For once in my life, my father has taken my side.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Juliet
I’m back in a cage again. I yank furiously against the bars but it’s no use.
That Queen is one piece of work. She was never going to listen to a thing we had to say. She wanted me back in this damn cage and she got it.
The cold way she looked at me… She doesn’t just want me caged. She wants me dead, along with the... Along with the…baby.
I drag my hands through my hair and shake my head. No. No no no. This was never supposed to happen. I was never supposed to be a mother.
For exactly this reason.
I can barely take care of myself, much less protect some innocent baby from all the bad shit in the world. I’ll fail them. Just like I did Mariah.
Jesus, why did I have to go in there and open my big fat mouth? But no one was talking and I thought maybe I could break the ice. Obviously I only made things worse. As per usual.
My hand drops to my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Then the door opens and…Shak walks through again. My mouth drops open.
How—? Last I saw him, guards were swarming him. How did he get away?
I barely stop myself from shouting out his name but it’s not like he’s trying to be stealthy. There are three technicians in the lab now but again, they only stare but do not get in his way as he strides over towards my cage.
“Juliet, I am so sorry.” He doesn’t rip the cage open this time, he just drops down beside me and sticks his hands as far through the bars of the cage as he can. His hand reaches for mine but I don’t take it.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
Shak looks confused. “Do what?”
I slam my back hard against the wall of the cage. It doesn’t move. I’m suddenly furious at him. “Why did you choose me of all people to be the mother of some new race? What the hell were you thinking?”
“Juliet, I—”
“No!” I shake my head. “You had no right. No right!”
And then come the tears. I haven’t cried in eight fucking years, but now tears are flowing down my cheeks.
“I won’t survive it, don’t you understand? I won’t survive losing another one.”
Shak’s face moves from bewildered to shocked. “A baby?”
I shake my head. “An innocent.” I wipe my dripping nose and my head falls to my knees that I have pulled up to my chest.
“Mariah was my kid sister,” I whisper. “She worshiped me. She followed me everywhere. When things would get bad at home, and they got bad a lot, we’d sneak out the back door and go to a nearby 7-11. Usually I could scrape up enough quarters to buy a candy bar or get a soda or something.”
My eyes go distant, remembering. “One night Mom and Dad were screaming. I could tell it was gonna be a bad one. Mariah wanted to stay at home and just hide out under the bed.”
A new rush of tears chokes me. “But I convinced her it would be better to get out of the house. I’d been saving up. I told her she could get a candy bar and a Coke.”
I swipe angrily at my tears. “She was happy the whole way there. I thought I was doing the right thing, getting her out of there. I didn’t want her to grow up thinking violence was normal or okay. But I’d forgotten that the whole fucking world is violent.”
I take in a gulp of air. “We weren’t in the convenience store for five minutes before men came in and started shooting up the place. Mariah was at the end of the aisle and I couldn’t get to her in time. I couldn’t get to her—” I break off into sobs and that moment, that terrible moment I will never forget replays on a loop in my mind.
Mariah looks my way, terror in her wide, innocent eyes. And then she’s knocked backward off her feet when the gunshots hit her, two rounds right in the chest.
I race down the aisle, sliding on my knees the last few feet. The staccato pop pop pop of semiautomatic gunfire is all around as I pull Mariah into the relative safety of the aisle.
But it’s too late. I’m only there in time to see her mouth gaping but unable to speak any words and her panicked eyes beseeching mine to help her.
And then…then she was just…gone.
Shak has moved around the cage and is squeezing my arm in what I know is meant to be a comforting gesture. But I pull away from him and look at him, one hand on my stomach.
“I swore I’d never put myself in that position again. I’d never be a mother or babysitter or have anything to do with kids. Because losing another innocent life on my watch—”