And once again, I had no choice.
Tension slipped from my spine as I sank into realization that from here on out, I would have to share everything. My shelter. My food. My energy. My life. She wouldn’t thank me. She wouldn’t appreciate it. She would expect it just like every filly, calf, kitten, or puppy expected their parent to ensure its survival.
“I hate you,” I whispered as I looked through the trees for any sign of company. My ears twitched for any sound of baying hounds as my fingers tore open the plastic and pinched the warm, smelly cheese between them.
My mouth watered so much I almost drooled as I raised the morsel out of its bag. My legs shook to eat, knowing they had a long trek ahead of them.
But blue eyes never left my face, condemning me for even thinking about eating.
“I hate you,” I reminded her. “I’ll always hate you. So don’t you ever forget it.”
Ducking on my haunches, I shoved my hand in her face.
Instantly, a grimace twisted her lips in a strange sort of smile as her hands came up, latched once again around my wrist, and a tiny, wet mouth covered my fingertips.
She pulled back a second later, spitting and complaining, red fury painting her blotchy cheeks. She scowled at the cheese in my fingers then me, looking far older than her young age.
I scowled right back, fighting every instinct to eat what she’d refused. “This is all we have until we get somewhere safer.” I pushed it toward her mouth again before I could steal it. “Eat it. I won’t give you the chance again.”
She took a moment. An endless moment while she cocked her head this way and that like a sparrow, then finally swayed forward and licked the cheese from my hold.
Her fingers never stopped twirling her ribbon, hypnotizing me as she quickly lapped at the miniscule offering and sat back in silence.
I didn’t speak as I broke off another cube and placed it on my tongue. A moan of sheer delight escaped me as my body rushed to transform taste into energy and get me the hell away from here.
I wanted more.
I wanted the whole thing.
I wanted every can of beans and every bottle of water I’d been able to steal.
But even though it cost me, even though my hands shook with a brutal battle to seal the plastic and place it in the backpack with her, I managed.
Grabbing the sides of the canvas’s zipper, I looked her dead in the eye. “We’re going for a swim, so the dogs can’t smell us. You’re probably going to get wet and cold, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so don’t cry. You cry, and I’ll leave you for the bears.”
She blinked and stuck her thumb in her mouth with her ribbon dangling from her fist.
“Good.” I nodded. “Don’t…don’t be afraid.”
With a final look at her silky hair and innocent trust, I yanked up the zippers, drenched her in darkness, and swung her substantial weight onto my back.
She cried out as she thumped against my spine.
I stabbed her side with my elbow, striding fast toward the river. “Della Mclary, you make one more sound, and it will be your last.”
She fell quiet.
And I ran…for both our lives.
CHAPTER THREE
REN
* * * * * *
2000
THE FIRST FEW nights of something strange and new were always the toughest.
I’d learned that the hard way, and the lesson came again as I crashed to my knees next to a falling down shed in the middle of an untended field.
Adaption.
That was what I’d done when I’d been sold to the Mclarys, and if I didn’t remember the struggle it took to fall into routine, accept the inevitable, and find a new normal, then I probably would’ve curled into a ball, yelled at the vanishing moon, and suffocated the damn baby in my backpack.
Those first days at the farmhouse had been the worst because I kept expecting something more. Something kinder, better, warmer, safer. It wasn’t the conditions I’d been thrust into or the back-breaking work I was assigned, but the hope that all of it would vanish as quickly as it had arrived.
But once that hope had been eaten away by my starvation, life had gotten easier. Acceptance had been smoother, and I’d saved up my tears for when they truly mattered.
Breathing fast, I peered into the dawn-smudged gloom for signs of a hunt.
My clothes were still wet from walking thigh-high in the stream for as long as I could physically stand it. My muscles had bellowed from the chilly water, my ankles threatening to snap every time I slipped off an unseen rock on the bottom.
It would’ve been far easier to sink below the surface and let the ripples take me. To lie on my back and rest.