Vin looks Andy up and down slowly. I know why he’s doing it. He’s dragging the moment out to stress every last person in the room—everyone but him and probably Trent, because Trent doesn’t stress. I don’t like it one bit. I feel like Vin is trying to make Andy slip up so he has a reason. The same reason he had with Breanne.

“Yeah, I can work with him,” he says finally. But then his eyes swing to Alvarez. “But they don’t get the MOHAI. Not a chance.”

“Who would you suggest inherits it, then?” Alvarez asks, but he already knows.

Vin stares at him long and hard without answering.

I see Alvarez’s jaw clench once tightly, but then he nods. “It’s yours if you can get it back. Elijah, the same goes for you and your people. If you get us into the southern Pod like you promised, then it’s yours. Deal?”

Elijah nods, his eyes still on Vin. “Deal.”

“Great,” Alvarez says sarcastically. “Now can you all stop acting like children and get back to business? We still have a lot of work to do.”

***

Three hours later finds me eating my last meal in the forest. We’re having a late breakfast, then it’s off to war. I’m noticing that this overthrowing business is exhausting. I keep accidentally looking off in the direction of my loft, dreaming of my bed and my bathroom. After the tense meeting we just had with the cannibals, I’m even having thoughts about my bottle of vodka.

“It took you long enough to come back,” Lexy tells me bitingly.

The girl is ruining my meal. Ever since the stable girls showed up, she’s been attached like glue to Vin’s side. I recognize it for what it is—infatuation. No way Vin is leading her on. He barely tolerates her, which isn’t to say he isn’t sleeping with her, but he definitely isn’t putting pretty pictures in her head. She’s doing that all on her own.

“That’s what he said,” I grumble around a large bite of bread, gesturing to Vin.

“We were sure you’d left us to die.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Don’t be. We wouldn’t have been sorry to see you go.”

I look up from my plate to eye her carefully. I do it for too long. She twitches under my stare, making me grin.

“‘We,’ huh? You’re a ‘we’ now?”

Vin looks up sharply. “What? No.”

“Vin,” Lexy protests.

“Are you sure?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he tells me angrily. He stares Lexy down. “And, no, we’re not a ‘we.’ We’re nothing.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t mean it, Lex,” I tell her consolingly. “Never give up hope.”

“Kitten,” Vin growls in warning.

Lexy shoots me an icy stare from across the table. It’s cute how hard she tries. “Be sure to watch your back out there, Kitten,” she spits sarcastically. “I’d hate to see you get hurt.”

I put up my finger in her face, getting serious. “Watch yourself. You’re toeing a dangerous line with me right now and I don’t want to have to remind you what happened to the last girl who threatened me. Forget Vin, I’ll put you to bed with Caroline. You get me?”

Lexy pales. She glances once at Vin, then Ryan and Trent. All of them keep their heads down, carefully pretending they have no idea what’s happening. Finally she stands slowly, turns, and leaves without a word.

“Well, that’s handy,” I mumble, picking up my bread.

“Kinda harsh,” Ryan comments.

I hate that I immediately feel a twinge of guilt just from those two words from him. “I did him a favor,” I say defensively. “That girl was one kiss away from collecting his hair. I don’t have time for that kind of crazy.”

“Amen to that,” Vin says heartily, raising his glass to me.

“Calm down, Romeo. You’re the idiot who keeps getting us into these situations.”

“‘Us’?” he asks with a sly grin. “Are we an ‘us’ now?”

“No,” Ryan replies darkly.

I roll my eyes. “Can we talk about something else?”

“I think there are almonds in this bread,” Trent states affably.

“What happened to your dad?” I ask Vin.

“Maybe pecans?”

He doesn’t have to say anything—I can feel Ryan’s annoyance rolling off him in waves that crash over me again and again. But I don’t care if I’m being too blunt. Vin is the rudest person I know. I don’t owe him any attempt at etiquette.

Vin eyes me shrewdly. “He died.”

“No kidding. How, though? Marlow did it, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because he lied to him.”

“About what?”

“About everything.”

“Nats said you were an orphan before the fall. How did your mom die?”

Ryan nudges my arm. I scoot away from him.

Vin shrugs. “I don’t know. I never knew her. She ran when I was born.”

“Why didn’t your dad raise you?”

“He did. He was a drunk and a druggie. As soon as I was old enough to run away, I did.” Vin sets his food down and leans across the table, giving me his full attention. When he speaks, his voice is flat. Dead. “I lived on the streets and I took care of myself. When the illness came and everyone started dying, I thought it was great. I thought that finally all of the worthless, lazy deadbeats out there would be gone and all that would be left were people like me. Smart and fast. Tough. So I went back to my dad’s house a few months after it started. I wanted to see his fat corpse banging around inside his tiny, filthy apartment. I wanted to be the one to bash his head in. But you know what I found instead of a zombie? That SOB was still alive. He’d stolen food and drugs, probably killed living people to get it, and he was still alive. He attached himself to me after that. I couldn’t shake him and for some stupid reason, I couldn’t kill him. I prayed for him to get bitten, but it never happened. Eventually we took up with Marlow when he was just getting started. Dad sold Honey for him, but he took more of the drug than he sold. He got into trouble and Marlow put him down. Tossed his body in the Sound while I watched. He let me keep his ring, though.”

“Why do you keep it if you hated him so much?” I ask quietly, stunned by this amount of information from Vin.

He holds his hand up, showing me the ring. “Marlow said to wear it and remember what happens to traitors. It kept me in line. Now I wear it so I’ll always remember not to be stupid like my dad was. Stupid and weak won’t get you anywhere but dead. It’s the only thing that loser was ever able to teach me.”

He slams his hand down on the table, the ring making a sharp sound against the metal of his battered plate.

“Anything else you want to ask me, Kitten?” he asks calmly.

I shake my head stiffly. “No, I’m good.”

“Great. I gotta hit the head.”

Vin stands abruptly, his legs knocking the table and spilling my cup of water. The liquid runs over the uneven surface, chasing the path of least resistance until it finds the edge and begins to drip down onto my leg.

“Maybe don’t go digging around in people’s pasts anymore,” Trent recommends before taking a bite of apple.

“Trent, I don’t say this as often as I should,” I reply, feeling exhausted and stupid, “but I think you’re absolutely right.”

Chapter Nineteen

I don’t see Vin again after that. He leaves to go get his castle and he doesn’t find me to say goodbye. I don’t know much about people, but I know I messed up. I know he’s mad at me and fair enough. I would rage out on him if he did the same thing to me. Especially in front of other people. I thought I was being blunt and calloused the way he always is, but now I’m not so sure. I think I might have just been a jerk again.

Not long after Vin leaves with his small army, we head south in the largest gathering of human beings I’ve seen in years. Once you take everyone out of their tents and away from the trees, you can see how many there really are—a buttload. We picked up more people willing to fight from the stadiums. I think the count I heard was around one hundred, but when you consider the number we lost to Vin heading north, we’re about where we were before. He even took the girls from the stables with him. I’m not surprised in the least that Freedom knows how to fight. Her temporary pimp Dante even came out of The Hive with them, leaving me amazed at the amount of loyalty that’s built into that place. Their sense of family is a lot like the cannibals’: it’s everything to them.