Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: One Night Off

"I promise," I said.

Gran looked at me a long time over the mask.

"Haven girls," she whispered. "Always promising."

Then she shut her eyes.

The medic pushed the mask back over her face and glared at both of us.

"Out. She needs to sleep, not make speeches."

I didn't go out. Neither did Brand.

We sat on the floor of that container all night and listened to her breathe.

At dawn the rattle had eased.

At noon she opened her eyes and asked for flatbread.

"She'll live," the medic said. "God knows why. Pure spite, I think."

"I heard that," Gran said through the mask.

Building the second governor took eleven weeks.

I worked in Sable's shop with a twin on the floor under the bench, chewing a spool.

The boy from the collars wound coil until his fingers bled.

Sable's trader came up the drain every Sunday with whatever Haven would sell him.

Gran sat on her step with the mask in her lap and asked me every evening if it was done yet.

"Nearly."

"You said that last week."

"It was nearly then too."

On the night we ran the full test, the town brought chairs into the square.

Gran's went in the middle, by the pump, with three blankets on it.

I threw the switch.

The governor brought the nodes up, one at a time, the way my mother drew it.

The gold closed over us.

It held at one hour. At two.

At four, the twins fell asleep in a heap on Brand's jacket.

At six, Sable fell asleep on the pump.

At dawn, the gold was still there, thin and steady, with the first gray light coming through it.

Gran was awake in her chair.

She hadn't closed her eyes all night.

"There," she said, when I came to her. "That's a promise kept."

She held out her hand. I took it.

"Now," she said. "Give me those babies for a night. You look terrible. Both of you."

"Not yet," I said. "When it's safe."

She snorted. "It's never safe, girl. That's not what it's for."

I kept saying not yet.

We ran the dome all night once a week for practice, week after week.

Brand didn't push.

He just looked at me sometimes across the shack, after the twins were asleep and I was too tired to talk.

Six weeks after the full test, the first frost came.

I woke up to white on the porch pallets, and Gran on our step with her stick.

"Today," she said. "I'm not asking."

She took both twins away to her railway car in a wheelbarrow, with a blanket over them, both of them shrieking with joy.

Our daughter waved. Our son waved the wrong hand.

Then they were gone, and the shack was very quiet.

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