guess you're different."

Alex smiled, and the tiny gap between his front teeth showed. "She's quite smitten with you, I would say." His face darkened ever so slightly. It was so slight, in fact, that I wondered if I was imagining it. "Don't let her down."

Joshua laughed, but an ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach arose. I won't, I promised to myself, trying not to let it get to me. I won't let her down, whatever that means.

The rest of the car ride to Charlotte was relatively uneventful. Joshua and Alex talked with each other most of the trip. Abel, predictably, kept to himself. I just used the ride to think.

I'd been nervous about telling Adrian about myself. It had felt good to finally tell someone everything, but now I was wondering if it would have been better to keep it all inside. Telling her and the rest of my friends about Charity and I's past was opening them up to a whole new world of trouble. And, now, we were just heading straight into an environment where we wouldn't be able to get away from the Alpha Freedom Movement if they decided to come after us.

I looked in the truck's rear window at Charity. She hadn't spoken much since her outburst the night before, and I doubted she really wanted to talk. She'd tried so hard to forget about Paisley, but was never truly able to. Now, as I stared at her through the glass, she looked white as a ghost. Her eyes were sunken from a night of tossing and turning, and her face was dark. Her lips were turned downward in a drained frown.

Bad luck seemed to follow Charity and I wherever we went. No matter what we did or said, bad things would always happen to the people we cared about most. I was shocked that nothing truly bad happened to our friends while we were staying with them, but I was sure that the worst was yet to come.

At some point in the ride, I nodded off. I only woke up when my nose started to burn with the acrid scent of gunpowder and smoke.

I rubbed my eyes and stretched. "Are we here?"

"Almost," Abel muttered. "Look."

I peeked over the truck cabin at the rapidly unfolding scene. I almost gasped as I saw how much had changed. The outer city, which had once been completely overrun by AFM patrols and criminals, was now surrounded by an electric fence, topped off with barbed wire. Inside the fence was a tiny, town-like setup. The militia had turned the abandoned buildings into shelters for soldiers, and scattered throughout the area were tents and temporary warehouses. There was a massive tent in the center of the encampment that was probably three times the size of the Edger's house. Its nylon walls were white, and there were clear plastic doors at the front of the building that served as doors. It's a medical center, I realized as I saw the American Red Cross logo emblazoned on one of the walls.