Chapter 7: Torn Paper

I took the paper out of Brand's hand.

I tore it in half.

Then in half again, and again, until it was confetti.

I threw it over the gate into the wind, and it blew back across Perrin's white coat.

Half the salvage crew had come down to watch. Somebody laughed.

Perrin brushed a scrap off his sleeve.

"I have copies, Ember. The offer stands for a week." He looked at Brand. "Your wife doesn't sign for you. Or does she?"

He got in the truck and drove off toward Haven.

The crew went quiet.

Brand didn't look at me. He turned and walked back toward the shack.

I followed him in my towel with my feet freezing in the dust.

He shut the door behind us. Not hard. That was worse.

"Triple pay," he said. "For Gran's lungs. For a year."

"It's a trap."

"Everything Hawthorne does is a trap. I've worked Registry contracts for ten years. You go in, you get out, you get paid."

"Not that one."

"Why not that one?"

I stood there dripping.

There was no answer I could give him that didn't sound completely insane.

You died there. Your tag came back on a chain. I was seven months pregnant with your children.

"I can't explain it," I said.

"Then don't tear up my work in front of my crew."

"It's not work, Brand, it's an ambush."

"You don't know that."

"I do."

"How?"

I didn't answer.

He laughed once, without anything in it.

"Three days," he said. "You bonded me in a cage, you fixed a pump, you know where my scars are."

"And now you decide where I go and what I sign. Like a Haven girl with a dog."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.