Free Revenge and the Wild by Michelle Modesto Page B

I’d say you were jealous,” she said, mimicking his statement from the docks.
    He gave it right back. “It’s a good thing you know better.”
    Westie ground her teeth. He was only copying the words that she’d said earlier, but they stung all the same.
    “Does Nigel know you’re leaving?” Alistair asked.
    “I left him a note saying I was going to Sacramento with Isabelle for a few days.”
    “Where are you really going?”
    “The cabin.”
    Alistair moved so close he couldn’t be ignored. “The cabin . . . where your family died?”
    She didn’t answer, just went on about her business, checking her saddle, Henry’s bit, and the length of her stirrups. When Alistair took her flesh hand in his, Westie looked down at their tangled fingers as if he’d grown tentacles. How unlike him it was to even stand near her. She could’ve easily slipped out of his hold, but his warmth and the firmness of his grip kept her grounded as her strength withered away.
    He had big, strong hands that were rough to the touch. They were hands that had never shied away from hard work, but were still agile enough to dress wounds and assist Nigel in the surgical rooms.
    Seeing their fingers laced together, she was reminded of the day they’d met, the day she and Nigel had found him. The men who’d attacked him and his family took off into the woods, and Nigel, with his cane and horse, went after them. Westie stayed back with Alistair.
    The cannibal men had bitten his cheeks, but the worst damage was done to his throat, leaving scarlet craters. Blood gurgled from his open wounds. Air whispered from his lips. His voice was gone, but she understood well enough. His lips moved and he mouthed the words “Kill me.”
    Though only fourteen at the time and small for his age, he gripped her flesh hand with the strength of a man twice his size, holding on as if she were his last tether to this earth. Westie was in agony as he crushed her fingers together, but she refused to pull away.
    Heavy tears fell from her eyes into his wounds. She’d thought about strangling him with her new powerful arm, but looking into his glittering eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to end his suffering. After losing her family to cannibals, Westie knew losing someone else—even a stranger—in the same violent way would be too much for her heart to bear. And so she begged him to live. She kissed his forehead and begged and begged.
    Nigel came back covered in the blood of the cannibal men and looked like a creature out of her worst dreams. She turned her begging on him and asked him to save the boy’s life.
    He slid from his saddle and crouched over the boy, examining the wounds.
    “You have to save him,” Westie demanded, tears blurring her vision.
    Nigel smoothed the boy’s hair and whispered. “Westie, I don’t know if—”
    “No! You have to,” she cried, her voice echoing off the trees.
    He let out a long sigh and nodded. “I’ll try.”
    Alistair sat on the edge of death for weeks after infection ravaged his body, but Nigel managed to save him. Westie stayed with Alistair through his recovery, through his nightmares and sorrow. She never once left his side. Like a silly girl, she believed he lived for her, so he was hers and she was his.
    “Don’t go,” Alistair said, interrupting her memories. “Creatures and bandits are all that travel the wagon trail now that the trains and airships have come back from the war.”
    Westie closed her eyes, memorized how his touch felt against her skin before shaking him off.
    “I have to.”
    “I am going with her,” Bena said. “She will be safe.”
    Alistair wouldn’t give up that easily. “Why are you going back there?”
    It wasn’t the first time Westie had tried to get into that cabin to learn more about her family’s killers. Once, two years ago, she and Bena had ridden out to the cabin in search of clues. An old man had made the place his home and refused to let them in. This time Westie