Cren nods slowly. “I shall summon the whole of my powers. They are at your disposal.”

I’m surprised when Alvarez bows slightly. “Thank you.” He stands to face the rest of us as like nothing weird just happened. “They have boats that regularly cross the channel, but we aren’t sure exactly where they’re going yet. My guess is that this Pod is acting as a hub in the supply chain coming from the stadiums and the MOHAI. It’s taking a cut and sending the rest to another location across the water. We haven’t been to see it yet, but we’re assuming it’s on Mercer Island. We think Westbrook has built himself a mini-Vashon.”

“One he’s not sharing,” someone says bitterly.

“No.”

“He really is following in your footsteps, then, isn’t he?”

Everyone turns to the open tent door. What we find there shocks only a few of us, but that’s only because the others don’t know enough yet. They will. And when they do, they will not be happy.

Andy stands next to Elijah, both of them looking completely unhappy. When I glance at Alvarez, he looks the same.

“Uh oh,” I mumble.

“Everyone,” Alvarez says tightly, “this is Elijah and Andy. They’re going to be joining us on our next operation.”

“Twist!” Trent whispers to me.

I scowl at him. “What?”

“This just got interesting. Shhh.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“Shhh.”

“I will cut you.”

Trent reaches for his belt. “Here’s my knife. Shhh.”

“Who are they?” Todd asks.

I’m impressed when Alvarez answers without hesitation. “Cannibals.”

Cue chaos.

People are so angry. It’s ugly. They don’t riot or throw chairs—they have too much respect for their leader for that—but they do shout out protests that leave my ears ringing for a minute.

I’m impressed again when Alvarez calls for silence and they almost immediately give it. It reminds me of Vin and his Colony, and when I look over at him I’m not surprised to see him staring blankly at Andy.

Vin shooting you daggers—that’s a slip in his calm. It’s a rare moment of mistake that he’ll quickly correct.

Vin watching you with silent calm—that’s deadly death danger. That’s a lion biding its time and planning its attack. Get your affairs in order, ‘cause you’re already dead.

“If we go in by boat, they’ll see us coming,” Alvarez says sternly. “If we go in on land, they’ll see us coming. We’ll never break through their narrow gate out onto the peninsula. Elijah and his people have offered to help us with a different strategy.”

“More tunnels,” I groan.

“That peninsula used to be a city park,” Elijah tells the room. “There are water lines. Sewer lines. Drainage lines. There are ways into their compound that they won’t see coming.”

“What’s the price?” Vin asks.

Elijah looks at him with tired eyes. “The price?”

“Yeah. There’s always a price. What do you want in return for this guided tour of the underworld?”

“They want the MOHAI once it’s retaken,” Alvarez says.

Vin’s nostrils flare slightly, but he holds perfectly still. “Is that all?” he asks, his voice low. Deep. Dangerous. “And we’re giving it to them?”

“That’s the plan, yes.”

“I have a better one. Kill them.”

“That doesn’t exactly help us.”

“All right, then just kill this one,” he says, nodding toward Andy. “He’s a traitor. He’s Hive.”

Andy snorts. “As much as you are, brother.”

“Do you have him fooled?” Vin asks coolly, pointing to Elijah. “Does this guy trust you the way Marlow did? Until the bloody end?”

“I would never betray—”

“Let me stop you there because you’re a liar, plain and simple. To be a member of Marlow’s inner circle means you swore an oath, and if you lied to him you’ll lie to these people too.”

“You openly betray everyone who has ever trusted you and you have the nerve to throw stones at me?” Andy growls through clenched teeth.

“I’m open about it. You’re a lying coward.”

“You’re a selfish prick. You’re worse than a traitor because you never had the balls to belong to anyone or anything in the first place. You’re nothing but a cocky little boy playing at being a man when what he really should be doing, what would benefit us all a little more, is if he’d disappear. And that’s what you’ll do someday. You’ll die, you’ll vanish, and no one will care that you’re gone.”

His words sting me, but I’m not sure why. I doubt they’ve even scratched the surface with Vin, but for some reason they hurt in my heart. Maybe because I wonder if they’re true. I sneak a peek at Vin to find him watching Andy with a familiar wry smile on his lips. He watches him for a long time before calmly and clearly telling him:

“Eat me.”

It’s a trigger for Andy. I know firsthand how much he hates judgment on their lifestyle, and somehow Vin must know it too.

The room erupts around me. Andy makes a lunge at Vin. Elijah goes to grab him. Ryan steps between them. Trent easily gets ahold of Andy from behind. Andy slips from his grasp only to be grabbed again, this time by both Elijah and Trent.

Vin never moves. The rest of the room bursts with people shouting for calm, grabbing at angry hands, but he and I both stand perfectly still inside the madness. With the entrance of the cannibals, this was already a powder keg waiting to blow and Vin just lit the match. This was a union that was destined to die violently, but what choice do we have? How many choices do we ever have? None. Or at best we get two and they’re never good. The sum of the life we live is the lesser of two evils. You dance with the Devil you know because he’ll leave you broken and bleeding, but at least you have a chance in hell at making it home to recover. It’s the unknown that will kill you, and even though I know that, even though I’ve lived it every single day for the last nine years, I’m still foolishly hoping that this time it will be different.

Maybe this time it will set me free.

“Are we going to have to separate you two?” I ask, shouting over the noise of aggression and rage, staring straight at Vin. He locks eyes with me, his face impassive. “Or can you play nicely?”

He smiles broad and easy. “I’m sugar-sweet, Kitten. You know that.”

“Can you tone it down a bit?”

“You want me to be less me?”

“I want you to shut your mouth a little more.”

His eyebrows raise in surprise. “You giving me orders now?”

“I’m giving you advice. If you can’t say something nice—”

“Say something painfully honest?”

“Shut your trap.”

He grins again. “That’s not how it goes.”

I gesture to Ryan, Trent, and Elijah forming a barrier between him and a still seething, though quieting, Andy. “Neither is this. If you can’t play nice, you need to get out of the sandbox. I’m getting past the fact that we’re all meals on wheels to them and if I can do it, anyone can. Even you.” I look around to the rest of the room. “All of you can. And you will or we’re boned. We may as well just go home now.”

Vin waves my words away. “I don’t care what they eat. Or who. Live and let live, I always say.”

I shake my head, feeling exhausted. “I really doubt you’ve ever said those words before.”

“Maybe not, but it’s true. The cannibalism thing, that’s never bothered me.”

“Then why are you pushing his buttons like this?” Ryan asks, turning to face Vin. I don’t care for his back being to Andy. The only thing keeping me sane is that Trent is there too.

“Because he’s a liar,” Vin says simply. “He’s betraying The Hive after how many years under their roof? At their table? In their beds?”

“So you don’t trust him. Fine,” I say, letting my exasperation show. “We all know it. Bottom line—can you work with him or not? Can you all get past your issues and work with them to get this thing done?”

Eyes hit the floor or shoot to the sky. People avoid looking at each other and I don’t know if it’s because they’re ashamed for hating someone they don’t know just because they… well, because they eat people and that’s jacked up, or if it’s because they don’t want to face the fact that they can’t get over it. I understand either way.