Free The Lawgivers: Gabriel by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

escape at the
first opportunity. With that thought in mind, she worked her way to
the edge of the herd as the group bottlenecked at the gate. Waiting
until everyone else had squeezed through, she followed and then
halted abruptly when she saw that Gabriel had ‘appeared’ outside.
She jolted to a halt, gaping at him for a moment in stunned
disbelief and then glancing back the way she’d come, wondering if
there was more than one of them.
    He looked downright amused when she
looked at him again—and knowing, as if he’d guessed what she had
planned.
    Or knew because he’d read her
mind.
    He pointed toward the rest of the
group—which was once again running although the necessity of
slowing to exit the city had temporarily tamped their
panic.
    With Gabriel now directly on her heels,
Lexa hurried to catch up to the others, too unnerved to feel much
in the way of resentment that he’d once again foiled her plans to
part company with him. When everyone tired enough to begin to slow
again, Gabriel moved forward to adjust their course.
    Thoroughly winded from their panicked
flight out of the village, everyone dropped from a run to a trot
and then to a walk and finally to trudging at a snail’s pace. He
waited until they reached a point of making very little progress at
all and then called a halt for a short rest. There was nothing to
shade them from the blistering sun overhead, but no one argued.
Most of them simply dropped where they were, panting.
    Lexa was fairly desperate for a drink
of water by that time, but she waited until she’d caught her breath
before unearthing a bottle from her supplies and taking a small
sip, swishing the water around in her mouth before she
swallowed.
    “You’d be wise to conserve your water,”
Gabriel announced to the group. “It will be two days before we
reach a safe water supply—assuming, of course, that we make good
time—longer if we don’t.”
    The announcement was enough to make
everyone examine their water somewhat fearfully. As accustomed as
Lexa was to taking very great care of her own supply, she felt her
heart sink. She had a very bad feeling that Gabriel’s estimate of
the time it would take was optimistic and that it might take far
longer. After all, he could fly and she doubted it would take him
nearly as long as it would everyone else.
    He had flown. That was the only thing
that made any sense at all as an explanation for how he’d managed
to get in front of them when they’d all run off and left him
standing in the street.
    Of course, he had wings and she’d heard
the angels could fly, but she didn’t think she’d actually believed
they could before.
    Mentally assessing the water she still
had, she took a couple more smallish sips, capped the bottle
carefully, and returned it to her pack. She didn’t want to run out
anymore than anyone else, but it wouldn’t do her any good to have
it if she passed out before she ran out. Someone would just take
what she had and leave her with none at all.
    The sun had moved about half past its
zenith before the angel allowed them to stop again, but then it had
been well upward in the sky before they’d even started out. This
time, he suggested they eat and not simply rest and
drink.
    Lexa scanned their surroundings and
finally spied an outcropping of rock that offered a little shade.
As tired as she was, she hurried over to it to claim it before
anyone else could. Unfortunately, she wasn’t fast enough. She
arrived at the shelter only just before one of the village men.
Before she could plant her ass in the little bit of shade it
offered, he gave her a shove that sent her sprawling.
    More than half expecting him to
punctuate his claiming of the spot by kicking her a few times for
good measure, Lexa scrambled to get to her feet even as she hit the
dirt, ignoring the burning scrapes to her palms and the bruising of
her knees. She slipped on the pebbles strewn across the hard packed
ground, however, and before she could do